The Long Road to Success
Clockwise, from top left: Anabel at age 15 with her mom; Anabel’s parents, Francisco and Maria; Maria (left) with her childhood friend, whom she met working in the fields; a five-year-old Anabel (left) with her dad and three siblings at a California migrant camp
“It’s hard work,” says Anabel. “You get sticky. You cut yourself. You get stung by bees. But my parents told me it’s actually much better than it used to be. At least now they have porta potties and water. They don’t spray as many pesticides around the camps.” For her parents, who are from Mexico and don’t speak English, the money was good. She and her family were frugal those summers and piled up extra cash to sustain them through the winter once they returned to Texas. It’s a peripatetic life that most can’t even imagine, but for Anabel and dozens of other 14 ST. EDWARD’S UNIVERSITY
St. Edward’s students supported through the College Assistance Migrant Program, it’s the way they grew up. And for many migrant families, the cycle will continue for generations. For those who find CAMP, there is a way out. These days, Anabel pours the drive and discipline that got her through 10-hour days among grapevines into her studies as a Biology major and Religious Studies minor. She has excelled in her classes and dreams of becoming a doctor. But without the university’s long-standing dedication to CAMP, she wouldn’t be here.
Anabel spent four summers working in the fields. But long before she was old enough to work for pay, she helped her family in other ways. During the summers when she was too young to work, she stayed home by herself at the camps, washing clothes at the camp’s laundry room, cleaning up dishes from breakfast and preparing food so that her mom could cook dinner when the family returned home. And though the experience was exhausting, it wasn’t all bad, Anabel remembers. “It was comfortable enough,” she says of the tiny camps they lived in. “There was a play area and a park, just like a neighborhood. When you grow up in something, it seems normal. But then I started questioning.” By the time she was 15, Anabel realized that her life looked different from those of other kids. She knew that she didn’t want to harvest grapes her whole life, and she also knew that she needed to start making changes quickly — and cheaply. “My parents always told [my siblings and me] that they didn’t want us to go through this, but we needed the money,” she says. “We told [my parents] that we were glad they did, because it showed my siblings and me that we didn’t want to be [in the fields]. We wanted to get an education. We wanted to be different.” With a little digging, she discovered free classes offered nearby at South Texas College, where she could earn both highschool and college credit. Before long, she was stacking up college credits like so many boxes of grapes: American history, algebra, trigonometry, composition. By the time Anabel reached high school, her parents had landed full-time jobs — her mom as a custodian, her father as a bus driver — so she could stay in Texas through the summer and focus on her coursework. When she wasn’t at school, she volunteered at Starr County Memorial Hospital or played center field for the Lady Rattlers, her high school’s softball team. Despite her extremely full schedule, she finished first in her high-school class. Anabel isn’t one to leave much to chance, but not everything went according to plan. Her parents’ income for the family