José

José

Oral history from Colombia to Kansas City, Kansas

José Faus is a celebrated Latino poet, writer, and muralist originally from Bucaramanga, Colombia. In this interview, he shares what it means to be an immigrant, his various interactions with several Latino and non-Latino communities, and stories about some of the wonderful educators and librarians who supported and encouraged him as a person and artist/creative. Lastly, he also speaks about what it means to make a place your own.

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José (J)
Marta (M)

J: I do identify as an immigrant. I know there's a lot of things that are attached to that for a lot of people, but for me, it's simply that I came from another place that had already formed me to some extent.

J: I left when I was a little over 9.5 years–about 9.5 years old. I was born in Bucaramanga, Colombia, South America. The coffee region in the mountains. I have great memories of place. The house that I spent most of the time with.

J: When my mother came up here, she immigrated earlier than my brother and I did. She came up here with my sister. She married an American stationed at Fort Leavenworth. So she came up here looking to settle herself down and put the roots that would then allow for her to bring my brother and I up here.

J: There was a long separation.

J: We were basically in the care of my grandmother. I recall for a little while there was kind of not an orphanage, but it was like a school, a private school where we lived with the family. I think that was kind of a failed experiment, to be honest.

J: My memories of that are kind of murky, but they weren't all that nice.

J: But then, most of the time, I do remember being taken care of by my grandmother. And we would visit various aunts. There's four aunts that were part of the family. They were stretched from Armenia to Medellin, Barranquilla, and Bucaramanga. Also, there was the ancestral home, which was Puerto Wilches. But that was kind of like my negotiations. I mean, that was kind of like the background, the place that I identified that I knew spending summers or whatever it would have been visiting other families, always kind of being pulled along by my grandmother.

J: And then, like around 8.5. I remember there was about a year-long process. We got a notice. And I I really don't even know exactly where or anything. I have no recollection of it, but we knew we were going to go and visit our mother.

J: And which was kind of a strange thing because when you're separated from somebody for that long, you kind of don't really have the grounding of who they really are. I mean, my grandmother was raising my brother and I.

J: I had no real sense that there was another person more responsible for that than than my grandmother. And so I remember we were we got a little introduction to the English language. It would not be fair to say that I came totally not knowing some words, but it was at the most rudimentary level that a nine year old might be paying attention to when they think of coming to this country it's just like which is going for a visit.

J: It's kind of almost like a lark.

J: I don't understand my brother and I understood the seriousness of what was about to happen. Sure.

J: We arrived December 29, I remember, five 30 in the evening. I don't know why that sticks with me. There must have been something that I saw or. Somebody said. I know we were my brother and I were sat in a two seats next to each other. We were under the care of the stewardesses, the airplane staff primarily.

J: I remember I think it was the captain or one of the mates helping us off the plane and landed on the tarmac back then. And then being taken inside where my mother and my stepfather and my sister at that time, were waiting for us.

J: I just recall we really had the sense that we were just going for a visit. We had no clue that we were never coming back. And I think it kind of dawned on us I still don't even know what it meant to me, honestly, to be truthful about it. I don't think I was thinking too much about things. There was just like, things were coming at us in so many different ways.

J: I remember we spent some time in Miami. I think we went to the beach, which was kind of interesting is the last place we saw when we left, I started Tajena and then we're in Miami. I do recall getting in the car. My stepfather drove a ’56 Chevy Sedan, I was kind of like a two tone white kind of a powder blue baby blue thing. I've always seen that. Every time I see one of those cars, I get extremely nostalgic.

J: But I remember getting in the car and we just drove up from the south up to Kansas City.

J: And I think the thing that stands out the most about that trip from me and has impacted me more more I thought about it or reflected on it. I remember we went we were driving up through Mississippi. And this is early 1965, because I think we spent about a week or two in Miami before we drove–headed north towards Kansas City.

J: We had stopped by we had driven by town called Jackson. I can remember that so clearly. My stepfather is leaning over and asking me to say the word Jackson. And I'm trying to say it, but, you know, with Spanish, the “J” is a very hard sounds like “hota.” I'm saying Jackson Jackson. And he say no, say soft soft. I just kept going, Oh, I just finally gave up.

J: And he stopped, but he then said something that has always been kind of like the formative thing for me and the most instructional thing about where we were headed. He said there will be people in this country who will not like you or judge you by the color of your skin.

J: And I didn't I don't think it didn't sink in.

J: I had no clue what he was talking about because Well, my brother is very white-presenting. Very caucasian looking. I'm brown, but it didn't seem like anything that was a distinction. It was like a distinction without any meaning towards me. I didn't see it.

J: It was at that moment, I realized I had a color.

J: A friend of mine, Xánath Caraza wrote a book was a great poem that she had into when she came to this country. She was you know, she says, what color are you? She says, Oh, I can pick any color I want.

