My mother was no saint

On June 4, 1992, Edilia Vergara de Cruz (my mother), left this earth to meet her maker. And, as Teddy Roosevelt said, after the death of his wife, “The light has gone out of my life”. We, her friends and relatives felt the same way. If as Henry David Thoreau said that, “most men lead lives of quiet desperation”, then my mother was the exception to that rule. Not that she was born with a silver spoon in mouth, far from it. But she had a joy of life and a faith in God, which sustained her throughout her life. She was born in Bayamoncito, a small Barrio belonging to the city of Aguas Buenas in Puerto Rico, on December 27, 1915. Bayamoncito is a plateau on top of this mountain which was accessible in two ways: One, a road between Aguas Buenas and Cidra (a small town towards the center of the Island). The other was to take a bus from Caguas, stop somewhere by the side of the mountain, and climb. My earliest recollections of this Barrio, was that everyone knew everyone else, and many of the people were related. These were country people or Jibaros as the Puerto Ricans call them. They made a living out of growing things and selling them in Aguas Buenas. No one owned more than a few acres of land, where they grew some tobacco which was sold to the Consoladited Cigar Company for cash. This cash allowed them to buy clothing and other dry goods necessary for farm living. There wasn’t a tractor to be found for miles, and no electricity. That came later. In their family farms they grew many products such as batatas (white seet potatoes), yams, malangas, yautias, bananas (midgets, reds, large and spotted), plantains, apios, names, yucca, beans, breadfruits (called pana pen), chestnuts (called panas de pepitas), corn, coffee, rice, calabazas, and many different types of fruits such as caimitos, quenepas, mangoes, corazones, guanabanas, algarrobas, oranges, lemons (sweet and sour), grapefruits, and of course coconuts. The land was so fertile that a green thumb was not needed.

