27 minute read
DACA recipient realizes barbershop dream
Hola America News July 7, 2022
18 DACA recipient realizes barbershop dream
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By Anastassia Zvoryguina
There was a time when Luis Garcia, a 31-year-old resident of Des Moines, Iowa, gave up on his dream of doing what he loves the most and accepted that there would be no change. “It is what it is,” he thought to himself. Fortunately for him and many others like him, the change came in the form of a Presidential Executive Order and his dream finally turned into a reality. Today, this DREAMer, as they call DACA program participants, has his own business and is working hard to succeed. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is President Obama’s deportation deferral program for DREAMers – undocumented young people brought to the United States as children. The program started taking applications on August 15, 2012. Luis Garcia was born in Cordova, Veracruz, Mexico. He lived there for over a decade, cared for by his grandparents while his mother earned a living in the US. “Life there is very different from here,” Garcia shares. “I remember I used to help my aunt sell limes, tomatoes, and such.” He added that he used to spend a lot of time in the streets, which were getting dangerous. By the time he turned 11, he had seen some things kids his age shouldn’t experience. When his grandfather passed away and his grandmother could not take care of him anymore, his aunt told her sister, his mother, Garcia should join her in the United States. “What are you waiting for, my aunt asked my mom,” Garcia recalls. “Take your son with you. He is alone here. There is no life here.” Soon, Garcia found himself in a new country. He said it was very hard for him because the school was very different from school in Mexico, and he did not speak any English. “It was very, very, very hard,” Garcia says of his first years in the United States. “Not only because I did not know how to speak English, but I didn’t even know how to get to the bathroom because I did not know how to ask. It was hard to learn. It was a silent period in my life.” He said there was even a time when he asked his mom to send him back to Mexico or to let him go to work because he did not understand anything in school. But his mom did not let him drop out. She pushed and encouraged him to continue. When he started high school he realized it was time to get serious and try to figure out what he wanted to do with his life after graduation. As a teen, Garcia was not satisfied with any barbershop in town. It seemed that they could not produce the styles he wanted.
“They did not do unique styles or designs. They were too classic,” he said.
At one point he got so frustrated that he asked his mom if she could buy him his own hair clippers. The next day he found a box of clippers on his bed. Garcia spent the next three hours in front of the mirror in the bathroom, but he ended up with the result he was looking for. Kids at his school noticed his haircut and soon started asking him to cut their hair. It was around that time that he started thinking that being a barber might be his thing.
After high school, he tried to enter the American College of Hairstylists. Unfortunately, this was before DACA, and he did not have a social security number so the school refused to accept him as a student. Garcia was upset, but he knew, like many other young immigrants, that there was nothing he could do. He started working at a restaurant and thought becoming a licensed barber would never happen.
In August of 2012 President Obama established the DACA program and Garcia figured that was his chance to realize his dream of becoming a barber.
“At first, many did not believe in it. They thought it was a way to deport people,” says Garcia, sharing the cynicism many had about the DACA program in its early days. It sounded too good to be true. Despite his fears, he gathered the required documents and was one of the first applicants to the program.