J: Well, we didn't have that option because we were too young to understand what the hell was going on.

J: But I remember not understanding that. We started crying. My brother and I started crying.

J: Years later, I understood and I wrote a poem about this. I understood what he was really trying to say because we were driving through the Jackson, Mississippi, the South of the 1960s three months earlier. And I did not know any of this at the time. I discovered this later when I was started reading history. So. There had been Shane Schwarmer Goodman been kidnapped. And there were civil rights workers trying to register people for the vote in the South. And they had been kidnapped and disappeared and then found dead.

J: The Klan was involved.

J: But I didn't know that. But I think that was what he was trying to tell me. I think he was aware that this would be something that would kind of define some aspect of my life or my brother and I's life or any immigrant’s life.

J: Just fast forward or let's go back a minute. My images of America were very much constructed by the realities that were presented to some television screens. And I really never thought about the North. I never thought about North America much. It wasn't in my mentality.

J: The only thing I recall are two things. We used to have a television that sat underneath the stairs that went to this alcove was a room above the garage. And the garage had been converted into a roof for my brother and I to live in where we were sleeping. That was our bedroom after my mother had come up. But I remember when you stepped out, there was the stairs that led upstairs, and underneath that little alcove that construction made is where the television was at.

J: It was not really something we watched a lot because it was inconsequential. It was, Oh, there it is underneath the steps. It was chairs there, but I remember the show that sticks out to me the most Ponderosa, which translated means bonanza. That was my image of the United States, really, the Ponderosa.

J: The other one was even something that had taken place probably about a well, 1963, November 22, 1963. I can recall distinctly, a lot of people from the US will say they know exactly where they were at what Kennedy was shot.

J: Well, I know exactly what I was doing. We were my cousins and I were in the backyard shucking peace. There was going to be a family dinner because they were wanting to be many of. And we were shucking peas.

J: And there was a lot.

J: But it was, you know, kids would make a game out of it.

J: But then one of my cousins came out and grabbed the whatever container we were putting the piece into and took them away from us and then got the other piece and just scoped away. She was angry, she was mad, she was crying. We didn't know what was going on being us kids. We just started playing, we just went on and played and played. But soon, you could hear the wail of the women in the room extending out into the backyard. And that was when we were told that the president of the United States had died.

J: Yeah. I don't I can't tell you that it meant anything to me at that point.

J: But it's an extremely vivid memory that I have of how the US impacted our family down there. I'm sure I could go back and find any reasons why the women were so incensed or surprised, saddened by what had happened up North. But like I said, I had no connection to that beyond that.

J: Years later, of course, I became totally enthralled, I think, by the idea of the conspiracy theories that came out about Kennedy's death. It was like a really big education about the political systems and the contradictions in this country.

J: But at that point, I was just a kid. I was glad that we didn't have to shut the piece because my cousin took them all and we went out and played until the sadness of the room brought us all back together. I don't recall much after that. But those are the two–

M: Can I ask a quick question: So you were not in the US for the assassination of Kennedy?

J: I was not. We came up here a year and a month later. But I think.

M: Okay. Yeah.

J: That was the first instinct that I knew about the presidents of that country something significant.

J: So fast forward, we arrive in Kansas City, we drive through the South, and we arrive in right here in Kansas City over in the West Bluffs just off Cesar Chavez Avenida on the West Side. And we lived there for about two years. It's the projects overlooking the stockyards, I can recall.

J: I have a vivid memory of what that place looked like because I mean, that was my life for the next two years. But I remember the smell of the stock yards because they were still there. I literally was we could go to the edge of the cliffs and overlooked down the American Royal and we could see it. That was like before they built Kemper Arena.

J: So we could see the stuff, we could see what was going on. But that was kind of our introduction.

J: I remember distinctly snow, the first disappointment of winter. We used to do this ritual in Christmas in Colombia, where we'd go and get a tree for the Christmas tree. And my cousins and I, we would strip the tree bare then we'd spend all this time gluing these little balls, white foam balls kind to make it look like it had snow.

J: So you know, we're getting close to Kansas City. I remember that night we arrived in Kansas City. It was cold and there was snow on the ground. And I remember my stepfather taking us out we kind of like got un familiar with the house it was in the evening.

J: And I remember my brother and sister and cry because it wouldn't make a snowman. I mean, that was the only thing I knew about snow. I was like, you make a snowman. It was like, dry powdery snow and all I could get was little pyramids, you know?

J: So that was my first disappointment with snow and I've never gotten over it because I can't stand winter. Never will be able to adapt to that.

J: But that was really the introduction we came. We were on the West Side. And there was really Outside of the bitterness of the cold, you're young. I can't tell you what I was thinking and other stuff, but I think the transition was kind of smooth in the ways because the West Side of that time, especially the projects we were at, there were a lot of immigrants that were living there that came from South America. I can't remember there was some Ecuadorians, Peruanos, Colombianos that lived in that area. They were.

