Jocelyn Cortez interview, March 18, 2019: transcript

i AN INTERVIEW WITH JOCELYN CORTEZ An Oral History Conducted by Nathalie Martinez Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada Oral History Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ©Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2018 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV – University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcribers: Kristin Hicks, Maribel Estrada Calderón, Nathalie Martinez, Rodrigo Vazquez, Elsa Lopez Editors and Project Assistants: Laurents Bañuelos-Benitez, Maribel Estrada Calderón, Monserrath Hernández, Elsa Lopez, Nathalie Martinez, Marcela Rodriquez-Campo, Rodrigo Vazquez iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader’s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iv PREFACE In 1981, Laura and Milton Cortez, along with their five-month-old daughter Jocelyn, fled El Salvador’s violent civil war and sought a better life in Las Vegas. Milton, formerly a physics professor, learned to make shoes for showgirls, and Laura used her medical student background to secure a job with the Plasma Center. Though she grew up in Nevada, Jocelyn explains, I’m from El Salvador; I consider myself indigenous. Her roots are important; she honors the culture and traditions of El Salvador as both a daughter and a parent to her own children. She and her husband, John Valery White, a professor at Boyd Law School, have two children. During this oral history interview, Jocelyn describes her life growing up in the 1990s, the stigma attached to being a bilingual student unnecessarily placed in ESL classes, and her lingering anger when her parents were confronted with immigration issues in 1995. After earning a degree in English literature from UNLV, Jocelyn attended law school at the University of Arizona. It was in Arizona that she noticed multi-generational Latino families; Las Vegas’ population was not yet deeply rooted. She also became attracted to immigration law—though there were those who discouraged her at the time. v At U of A, she was active in organizations such as: Hispanic Law Student Association and Native American Law Student Association. Her resume includes being a clerk for Judge Valorie Vega, intern with the Equal Justice Center in Washington, D.C., and a legal observer volunteer during the Bush v Kerry presidential contest and at the Mexican border with the U. S. In 2012, she president of the Latino Bar Association. Today, Jocelyn Cortez is an active immigration attorney and community member. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Jocelyn Cortez May 18, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Nathalie Martinez Preface…………………………………………………………………………………………..iv Jocelyn talks about the political climate happening in El Salvador at the time of her birth in 1980; her family fleeing to the U.S. a few months later; her father [Milton Cortez], a physics professor, and her mother [Laura Araujo Cortez], a medical student; Salvadoran Civil War violence, and importance of Archbishop Óscar Romero. Explains how family settled in Las Vegas, her father becoming a shoemaker at Tal Show Shop, for showgirls; mother worked for Plasma Center. Challenges of adjusting and growing up on the Eastside of Las Vegas during the 1980s – 1990s, her education experiences attended Halle Hewetson Elementary School, Roy Martin and John C. Fremont middle schools, first class of the new Las Vegas High School. ESL classes and stigma attached……………………………………………………………………………….……… 1 – 6 Talks about Salvadoran cuisine: gallina en salsa, pasteles, quesadilla. Nostalgia for family stories; observations during a return visit to El Salvador in 1996, and precautions they took; whether they were still considered “Salvadoran” or “American.” Mentions her family’s Catholic background, attending St. Anne’s Catholic Church. Growth of Salvadorian community within last ten years; attending Youth Leadership Conference in 1998…………………………………………….7 – 12 Mentions participation in Student Organization of Latinos (SOL); enrolled in UNLV to pursue a degree in English literature; followed by law school at University of Arizona, attracted to immigration law and clinic experiences there, a Cancellation of Removal case. Recalls her family’s own dealings with immigration status when she was in 9th grade (1995); being angry; success of their attorney, John Kelley. Expands on her time as an UNLV student, pockets of Latino students, starting LULAC Chapter.………………………………………………………………..…13 – 17 Explores the various labels, Latinx, Latino, Chicano, Hispanic; comparison of attending U of A, where there are multi-generational families, to UNLV; mentions Hispanic Law Student Association and Native American Law Student Association; her indigenous identity. Talks about working while attending college; volunteering to be a legal observer during Bush v Kerry election and at the border for crossings. Returns to Las Vegas after law school, works for Judge Valorie Vega.…………………………………………………………………………………….