As soon as Garcia received his social security card, he went back to the American College of Hairstylists and applied again. But being a DREAMer meant he could not get any financial aid or scholarships. He would have to work to pay tuition. The school offered him a payment plan where he would pay $1000 a month to cover the cost of school and supplies. He did not have that much money. He thought his dream was crushed yet again, but his mom stepped in to help her son. She worked extra shifts and sold some of her belongings to pay his monthly bill so he could go to school. The hard work paid off and Garcia completed barber school. He started working for a local barbershop while dreaming of opening his own. He wanted to open it in five years, but the COVID pandemic derailed his plans. He stopped working for about two years during the lockdown. Once things got back to normal, he started looking for locations for his own barbershop. “I was searching for locations, but it was not easy,” he remembers. “I had to follow many codes and it was expensive because prices went up.” Fortunately, opportunity came knocking. Garcia received a call from a friend who said that the Roosevelt Barbershop was on the market. It has a long history in Des Moines. It was opened in 1934 and is considered one of the oldest barbershops in the metro area. It has had 5 owners since it was first opened and there was a chance Garcia could be the next one. He did not have to think long about buying the Roosevelt Barbershop. While he loved the historic aspect of the place, he wanted to add a personal touch so he decided to call it Dreamers Roosevelt Barbershop. “It is very sentimental to me,” he explains. “If it wasn’t for the Dreamer program [DACA] I would not be a barber now. This program gave me a chance to go to school and become a barber.” Under Garcia’s ownership, Dreamers Roosevelt Barbershop is planning some modern touches and may even expand one day. While bringing his shop into the next century, Garcia is firm on keeping the rich history of the Roosevelt Barbershop intact. He plans to build on its amazing historical background. The previous owner still works there, renting a chair from Garcia to service his longtime customers. Garcia has added 2 more Latino barbers to the team: Mayra Quintanilla and Adrian Camarillo. DACA has opened new opportunities for many people. A young Luis Garcia never imagined he would reach success in a new and unfamiliar country. With the support of his mother, he made it through many difficulties and is now the proud owner of his own business, Dreamers Roosevelt Barbershop. Many DACA recipients credit their parents as the original dreamers. They dreamed of a better life for their children, no matter the sacrifices they had to make to give them the chance to pursue happiness. They work hard in their new countries to remove barriers for their children, just like Garcia’s mother did when he needed help with tuition. Today Garcia is a documented US resident raising a beautiful family with his wife Lacy and they have 3 children, and he is living his dream of running his own barbershop.
Luis Garcia becomes the first Latino owner of Roosevelt Barbershop now Dreamers Roosevelt Barbershop Photos by Mayra Quintanilla Dreamers Roosevelt Barbershop is located at 851 42nd St., Des Moines, IA.
A story about mariachi and Iowa’s future
The pride is palpable in Amy Estrada’s voice as she talks about performing in Denison High School’s top mariachi group. “We show diversity in our community,” Estrada told Iowa Columnist Courtney Crowder. “We represent Denison, and I love representing Denison.” Crowder’s uplifting story and Bryon Houlgrave’s photos and video show how Denison’s decade-old mariachi program has helped unite Latino and white students, their parents and the broader community in a stronger web of acceptance and understanding. I’m proud to publish this story on this Independence Day weekend. The war in Ukraine poses an ever-present reminder of how precious and tenuous freedom is. And these polarized times remind us that our nation has often hit bumps in its road toward fulfilling our founders’ declaration 246 years ago that “all men are created equal.” But our history is also replete with people of goodwill who rise above division, like the band director and superintendent in Denison, who thought that maybe, just maybe, a mariachi program could help Latino kids feel more at home and other kids get to know them better through a shared joy in music. This spirit of coming together as a community is especially important for slow-growing Iowa and its rapidly growing Latino population, which has soared more than six-fold from about 33,000 in 1990 to 216,000 in the 2020 census. At nearly 7% of the state’s people, Latinos make up Iowa’s largest racial or ethnic minority. I’m also proud to publish this story in partnership with Hola America, a news outlet serving Iowa and Illinois that publishes its articles in both English and Spanish. Hola America is simultaneously publishing this piece in Spanish on its website and in the Hola Iowa newspaper, available at retail outlets across the state. The simultaneous publication represents the next stage of our partnership: For more than a year, Hola Iowa has published Register articles in Spanish on its website and in print after the Register’s publication. The Register has shared these translations on social media. Tar Macias, who lives with his wife, Erika, and their daughter in West Des Moines, founded Hola America in August 2000 and Hola Iowa in 2014. He and Erika have been the company’s sole employees for most of that time, and they also work with six to eight freelancers. They publish two print editions: Hola America serves eastern Iowa and western Illinois, and Hola Iowa serves the entire state of Iowa, including the top 10 Latino markets, spanning from Davenport to Council Bluffs and including smaller towns such as Muscatine, West Liberty, Columbus Junction and Marshalltown . His publications seek to connect Latino communities with one another and with the broader community. Macias has long partnered with other news organizations to provide as much information as possible to his audience. He sees the partnership with the Register as a way to help the Latino community be better informed. Recent stories from the Register that are posted on the Hola America website include a utility regulator’s warning that Iowans could face rolling blackouts this summer in periods of extreme heat; announcement of a year’s delay in construction of the planned downtown Des Moines soccer stadium; and the Register’s annual guide to Des Moines-area swimming pools. “The pandemic, the social unrest of the last few years along with the recent tragedies that hit our Iowa Latino communities (the East High shooting and the fatal hit and run of a student walking home) made it clear to many that there is a huge lack of information for our Spanish speaking community,” he wrote in an email. “And the Register’s resources and this partnership give me the opportunity to inform our community as the news and current events develop.” Likewise, we at the Register welcome this partnership as a way to reach out to Latinos beyond our current digital and print subscribers and demonstrate that the Register is a trustworthy news source across our communities. Beyond delivering more news coverage to his audience, Macias said, “My bigger dream would be to assist the Register in engaging with the Latino community in a way that would feel organic and culturally sensitive to the needs of our community.” That’s our goal, too.