M: I was going to ask why you went there. Like how did you get to Kansas? Because of the immigrants?

J: Well, no. Actually, my stepfather was stationed at Fort Leavenworth. He had been in the Air Force. He was an officer So he was stationed at Leavenworth,, which is a college kind of for military. So I think this was the closest place for him.

J: And I think Catholic charities, I know it was involved in helping us come up here. And I think that was probably a gateway, the Northeast area, and then the West Side, if you were Latino there were already some families living there when we arrived that had pretty much a similar histories that were immigrants, first generation.

J: So I think that's really what it was.

J: I do remember I have memories of that playing as a kid. They had swings, we played in the backyard, we played The Beatles was a big thing. I remember that was popular music was a big thing. So we would mimic the songs that we heard. We still couldn't speak English fluently or anything like that. But I can remember one time we're playing and we're using mops literally to mimic guitars and just mouthing the words to “She loves you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

J: I I'm sure we were horrible.

J: But that was kind of the introduction.

J: We went into school pretty fairly quickly. I can't recall which cool it was. I think it's not Guardian Angels. There's two parishes down there Sacred Heart, maybe at that time in the West Side. But very quickly, my mother had the sense that she wanted to move from the west side out to the suburbs. And I think that's what she had been working on was saving money so she could buy and they could buy a place, kind of, like, out in the suburbs. So my mother started taking us out of the schools and putting us into different schools.

J: I was meeting new friends pretty much all the time.

J: I wasn't around the kids that I played with.

J: We started going up to Redemptress which was up on 33rd in Broadway. And I remember we used to take the bus, you catch the bus on 35. And it would somehow get us up to where we were going. But then when she moved us to Overland Park, it was 71st and Rigs. The church there would have been Oh, my God. Oh, God. I can't remember the name now. Well, I picture 71st and Metalf, Our Lady of….whatever.

J: But so it was 71st and Metcalf so in order to get we started going to school there first before we actually moved there. So we started going to, I think it was Santa Fe Trail, Elementary is where I went. We would take the bus up to 71st Street and then from there, 70 horse Mac walk down to the schools we went to Queen of the Holy Rose. I think that was the church. That was for for some reason, my brother and my sister went to that school, and I went on further down to Santa Fe Trail, Elementary a public school.

J: And then within a year, we had moved to that area, so we weren't taking the bus back anymore. It was kind of interesting because years later, I ran into a friend of mine who I knew when we were living in the West Side. And I think this tells you a lot, I think about the way separation works and the way we kind of build narratives around that.

J: So when we left the school, I think we went on summer break or something, and then we were gone. We moved. There was, like, no going around and calling all my friends from school or anything like that. He had no accidents. He didn't have, you know, privileges on the phone or anything like that, didn't have cell phone. So I just for a lot of my friends, I just disappeared. He was here, and then when they was gone.

J: I ran into this woman, who was a friend of mine back then, who recognized me remembered me by name and approached me and asked me, are you the Jose house that went to the school Redempress and I said, yes, she says, Oh, my God, I thought you were dead. We all thought you were dead. I said: What do you mean? She says, Well, you disappeared. You know, you guys were gone, and the rumor was that you hadn't died. So I imagined that. I mean, it's like this was literally I think when I ran into this woman, I think I was 55. So about 11 years ago.

J: So I think that's just to say how the patterns of migration kind of have worked for me. We arrived. Again, we find a familiar that's identifiable. The language is Spanish. The food still has Spanish roots and even food that I recognize from because of the immigrants that lived there with us. There were a lot of people–women that took care of the children who looked out after us and fed us. And so it was not unusual. I mean, the food felt right.

J: But the minute we moved to Overland Park, I didn't have that. I didn't have that neighborhood I could walk around to that or the neighbors that would feed us, the food that I was familiar with, and then the language stopped and the music was different–everything culturally boom. I always used the term “Arrested Development” used to be that show that was on because I think that was for me.

J: It's like at nine years old, I had a pretty good sense of who I was. I can feel that I could–I kind of had a sense of where I stood in the world. The world that I knew as a nine year old.

J: And then we arrived in this country and all of a sudden this movement is different. But there's still a semblance of where I kind of came from. Language was still Spanish. I still spoke it. But the minute we moved to Overland Park, the Spanish even stopped. My mother did not speak us often in Spanish with us made a point. The language started to disappear. Customs…the friendships disappeared.

J: I didn't see–I think there was one family that was a very close family with good friends and my mother, so I would see their sons and stuff and their daughters. And over the years, I would stay in contact but never that whole core of the kids that I had played with and grown up with when we first came here. That was one that was developed.