….17 – 22 Talks more about her parents, pride of her education and career choice, how their jobs changed over the years. Recalls her various positions while attending law school: a small law firm; Judge Vegas; National Labor Relations Board; Equal Justice Center in Washington, D.C.; Kathy vii England, the preeminent employment discrimination lawyer in Nevada; De Castroverde law firm to work with the immigrant population, which she recently left. Community workshops she is doing for Spanish-speaking. Explains the Latino Bar Association, of which she was president in 2012.……………………………………………………………………………………..…23 – 27 Shares examples of cases she has worked on; challenges of being an immigration attorney. Unique opportunities in Las Vegas at this time; growth of need and lawyers to provide the services needed………………………………………………………………………………………27 – 30 Thoughts about raising her own multi-racial children, ages 7 and 5, today; speaking Spanish at home; husband is a native of Louisiana, where his father was a civil rights attorney, her husband is a Boyd Law School professor; her thoughts on being an adult interacting with impact of Salvadoran history. Salvadoran traditions she is passing on to the children, such as Christmas; blending with a touch of Louisiana flavors; language and accents; demonstrates example of Salvadorian accent. Brief thoughts on observable changes in Las Vegas and Latinx communities. Her thoughts about the identifier “Latinx” and how her parents would identify; the diversification of Latinx voices………………………………………………………………………..……31 – 42 viii 1 Good morning. My name is Nathalie Martinez. Today we are here in the Oral History Research Center. The date is March 18th, 2019, and today we are here with… Barbara Tabach. Monserrath Hernandez. And… Jocelyn Cortez. Can you spell your name for me, please? Jocelyn, J-O-C-E-L-Y-N. Cortez, C-O-R-T-E-Z. Thank you. How do you identify? Salvadorian American. Now, were you born in El Salvador? Yes. Where were you born? I was born in San Salvador in the Hospital Maternidad. That’s what my mom tells me. I was born on December second, 1980, which was the day that three U.S. citizen nuns were assassinated, as well as a layperson. What can you tell me about that? I don’t know much because I was born on that day. All I can tell you is that it was a very big news story internationally that these women had gone and tried to do some missionary work and, because of the turmoil that was starting to get very heated at that point, unfortunately they fell victim to the conflict. There have been, I think, human rights inquiries since then; it’s been almost forty years. I can’t tell you who it’s been concluded was behind the assassination, but we 2 know that there was a lot of persecution of Catholic ministers and figures that were promoting a leftist social justice movement. Thank you. For how long were you in El Salvador before you came to the U.S.? Five months. What can you tell me about your parents? My parents also were born in San Salvador. My father was a physics professor in San Salvador and my mom had started medical school. But because of, again, the conflict that was starting to erupt, the universities were shut down on and off. She was forced to withdraw her attendance at school because of the violence. They married and had me. They married in March of 1980 and not even two weeks later Archbishop Romero was assassinated. Lots of things were going on. By the time I was born, they made a decision that it was probably best that we start to make a move. Who was Archbishop Romero? He was, I believe, the highest ranking Catholic figure in El Salvador and he was just recently canonized; he was made into a saint by the Catholic Church. It was a big to-do in 2018 when it happened because, when he was assassinated in March of 1980, he was seen as a threat. Again, we’re talking about a division between the left and the right ideological spectrum, and so he was someone who was very outspoken against military intervention, military movements to, I suppose, inflict violence on people who were voicing their desire to have social change in El Salvador, and that was going on around many regions in Latin America. One of the things that I think made him very controversial is he used Jesus and the Bible to say, “I don’t think that Jesus would want some of us to be richer than some of us who are not even able to eat on a daily basis.” His homilies were very controversial in that sense. It seems that people were 3 uncomfortable with that message, and so it’s not hard to believe why he ended up being assassinated. When your parents came to the U.S., where did they go initially? What was their trajectory? We came straight to Las Vegas. It’s unusual, I know. But the reason why we came here is because my grandfather, my mom’s father, had come here previously around the mid-seventies. He was a shoemaker, and so he was looking for a way to make a better living and help his family. While he made a stop in Houston—we almost ended up in Houston—he had a contact that had him come to Las Vegas. Because he was a shoemaker, he helped make shoes for the showgirls on the Strip. That’s how we ended up here. BARBARA: Where did he do that? Was it a particular casino or dress shop? No. It was a shoe shop called Tal Shoe Shop. It was on Convention Center Drive across—is it called the Greek Isles now; that casino? But it used to be the Showboat. Then around there was the Landmark. He was a shoemaker there for