Campesinos Sin Fronteras leader empowers families

Editor's note: This story is part of a Hispanics in Action, a series of stories by Freedom Communications' Spanish-language newspapers highlighting the achievements of prominent Hispanics in the Southwest.

The strawberry, that small delightful fruit that stands out for its flavor, also symbolizes work and struggles for Emma Torres.

It represented a barrier to education for her during her teens when she gave up an education to pick strawberries, but she has since achieved all that had been denied her during her work in the fields.

Torres, co-founder and director of Campesinos Sin Fronteras in Yuma, is an immigrant born in Guanajuato, Mexico.

But Torres went on to receive national recognition as an Hispanic leader and health care advocate for immigrants and farm workers of limited means.

At 5 years of age, she began her journey to the United States. Her family arrived in San Luis Rio Colorado, Son., looking to cross the border.

"My father crossed as a bracero, and eventually he was able to bring his family here, little by little. First my mother immigrated and then we immigrated. I arrived at 11 years of age."

Education has been the grand prize and challenge for Torres. While working, she longed to study like other youths.

"At 13 or 14, when I left the strawberry fields with my hands all dirty and my face completely covered with dust, I went to school, and I would see all the youngsters my age going with their books and smiling, and I began to long to be like them. And because I couldn't, I wanted it so much."

The students caused feelings of despair in Torres, who had been raised in a traditional male-dominated household and then continued to live in the same environment after getting married.

"I lived in a very conservative family where the father is the one who establishes the rules. Then I married a man like that. I didn't have freedom to make decisions for myself."

But when her husband died, Torres was left as a single mother with two children. She became the owner of her destiny and responsible for her decisions.

"When my first husband died, I was 24 years old, I had that vision of what it was to be in school and gaining an education. I wasn't even thinking of a career; I just saw that as being so far off. It was something I yearned for, I longed for so much in my life.

"Then I saw people who were in offices, in the banks and whoever else I admired for having achieved so much in life, and I asked myself, 'Why not me?' And why not me? And since I have always been a rebel - in fact, I don't conform very easy - I said to myself, 'If they can do it, why can't I?'

"The death of my first husband was what motivated me to go to school. Little by little, I realized that it was possible, that it wasn't so hard. I was smart, I had capability. And simply life or destiny - however you want to put it - left me with that opportunity."

After dealing with the loss of her husband, Torres began pursuing her education. She reached the first of many achievements to come when she graduated with a bachelor's degree in social work from Northern Arizona University.

"I came full circle," she says now. "I returned again to the point of immigration. Many of our youths - now I focus much on the vision of youths - are in the same place I was, when I had that longing from seeing that life wasn't fair for everyone."

Helping youths, their families and the community led her to found Campesinos Sin Fronteras, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of Hispanics along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Helping youths to get an education is what motivates her today, Torres said, and her advice to them is to study.

"In reality, the opportunity to go to school is one of the most important privileges that we can have, and it saddens me when I see youths who don't appreciate that opportunity."

In most cases, young people's failure to pursue an education stems from their parents, Torres says.

"I see parents who, because they didn't go to school, they don't understand, and I don't blame them. Since they don't know English, they don't know where to begin or how to push (their children to get educated) ... They didn't even go to elementary school.

"I see that with families with youths who are eager (but) had to leave (school) to work. They need the support of (the parents) as well."

Torres practices the concept of "promotoras," of which she was a pioneer 20 years ago in Arizona. Promotoras help not only the children but everyone in the family, she says.

"(Promotoras) help the family to leave the fields. We teach mothers to be lay educators. Then we look at leadership, and I try to bring out the natural leadership in each."

Seeing their mothers rise to the challenge of becoming community leaders, the children are themselves motivated, said Torres, adding that the Promotora program, in turn, provided motivation for her.

Another achievement that has made her proud, she said, was starting a teen pregnancy prevention program in Yuma County.