Zelmira Moves to California and Sees the Pope

Traveling back and forth, from Mazatlán to California, Zelmira got an itch to move to the U.S. full-time. She still wanted to collect clothing to sell in Mazatlán, but she decided that her main home would be California. At least for a while. 

In 1981, Zelmira left her husband, Jesús, in charge of their two youngest sons with strict orders that they needed to finish high school. Zelmira’s daughter Alma, age twenty, was already married and having babies. Zelmira didn’t want Norma to get in the same trouble at age eighteen, so she got her a visa and dragged her along.

Zelmira moved to Los Angeles, a city she already knew. There was a well-worn trail from Mazatlán to California, established long ago by her brothers and other braceros looking for work. Her brothers, Gero, Chendo, and Ramon all worked as braceros, picking grapes in California in the 1950’s.

Three of Gero’s children, Delia, Mercedes and Jesús, moved to Calfornia in the 1970’s. and Zelmira often stayed with them when she went on her clothes-buying missions. She knew almost enough English to get by. 

Zelmira quickly adapted to life in California. She liked working and sending money home to her family. She and Norma lived with her niece, Delia, in Inglewood near the L.A. airport. Norma went to work right away, working in the same airplane parts factory that Delia did, and later working in a ceramics factory.

According to Neto, “California felt like Mazatlán to Mamí and the other immigrants. People spoke Spanish on streets lined with palm trees. Smells of chiles, cooking in oil, and meat roasted on backyard grills, greeted people as they came home from work. Her neighbors stopped at local tortillarias or frutarias before walking up their sidewalks and opening their doors.”

Zelmira quickly found work, as a full-time maid and nanny in a big home in Echo Park, where she had her own live-in apartment. She moved to Echo Park and left Norma in Inglewood under Delia’s supervision.

Zelmira continued to come back to Mazatlan three or four times a year to sell clothes and check on Jesús and the two boys left at home.  Somehow she managed to get visas for the two youngest sons but not for Ernesto.

“I was always the black sheep. I think that’s why I was left behind,” Neto told me. By this time he, too, had discovered California and was able to jump the border easily, even without legal papers.

In 1984, Zelmira called Ernesto to tell him she was going to Italy to see the Pope. Padre Alvarez, pastor of  the Catholic church in Inglewood, sponsored the trip and Zelmira was the first person to sign on. She was fifty-seven years. She came back with stories of everything she had seen and done. For a working woman from tiny Hacienda del Tamarindo to go to Rome and see the Pope was a huge adventure.

“Neto, that airplane was more than a block long,” she reported. She slowly shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe it herself. “We walked all day. Some people got tired but not me. I could have walked all day and still walked home at night.”

Two years later, Zelmira signed on for another trip to Europe with Padre Alvarez. This time to visit the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, in Portugal. She also traveled to Mexico City, to the Basilica of  Our Lady of Guadalupe, when Pope John Paul II appeared there in 1999.

When the Pope visited Los Angeles in 1987, Zelmira was there in Dodger’s Stadium, cheering along with 6000 people as the Pope rounded the bases in his Popemobile.  Zelmira was ecstatic as she told Neto, “You should have come, M’hijo. He spoke in Spanish and English. He told the priests and the bishops they should work to help illegal immigrants become citizens.” 

A picture of Pope John Paul II hangs in Zelmira’s house to this day, along with pictures of John F. Kennedy and Our Lady of Guadalupe. The Pope is a reminder of all she has done in her lifetime. She considers him one of her good friends.