Rosa Torrez Interview

Key Words: Mexican-American Education, The Barrios, Racial Discrimination in Claremont [Tape 1] Rosa Torrez has lived in Claremont since 1918. Her father worked for a railroad company in Beaumont, California, before moving to the East Barrio in Claremont. She and her husband raised nine children in Claremont. She remembers the first services for Sacred Heart Catholic Church in the East Barrio, which were held in a house. She also talked about Dr. John Wilcox’s clinic for young mothers in the Barrio. Torrez describes the housing discrimination for Mexican-American families living in Claremont. “We lived in the East Barrio because real estate people weren’t selling to Mexicans here in Claremont.” She explains that as a little girl, she felt “scared stiff” because “Anglo children were very cruel.” The Mexican-American children were separated from the white children; they could not go to school together. The white children would pull her hair, and she remembers hiding in bushes to eat her lunch. [Tape 2] Torrez speaks about the difficulties for Mexican-American families living in Claremont. Her husband had to live away from her and their children so that he could find work, and he was only able to come home on the weekends. This hurt the relationship that he had with his children. Torrez and her husband both experienced discrimination because they were Mexican-American. One time her husband told her a story about going to a bar with two men who were from Mexico but had fair skin and blue eyes. “The bartender said to the two Mexican men, ‘Why do you hang around with that Mexican?’ not knowing that they didn’t understand a lick of English. My husband heard him and said, ‘What are you saying to these men? You know what, they are Mexicans from Mexico and don’t know English. I am the one who was born here. I am as black as aces, but I understand what you told them.’” Torrez describes raising nine children in the small two-bedroom house that she and her husband rented from the Packing House. There were “for rooms: a concrete slab, a kitchen, living room, and only two bedrooms. . . a garage, a little hut in the back, that was it.” [Tape 3] Torrez adds that it was difficult for Mexican-Americans to get loans from banks to build houses because “they never did want to loan us anything.” Before she married her husband, she worked as a housekeeper and as a server at Padua Hills. She and her husband only spoke English with their children and did not teach them Spanish. She believed that if they spoke Spanish, “they would be segregated and punished like we were punished. Why should they go through that?”