Hunting Season (7 page)

At home Kaleda’s parents stressed a sense of fairness, respect, and hard work. The “golden rule” was a teaching tool. Even as a child, the simple idea of treating others as she would like to be treated herself resonated with her. In ninth grade, the curriculum of the Catholic school she attended dictated that students take a foreign language, and she chose Spanish. Kaleda then studied English at Towson University in Maryland, and in the fall of 1979, her junior year of college, she decided on a whim to go to Spain. It was there, in the narrow streets and smoky bars of downtown Madrid, where Kaleda fell in love not only with the language but also with the bohemian culture of a country that felt electric and giddy with possibilities. General Francisco Franco, the strongman who had ruled Spain for thirty-six years, had died four years earlier, and Spain had transitioned to a democracy with a new constitution.

Kaleda’s political sense heightened in Madrid, where she followed the Spanish media coverage regarding the fifty-two Americans taken hostage in Iran that year, and she was surprised and saddened to see that some Spaniards found joy in the suffering of Americans. She thought she understood the reasons for it. She remembered as a child reading the daily news coverage of the Vietnam War, with the photos of dead children and soldiers in caskets. If that’s the way the war had played in America’s living rooms, she could only imagine what the world had seen and how that had influenced how other countries viewed Americans.

Upon graduation, with a major in Spanish and a minor in English, Kaleda stayed in Maryland, first working as a secretary in an accounting firm, and then for three years as a translator
from Spanish to English for the Defense Department. When her father became ill with emphysema, Kaleda moved back home and switched careers, enrolling in St. John’s University, in Queens, for a master’s degree in library science.

Her first job after graduation was as a librarian in an investment bank in New York City, where she had done an internship during graduate school. She worked there for three years, though the job never fulfilled her. She wanted to be a librarian to share knowledge, not to be a facilitator of data for a big corporation. Taking a pay cut, Kaleda, at thirty-one, returned to Long Island to work as a librarian in Riverhead, near where she had grown up.

From 1990 to 1997 she was relatively content with her job as a reference librarian, but barely used her Spanish. Then, in 1997, the offer came to work at the Patchogue-Medford Library, where, she was assured, her Spanish would be put to good use. So it was with eagerness and a great sense of mission that she accepted the position, seeing herself as a link between the library and the growing Hispanic population on the south shore of Long Island. She envisioned all she could do with her language skills and her curiosity for a people who she knew were underserved and often misunderstood, as many newcomers are.

Kaleda was surprised and disappointed to find that the library’s patrons were not as diverse as the population she could see right outside the library’s front windows. Where is everybody? she wondered. And who are they? Where are they from?

She would strain her ears walking up and down Main Street trying to identify the soft Spanish accent she had come to know and love in Spain, or the more musical but truncated Spanish of the Caribbean that she was used to hearing from the Dominicans and Puerto Ricans in New York City. What she heard in the streets of Patchogue resembled neither of those accents. This was a more formal, clipped way of speaking that seemed to skip over the vowels and end each word with an expectant tilt, as if the other person was supposed to finish the thought.

Kaleda couldn’t place it, and didn’t know who could. She didn’t know anybody in Patchogue outside the library or at least not anybody who shared her interest in Hispanics and her love of Spanish in particular. But she was determined to attract Hispanic patrons to the library.

There was plenty of history to draw from. Chartered by the state of New York in 1900, the Patchogue-Medford Library is the main library for Suffolk County, serving a population of more than fifty thousand people.
¹
During the 1970s and 1980s, Puerto Ricans made up the vast majority of Spanish speakers in the community. A librarian named Barbara Hoffman decided to reach out to that community by focusing on the youth. With her support, a local band of teenage musicians, mostly Hispanic and African Americans, was hired for a library dance. Local teens who thought of themselves as graffiti artists were enlisted to redirect their talents to paint a mural for the library, and the library provided video equipment and a videographer to film events in the Hispanic community. To develop a young adult collection in Spanish, English-speaking librarians asked local teenagers to accompany them to the Borders Bookstore to select books they thought other teenagers would like.
²