Carol Hunter is the Register’s executive editor. She wants to hear your questions, story ideas or concerns at 515284-8545, chunter@registermedia.com, or on Twitter: @ carolhunter.
Sunday July 3, 2022 cover of the Des Moines Sunday Register.
This high school mariachi band united a rural Iowa meatpacking town. Can its success be replicated?
Members of the Denison High School mariachi ensemble pose for a group photo in a doorway to the high school gymnasium prior to the start of the 2022 Fiesta Mariachi celebration. Photo by Bryon Houlgrave / The Register
By Courtney Crowder, Des Moines Register
DENISON, Iowa — The standing-room-only crowd’s loud grito cheers — Aaaaayyyyyeeee! Aaaaayyyyyeeee! — echo across the high school gym, their elongated vowels bouncing off a rainbow’s worth of bright tablecloths, streamers and Mexican-style papel picados bunting. Little siblings crawl among long communal tables, where families dine on heaping piles of carnitas, red beans and rice; warm tortillas at the ready to sop up any wayward remnants. White granddads wearing Cyclone sweatshirts and seed caps exchange greetings with young Hispanic fathers adorned in embroidered button-downs and pointy cowboy boots. Grandmas — Mexican abuelas and centuryfarm meemaws — steady their hands, phones raised, ready to record. A line worker at the local Smithfield meatpacking plant, who arrived early to snag the seat closest to the corner stage, attempts to covertly wipe away a tear, moved by music he never thought he’d hear in an American school. The gathered represent at least a dozen countries in a district where 23 languages reverberate throughout hallways and classrooms daily. They’re a cross-section of life in Denison, both those whose faces are fresh and those whose roots run deep. It’s a cross-section not seen in any other parts of this county, or in much of rural Iowa. Tonight, these hallowed boards normally reserved for basketball and pep rallies are playing host to the school’s Fiesta Mariachi, a celebration of Iowa’s most robust high school mariachi program — and of how immigration and a trumpet’s fanfare transformed this rural hamlet. Small towns in Iowa have been emptying out for more than a century, but Denison’s population has increased since the 1980s, including an explosive 25% growth in minority community members in the past decade. Jobs and industry are the main motivators for relocation, and with two large meatpacking plants in town and all the trappings of being a county seat, goodpaying employment is not hard to find. But to keep people, to encourage them to buy homes here and raise children here and retire here and tell extended family to come here, residents must feel ingrained in a place, experts say. And finding ways to welcome these new, diverse populations, to create community with them, could stem the bleeding in parts of rural America, they say. Mariachi “has given that community as a whole, the Latino community, the green light that we embrace what you’re bringing to the table here,” says Claudia Rihner, Denison’s strings teacher. “We love that you’re bringing this cultural diversity, and we want to be involved in that.” “It’s making somewhere that probably doesn’t feel like home to them, feel like home.” Ten years strong, Denison’s mariachi, which includes nearly 70 kids in four different ensembles, has created an ecosystem of acceptance inside the high school and out. Their strings and serenades form a musical net that connects white students to their Latino peers, Hispanic kids to their heritage, diverse parents to the equally diverse school, and the district to a community primed to grow. Encouraged by Denison’s success, high schools in Ottumwa, Sioux City, Storm Lake and West Liberty have started mariachi programs, joining a national trend that has seen this regional Mexican music incorporated into curricula as far away as Juneau, Alaska, where migrants work on crab boats. In Storm Lake, enrollment in mariachi class has jumped from six to 38 in the span of a year. And in Marshalltown, the district posted an opening for a full-time mariachi educator in hopes of starting a program soon. As the opening strains of a new tune swell in the gym, junior Amy Estrada steps forward to grab the microphone. Her brand new purple traje, a traditional mariachi outfit sewn in Denison High colors, twinkles under the scoreboard; the lapel’s embroidered monarch lions, the school’s mascot, positively glowing. She’s listening for her whistle, her dad’s highpitched squeak. The unmistakable sound of joy. She asked band teacher Ruben Newell at the beginning of the year if the school’s top mariachi group, Mariachi Reyes del Oeste, could play “Estos Celos” (“This Jealousy”), her dad’s favorite. Born on a ranchito outside Mexico City, he blasts the song while tinkering in the garage, coaxing the entire family to sing along. In Estrada’s world, the dulcet melodies of mariachi can instantly turn a bad day good. Like so many students, playing this music, and at school no less, has given Estrada a confidence she couldn’t have named before picking up a