J: And then the second was we went to the suburbs. That was a totally different thing that I found new friends. And it was weird because I always felt that's where you start to get this feeling like you were the Other because I remember when we first went to that elementary school, the kids gathering around me.

J: Now, it had happened when I went to the school in the West Side. They gathered around my brother and I, they were quizzing us asking us all these questions like, Oh, how do you say this in Spanish, somebody would translate. It was a weird thing.

J: But then when we got to Overland Park, I'm by myself. My brother is not around. He's going to another school and these questions are being asked of me and by then, I speak, I understand. So I can translate some things. But sonically, everything is changing. The music is changing; the customs are changing. I don't know anybody. I literally I think–I lost that sense of community where the people next door, they know you so well, you better act right or they're going to tell your mother? I mean, there was that extended family type thing, I get to the suburbs, none of that.

J: Hey, it was just an awkwardness, you know: there were not that many kids in the block. We were on the corner house that I recall. So my friends really were the ones that I was making in school. And some of those friends I stayed in contact with all the way through and up to high school. But–

M: So were there no–were you the only Latinos when you moved to Overland Park?

J: In that area where we were at, it sure felt like that. It totally did. As a matter of fact, I remember my mother had a job. Okay. Which was one of many jobs that she had when she was trying to get to make ends meet. And it was working at a doctor's office. And so sometimes she would drag my brother and I or my sister and make us go with her while she cleaned the night because, you know, there was well we had the community in the West Side that could look after us while my mother was working, we didn't when we moved out to the suburbs.

J: We had my mother had friends, but they had to drive to come over. They wasn't like, Oh, go next door. I mean, we never had that kind of thing, or relationship with our neighbors.

J: Culturally, most of the friends that we had were the friends that my mother had that could drive to where we were at and there were a lot of new members that actually began to move to the Johnson County. They came I propose, I suppose the migration was these were middle class families in South America. They were not all poor. And they were looking at aspirations to replicate some of that.

J: And so they wanted to live where it was safer and that involved a lot of times moving away from community.

J: And so the only community that you really had was I was dependent on my mother and her friends, but I was a kid. I was rebellious. My brother and I both were dealing with this idea of not understanding this relationship with mother and son because: that was our grandmother, right?

J: And it was interesting because right before the next change took place, my mother–my grandmother came to visit and I was overjoyed, but I was also terrified of my grandmother. She was the disciplinarian par excellence, so she could inspire love and fear equally. But I remember I was old enough to understand that I had disappointed my grandmother tremendously.

J: I was not that kid that she could with just one look and make me sit straight. I was now a kid that talked back and I think it broke her heart to see that. She had a miserable time visiting us. She broke her legs. She got stuck here.

J: And then I never saw her again.

J: And it kind of has impacted me a lot to think of the missed opportunities. But again, I was trying to deal with this authority that I didn't respect because I didn't know it, you know, you don't just walk into somebody's life and say I'm your mother. Boom. And understandably, you know, it led to a lot of problems.

J: After my grandmother left, I think my mother realized my brother and I were getting into trouble. And she realized she had to do something. And with the assistance of Catholic charities, again, I remember we were presented with an option. You're going to go to a military school, think Wentworth Academy or something like that was said.

J: And my brother and I had just read a book about Father Flanagan's Boys’ Home, we were trying to master our English. We had somebody that was would help us reading and point out, kind of tutor us. And we had read a story about Father Flanagan's Boys Home, and when we were proposed, you know, given the choice. We said, Oh, we want to go to this place. And Catholic Charity helped us get there, and my brother and I were shipped off to Boys Town in Omaha.

J: And that was another culture shock because all of a sudden, I had been taken from Colombia, transplanted to a place that kind of mimicked the things we had left except the weather was horribly bad. I could never relate to. But there was community and then we got moved to the suburbs and all of a sudden, no community existed for us.

J: Then my brother and I get pulled out and sent to Boys Town. Really the only community we had was our peers, even though there was structure of what do you call it? Was the counselors, there were the teachers. They were the seniors, they were the head of the house where you lived in or the school that you lived in there was these hierarchies.

J: We were pretty much living as kids.

J: I mean, my peers were the biggest influences on me in terms of the trouble I got into or the trouble I fomented. But I never really had a father figure at all in all of my life.

J: What I did have though was great teachers.

J: Education became something like really Important to me. I loved reading. I remember my grandmother used to read to me Prince Valiant. I always loved that illustrations in there because it was a beautiful almost like a story a narrative story every chapter. And I was so surprised when I came up here and you actually could see Prince Valiant and English serialized. So that kind of was a nice connection.

J: So I had this idea of education as being something that I was not revolted by it. I loved learning. I was very precocious reader, too, and I remember at this point is when one of the biggest influences in my life started to appear, the teachers that I would have.

