The Courage to Say Goodby

“E s un gran sacrificio”-- it is a great sacrifice -- to be here, away from her husband and two daughters, Gloria Henriquez says.

She left her home in a suburb of San Salvador because her family, like many others in a country wracked by war, was desperate. She and her husband had heard that women can get work more easily than men in Southern California. So they agreed that Gloria would come here for a while to earn money.

After settling with Salvadorans in a crowded Pico-Union area apartment, she found a job as a live-in domestic. She made $120 a week for cooking, cleaning and caring for one child in Granada Hills, the equivalent of her husband’s monthly teaching salary in El Salvador. She sent home as much of it as she could. After seven months, relatives in New York told Henriquez of a chance to make more than twice her wages for the same kind of work. She said goodby to friends and packed again. She begins her new job today.

Henriquez, 33, plans to return El Salvador either in 18 months, when her new temporary work permit expires, or sooner. Until then, she consoles herself with letters from her family. “Even though I’m hurting in my heart, I do not show it to others,” she says.