many, many years. I remember going to the shoe store. I still to this day love the way shoe glue smells because as a little girl we’d go visit my grandfather and we’d see the machines and they have the leather glue. He was a shoemaker and so that’s how we ended up straight in Las Vegas and that’s where we’ve been since. Were you able to spend days or time with him in the shoe shop? A little bit, not too long because there were some heavy machinery and you probably don’t want children around. Certainly just some time and you got to see him in the back making the shoes. He made me some tap shoes for me one time in the showgirl style, which was very fun as a child. It’s interesting because I was admiring the shoes that you’re wearing. Thank you. 4 I wonder if that makes you more attune to footwear. Well, what I can say is that it’s hard to find good shoes, well made shoes. That much I can say. What was that transition like for your parents? Do you recall anything they told you about when they first arrived here; what that transition was like? Since I was infant I don’t remember. But what they have told me is that my father, being a physics professor, coming here was a hard transition. Obviously, the language barrier posed an issue. He was a barback at the Golden Nugget, if I’m not mistaken, and so he did some work of that nature. My mom was still thinking that she could continue with a medical trajectory. She worked at the Plasma Center down on…Is it Bruce? By Stewart. She had some experimentation with trying to go back into the medical field here in Las Vegas, but eventually found her way into education. But it was hard, as most immigrants find, the language, adjusting culturally. You go from a place of independence in your country to living with a bunch of people in a home, trying to make it work economically and just trying to adjust to a whole new system. Where did you live in Las Vegas, what parts? From the time I came to Las Vegas until about 1996 when we moved, we lived on Bonanza, more or less, on just different blocks. My grandma, my mom’s mom, still lives on Bonanza. I consider myself an east side girl. When I say Bonanza I’m talking about Bonanza and 15th Street, Bonanza and 21st Street. The shopping center on Bonanza and Eastern was our place to go every weekend. There used to be a Sizzler’s and we would go there on the weekend and just the markets there. That was our stomping ground. How would you describe the east side in addition to what you just described? I think the east side today is different than it was when I first started living there. In truth, when we first got there, I don’t think there were many—we’re talking about 1981 is when we arrived 5 to Las Vegas—there weren’t many Latinos. I can say that with confidence because I don’t remember people in my classroom looking like me or being like me. it was so unique that the school district was still trying to figure how to deal with Latino kids, bilingual kids to the degree that I was perfectly fluent in English, but in second grade I was put in ESL. I don’t know why. It was fine because I ended up learning to be an assistant to the teacher, which was perhaps something that fostered me in what I do today in trying to help. But I was perfectly fluent in English and there I was in an ESL class. I was a translator. I was an assistant. That was at Halle Hewetson Elementary School. I don’t know that in the mid-eighties Las Vegas was—it was not what it is today. There were few stores on the east side at that point. I remember there was a store called El Relampago, which was on Bonanza in a shopping center by Eastern, and that was one of the only Spanish language owned stores at that point. El Mundo might have been around and it was new, but that was the only periodical. I think we were fortunate to be part of what made the east side the east side it is today, which today it’s the hub of immigrant living in Las Vegas although there are a lot of immigrant pockets around town. When you go to the east side, it’s mostly Latino immigrants and storefronts with Spanish language ads and information. I love it. It’s home. Did you speak primarily at home with your parents? I did. In my younger years I don’t remember. I imagine that I only spoke Spanish to them because that’s what they knew. As I grew older, their English improved. One thing that I can say was unique and helpful and I’m implementing it today, my grandmother, my mom’s mom, married a Tejano, and so he decided he was going to speak only English to me. My grandma and the rest of the people spoke only Spanish. I was being spoken to in both languages simultaneously at any given moment. Probably for the first several years I spoke primarily 6 Spanish, but my grandpa was the one who maintained the English. By the time I got to kindergarten I was able to speak English and I was perfectly bilingual. What was that environment like, being one of the only Latinas in school, going to recess, interacting in the classroom? I think when you’re young you don’t really understand what that means. I do remember in kindergarten having a crush on a little blond boy and then realizing that I wasn’t looking like the other girls that he probably liked. That was the extent of my understanding. But I