J: I remember Mr. Boston was an English teacher in Boys Town. He had a very strong love for literature, poetry in particular. And I can still remember he was a frail man, frail like just not humongous, you know, I mean, when you were in Boys Town you were always judging yourself physically because, you know, sports was a big defining factor, and you had to defend yourself.

J: But he was not that kind of–looked like he could catch you in a fight, you know, it'll be your backup in the fight. But he was very [unknown] I mean, the man, I can always remember him with a book in his had kind of walking around as he's lecturing us and he loved poetry and he introduced me and lost to poetry, and I just I think I fell in love with it.

J: So he was a big encouragement for me.

J: Particularly as he gave us some writing assignments.

J: He loved what I did and we always make it a point to encourage me to do it. And that to me is kind of I remember also there was a school librarian there who, you know, loved the idea that I read. I mean, any kid that reads and goes into a library nowadays, and you've got friends for life. Those librarians, that joy that they have and what they do is just contagious to me.

J: So that was where my education really started. I had access to a place where literally nothing was off limits to me. I would go into library shelves and find books. I probably should not have found that I didn't even understand. But in time, they became kind of a refuge.

J: So school had it things, there were issues at Boys town. But I remember I did have an aspiration that I wanted to go to Notre Dame.

J: My mother grandmother was very religious, Catholic. She had wanted a kid in her African family to be a priest. We had some family members from other lines of the family that were in the Church. So they always had the sense that I was not. I think I was for a moment, and then I grew up.

J: But I always was intrigued by the idea of faith in a way, you know, this was a Catholic school. I mean, even though they were very respectful of all the religious traditions. We had Chapel, and you could have any service. It was a non-denominational service, and then there was the Catholic mass that we would go to most of us.

J: But I really love that idea that you could have different faiths and they were I don't ever remember proselytizing that said, “Oh, you're Catholic, you know, those people who go to the service, “got to be careful that.

J: There was never any kind of understanding.

J: There was just this very you know, respectful way of what people have faith and it was never an issue. And I think that's one of the best things that I ever got out of boys stone is that I was never going to judge anybody by their faith or either think that mine was superior or think that theirs was lesser. It was just a matter of I'm going to say convenience, but it's just a matter of custom and culture.

J: And I think for me, I excelled in that school, but I wanted to go to Notre Dame. That was one of the things that somehow the Irish [unknown] was a big legend. So and I played sports. So I wanted to go to Notre Dame.

J: There was an opportunity that I had my last year I was in Boys Town to go to a summer camp at Notre Dame. And my teachers had encouraged me so my studies to do and apply and I applied and I got accepted.

J: And I don't even remember what the thing was going to be. I was going to be there for the summer.

J: And so I was so overjoyed.

J: I told my My counselor told me to go tell Monsignor blah blah blah, because Monsignor was involved in all the extracurricular activities, and he informed me right then and there, he says, “You can't go.” I said, “Why not?” I couldn't understand. He said, “Well, we had some students that went last year, and they misrepresented themselves. They left a bad reputation, a bad image for the school. So we've decided to suspend the program in exchange for right now.”

J: And I was mad.

J: Because, you know, you kind of developed the sense of right and wrong. And that seemed to me very wrong to hold something that somebody else had done against me and not even give me the right or the chance to prove that that was an anomaly. That was not me. That was not my character.

J: And I was told–I argued. I mean, I think not like screaming argument. I think I tried to use reason because I was being taught reason. But when they said, no, I just was disappointed.

J: And I remember I got a chance to come back home that summer to visit family. We would get like leave. And I was not particularly missing my family, but I was missing some friends that I had made connections with when I was going to the elementary school and they started going progressing. And I ran into them and I was angry anyways for what had happened, and I insisted that I wanted to come back home.

J: The saddest thing about that is that my brother and I who had been inseparable since we were in Colombia, we got separated because my brother didn't want to come back here. He wanted to stay in Boys Town and I was wanting to come back here.

J: So I did and my brother and I went separate ways, probably the biggest tragedy in my life, I think.

J: But that kind of led to all these other troubles [chuckles].

J: High school was fun and tough. I mean, I got into a lot of trouble list to say, but I think that's really the foundational story for me is this idea that when you migrate, it never really stops. There's always these kinds of places where you begin to feel like you're getting your footing and always something else must happen, and then something else must happen. And each time you just feel this untethered sense.

J: And I remember hearing the expression neither from here nor there. Because from there, you're not accepted because you've left, you've kind of disappeared. You don't even speak the language the right way anymore. And then from here, it's a tenuous thing. This is where you stand. But you know that often you have more questions because the promise of something is not the actual thing that is.

J: And for me, that was political–the politics of the time and the era. The end of the 60s were very formative for me. I could see it on television and the [coughs and wipes nose] the excuse me, the assassinations, the Civil Rights.

J: And that's where I began to connect things, reading about the struggling of civil rights movements and seeing Mississippi and then remembering that thing about Jackson and my father. That was my first introduction. To revelations to me.