The program was a victim of its own success: as the community became more bilingual and more integrated into the fabric of Patchogue, there was no longer such a need for a Spanish program. Eventually the library’s outreach to Spanish speakers came to a near-standstill. While the library blinked, the Spanish-speaking community was reinventing itself, but this time with the Ecuadorians.
³

In early 2002 the library revised its long-range plan, and Spanish-language outreach was designated a priority. Soon after, the library established a Spanish Outreach Committee, which was chaired by Kaleda. A Literacy and Languages Center with materials to learn English and other languages was established, printed materials were translated into Spanish, and the bilingual
and Spanish collections were greatly expanded. Bilingual suggestion boxes were placed everywhere in the library.
⁴

The only problem for Kaleda was that there seemed to be no clear path to reach out to the community. The library was like a perfectly laid-out buffet with all the trimmings and no takers. Unlike other groups that tend to unite to lobby for recognition, jobs, or political power, the Ecuadorians in Patchogue seemed to be leaderless. Everyone went about his or her business individually, a behavior typical of recent arrivals. Ecuadorians were not yet seeking a presence in the town’s life; they were trying to survive.

Then, in the early fall of 2002, Kaleda found an item on the front page of the local paper, the
Long Island Advance,
that caught her eye: “Planting Roots on Long Island, Surging Hispanic Population Hopes to Break Barriers in America.”
⁵

Finally, Kaleda thought as she read, somebody else has noticed the obvious:

Martha Vázquez is a long way from home, but she has lots of company.

A native of Gualaceo, Ecuador, Vázquez says there are more than 16,000 people from her South American homeland who have migrated to Long Island during the past 30 years. The Patchogue Village resident, who moved here 15 years ago and officially became a US citizen on Aug. 15, 1998, also says that at least 4,000 Ecuadorians now live in the greater Patchogue areas.

The most interesting statistic, according to the 32-year-old wife and mother of one, is that all of them came from the same small village in Ecuador.

[ . . . ]

On a local level, the Hispanic population in Patchogue village, for example, has increased by 84.1 percent between 1990 and 2000, according to recent census figures. Approximately 2,842 individuals of Latino descent now live within
the borders of the 2.2-square-mile village. The cultural metamorphosis is most apparent on South Ocean Avenue, where Spanish bodegas and meat markets now dominate the commercial corridor.

[ . . . ]

In addition to seeking employment opportunities, the majority of Ecuadorians living on Long Island either are or hope to become full-fledged tax-paying American citizens, according to Vázquez, spokeswoman for the newly incorporated Ecuadorians United in Long Island. The Patchogue-based group now boasts almost 60 members, but only two speak good English, highlighting one of the barriers that the growing local Hispanic population must contend with.

Kaleda had found her answers. In a few paragraphs she had noted a need she knew she could fulfill—English lessons—and learned the name of a person who seemed poised to help, Martha Vázquez. She picked up the phone and called Vázquez. The article had identified her as working for a local bank.

Vázquez was receptive, immediately grasping Kaleda’s intentions, and invited her to the next meeting. The group—no more than ten that night—met in a space above a Chinese restaurant on Main Street. Kaleda went and mostly listened. Group members were discussing one of their first projects: a community garden on South Ocean Avenue. Kaleda understood that if she wanted to attract Ecuadorians to the library she needed to reach many more than ten. She needed to do it in Spanish and through a publication they trusted. Someone at the meeting mentioned that the most trusted publication among Hispanics in Patchogue was not on Long Island, but in Ecuador, more than three thousand miles away: a weekly newspaper called
Semanario El Pueblo,
which was edited and published in Gualaceo on Sundays, and arrived in Patchogue by Thursdays.

