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2. Los Activistas
Grace Ramos
GR: Well my name is … everyone knows me as Grace Ramos, but my name is Altagracia. Altagracia Ramos. And I was actually born in El Paso, and I probably lived there for a week. But I was raised in Fort Madison, Iowa. So I was raised in an atmosphere very, very similar to Ohio. You know, in all ways. And that’s where I grew up, until I was a junior in high school and then I went out to California for a couple of years, and graduated in California, San Bernadino. And then met my husband, and ended up back out here in the Midwest, in Ohio.
GR: Well, I can tell you, Ohio is very much like home. The climate, the people. It was just very …I owa and Ohio are, are really similar. You know. Not a lot of Hispanic families in Iowa, it was a migrant railroad stop. And so that was how my family ended up there. And I was the only Hispanic female at the high school. So, coming to Ohio, for me, was not that, that much different. You know, a lot of similarities. It didn’t make much of an impact. Now my husband, who was born and raised in El Paso … was in total cultural shock and everything. But he had been in the Air Force a few years; time to adapt.
EF: Great. Well you both, your husband and you, are Mexican, Mexican-American. What were some of the traditions that you try to keep alive, with your children, besides the language?
GR: Tortillas!
EF: For example, tortillas.
GR: Beans. Rice. And I wasn’t brought up cooking. I did not have to cook at the house. So I had to learn all that. I just try to keep that. Not being Catholic, I didn’t observe some of the Catholic days, like your King’s Day, and stuff like that. I didn’t do a good job with the language. I will say I did not do a good job with that. But I try to keep that alive in them, talking to them about the culture, about some of the things that went on. We did get involved. At that time, there was a club here called the Latin American club. And so we did get involved with them. We’d go to their parties; we showed them how to party. We would go to a lot of that stuff, but there really wasn’t a lot going on. In my house it was more about food, culture, music. He liked the Mexican music, I had never really been exposed … I never knew what a mariachi was, until I got married. So, I kind of evolved myself. The few years I spent in California, and then after marrying him, I really grew. Eventually we ended up forming a Mexico club, which participated in the national festival, and then I started learning myself. Things I could teach my kids. I taught them the dances, and I had a group of students that I taught their dances to, you know, doing things like that.
EF: Did you teachdanza folclórica?
GR: Yes, a couple of them. I would go to Texas and learn them, bring them back and teach them to the kids. We would do, uh; gosh I don’t remember the names of them. The one about the alligator, where the alligator is going to eat him up and the little girl dances and kicks him away. But, you know, the Mexican hat dances they refer to it, uh…tapatio … a couple of others that I would go down and learn …. la bamba …and teach them to the kids. And then we tried to use all Hispanic, uh Mexican kids, if possible, but we didn’t. They weren’t all Mexican. And then we would do dances at the international festival. I think we were on TV for what they used to have, the McDuffy Dog Show, or whatever they called it and uh, so we did things like that…you probably saw some of the pictures of that.
EF: Yes, I did. (Pause). For the most part you were a stay-at-home mom, when your kids were young, but you also have been an active member of the community. What are some of the things that you have done?
GR: Well, in the early years, I was more of a support to my husband. Because he was very active. And so we did the Mexico club, and, another family did it with us in the very beginning. She did all the sewing of all those costumes that you saw, and all the cooking. I did the putting up of the venue, and selling it. And so we did that, and again, that was uh, an endeavor of everybody, my husband was one of the original organizers of the Ohio Commission on Latino Affairs. And he traveled the state. So in that role, I was more supportive in doing that kind of stuff. He was also the first program coordinator at the base. And he had direct hiring authority, so he brought a lot of Hispanic … Puerto Rican engineers, and we housed them. So I was kind of a mother, to a lot of these young people. Because he would bring them in, and they had nowhere to stay. They were young engineers out of college, their first job, but, uh, so you know those are the kind of things we did and we helped those students coming over here. Some of them now are retiring. (Laughs)
GR: I can’t believe it. In the early years I was more of a support to him, than I was an actual organizer. And those were the ones that I remember that were the oldest from the things that we did: the commission, the base organization.
Mrs.Ramos was named one of Dayton’s Top Ten Women in 1976
EF: How did you transition then to a little more work with immigrants, recent immigrants or women, even?
