The Work Is All of Us
FERNANDO RAMOS ARRIVES LATE TO the community center, wheels in, and picks up a guitar, joining his voice with the others: Entre tus manos, está mi vida, Señor. From his wheelchair, Noé Ramirez directs the group. Francisco “Pancho” Argüelles strums a guitar as he stands. Others sit in their wheelchairs and play instruments. A couple of the women sing—Hay que morir, para vivir—their voices clear and powerful, if slightly off-key.
Across the barren conference room, a plastic folding table, covered with a brightly striped woven serape, serves as an altar for Día de los Muertos. The ofrendas are simple: a few photos of those who had been lost, a small wooden shadowbox with its own miniature altar hung with papel picado and laid with skulls, a vase of paper flowers, an icon of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Strewn on top of the serape are yellow sticky notes covered with names—Maria, Mario, Armando, Elvira. Or just mi mamá, mi esposo.
It’s the November meeting for Living Hope Wheelchair Association, a group of mostly undocumented immigrants in Houston who have suffered spinal cord injuries, many while supporting the city in one way or another—laying its roads, mowing its yards, cleaning its houses, feeding its hungry, caring for its children and elderly.
Ignacio Barrera (Barrera’s, Ramos’, and other names have been changed to protect their identities) offers the opening prayer, asking for blessings and wisdom to do their daily work, remembering those who couldn’t be there with them. Then, after the songs, they turn to the day’s business: fundraising, petitioning City Hall, discussing the need to care for their aging members.
According to a report published in May by the Baker Institute at Rice University, undocumented immigrants contributed around $2.43 billion in tax revenue to the