J: And a lot of them were questioning. I mean, that led to a lot of questions about what the system is like, what this society is because it promises so much.

J: And you know we had to study a little bit of citizenship because we were going to become US citizens, swear the oath. And that's where the kind of dichotomies begin to present themselves.

J: So like I remember they canceled the draft. And it was like ’72, I think, when I was presented with this idea that you had to go register. Not necessarily that you were going to be drafted by that point, Vietnam was kind of winding down and the idea of actively recruiting and getting more people in there drafting that was just like American people just weren't going for that anymore.

J: But I remember you still have to go register and a lot of my friends weren't registering, and I thought, you know, I was indoctrinated by you, I had to go and swear an oath of allegiance to this country literally to become a citizen and study about the laws and the history.

J: So I did that and then the first task that is we have to register. I wouldn't registered. I just thought, well, that's your duty. That's what you do, you know?

J: Even having questions about the systems and seeing how things were not working or had to be fought for.

J: I just didn't, you know, I just sore. I just swore I would so I wouldn't register and my friends didn't and it didn't mean anything, really, you know. But I thought it was like, my first real understanding of the rights and duties of citizenship to nation fealty.

J: And I think in some ways, I passed and failed the test [laughs again]. I signed up, but I think there was a part of me that was questioning whether it was even right to do, but I had just made it sworn so I did it.

J: And then I got into trouble in high school. And I got expulsed. My–My inquisitiveness though was always there. I always read. You know, I figured out you can always get a great education. But there was something that bothered me in our family. I think most of us went to school. It was not I think it was in our blood. I mean, you went to higher learning. You studied. There was nothing fearful about that and I loved learning.

J: And so here I am working and doing these jobs. But I'm not going to school anymore.

J: And then I think the most significant thing that happened in my life happened one summer. I started taking classes at Johnson County Community College, and I was working and I was at Oak Park Mall, if I remember. And a lady called out my name and I turned around. It was Mrs. Brown, she was my high school counselor at Shawnee Mission North. She she had always taken an interest in me. She would see me on the whole.

J: She would just stop me and ask me what was going on even though she knew what was going on with me. She always showed care and I would always follow up. And she stopped me and she said, “What are you doing now?” And I told her, “Well, I've started going back to school. I'm taking classes at JuCo” And she said, “You know, you only needed one credit to graduate. You could have graduated your junior year.” I was in the college prep program, but I was getting in trouble. I wasn't paying attention.

J: And she said, “You could have graduated.” And she asked me what class I was taking, what classes I was taking and at that time, I wanted to be a political science majors. I was taking some government classes. I was taking US National government in history. And she stopped right there, says, “The minute you get done with that class and you get your grade, you send it to me because that's the credit you need to graduate. And if you send it to me, I'll make sure that you get your diploma”

J: And I was shocked, honestly. I was totally shocked but I didn't understand why I was so grateful that she said this and realized and kind of, I get a second chance to get my diploma.

J: And I do remember that it meant something because when I got kicked out of high school, I wrote a letter to the vice principal at that time. I can't remember the guy's name. It was a two, three page-letter handwritten thing condemning their actions and calling out this idea of, you know, separating us instead of trying to deal with the issues, you know, kind of this Oh, you’re hippies, all this stuff you're discussing blah, blah, blah. I was trying to say I still believed in school spirit and all that, I still follow the football team, I played football stupid stuff.

J: But that she remembered me: that she remembered exactly what I needed to, what I needed to graduate astounds me to this day that somebody could care that much, and that I could be so indifferent to it and not realize it affected affects me all the time.

J: People who have done random acts of kindness of interest.

J: To me, I think the biggest inspirations I have. People have given me so much. I think in Mrs. Brown's Honor, I give back. That's really my only spiritual thing, I think when it comes to the nature of being engaged or involved.

J: It's because people in my life have taken opportunities and interestingly enough, they've been librarians and teachers. Those are my heroes. But anyways, when she told me that I finished that semester, got my grades, I sent them to her, and I sent me a letter. I got a letter a few months later that said I got my diploma, but I never opened I think–I still–I know I have it somewhere.

J: I've tried to say things, but I just decided I was never going to open the official letter that said that I got my diploma.

J: The good thing was that it wasn't needed for me to enroll in college at that time. So it worked out great for me.

J: But I think that's really it in terms of I think by this point I'm in my 20s. I take a summer job because I'm really tired of taking out student loans. The job that I get takes me to a law firm where I stayed at for 15 years.

J: I don't regret any of it.

J: Some would say probably wasted my time. I should have been doing art all a long. That was what I went to school for.