think by the time I got to the second-grade ESL class, I might have understood that there was a difference. But once I went to third grade, they put me back in non-ESL classes. I do remember taking note both in elementary school and middle school and high school of the difference between someone like me who had had the privilege of growing up here primarily and people who had come recently, the recently immigrated students that were just starting. I could tell that there was a negative stigma attached to the ESL kids. I’m in high school and we’re part of the English-speaking group and I certainly was by no means part of the popular crowd, but you knew that that hall was the ESL kids. Once you get older you understand the differentiation. Where did you go to middle school? Middle school I started at Roy Martin and then my mom put me into a private school, and so I was there for a year, and that was on Cheyenne. Then after a year of that we decided that we’d put me in Fremont, and so that’s where I ended up; seventh and eighth grade at John C. Fremont Middle School. And high school? I went to Las Vegas High School. I was the first class that completed the four years at the new 7 school up on Sunrise Mountain. Did your family regularly cook certain Salvadorian dishes? What was it like being at home with those Salvadorian traditions? I think we did. We do cook. But the one funky thing about it is we don’t make pupusas. My grandma makes them, but it wasn’t a regular occurrence. What’s a main staple for us is the gallina en salsa; it’s like a roast chicken, which is usually made for Christmas or New Year’s and it’s made in a very savory tomato sauce. You take the meat and put it in like a short French bread and you put some pieces of tomato and cucumber and radish and watercress. That’s definitely a festive dish. That’s something that my mom made. She could make pasteles, which are like empanadas in other countries filled with ground meat and some vegetables. My father is very good at making quesadilla, a sweet corn-cheese bread. But I think more than the food my parents were big on memories, so I had a lot of information. Perhaps because when I was a small child, I was the first of my cousins to come from El Salvador. I was for a long time probably the only child amongst a lot of immigrant adults. I think I absorbed their nostalgia and what they left in their stories. More than food, I think I was nourished on that. What are some of those stories that you remember most fondly? I think it was mostly sentiments and pictures, looking at my parents’ pictures of before the conflict started in El Salvador and the joy and just the youth that you saw and just kind of like the freedom and there was a longing. So sentiments, but the longing that you had for a place that you had to leave forcibly and, also, just kind of a sadness that you couldn’t go back. We had to wait for a long time for the war to end. I think the peace accords were in ’92-93, so I was twelve 8 or thirteen before it was even an option to go. Then after the war ended you have to wait for it to stabilize. Stories I couldn’t pinpoint, but I know that sentiments were something that were always around. Were you ever able to go back? Yes, we went back in 1996, I think was the first time we went back. It was the four of us, so it was my mom, my dad, and my sister was born when I was six and a half. That was a huge deal because I hadn’t been back since I was five months old. My dad had returned a few times, but my mom hadn’t gone back. My sister had never gone. We went for a couple of weeks and it was magical. It was like going into a dream place because I only had imagined it. I was born there and I lived five months there, but I didn’t have any memories independent of what I heard at home. It was a wonderful experience. What was it like for your mom specifically because she hadn’t been back? What was it like seeing her go back home? I think it was difficult. She is someone who wishes that so much more could have been done with the country in light of thirteen years of bloodshed, such that the people who were disadvantaged could have a better quality of life and just the basic condition of living to be happy. I think it was hard for her to go back and see, A, that it wasn’t the El Salvador that she remembered by any means. In what ways? Well, all of her family by that point had immigrated to Las Vegas. As I mentioned earlier, I was the first of the cousins to come of my mom’s side of the family. By 1990 all of her siblings were here in the United States, and so there was no family for her to go back to. Then I think just it has to feel that a place has changed after a war, after sixteen years that you’ve been there. A war 9 changes irredeemably a place and its people. I think she enjoyed it, but it wasn’t what she remembered. For me, I didn’t remember anything, so it was kind of putting a physical condition on what I had conjured up in my head, pieced together from what I knew of my parents. Can you describe that a little bit, some details? I remember when I was little asking my parents if there was ice cream in El Salvador because I had no idea what to expect, what kind of place it was. Of course, you get there and there is Jack in the Box