The next day Kaleda composed an e-mail in Spanish to the publisher, Fernando León, telling him that the doors of the library were open to the Ecuadorian community and that library employees were eager to work with them. She also asked him for advice on how best to reach the community. She was hoping for an e-mail response, or even simple confirmation that her e-mail had been received, but heard nothing. A few days later, the first three Gualaceños walked into the library looking for Kaleda.

How did you find me? she asked, startled but pleased.

They pointed to a copy of
El Pueblo
they carried with them. The publisher had used Kaleda’s e-mail as a letter to the editor. The ice was broken.

The outreach program was set into high gear.
Bienvenido al Pueblo
welcome packets, modeled on the library’s English-language “Welcome to the Community” packets, were created and distributed to all patrons applying for library cards. Spanish-language and bilingual workshops were offered on topics that ranged from immigration and health awareness to fair housing, and bilingual story times were started.
⁶

For much of the translation work the library relied on Kaleda, who had learned Spanish as an adult, a part-time clerk who was not in a public service area, and a part-time custodian. No one else in the library spoke Spanish. Kaleda knew she needed to find a full-time employee who was truly bilingual. She found what she was looking for right under the library’s roof, but it took time and a dash of luck to make it happen.

One day Kaleda was speaking with a man who had attended one of the bilingual workshops and who stressed that what he and other Latinos in the area needed was a primer on how Patchogue worked. For instance, how to pay a parking ticket, understanding the difference between the local constables and the Suffolk County police, or how to apply to use the soccer field for a game. Kaleda listened and set out to organize the first bilingual village/library
meeting. She spoke to the mayor, Paul Pontieri, who was interested. The meeting was set for November 3, 2004, and it was billed as
“Viviendo en la Villa de Patchogue
”—Living in the Village of Patchogue.

A supervisor for the Patchogue-Medford Adult Literary Consortium agreed to bring some of their English-language learners to the meeting. The consortium held citizenship classes at the library as well, and, by coincidence, one was scheduled the same day as the meeting, so those students too were expected to attend. The woman who taught the citizenship classes was Gilda Ramos, a part-time employee of the school district, who had been born and raised in Peru but who had lived on Long Island for six years.

Flyers all over the village advertised the meeting, and though the text was riddled with mistakes and spelling errors it was understandable. Mayor Pontieri was expected to explain everything from where to park legally to how to apply for low-income housing.

When Pontieri arrived shortly before 7:00 p.m., dozens of people were waiting for him. In the end, about one hundred crammed into a small room in the library basement. The mayor began to speak, but it was clear from the beginning that the community volunteer who was helping to interpret his words to Spanish was unable to translate. From her seat in the front, Ramos started whispering the correct translation to the beleaguered interpreter, who finally gave up, turned to Ramos, and asked, Do you want to do this? Because I can’t.

Ramos leaped at the chance, went to the front of the room, and flawlessly translated the mayor’s words.

From the side of the room, near the door, Kaleda liked what she saw and realized she had found just the person she was looking for. In 2005 Ramos began working in the library part-time as a clerk. Two years later, Kaleda was able to hire her in a new
full-time civil service category called “Spanish speaking library assistant,” and Ramos became an indispensable member of the library, teaching computer classes in Spanish, English as a second language, Spanish conversation, and, of course, her citizenship classes.

Gilda Ramos was, like Kaleda, the right person at the right time in the right job. Trained as an interpreter in English and German in her native Peru, and endowed with a passion for public service and a terrific work ethic, Ramos was eager to help the newly arrived immigrants.

She had started to learn English as a toddler in a Catholic preschool. Her love of the language and facility with it was such that, at night, before she said her prayers in Spanish, she recited the Lord’s Prayer and Hail Mary in English. When she was twelve, Ramos, one of two daughters of a single mother who worked as an assistant nurse and studied psychology, started earning money for the family tutoring older kids in English. By sixteen, she was translating for missionaries while going to school and continuing her training in English. The language school was far from her house, and it took her hours to navigate the city. At that time, the terrorist Maoist group Shining Path was keeping Lima alert and in fear with constant bombings. But nothing could deter Ramos in her drive to succeed.