J: But at a certain point after 15 years, I just thought that's not really what I want to do. I'm not going to be a lawyer. I'm not a lawyer. I have no interested in that not interested in it at all. But I was drawing and I was writing, and I just said, you know, I'm done I took my retirement that I had built up my 401(k) cashed it in, paid off the lived off the remainder for about three years until I could feel that whatever was coming I was prepared for and that was the career in the arts in some way or other.

J: I started working in community, which was just a natural thing I'd already done some of that.

J: So that was it.

J: That's my formative journey now.

J: It's been going through so many different iterations of, you know…I can say I did the corporate thing, not for me. I can say I had the troubled life, not for me. I can say I've lived in different places: that's good. Very rounded experience.

J: I made a hell of a lot of mistakes and I've got a lot of opportunities. So I think that's the best part I can say.

M: Thank you so much for sharing that. That's a really incredible story. I'm really struck by the emphasis you put on the educators who took an interest in you even long after the fact. And I've gotten that from a couple of interviews from a few interviews, do people who say, the teachers or the librarians or, you know, I had a made such a difference.

J: Yeah…a librarian, I may turn on–I mean, really feel my love of poetry because I was reading I can't remember exactly what book, but she noticed it and she says, Oh, have you ever read this? She turned me on to the Cano Monte Cristo, which led to The Three Musketeers. I've read all of the works of Alexandre Dumas. Sure.

J: And then she introduced me to Homer, before I even took it in class, I had read the lid and the artist then she told me about the Aeneid. These were all books that I could get there in the public system, right? And they were they weren't like easy readers. These were good books. I did not know many of the words I was reading, but you know what the stories came through.

J: And yeah, for me, they were formative in so many ways.

J: And then I think this whole spirit of what a library means, right? Is a repository. Knowledge is available to you: just come in, give them a card, they give you the book. Yeah, you'll forget it. They're already forgiving. Hey, just pay a fine, and you can have more books, even while you're paying the fine.

J: Very egalitarian.

J: It never demands much of me.

J: Libraries were the best gift I think that you could have.

J: Especially like I've gone to South America and other countries. I've been in some schools where they have little libraries, and they are so bereft of material. And to know the abundance that a library has here, like,--

M: Ummm….I wonder if….I have a couple of follow up questions related to my own interests. And one is, I'm really struck by the fact that you said when you're an immigrant, you never really stop.

M: And one of the ideas I've kind of been playing around with is, you know, as you know, I'm really interested in issues of place and how we make places our own. But I'm also interested in if the route metaphorical and literal becomes its own kind of place, like if you're always traveling the route. And I wonder what you think about that?

J: Oh, I think it's totally appropriate. It's a good description. I think of the feelings I have is because the root is always looking for a place to sink to establish so it gets the nourishment that it was, but when it's constantly being uprooted, then it realizes what the perfect soils are, right?

J: So to me, I mean, I am, I hate the word because it's so tied to one place, American.

J: But I am American in the truest sense of America.

J: I mean, I know it from its tip to its farest boundary because I still haven't gone to Alaska. But I know it from a long progression and I see most of the states in this country and eventually we'll visit most of the states in the countries in South America.

J: But I've always felt–I'll give you the best example. But the first time I went to South America, I had a chance to go to Chile. And we're coming–I'm on a plane. I don't know, you know, the way planes the routes are, I had to take the plane from San Francisco, go to Canada, take Air Canada back or Air France, actually, down to Peru, then down to Argentina. I was going to visit Uncle in Argentina, but I remember–no in Chile when first time I went there–before I visited my uncle. I went to Chile in ’88. And I remember it was earlier than that.

J: But I do remember. The one thing I do remember is I'm looking out the window. We're coming out over the ocean and we hit the Peruvian Coast. And immediately, I had this incredible feeling. I mean, I can't even describe it, but it's like all of a sudden, I felt this vibration, like I was where I was supposed to be.

J: I totally–As I looked at these houses that lined along the beach because you're coming off the ocean. And you see the structures, and you see the houses and the inner courtyard, and then you see the back and then the other house that's usually for the staff or the help that is there.

J: I recognized the house that grew immediately. I, Oh, my God that reminds me of the house in Colombia, that reminds me of my aunt's house. And the minute I felt that I felt this incredible surge of emotion.

J: I could I could tell my blood pressure was just increasing, my heart was beating fast. I'm sweating. And in my head, I'm hearing and seeing. I'm hearing music. I'm seeing colors and I'm tasting food I've not eaten. Since the West Side, literally.

J: There was just this rush of incredible sensory overload and that just like a crime. And I made sure nobody could see me. I was like hugging that window.

J: And because I think I understood at that point I was coming home, you know what I mean? Even though I was not going to Colombia, I was culturally in a home that I had never left. And that feeling, you know, it's weird.

J: I have felt that feeling when I've been in rural areas in other countries that are not the main cities. I was in Crete one time and we were driving around the mountains going from village to village. And I remember just having this sense of the topography of the people, the things that happened in rural areas immediately I recognize among I'm just feeling these incredible sensory experiences, and I've always felt those.