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guitarrón or a vihuela, string instruments unique to mariachi. It’s a confidence in herself, and in her hometown. “We show diversity in our community, and I love that because a lot of schools are very closed,” Estrada says. “Us coming in there and performing, we represent Denison, and I love representing Denison.” Off stage, she may be Clark Kent. But one quick change into that traje later, and she’s Superman. A mariachi band grows in Denison Ruben Newell was sold on starting a mariachi program in Denison after an hour of strumming. Newell, who’s had an ear for instruments as long as he can remember, had been band director at Denison High School for a few years before he picked up that guitar at a music educators conference. He was originally attracted to Denison by its strong tradition of fine arts and music — and, honestly, it didn’t hurt that the town was halfway between his family and his wife’s. His former school district had been 95% white, but Denison’s was more than 60% Hispanic. Not only was the school a hundred miles and a world away from Newell’s upbringing on a farm outside Fort Dodge, colleagues and acquaintances cautioned him before he took the position: When you go teach at a school like that, those students don’t stay in music, they said. Those students don’t get involved. Those students. They were never more specific, but they didn’t need to be for Newell to understand they meant the Latino kids. Not more than a week on the job, Newell knew that was a false stereotype. Yet when he stepped in front of his band, he didn’t see the school’s demographics reflected back to him. The words of his former colleagues clung to the recesses of his mind, a lingering fear: Those students don’t stay in music. He understood a large portion of this school’s population wasn’t being reached, but he didn’t know how, exactly, to extend an invitation. He found his invitation in that guitar. “If you get out a yearbook, and open up the band section from 1982, and you’re offering the same ensemble that they did in 1982, you are ignoring that there has been a change in people, in communities and in education,” he says. “If we’re not reaching the students, if we don’t have the students in here to teach them, what are we doing?” If he could get an ensemble off the ground, Denison’s mariachi program would be the first of its kind in Iowa. Now he had to convince the school administration. Like jazz — just in Spanish The group of a dozen or so students was just going to play a few songs at the endof-the-year concert in the spring of 2012, a little interstitial between the band’s regular programming. But this set list was as much a test for the audience as it was for the kids or for Newell’s instruction. When he pitched his superintendent the year before, Newell said mariachi music is as accessible — learn three chords and you can play a few songs — as it is intricate and difficult. Traditionally passed down between generations by hands-on teaching, not reading staffs on paper, mariachi songs trace the seasons of life. Meditating on tragedies and triumphs, the lyrics cut and comfort in equal measure. And, unlike concert band, so much of this music is in the performance, in how musicians draw on their own lives to portray love, loss, joy, sadness, yearning or victory. The words may be in Spanish, but the feeling transcends language. A mariachi program would not only invite new musicians into the band’s fold, Newell said, but push the current students musically and show minority families that school is a safe space for their children and their culture. This would not be the out of tune, beaten up trumpets wandering between booths at a Mexican restaurant, Newell said. “It’s a legitimate art form,” he says. “On par with what jazz is to American musicians.” Newell barely finished his spiel before Superintendent Mike Pardun agreed. He tells his staff often that learning, whether music or chemistry or English lit, is possible only through strong relationships with the families in their district. Pardun walked out of his office and booked Newell a ticket to an