Most families owned a cow, and some raised chickens and pigs. No one grew beef for slaughter, and I don’t remember any factories there. They used make plates from gourds. The bigger gourds would make the bigger plates (called ditas), other gourds provide smaller plates. Additionally, they would make cups out of coconuts. They used to cut a coconut in half, remove the milk and flesh, let it dry out. The corn used to be mashed with a pilon and stored in giant barrels and converted to corn meal. I still remember the coffee beans being dried out in the sun before they were baked in a cast iron pot, and ground with a molino (coffee grinder) into coffee. Whenever coffee was desired, they would grind as many cups as were needed. I later learned that Puerto Rican coffee has less caffeine than other world coffees. That explains why so many Puerto Ricans may have a cup of coffee before going to bed. The important structures in the Barrio: A general store, owned by my mother’s uncle Tio Jose Vergara. He was considered the patriarch of the community, in which all types of goods and candy would be found; the second, a Baptist Church, which was unusual since in Puerto Rico the majority of people were Roman Catholic. Even during the depression these people had more than enough to eat. Anyone that came to visit would spur the women to rush to the kitchen and a meal was prepared in minutes. Even a traveling salesman (quincallero) who would show up selling stockings, hats and other stuff, were treated to what was then called “ comida de quincallero). This consisted of two fried eggs, fried yellow plantains, and white rice. As a child, this place was for me a place of enchantment. Maybe it was because my mother and father would leave my brother and I there for a few weeks during the summer. My grandmother (Lola), her real name was Dolores Hernandez, would keep me in line by telling me that she would make me paper wings so I could fly to a neighbor’s house. This neighbor was none other than Fabio Cartagena, a favorite of my grandparents, and my mother’s cousin. Fabio, was approximately six feet tall with light hair and hazel eyes. He was married to my father’s cousin Basilia. How these two got together I never knew, since my father’s family came from Cayey, which was quite a ways from there. As I mentioned before, this Barrio had a Baptist Church, so it’s possible that a revival meeting was responsible for their meeting. Since my grandmother (Lola) and grandfather (Flor Vergara), liked them. My brother and I would spend a lot of time at the Fabio household. Besides, they owned horses and my brother Ramon liked to ride them along with my uncle Ismael. I was too young and frightened to attempt riding those horses. It was in this setting that my mother was born. She was the oldest of six children and had a more difficult childhood than the others. The little schooling she had was done by a part time teacher that the town (Aguas Buenas) would send to this community on occasions. If my mother reached the third grade it would be stretching it a little. Not having a formal education bothered her throughout her life. If you dared to suggest that she was not intelligent, her stare would freeze you and her words would sting you. She made up for her lack of education by reading and studying by herself as much as possible. In adulthood no one would suspect that her education was so sparse, since she was assertive and knowledgeable on many subjects. Ultimately, she used to teach Sunday school class to the ladies organization of which she was president. Her classes were always well attended. My mother, her sister (Emilia (Titi Milla), and her brother Benjamin went to work when they were very young. This allowed the younger children Elisa, Edelmira and Ismael to further their education. Elisa was the first in her family to graduate from High School. I imagine that her work consisted of cleaning tobacco leaves that were sent to market. The church which was at the center of this community was too small for a full time pastor. Various members of the church would take turns in running the affairs of the church. As I remember, an ordained minister (Jose D. Camacho Sr.) would visit and preach in the church on occasion. He would perform baptisms and weddings, when needed. This minister about six feet tall, with some weight on him wore a reddish toupee which he never took off. On the occasions that he visited, he would stay in my Grandparents house and sleep in a hammock (hamaca). My grandma and I would try to see him without the toupee, but were never successful. Although, my grandmother would say that it was sight to behold. Interesting that his son (Jose D. Camacho became a minister and traveled for several years with the Billy Graham crusade. He was the pastor in Caguas where we lived and the Central Baptist church of Brooklyn, New York city where we were members. Some people from California may remember since he received his PHD from UCLA at Berkley and was pastor of a church there. It was at the Church in Bayamoncito where a young tango singing, political firebrand, itinerant preacher from Cayey arrived, to preach at this church with his close friend Neftali (Natalio) Cruz. My father (Ramon Cruz) and his friend fell in love with a couple of beautiful daughters of Flor and Lola. When I asked my father what was it that attracted him to my mother. He would say without hesitation, “ her beautiful green eyes”. My mother, of course, hated the color of her eyes, since the kids in the neighborhood would call her Cat Eyes. I’m certain no one would do this to her face, since her temper was nothing to be trifled with. They married in 1937 at the height of the depression. It was said that when the United States gets a cold, Puerto Rico gets pneumonia. So you can imagine the devastation that hit Puerto Rico during this era. They settled in the City of Caguas which lies approximately forty-five minutes from San Juan, by car. This was the time when many Puerto Ricans left the farms and moved to the cities looking for work. Many Puerto Ricans found work digging ditches for Roosevelt’s new deal agencies, the WPA and PRA. My father Ramon often said that many of his bosses couldn’t read or write. Politics as is often the case ruled the day. Those friendly to local politicians were able to work. Life appeared bleak at this time in their lives as it did to many people in the United States. My brother, Ramon Enrique, was born January 6, 1938 and the problems continued for the family.

On March 24, 1943, I was born in Caguas, Puerto Rico. My parents moved to a housing project called Caserio Jose Mercado. My mother always thought of me as a good luck charm, since their lives began to improve after that. The fact that War War II had started did not seem as significant to her as my birth. My father, as many Puerto Ricans, tried to join the United States Army as a means of getting enough to eat for their families. He was turned down because he did not meet weight requirements. His brothers (Manuel Cruz, Benjamin Cruz ) were taken and promptly were sent to North Africa and Germany to fight. They were part of Patton’s army in Germany. Served on the Sixty- Fifth infantry regiment.

