Face-to-Face with the Border Line, Gangs and Discrimination: Elvira’s Journey
Pulling her arm and shaking it in the air, Santa Monica local Elvira Chagoya demonstrated how she used to grab her son by the hair to bring him home and keep him out of trouble back in the ‘80s. “I followed him many times. Thank God he didn’t get involved with gangs anymore, but now he’s grateful to me,” she said.
Santa Monica, like other cities in California, experienced a rise in gang activity in the 1980s and 1990s. Some gangs had extended their influence into the Pico neighborhood, creating fear, insecurity, and racial tensions among the residents; this is where Elvira has lived for the past 39 years. But this is only one of the challenges a Mexican immigrant woman had to face after arriving in an unknown place.
Elvira was born in Oaxaca, Mexico. At the age of 11, she lost her father and began facing a difficult economic situation that worsened over the years. With a lack of educational opportunities, low demand for labor, and economic challenges in her home country, it pushed her to emigrate to the United States when she was just 19 years old.
“It was hard for my mother, so I came here to work and help her,” she said. Elvira immigrated to the U.S. in 1978 as part of a chain migration, following her two older brothers. Her mother and youngest brother followed suit shortly after.
Leaving behind her roots, culture, and friends was hard, but the most difficult part was leaving her family. She crossed the border two more times to bring them into the U.S, as she wanted to ensure they did not experience the same horrors she had endured during her second time crossing the border.
The first time she crossed the line through Mexicali, “fue fácil, una corridita y ya,” Elvira said smiling, which translates to “it was easy, a quick run, and that was all.” Her oldest brother, who was already living in Los Angeles, had paid three hundred dollars to a countryman and his wife to help her and her sister-in-law cross the border.
“We just ran through a parking lot. They lifted a fence. We entered a store, and from there, took a plane from Calexico to Los Angeles... It was easy because we left Oaxaca in the morning, and by night, we were already here,” said Elvira.
A few months after her arrival, while working at a blind factory, she was deported. Immigration agents showed up early in the morning, filled two buses with undocumented workers, and brought them back to Tijuana. “We couldn’t run because they surrounded the place, so we all stayed put, and they asked for our documents. I didn’t have any, so they took us,” Elvira said, raising her arm to her neck in concern.
It was mid-1979, and Elvira had been working under someone else’s Social Security number, going by the name Estela Gutiérrez. She was 20 years old, alone, and had only the money she carried in a small purse. In the midst of the unfamiliar, her coworker Irma offered her and a Salvadoran woman a place to stay. “Estela, don’t worry, come with me to my house,” Irma said.
Once at Irma’s house, Elvira contacted her brother, who paid someone to help them cross the border again. However, the man helping them this time was not a countryman. “He led us to a small shack near the border and said that once we crossed, a car would be waiting for us. But he tricked us,” she said, recalling as if it happened yesterday.
They walked all night with the man, who kept saying “Ahorita llegamos” or “we’ll arrive soon,” while climbing up and down hills without any water or food, alongside other groups of people crossing. “Believe me, it felt like an eternity climbing that mountain, and on the way down, our legs were trembling. Some people sat down and slid as if they were on a slide,” she said.
They hid in the mud to avoid being seen by helicopters, climbed more hills, ate green watermelons and tomatoes to quench their thirst, ran across the freeway, dodging cars and finally reached the trunk of the car that took them to L.A. “The journey was terrible… I have experienced both ways of crossing. It was hard,” she said. In fact, Elvira crossed the border four times; the last two times were as simple as getting into the trunk of a car for a few minutes.
Back in Los Angeles, Elvira went to live with her brother in Santa Monica. In 1993, she got married. The following year, she gave birth to her first daughter and moved into the apartment where she still lives today.
Later, she had her son, Ernesto, and her youngest daughter, Teresa. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which allowed undocumented people with no criminal background to obtain citizenship if they had entered the country before a specific date. This fortunately applied to Elvira, who had saved every receipt and document since her first entry in a little box.
“I had all the proofs, receipts, letters from my mom, and pictures,” she said, explaining how she eventually became a U.S. citizen.
The green cards allowed many people to leave the informal economy, but that was not the reason why Elvira stopped working as a housekeeper. Her three children needed her full attention. With her husband working long hours, she was raising her kids on her own in a neighborhood plagued by gang activity, crime, and violence.
Balancing motherhood and the dangers of her surroundings became her priority, as she focused on protecting and guiding her children through those challenging times. “Viviamos con mucho temor(We lived with great fear),” she said, rubbing her hands together in concern. In the early ‘80s, Santa Monica was home to many Latino and African American families, as well as gangs.
