Claudia Perez walks through the municipal pantheon of Coacoatzintla, Veracruz, on Feb. 21, 2024. The day their mother left was one of them.
Her husband, Seferino Arguelles, tried convincing her to wait so that the two could go back together. “Just a couple more years,” he would tell her, urging them to leave the business ready to be passed down. But Perez was afraid that if she waited any longer, she would never return. Not alive at least.
Claudia Perez is helped by her daughter Elizeth and son Uriel as she arrives at the bus station in Chicago on Feb. 19, 2024. Several family members arrive at the home of Claudia Perez to wish her farewell on Feb. 18, 2024, before she returns to Mexico. Claudia Perez is presented with a rose from her brother Laurencio Perez, at a local restaurant during a going away gathering of family and friends, on Feb. 14, 2024.
Claudia Perez, left, prepares over 1,000 tamales with Petra Ramirez, one of her two employees, at a rented kitchen space in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood on Feb. 9, 2024. Claudia Perez takes a look back at her home in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood on Feb. 8, 2024. It’s a dilemma that scores of families living in the U.S. illegally experience quietly as the community ages. Some are sick or unable to work, and many immigrants want to make the reverse migration to see their loved ones and homelands before they die. But in doing so, they may never be able to return to the U.S. and see the relatives they left behind.
When Perez finally returned to Coacoatzintla, Veracruz in February, she sat in one of the homes she had built for their family. Outside, the surrounding green hills turned dark and quiet as the day ended, the surroundings seemingly a world away from the bustling streets of Chicago. When Perez decided to start selling tamales a few years after arriving in Chicago, she only had about $1,000 saved up to begin the operation. And she didn’t know how to actually make them.
“It was a profitable business. It gave me everything I have and more to help my family in Chicago and in Mexico,” Perez said. “I loved my job.”
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Source: Nature - 🏆 64. / 68 Read more »