So San Leader Featured in NY Times

SWU leader, Raquel Rodriguez, reflects on her immigration experience...

Making a Life in the U.S., but Feeling Mexico’s Tug
By Julia Preston

SAN ANTONIO — It is the fourth quarter, with South San Antonio High School holding a narrow lead over its archrival in the biggest football game of the year, and most everyone in the bleachers is standing and hollering. But not Raquel Rodríguez.

Her son, Jaime, a second-string defensive back, paces the sideline, anxious for a chance to play. Mrs. Rodríguez, shivering in a vinyl car coat and sling-back heels, hardly notices the game, obsessing instead over her family’s cellphone bills unfolded across her lap.

She calculates when her cash flow might allow her to pay them, just under $180 in all, and worries she will end up late. She hopes that Jaime will not be sent onto the field, fretting out loud that her health insurance might not cover him if he were injured.

“I can’t stand to see them hitting my son,” she sighed, confessing that 11 years after moving here from Mexico, she still does not understand the game of football or feel part of the larger American way of life that her son so embraces.

That Mrs. Rodríguez, 46, was in the bleachers at all was a testament to her many achievements as an immigrant. The eldest of nine brothers and sisters from Monterrey, an industrial city in northern Mexico, Mrs. Rodríguez is the only one in her family who has papers to live legally in the United States.

Reporters and a photographer from The New York Times spent a week in October following Mrs. Rodríguez and two of her sisters, Verónica and Irma, all of whom speak primarily Spanish, to chronicle the American immigration experience through the turbulent, intertwined lives of one family from Mexico.

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Community PUEBLO plan released

Compiling one year of community work, the Kelly South San PUEBLO plan has been released and goes before City Council for adoption in February. This plan represents the community vision and action plan around housing, economic developing, land-use, community facilities and transportation.

please check it out here...