The Struggle

By Carlos Garcia

I once found myself lying on my bunk inside my cell, waking up with a desperation that made me feel how insignificant my existence was. I went over the memories of my life, and at that time, I felt I had lived through so much, and that gave me the delusion of having had a hard life. That day in a California youth authority in Ventura County, the urge for this book was born. At the time, I didn’t know it, but whatever misfortunes I felt I had had up to that point were only a minor part of the life that awaited me.
The lie that I was ready to cope with a society that I hardly knew anything of was soon to become a rude awakening with a lifelong learning experience. I feel fortunate that in the midst of my ignorance, I have been able to learn certain lessons that have helped me pull forward and rebuild my life along with a wonderful wife and amazing kids. The struggle has been real, from being born in a country that was, at the time, fighting a war against communism to coming to a country at twelve years old and, by fourteen, being homeless in the streets and getting sentenced to twenty-five years to life for a crime that I didn’t commit.
Yet the hardest part was getting out and really learning what life was about, and through that learning, I find myself today writing about this brief memory of my life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796093483

Carlos Garcia

Carlos Garcia has been Professor of Research for the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) since 2003. He is currently working in the Centre for Soil Science and Applied Biology of the Segura (CEBAS-CSIC) of Murcia (Spain). His scientific work focuses on the problem of highly degraded semiarid soils and strategies for their protection and rehabilitation, as well as the search for new sources of organic matter. Dr. Garcia has published 189 scientific papers in SCI journals. He also has extensive scientific management experience, having served as director of CEBAS-CSIC, Scientific Coordinator of the CSIC Agricultural Science Area, and as a partner in national and regional research programs.

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THE

STRUGGLE

CARLOS GARCIA

Copyright © 2020 by Carlos Garcia.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 03/17/2021

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

The USA

Juvenile Hall

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

YTS

Terminal Island SP

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

CHAPTER 1

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I’ve always had the urge to write about myself, but I always had an excuse to procrastinate. My main excuse is that my punctuation is horrible. Nevertheless, I feel that before I die, I need to write at least one book. It has been one of my goals to see if I am capable of doing it. The point is that I need to start creating things I can be remembered for. This is my second project to accomplish, and I have come to the decision that as long as I am alive I will continue to aim for the stars.

Although it has been many years since I was born I will do my best to recall as much from my life as I can and more importantly try to write it in a way that it might be interesting. If I can’t accomplish that right now I apologize in advance but through the years, I will keep revising this book and hopefully one day I will get it right. Thank you if you have purchased this book and are reading it. One of my very first memories that I remember, I was sitting on the hood of a car, staring at a drunken older man looking straight at me. His eyes were filled with melancholy and love, he held traces of pain on his face. He looked filled with sadness, as if he carried a great burden inside of him, and yet filled with love as he stared at me. I don’t know why, but I remember that part, just for that specific moment. Maybe that moment was my first self-conscious moment and he was the first person I saw, he was also the person I got to know as my dad, not my real dad but the man that took on that role to the best that he could.

I was never able to forget that memory. Sometimes I wish I could remember more. It must have been an important date if it was stuck in my head for so long. I think I was two or three years old. Other memories are of lying on a bed, drinking a bottle of warm powdered milk, staring at the trees and how their limbs moved in tandem with the wind, sometimes finding shapes on the trees and fantasizing them to be people waving or animals. I always had a big imagination.

Those were the most peaceful moments, feeling the breeze on my face as it came in through the window caressing me to sleep. I guess I felt secure and comfortable.

During this time, I would wonder about my real mother and had fantasies that maybe she would be thinking of me at the same time I was thinking of her. Also through those moments, I imagined I could pass messages to myself into the future and the past. Weird, I know, but it made sense in my head at the time. It also made sense as I got older because on certain occasions, one of those messages would come in handy at the right time. I also used to think my real father was in the sky and that if I stared long enough at the clouds, I could actually see people or the shapes of people staring down at me yeah I had a big imagination I know.

But maybe thinking about it, this was a way for me to cope with life. Well, at this age, all I knew was my mother had left me when I was a month old or so to come to the United States to work. Times were tough in my country and jobs were scarce. A lot of people were getting killed for the dumbest shit and a civil war was at full force.

The person who was supposed to be my real father worked at a bank, and I saw him twice in my life time, if I recall correctly, once when my aunt had taken me to his job to ask him for money and another when I was looking for toys in a dumpster that was on the side of a cemetery close to where I lived.

