Where do I come from? Family ties in San Jose, Salt Lake City, and Estipac
by Izamar Ortiz-González
Where do I come from? Families ties in San Jose, Salt Lake City, and Estipac
Who are we? Where do we come from? Where am I? Where am I going? These are the primary guiding questions from Our Stories in Our Voices.
My answers are tied to the decisions my father made in his youth. I would not be in Sacramento; I would not be pursuing my Ph.D. if my father, Ernesto Ortiz, had not made the choice to leave his small town of Estipac, Jalisco, Mexico, in 1977.
At fourteen years old, my father left Esipac Jalisco to pursue more opportunities. You ask him now, and he will say, “The youth back then went to the North.” He was the second youngest out of ten children. His father, my grandfather Papá Macario, was retired at this point. Once the head of the Corcuera Hacienda, he had accumulated land and houses and distributed these amongst his oldest sons. By the time Ernesto, my father, and Antonio had been born, he only had the new house on the Loma to give them upon his death. Given that my father only passed sixth grade a puros panzasos, by the teacher’s hammering stick, at last, the school was not the path he chose. While his younger brother decided to stay, my father chose el Norte, North.
He was 17 years old, and he embarked on the journey with two older boys Nabor and Pablo. Years later, he would find out that Nabor was the older first cousin of the woman that became my mother. But I digress.
The coyote took my father from Estipac to Salt Lake City, Utah. There he worked in a hotel washing dishes. He didn’t like Salt Lake City in the 1970s. Back then, he only had 30 minutes of Spanish music on Sundays. He lived in an apartment with five other men. After two years, he headed to San Jose, California, to reconnect with three older brothers he didn’t know in his childhood.
The Rise of Silicon Valley
In the 1980’s San Jose, California, was still nestled between Agriculture fields. Cupertino, home of Apple, was just ten miles from San Jose but this fact did not become important until much later.
In San Jose he found a home; he carries with him more so than Estipac. He reconnected with his older brothers and became a role model to his younger nephews and nieces, children of his oldest sister Chepa— we call them the Borceguines.
The rise of Silicone Valley shaped my father’s and his nephew’s lives. He and his nephews started- as many did back then- picking up tomatoes. Once these were sold, they became the popular swat meat that many of us remember going to on weekends. The Ortiz and Borceguines were the families that were part of a larger Latinx community cleaning schools and office buildings.
The Borceguines built a reputation among companies and they eventually created a custodian/cleaning business and earned their contracts with schools and office buildings in downtown San Jose. They had no middle man and were able to choose where they wanted to work.
One of the Borceguin brothers was fortunate to have met Carmen. Carmen’s family had not crossed the border— the border crossed her family. Carmen knew how to navigate specific laws and systems in San Jose and, because of this knowledge, the Borceguin brothers were the first in the Ortiz family to own land in San Jose. The knowledge Carmen shared help my whole family. They were able to purchase these homes before the rise of Silicon Valley. They are proud of this feat to this day.
At this point he was married to my mother and had my twin sister and me. My father started working for the “electronica”— an IBM factory. Because of this, we grew up with the leftover IBM and Apple computers that were thrown away. I never figured out how, but my father managed to fix them, and we played solitaire on these computers. The screens would switch back and forth between green and black screens. We loved using the art feature to draw.
However, the rise of Silicone Valley meant that by 1997 my father was given a choice. My parents wanted to expand the family. It was time for a house. However, the homes in San Jose they qualified for were not neighborhoods in which my mother wanted to raise her children.
My father’s younger nephews, the children of his oldest two brothers Ramon and Carlos, Macaria and Teresa, had joined the Ortiz and Borceguin in San Jose. With them came more people from Estipac Jalisco. However, with Silicon Valley’s rising costs of living, a second option opened for Ortiz, Borceguin, and the rest of Estipac Jalisco: Salt Lake City, Utah.
Salt Lake City, Utah, the new mecca.
Even though in the 1970s my father and his cousin had left the city to push forth towards San Jose in California, not everyone from Estipac left. Some fell in love with the hills that surrounded the city; perhaps it reminded them of home. Estipac is nestled between hills all around.
Those that stayed behind paved the way for those who could not stay in San Jose anymore. The late 1990s resulted in a large exodus by my family’s extended family. Those that wanted houses, those that wanted more opportunities, went to Salt Lake City. In the late 1990s our families moved to Utah and joined the service industry there.
My mother’s youngest siblings bypassed San Jose altogether and headed straight to Salt Lake City. So when we visit our family there, it is not uncommon for my father to run into an old friend from Estipac working at a Denny’s.
My family was the exception. My father had a cousin that happened to live in Tracey, California. It was a smaller town back then, suburban and surrounded by ranches. What they could not afford in San Jose got them a suburban neighborhood in Tracey, surrounded by retirees. My mom liked that. My dad liked that it was a corner house. This house still haunts me to this day, but that is another story for another day.
Estipac
When I was 25, I went on a short trip to Estipac by myself. By this time, the town suffered from years of neglect from the government. The residents paid taxes but Estipac itself did not reap any benefits. However, there was a new little restaurant by one of the main avenues into the town. This street used to be the outmost edge of the city during my parent’s youth. The restaurant is called Viki’s.
Viki’s sold hamburgers, chicken wings, pizza, and anything else you might find at a fast-food restaurant in the USA but with top-quality ingredients. You knew your patty was actual meat and your potatoes came seasoned with more than just salt.
Walking into Viki’s, three portraits surprised me. They had three skylines of three cities in the United States. Chicago was there, San Jose was there, and I thought I would see Los Angeles or New York City, but instead, they had Salt Lake City.
This was 2015. By then, the people who did move up north, skipped San Jose and headed to Salt Lake City. But by 2015, most people in Estipac did not leave; they could make a good living in Jalisco. This small restaurant in Estipac carries the history of migration patterns of its people connecting San Jose and Salt Lake City.
Conclusion
My father’s story gives a glimpse of the history of the migration ties that connect communities in Mexico, California, and Uath. To understand that story, it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that it is made up of thousands of families’ stories, and that these stories are small intricate fibers that form the larger tapestry of what it means to be us.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Izamar Ortiz-González is a daughter of immigrant parents. This experience thought her to navigate multiple narratives at school and at home. Bridging the gap between these narratives has been her goal throughout her life as a teacher, organizer and student. She double majored in International Relations and Spanish for her BA at UC Davis. She received her single subject teaching credential and Masters of Arts in Education from Loyola Marymount University. She spent six years as a public school teacher in Sacramento, California. She organizes with other educators through the Association of Raza Educators.