“Sometimes when fights broke out between Latinos and African Americans on the corner, they would grab sticks and fight horribly,” Elvira said. The racial tensions between them turned the area into a war zone and fostered fear among the residents. “There were shootings, and suddenly you'd hear that someone was found dead on 16th Street, or in the alley, or on Michigan Ave. Someone was killed. I mean, it was terrible,” she said.
The constant insecurity — hearing gunshots at any hour of the day, seeing bullet marks on the walls and trash bins — was not what worried Elvira the most. Her greatest concern was her son, Ernesto.
Gangs like the 18th Street gang were notorious for recruiting immigrant Latinos facing economic hardship and social marginalization, making boys like Ernesto and his friends prime targets. “It was really hard with him because he wanted to get involved with the gangs. All his friends were caught up in that. He gave me a lot of trouble, but fortunately, I had a really strong character,” Elvira said, while her voice was shaking with anger.
Her determination and firm resolve kept her son from falling into the trap many young men couldn’t escape. Her strength as a mother became her most powerful weapon against the dangers that surrounded her family. Elvira knew her son’s movements and would follow him everywhere.
“I’d show up, and there he’d be, hanging out with a group of bald guys on 18th Street,” she said. Elvira would confront them, demanding, “Have you seen Ernesto?” In silence, she would face the gang members, making them uncomfortable and eventually find her son smoking marijuana behind them.
“Te me vas, si no quieres que me agarre a todos a cachetadas aquí. (You better go, or I’m going to start slapping all these guys around here),” she said, raising her voice and pointing her finger as if she was reliving the moment. The guys with Ernesto would urge him, “Come on, Ernesto, go with your mom,” said Elvira. They witnessed the determination and bravery of a mother fiercely protecting her child.
“He would come with me, but he’d rebel a lot and argue,” Elvira recalled, shaking her head in disappointment.
Despite his father’s absence, Elvira’s persistence did not let the streets claim her son. She even went as far as calling the police because of his bad behavior, but all her efforts eventually paid off. Her son has a close relationship with Elvira now, and he’s thankful for everything Elvira did.
“He has told me, ‘Thank you, Mom. Thank you.’ I told him it was horrible; it was very tough,” she said.
On one occasion, she found her friend Jaime wounded by a bullet in his leg. On another, while returning from the pharmacy, she sadly recalled: “I saw a boy lying outside my window. My son had given him one of my pillows to rest his head on; he was covered in blood.” He was a friend of her neighbor’s.
Those events marked a period of insecurity in Santa Monica, but change was on the horizon as foreign buyers started purchasing homes in the area, increasing the cost of living and rent. This shift helped to dissolve the gangs, but it also increased discrimination and the displacement of many families from their homes.
The complex where Elvira lives was not an exception. When a new owner from Czechoslovakia took over, she began evicting people from the building. “She would say to me, ‘I don’t want Latino people, and I don’t want African Americans.’ So, I thought, she is racist because she was white,” Elvira said.
She watched many of her longtime neighbors leave and saw new tenants arrive. Like others, Elvira faced discrimination from the owner, who targeted her youngest daughter Teresa. Her daughter would be told to not play outside, as the owner did not like to see her around.
However, Elvira refused to tolerate any racist behavior toward her or her family, especially when the owner told her daughter such things that would make her cry. “Is it because we are Mexican that you don’t like it? I won’t tolerate that,” Elvira said.
Immediately, the owner gave her 30 days to leave the apartment, arguing that Elvira was using the apartment like a butcher shop, that her son destroyed the wall playing and that the other neighbors complained about her daughter being in the walkway. The accusations against her were false. Elvira had letters from her neighbors as well as her notebook — detailed with every act of discrimination by the Czechoslovakian owner — to back her up.
With all this proof and the support of her politician friend Oscar, Elvira went to court to defend herself. “After reviewing all, the lawyer submitted the evidence to the Sup(erior) Court of Los Angeles… We won the case, and she ended up paying so much to the city of Santa Monica, because the issue with Tere, it clearly showed discrimination,” said Elvira firmly. Her case became public in the early 2000s, as it was covered by the media.
Now, at 66 years old, Elvira still misses her friends, as well as eating traditional foods like pan de muerto and mole. After crossing the border four times, facing gangsters, fighting against discrimination, enduring mistreatment from nurses who refused to provide translation, and dealing with her ex-husband’s alcoholism, she is happy to be where she is. “At least my children had the opportunity to go to school, which gives me satisfaction because they achieved what I couldn’t,” she said.
Elvira currently lives with her youngest daughter Teresa in the same apartment in Santa Monica. While she couldn’t manage to buy her own house and make her American dream come true after immigrating, Elvira is happy to see that her children have had opportunities that wouldn’t have been possible in Mexico. “Even though… I couldn’t do it, thank God my eldest daughter now has her own little house,” said Elvira, filled with satisfaction. “The others are also slowly making progress, and in the future, they will be fine. It was worth it.”