At this time, the U.S. Army was segregated. They divided Puerto Ricans into “White Puerto Ricans” these were placed with the 65th Infantry Regiment, and “Black Puerto Ricans”. They were sent to the 258th Regiment. Sometimes brothers were sent to different regiments at the whim of the induction people. How they made those determinations had to be a difficult task in a country where inter marriage was the norm and not the exception. To go to war, knowledge of English was not mandatory. Shortly after, my mother found employment in a tobacco factory preparing the leaves for making cigars. Her salary was twelve dollars a week in the late forties and early fifties. Our rent in the Caserio was three fifty a month. My father found a job at the Lone Construction Company in San Juan as a time keeper. He had a staff of ten reports and was making twenty eight dollars a week. A good salary at the time. My father got this job because he was fluent in English. When he went to school, the law of the land was that all classes were to be taught in English. If you did not learn, you could not be educated. As a matter of fact, this law was in place from 1898 to 1948. A while later, the Korean war was raging and many Puerto Rican families came out of poverty when their sons lost their lives in that conflict. The ten thousand dollar insurance payment the government paid, helped those families. But, at what price? A disproportionate number of Puerto Rican lives were lost in that forgotten war. Not many things have been written on that chapter of American History. In December of 1952, the construction work was completed and my father was left without a job. He was offered a job in Aguadilla, about a hour and fifteen minutes by car. My father thought the distance too large and decided to come to New York, where he thought his college would help him in finding a job. By the way, I used to travel for two hours to my job in Prudential Securities. New York in 1953 was not as hospitable a place as he had hoped. Still, he got a job in a rug factory where it was bitter cold in the winter and hot as hell in the summer. Moreover, the different solvents used in the factory affected his skin. My mother arrived shortly after. Several months later, on October 28, 1953, my brother and I were put in a plane and sent to New York.

My first impressions on coming down from the plane were pretty vivid. I remember asking where the trees and flowers were. My cousins, also new arrivals told me, “there are no trees in Brooklyn.” But I did see one as the car moved past the Tompkins avenue park in Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. When we arrived, we were taken directly to the Central Baptist Church of Brooklyn, where my father was delivering the sermon of the night. On November 6, 1953 a big snowstorm hit Brooklyn. My brother and I were stunned by the beauty of it. There was no heat in the apartments on those days. To us it looked like coconut chips were falling and gathering on the ground. We liked coconuts. Our first winter, we didn’t feel the cold. Our bodies were not acclimated so we just didn’t feel it. If you speak to someone who has lived in Florida their whole life and has never experienced temperatures below seventy degrees, they can tell you. We settled in a cold water flat in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, on Tompkins Avenue., between Vernon and Myrtle Avenues. The area was a mixed neighborhood consisting mainly of Jewish, Italian, African American, Irish and Puerto Rican families. The area

became more segregated later. This happy segregation happened after John Lindsay (Liberal Republican) took office. The municipal unions fought bitter fights with the administration for pay increases. The majority of my neighbors jobs were factory workers, civil servants and teachers; which included Policemen, Firemen and Sanitation workers. Puerto Ricans and African Americans were factory workers whose salaries never went up. Since municipal unions and department heads in city agencies practiced discrimination against the black and Hispanic population, it became harder for them to raise their standard of living. The result was predictable. All white families moved out to Long Island and Staten Island and the rest were left to what Senator Patrick Monyhan advocated. The policy for the Nixon Administration “Benign Neglect”.

On the day of the funeral for my mother, my cousin Rev. Elisa Vazquez conducted the service at the church. Women from the Ladies Organization of the church, dressed in white blouses and black skirts took turns and stood guard in front of the casket as silent protectors of their past president. My cousin ended the ceremony by singing my mother’s favorite hymn. “Why should I feel discouraged / Why should the shadows come / Why should my heart feel lonely / And long for heaven and home / When Jesus is my portion / A constant friend is He / His eye is on the sparrow / And I know He watches over me / His eye is on the sparrow / And I know He watches me". Once gathered at the Washington Memorial Cemetery, everything that transpired was like a dream sequence. I can’t recall exactly everyone one that was there. I do remember however, that the minister asked me to “say a few words”. I said without thinking, “My Mother was no Saint”. It was at this time that it dawned on me that she was a human being made of flesh and blood with faults and attributes like everyone else. I of course spoke of her kindness and loyalty to her friends and family. Her idea was that prayer without good works was empty. In other words, feed the hungry, visit the sick, protect the weak, before praying for their salvation. In conclusion, I said ”to me She was a Saint”. “To me too”, my Aunt Milla whispered.