upcoming mariachi training. A few weeks later, six violins and six guitars, instruments necessary for mariachi, were delivered to the school. And in the fall, a small ensemble of eighth-graders, a mix of white and Latino kids, started with 20-minute lessons weekly. Newell picked the band’s journeymen, not the best or the worst, but the kids who cared deeply about music, the ones who felt the notes and the movements. Their first performance was set for the spring concert. As the ensemble stepped to the front and strummed, Newell paced back and forth, tracing the back wall of the middle school auditorium. “Worst-case scenario was we put this group of students out there and they get in front of a crowd and they play what we taught them was mariachi and people go, ‘Wait, what is this?’” he says. “‘What are these’ — if I’m being honest — ‘these white guys doing trying to teach our kids mariachi?’” In a rapidly diversifying town, you see, race is never far from most people’s minds. But as the last note echoed, the audience erupted, literally jumping to their feet — the first of many times that the loudest applause would be for mariachi. As Newell started to take full breaths again, he caught a father crying into his hands, overcome by what he’d just seen. “The thing we weren’t prepared for was the adults in the Latino community who couldn’t believe it,” Newell says. “It was grown men sobbing because they just couldn’t believe it. They were just in shock that this was happening in Denison, Iowa.” ‘Spanglish’ life leads to strong bonds Senior Jamie Abarca’s parents blast mariachi while they clean on Saturdays; junior Adrian Velazquez-Nieto’s do, too. Velazquez was a grade-schooler when his mother turned up the radio dial to sing along to “El Rey” (“The King”), a classic mariachi song about the bare-knuckled life of a swashbuckling man. My favorite, she said, humming along. At home later, he downloaded the song to his iPod Nano, playing and replaying the tune, lost in the melody. When he hears that opening trumpet flourish, he still thinks about that day, and about how he’ll pass that song to his children and they will to future generations. Estevan Castellanos’ grandfather was in a mariachi band, a violin player and singer, just like he is now. As soon as the senior got the mariachi set list for this year, he asked his mother to circle songs that his grandfather once played. “The whole culture of mariachi, I can relate to. It’s just so comforting,” Velazquez says. “It makes me feel at home, like I belong to something.” Nearly all of the students at tonight’s festival have spent their entire lives in this town. Born in the era of two Denisons, the musicians came into themselves as community leaders were building bridges between the white and nonwhite populations. Duality, a sort of “Spanglish” life, as Estrada says, is what they know. So none of the Latino students demurred when their white classmates joined mariachi. Standing side by side with blondhaired, blue-eyed kids wearing moños, Mexican bowties, that’s just another aspect
Denison High School music director Ruben Newell guides senior Antonio Rodriguez, left, and junior Adrain Velazquez-Nieto, right, both members of the Mariachi Reyes del Oeste, the high school’s top mariachi ensemble, during practice. Photo by Bryon Houlgrave / The Register
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of Spanglish life in Denison.
“Seeing a white person playing mariachi, it made such a good impact in me. I’m like, ‘They want to be part of it!’” Estrada says. “I feel so appreciative of them being a part of it.”
At its core, mariachi is folk music, created to tell stories, to offer an avenue for people to relate to one another, Abarca says. The lessons in each song, about confidence, about broken hearts, about success, are universal.
Having students of all races in mariachi “makes me feel safe, like people do care and they do want to learn,” Abarca says. “It just makes us feel heard”
That mariachi is for everyone — not just Latinos — is vital to the growing national movement to include the music in instrumental curriculum, says Robert Lopez, a mariachi expert and teacher in Las Vegas’ Clark County School District.
“We talk about breaking cultural barriers and integration of students of all cultures,” he says. “Integration goes both ways, not just Hispanic to white.”
“If people want to learn and be a part of our culture, why wouldn’t we let them?”
Like so much in this town, the mariachi program wears difference, in all its senses, with pride. And that self-worth, that honor, binds participants in the face of adversity.
