Tag: Latino heritage

I went to Mexico to look for relatives of my great grandfather, who left there in 1890. My grandfather was a cowboy who rode cattle from Texas to the Midwest. I told a woman, who could have been a cousin, how my mom was born in Carrizo Springs, Texas and grew up in a migrant worker family. They picked cotton in Texas and beets in the Midwest and then wound up on a tomato farm outside Chicago. My mom’s sisters convinced the family to move to the city where they could make more money working in factories. My mom was the youngest, so she was allowed to go to high school if she got an after-school job. She found a job in a department store. My mom and dad, also a migrant from Texas, met in the high school cafeteria. They married and had five children, all who went on to graduate from college.