Voices of Lake Okeechobee

Mike Vogel | 9/1/2007

Immigrants
American Dreamers

Maria and José Prieto, a welder, own five rental properties. Maria also owns a small restaurant with her sister. “I think Pahokee found out Hispanics are very hard-working,” says Father John Mericantante.

José and Maria Prieto (back) with daughter Sara and Maria’s sister Carmen Hernandez (right) [Photo: Jeffrey Camp]

Not too many years ago, as Mexican immigrant Maria Angelina Prieto and her husband, José, earned extra money cleaning and painting five Pahokee rentals while their first-born watched from a playpen, Maria joked to her husband that some day they would own the units.

It was a far-fetched notion for recent arrivals, themselves renters, who supported themselves with José’s income. But they added two more kids, moved up to a mobile home, then bought a three-bedroom house with a terrazzo floor nine years ago. José is now a welder, and they own those five rentals. What’s more, Maria and her sister Carmen Hernandez opened a small eatery five years ago that employs three part time, serving migrant laborers from the nearby fields.

“We have people now who own their own businesses. It’s beautiful,” says their pastor, Father John Mericantante. “I think Pahokee found out Hispanics are very hard-working.”

Father Mericantante [Photo: Jeffrey Camp]

Mericantante is the energetic head of thriving St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Pahokee, a 75-seat community hub with a 16th-century Russian icon, a one-room folklore museum, youth and after-school programs, a medical and dental clinic and food distribution for 1,000 people a month. A church building houses a public charter school. He serves as translator for his flock and go-between on everything from real estate closings to trying to get compensation for the family of a worker who died on the job. Himself of Italian, Irish and German descent, he was Pahokee’s Citizen of the Year once and knows everyone. He hopes to break ground soon for a larger, Spanish Mission-style church.

Fourteen years ago when Mericantante arrived, half the parish was Spanish-speaking. Today only nine English-speaking families remain. The other 391 families — about 60% have legal status, he estimates — are Spanish-speaking, many with six to 10 children.

Driving around town, he introduces them. Vicente Torres, 28, came from Mexico 14 years ago to work as a laborer in a nursery. Now he’s a DJ at a local radio station and operates a small used-car sales center. Irma Paniagua, 19, came from Mexico at 7 and grew up in a hurry after her mother died three years later. With a friend, the single mom recently purchased a business that imprints T-shirts, magnets, business cards and the like.

Humble beginnings: Many immigrant farm workers start life in America in houses like these, in an agricultural area near Pahokee. “It’s the country of hopes and dreams,” says Maurilia Martinez. [Photo: Jeffrey Camp]

Alva Aguirre, 37, and her husband, José, who drives a tractor for the sugar industry, raise their four children in a three-bedroom house on the dike. She sells fruit from a truck. The integrity of the dike doesn’t worry her, she says, standing in her yard. She’s more concerned about her upcoming citizenship test, property taxes and insurance.

Her fellow immigrants have a similar list of concerns: Insurance, taxes, their children’s education and whether the kids will find work and be able to afford to live locally. Still, “It’s the country of hopes and dreams,” says Maurilia Martinez, a mother of four, in Spanish. Opportunity is their reason for coming; work and Pahokee’s small-town feel keep them, many finding it reminiscent of home, to which none desire to return. “Me gusta todo,” (I like everything), Aguirre says.

Tags: North Central, Environment