and there is Pizza Hut. Those are things you just can’t really associate as a child. But the fruit, for example, just the variety and the color and the flavor of the fruit is something that you can’t really—I mean, you eat apples and bananas and oranges day in and day out here, but in other places in the world there is just such a variety. Going to a market and seeing all the produce, seeing how people live, which reminds you of how privileged you are to be in the United States, the poverty, the struggle, but also just the resilience that you can forget about when you’re here in the United States. I’m curious. A follow-up question to that. When you arrive there and you’re visiting after all those years, do they consider you a Salvadoran or American? That’s a wonderful question. That’s always, I think, a point of contention with those of us who grow up here and you’re not fully U.S. and then you go back. That was something that was controlled, your language. Now, today, in 2019, you can say okay and people around the world use okay and I think that has to do with the Internet and YouTube and everybody is learning English off the Internet. But in 1996, okay signaled you were from the United States. People don’t say okay in El Salvador; they’d say va; vaya pues. You even had to watch what you were saying in the streets so that you weren’t flagged as a U.S. tourist going to El Salvador for safety 10 reasons, but I think also you don’t want to stick out. My sister was, I think, seven, and so curiously, and I’m sure it’s common, but amongst her and I, we mostly speak English, and so we would have to… “Yosha, make sure you control your English,” and, “Jocelyn, make sure you don’t speak out of turn when you’re in the street because you don’t want to stick out.” I think in El Salvador for my aunts, my dad’s side of the family—we still have some family there—they don’t care. They don’t see me as anything other than the baby that left and they love us dearly. But I do have some cousins over there, some more extended family, and she to this day will say, “Well, vos no sos salvadoreña, sos americana.” You’re not Salvadorian; you’re really American. I’m like, “No, I’m not.” But I’m okay. I from a young age have understood that I was in a position where I wasn’t this or that; I’m just kind of this amalgamation of things. Yes, I don’t know in that first trip you really are Salvadorian in every sense of the word because you’re discovering it. You’ve only seen it in postcards or in videos or in pictures. It’s an interesting journey. What about religion in your home? Was your family very religious growing up? Yes and no. To this day we’re Catholic. But they’re very open and they were never forceful. We did our sacraments: First communion, confirmation. We would go to church. But I think probably because of the tradition both my parents hearing the homilies of Archbishop Romero, who is now a saint, they understood that religion is good, but it can also be harmful depending on who has the power, and so they allowed us the choice to ask questions and disagree with certain points of the tenets of the religion. I would say our family has been more spiritual than religious. Which church did you frequent? 11 We went to a couple of different ones, but I would say our family church is Saint Anne’s only because that’s where I did my first communion and my sister, Yosha, was baptized there, and it’s also the east side; it’s on Maryland Parkway by St. Louis. Even to this day—I live on the other side of town—I still will go back to Saint Anne’s and it just feels like a church home to us. But we went to a couple of different places, Saint Christopher. Once we moved, once I was in high school, Prince of Peace, also on the east side. Did that experience in the church increase your interaction with the local Salvadorian community or Latino? Did you see more faces that looked like yours? Well, Salvadorian community I didn’t have a lot of interaction until, quite frankly, in the last ten years because there just weren’t that many people from Central America or El Salvador in Las Vegas until my adulthood. In terms of Latinos, I think high school was probably—well, junior high, too, middle school. You just kind of gravitate towards sometimes people who might understand you a little bit better than others. But in high school I was very fortunate to have a very blended group of friends. We had a very ragtag group. My best friend in high school is Cuban American and my other one was Jamaican. I think that was something also that was helpful to me because, as someone from El Salvador growing up in the Southwest region where most people are from Mexico or Mexican American, you realize you’re not speaking the same language literally sometimes; your verbiage is different. There was a pushback on my end sometimes. Well, if they’re not going to accept me fully or someone is going to make fun of the way I said straw in Spanish or what have you, then you start to look for people who are also different. You’ve got my Cuban American best friend who would base something very similar and my friend from Jamaica. Her parents are from Jamaica. 