Bigger than the music
When fall hits in rural America, there is no bigger stage than Friday night — for the football team, the band, and the town. And on this Friday, about three years into the program, the mariachi kids stepped to the front of the field for a specially arranged number with the marching band. Normally, Newell doesn’t have football players take part in halftime, but the mariachi singer insisted. He wanted to; he was proud to, and he’d wear his football jersey while he did. As the show got under way, Newell heard a sound drifting on the wind. A chant, maybe? Did the visiting team’s cheerleaders start a routine? Are you hearing that? he asked the assistant nearest to him. Then the sound became clearer. Taco! Taco! Burrito! Burrito! With a flash, he was back in that middle school auditorium, pacing at the rear wall. He’d asked these kids to trust him, he’d taken them out on that ledge, and this was soul crushing. But then a swell grew on the other side, the home side. Denison’s crowd got on their feet. They cheered louder and louder, stomped and clapped, until they drowned out the visitors. “That feeling that night, it was this idea of: Who are you?” Newell says. “It was a coming together.” “That made me think, ‘OK, this is bigger than the music. It’s bigger than the mariachi program. This is who we are.
This is what makes us different.’”
The players today still harness that energy in the face of icy crowds, an easy task, Abarca says, knowing an entire town stands behind them.
Newell’s original goal in founding the mariachi group was to create a thriving music program, and numbers show he did. The band program has grown by 50% since he started, and every one of the various ensembles — jazz band, pep band — reflects the school’s demographics. A decade later, the students in music look like the students in school.
“We’ve got kids involved in our program, invested in it, and they’re leaving here with an appreciation not just for mariachi music, but just people, just being open, accepting people,” he says. “They leave here better prepared for the world outside of those doors.”
Watching the program expand, motivating and changing kids of all races, caused Newell to reflect on his place in a shifting culture, too. When he took this job, he would have bristled at being called a racist — and if it’s defined as hating others for their skin color, he certainly wasn’t.
But he hadn’t allowed himself to really explore perspectives outside of what he was comfortable with, what he knew. And he let those colleagues’ words cling to the recesses of his mind.
In his decade of working with mariachi, his empathy has grown, and his self-awareness has, too.
“It gave me the perspective to go, ‘Yeah, I get it. I get that this is a problem,’” he says, “and it doesn’t matter which group of people we’re talking about, whether it’s
Latino or it’s African American.”
Newell has coached a handful of other districts on starting mariachi programs over the years. A few have stuck, but most have fallen through. Sometimes, as students file in for first period band, he and Rihner wonder why. “Like, what’s holding you back?” Rihner says. “I know it can be scary; change is scary. Jumping into a program that you know nothing about is scary.” “But not doing it is equally as scary.” In the back of the gym-turned-Fiesta hall, Israel Antonio Rodriguez Baez watches his son, Alexis, through tears. This, his son performing in a traje at school, this vision feels like a dream, one he couldn’t have begun to conjure when he moved to Iowa from El Salvador for meatpacking work. He takes out his phone, swiping through pictures, and the tears come anew. Just look, he says, how handsome. “My wife and I, we’ve worked hard for them to do what they like,” he says. “For me, it’s something that made me proud.” “I think about their future, and I hope one day they can be where they want to be.” A few paces away, the middle-schoolers, who played one song earlier in the evening, listen intently. Some are cousins or siblings of the teens in Reyes del Oeste, Kings of the West — the next generation, the future of the program, in flesh and blood. The father of a Storm Lake player, whose high school mariachi ensemble performed too, leans over to their band director, Corbet Butler. How can we do this in our town? the man asks. Just give me time, Butler says of the school’s three-yearold mariachi program. We’ll get there. On stage, the musicians lift their instruments for the grand finale, light glinting off their belt buckles, each adorned with an eagle. The buckles were the only part of the old traje they kept; the eagle’s appearance on both the Mexico and Iowa flag acting as a reminder of their interconnectedness, of how their fates are intertwined. Then the downbeat comes and the trumpets flourish, the opening measure to “El Rey” erupting as the crowd does, too — the unmistakable sound of joy, no matter what language you speak.
Denison High School junior Amy Estrada sings as the Mariachi Reyes del Oeste, the high school’s top mariachi ensemble, performs during the 2022 Fiesta Mariachi. Photo by Bryon Houlgrave / The Register Courtney Crowder, the Register’s Iowa Columnist, traverses the state’s 99 counties telling Iowans’ stories. She played clarinet for years, but decided words, not notes, were more her thing. Reach her at ccrowder@dmreg.com or 515-284-8360. Follow her on Twitter @courtneycare.