J: I felt them here [in the U.S.].

J: First time I went to Oregon and Washington State, being in rural communities, feeling kind of like, it's just a different vibe, you know, culturally, too, right? But I think I'm being more perceptive or reactive to those differences that exist between an urban and a rural things kind of where the roots belong.

J: But yeah, no, I totally believe that the roots are very much tangible things. They're always looking to plant. I mean, if we look at a plant, taking from its natural environment. If the roots are still there, they're going to look for a place to land.

J: And so yeah, I think that's the journey of an immigrant. I have always felt like my roots are malleable. They can they can find nourishment wherever they can land.

J: And I think that's the gift of being an immigrant.

J: But it's also the vein because you realize you do live multicultures, and sometimes that's kind of a schizophrenic way to live [chuckles].

M: I sometimes wonder if, you know, and I guess it depends on particular immigrant experiences, but it seems like sometimes immigrants just live en route. Like they're always en route [laughs].

J: Yeah. Like coming and going and trying to find a place to sink in?

M: Yeah. Yeah. This kind of relates or the memory that you described of flying over Peru relates to my second question, which is, I don't know how many Colombians there are in Kansas City, but I imagine that there are other–that you're outnumbered, as I am as a Cuban by other Latino groups.

J: Yeah.

M: Did you find like–Can you talk about that a little bit? Was it hard to make community with Latinos from other countries or Did you feel that there was really something in common?

J: It's a difficult question only in the sense that it just brings up a dichotomy.

J: So I remember we were all lumped as being Mexican. So it was, you're Mexican. You're Mexican. We're Mexican. And I remember I remember distinctly one point, getting so fricking mad I yelled at offend and said, “I am not f***ing Mexican; I am Colombian.”

J: And it really bothered me that I was so angry about the way I put it out. And I thought to myself, I've been so far removed from Colombia, it probably happened in my early 20s, and I said the way with which I said it or kind of put aside this notion would be Mexican.

J: I thought why was that so angry? Is it so bad to be Mexican and I realized that there was kind of a racial component to my reaction.

J: My mother used to, you know, bless her heart, but she did have this kind of superiority that she looked down on other people. I mean, Mexicans, you know, middle class up just, you know, have to acknowledge that.

J: But yeah, I felt a very distinct–you know, I had to have a separation that people understood. Especially when there weren't the town of Mex–Colombians that I knew, but I was always constantly around mexicanos. I was living close to the West Side.

J: I worked on the West Side after a while. I've had a lot of interactions on the west side. So yeah, my community kind of in Mexican. And we started painting murals, we went down to Mexico and painted murals.

J: And the interesting thing and they don't talk about much, but I had a DNA test. And to kind of filter these things out. Only to find out that I'm 10% Mexican [long chuckle]. You know, 60% of someone indigenous Latin American, Colombian, Peruvian and 10% Mexican. I'm going, how the hell that, you know.

J: I remember when we were painting murals, a friend of mine down there because we went down there three times. He said, you're an honorary Mexican. I can now say, Well, you know, by DNA. I guess I am.

J: But that's kind of like the joke is on me.

J: You know what I mean? Kind of. This notion that you can separate distinctly by what's national as opposed to what's cultural.

J: And so no, It's been a long process, and I know a lot of immigrants that deal with that, you know, they very much want to honor where they came from. And sometimes it sounds like you're being dismissive of the others, you know, you within your own.

J: And I've seen it too with like how African Americans sometimes can look down on very black Africans, Africans, you know.

J: But I've also seen it too within my own community, you know, the darker you are, depending on, you know, then there's the same trajectories, the same misconceptions.

M: So yeah. Okay. Thank you so much. This was such a rich interview. You're such a fascinating person and I just love all the forms of art and community work that you've done.

M: I have never been to Columbia, but I'm going to Bogotá in June.

J: Be prepared. It's enchanting as hell, but it's depressing as not.

J: I mean, I had not been back. I think I told you I went earlier this year was the first time I've been back since I left. And everything felt exactly the same way it was and everything felt exactly like different than what it was.

M: [nods in agreement].

J: You know, this country. But yeah, it's beautiful, but the poverty and the corruption, they're just there. You should see it but it's a beautiful country.

M: It's painful to go back to Cuba, too, for some of those reasons.

J: Yeah. Yeah.

M: Anyway, this was just such a pleasure. Thank you so much for agreeing to both my interviews.

J: No problem. Thank you.

M: I will send you the links when you're up on the website so that you can take a look.

J: All right. Well, thank you so much.

M: Thanks, José. Have a great holiday.

J: You too.

M: Bye bye.

Marta Caminero-Santangelo

José

English, some Spanish

Kansas City, Kansas

Overland Park, Kansas