Now that I remember, there was a third time. On the day of my first communion, he showed up and gave me some money. That was the last time I saw him.

But back to the second time I saw him—my friends and I were searching through the dumpster. My father and his family passed by, and they all laughed at us, including his other kids. At the time, it didn’t cross my mind that I was related to those kids.

After that, it kind of made me feel embarrassed to see him again, but I did wonder what it would’ve been like if that was my mother with him and I together. At an early age, I learned that thoughts like that weren’t good, mainly because they made me feel desperate and unwanted, so eventually, I got over it. I’m not saying I was all hardcore and stuff but only that it was painful to feel unwanted specially because the few times I saw him I would get excited and nervous. Don’t judge me, I was a kid.

Growing up in El Salvador back in the 1980s meant growing up in the middle of a war, going to school in between bullets being fired by soldiers and guerrillas. If a shootout began and we were caught in the middle ground, our options were to throw ourselves to the ground or run really fast to find cover. I’ve got to admit that it was a scary feeling, lying on the ground, hoping you don’t get hit, but at the same time, it was a conscious feeling that if I started to cry, all my friends would then make fun of me at school and vice versa.

But it was hard not to cry especially when the bullets zoomed right by your head, so close that you could hear the speed it carried, see the light because they look like little lights ripping through the air and smell the gunpowder. They didn’t care who got killed, they just wanted to get their point across. Everyone else was just a casualty of war.

After a while, you just got used to it. Sometimes after school, there would be dead bodies lying on the street, and everybody would be surrounding the body, poking at it making jokes about it. The older kids tried to scare the younger kids, telling us how that dead person was going to come back at nighttime to take us. Other times, the bodies would be hanging from the trees, especially by the church. It was a horrific sight and the atmosphere was always dull when we would see that.

Talking about the church, that was one of the most boring and painful experiences to endure. Having to listen to mass trying not to fall asleep was hard and painful because we would get hit if we showed any disrespect. But on the other hand, it was really awesome, coming out of the church into the Mercado to go eat pupusas or buy candy. Crowded lines of people pushing their way through trying to spot the vendors while catching up to their family members.

You were certain to always find an uncle or aunt maybe your girlfriend if you had one but it was something to look forward to. During these days to go to church we had to wear dressing pants and dressing shirts with the handkerchief folded on the back pocket and be very uncomfortable from the itchiness of the texture of the clothes.

Las fiestas de Agosto were very exciting festivities that happened during August. The fair would come, and everyone would head down to the Mercado to have fun. Los viejos de Agosto were a bunch of scary looking guys dressed up in disguise, dancing and parading.

This period of my life seems like another lifetime. It also seems so far away, and yet many of the things that happened then are still around with me today. The soccer games were very interesting. There would be a game against another team, and everyone from their team on down would come to watch the game. At the same time, everyone on the sides would start screaming stupidities to the opposite team until a fight would break out, and that’s how the game would finish.

I guess it was different depending on where you grew up because my primo toñito once took me to a game in a different city when he went to see his girlfriend, Julia, and that game was very calm. Nobody fought, and the best part was that afterward, everyone headed to a finca, where they were making atol de elote with tamales de elotes, and this is why I specifically remember this game. It was amazing.

I went to a school called Veinti Dos De Junio. There, I learned to read and write. In that school, if you weren’t paying attention, they hit you with a ruler, and if you misbehaved, they would also put you outside in the sun and just stand there. The first rule in school was for everyone to stand in line on the patio and recite the national anthem. Then it was time to go to class.

As far as my memory serves me, I remember my friends and I would get in trouble sometimes but nothing big. But there was this one girl named Dolores, and I remember her because she was like a gang member, and she would always be in the restroom, sniffing shoe glue. She was really cool to us, but at that time, doing that didn’t call my friends’ or my attention. I’m talking about a time in El Salvador when the MS wasn’t around yet and when the gangs that were around were little ones that carried knives and fought one another.

The soldiers at that time wouldn’t have allowed all this out of control behavior that people talk about nowadays. I really can’t say how it is now because I haven’t been to El Salvador since left. However, I am sure that neither the soldiers nor the guerrillas would have allowed all the things that are said to be going on now.

Christmas was really fun. At midnight, fireworks would go off from everyone and everywhere. Older and younger children would be out on the streets. There were no presents because there wasn’t any