12 I think in college, after having attended a leadership conference, I became very committed to working with the Latino population. I started working through those difficulties I think you face when you’re from different countries and different regions and you’re all put into one group and you have to figure out how to learn from each other and move forward. Which conference was that? That was the Latino Youth Leadership Conference put on by the Latin Chamber of Commerce I attended in 1998. It was a fantastic experience. It really did open my eyes and changed my life. One of my best friends now, we’ve gone on twenty years of friendship that I met there. I think conferences like that kind of put students together that are curious about the world and they have a fire and they want to do something. They put you all in a room. It was wonderful. After that conference I think it awoke something in me that said, this is where I think I want to go with my life. What familia were you in? Who were my parents? Let me think. What color were you? I don’t remember because it’s been twenty years. Do I have a picture? I don’t remember. But what I can tell you is that I met Merlinda Gallegos there and she is kind of an ex-pat at this point. She lives in Costa Rica now. She’s ten years older than I am, so she was twenty-seven and I would have been seventeen. I thought she was the coolest person on earth because she was super energetic and she was, I think, a PhD candidate at that point and I hadn’t met anybody who was a PhD candidate. She was just super excited and positive. I remember more meeting figures like that than who my parents were in my familia. 13 That was fun and I stayed involved in that organization as a facilitator. Thereafter several years I was president of the alumni. I don’t remember what year. It was a really fun experience. Going back to high school, what was your experience in high school involvement-wise, etc.? Involvement-wise I did become a member and officer of the Student Organization of Latinos, SOL. I’m not athletic. I’m the least athletic person you’ll know, so I wasn’t involved in sports. But certain academic endeavors. With SOL what I do remember is when Hurricane Mitch hit Honduras—it would have been 1998, I think—we did a clothing drive and we did some volunteer efforts to try and help with that. I was always interested in what it was to be involved with Latino peers and the community, so you’d see glimpses of that throughout. After graduation what did you do? After graduating high school I started attending UNLV and I pursued a bachelor’s in English literature. That was in 2003 I graduated. From there I went to law school at University of Arizona. I made the decision to leave Las Vegas because, as you can see by now, I’ve been here all my life minus five months. I was ready for something different and it was also important for me as a young woman to break out of her parents’ home, which is not very traditional. While my parents are very progressive, they still fear for the safety of their daughter going out of the house, and other economic things, too. It’s more expensive. It was a hard decision, but I felt that it was the right one. I’m very happy that I went to Tucson to pursue my law degree. But also at that point I had already made the decision I wanted to practice immigration law. University of Arizona had a very, I thought, attractive immigration clinic and they were an hour away from the border. I thought, shoot, what better way for me to get immersed in these border issues and these immigration issues than to go to Tucson. That was why I made my choice to go out there. Can you share some of your experiences working in a clinic? 14 Yes. The clinic was fantastic. I had the good fortune of—we worked doing kind of like workshops and consultations for people, but I also got to co-manage a case with one of my colleagues and take it to trial, which in today’s age is not that easy because of how long cases are taking in court, but at that point, it would have been 2006, I was able to take it on, work on the evidence gathering with the client, and then take it in front of a judge. That case was what’s called Cancellation of Removal, so it’s a case where you are arguing that this person who does not have documents should not be deported and should, in fact, be granted a green card because their deportation would be an exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to a U.S. citizen spouse or child. Well, this client had six children, the oldest of which had Down syndrome, and so they were all born in the U.S. We got to argue the merits of the case to the judge. I think it’s funny now, but it probably wasn’t at that moment, when I was in front of the court and during a pause, the judge looked at me and he said, “Well, I guess you guys are just going to have to pray to the Virgin of Guadalupe.” I guess to win the case. We kept going and the judge did grant the case, so we won the case. But it was a very strange comment to make. But we won the case and that was just a super confirmation for me that this is what I wanted to do with my work. How did you convince that judge? I think the fact that you have a disabled child born in the U.S. that’s usually a very strong factor because typically in Latin American countries you don’t have the resources that you have in the Unit