Caitlin Donohue, Remezcla, March 2018
Maggie Loredo wishes that she didn’t have to rehash the painful details of her story every time a reporter comes to Poch@ House, the Mexico City center for deportees and returnees she co-directs. As she points out, the injustices of US and Mexican economic and legal systems cannot be reduced to a single face and a single story. But Loredo has also known the loneliness that can result from staying quiet, from thinking you are the only one who’s had their life ripped in two. “It could be because of the fear,” she ventures, reflecting on the silence surrounding life after leaving the United States. “Even the undocumented community never really asks what happens when their neighbor disappears.” So, she methodically answers the same questions over and over in the hope that her words will help others facing the same difficult decisions that she once did.
When Loredo was a high school sophomore in Georgia, she discovered she was undocumented. She’d arrived in the United States with her Mexican parents at the age of two. While she was a diligent high school student, her immigration status barred her from receiving financial aid to attend college, or from entering a professional certification program. “Why do I suddenly stop having rights at the age of 18?,” she asks, remembering the emotional rollercoaster of that moment and the years that followed. “I was angry at the country, but more at the government. They were basically closing the doors on me.”
Maggie Laredo, co-founder of Poch@ House. Photo by Daniel M. Torres for Remezcla.