GR: Well, I think probably when I started to do a little bit more on my own was when I started organizing the chamber of commerce. I got involved in politics. I mean that really was what started me involved in a lot of stuff. He [husband] was transferred to Washington, and we went out there for three years, so I got very heavily involved in politics. As a matter of fact I worked at the White House with, under George … Herbert Walker Bush, and, so, I started organizing politically the state. And put together an Ohio Hispanic Republicans organization that still to this day we depend on. And so that was part of the first work I did, and then secondly I got into the civil rights field, and was a civil rights commissioner, and ended up retiring after twenty years. I organized the chambers of commerce statewide. And that was kind of a challenge. To bring in the metropolitan areas: Toledo, Columbus, Cleveland, Ohio, and Dayton, and try and get them all to agree on everything. But we were very successful, we helped our business entrepreneurs a lot. And so, those are kind of the things that I ended up doing that I think empowered the Hispanic community. Especially getting politically involved. We had a lot of people appointed to commissions and boards that have impact on everybody, everybody’s everyday life. We had people on the chiropractic board; we had people on the real … tax real estate board, and we had people all over, which was something that we had not seen before.
Mrs. Ramos participated in events that promoted Hispanic culture.
EF: What are some of those stories that your kids like to hear about you, when you were little?
GR: Uh, stories that they like … (Laughs) … I used to get in trouble … I tell what life was like living with my grandma. We used to call her “Big Toe” we didn’t want her to know what we were doing. So, “Are you going out tonight?” “I don’t know, Big Toe won’t let us out.” Big Toe kept a very tight control on the girls, couldn’t go out, couldn’t date, couldn’t have friends. I mean, I would say in that time, typical type of uh – Mexican atmosphere. So, the girls like to hear stories of when we would go out, my cousin and I were raised in a house together and we would get into trouble because we would obviously try to sneak out. And one that I remember, that they used to laugh at, was when we did get out and then snuck in through the window and unfortunately my cousin tripped on the telephone cord and made some commotion, and while the rest jumped in bed, she got caught. But I think those kinds of stories, you know, about the things that we could get into – we climbed a tree one time, and since I was the youngest one in the household I didn’t get a spanking, but the older one did, because we were not to be climbing trees. And uh, but all of it was an effort of pacifying Big Toe, because if Big Toe got ahold of you, you were dead meat.
EF: Well, talking about family then, what songs or joke or stories do you feel are a part of your family?
Mrs. Ramos’ personal pictures. The people photographed here are building costumes for Hispanic celebrations.
GR: Well, I’m going to laugh because I never thought my kids paid attention to me so when we went to that talk the other day, and someone said … no it was Sophia that said something about the cucuyI started laughing because I said, “Oh my gosh, you know, the cucuy – my kids were afraid of it,” and my daughter in Columbus says the cucuy lives in her basement, in a room where all the Christmas gifts and special things are kept. And she has got her kids convinced that if they go in that room the cucuy will attack. They don’t touch that room. And I started laughing because I didn’t even know that they were paying attention to the cucuy and so that has fallen down. And then my uncle – who is now just now deceased – I remember him telling me that when he was twenty-one years old, his dad would still tell him that the cucuy is going to get you, and he would still be like, “Oh no! … ” So that was the story that has been passed down and I think probably in many generational families in the Mexican culture the cucuy and I should mention la llorona. I didn’t ever emphasize lallorona as much as I did the cucuy. The cucuy did roam this house for a long time.
EF: What does Ohio mean to you?
GR: I think it means an area of …an opportunity. I think there is so much opportunity and I think its opportunity to create what you want because nothing is set in stone … politically it’s what they call a swing state, so you don’t know who’s in power, who’s in control. So I think you have the opportunity to be able to do what you want to do, and it’s a very conservative state even though lots of times we run liberal, so it’s sort of an oxymoron. But, I think that’s what Ohio means to me – it’s an opportunity for anybody that really wants to grow … whether it be personally, a business, or whatever. The opportunity is here. Ohio is full of opportunity.
Newspaper story about Hispanic celebration in Dayton, OH
EF: We have interviewed people … other people that have mentioned faith as a strong part of themselves, of their identity, of the way they grew up. You mentioned you grew up Baptist, and I wanted to ask you, where has the church had an impact on Latinos here in Ohio?
GR: Oh, definitely. When I first got here, my first involvement in any kind of organizational thing was with the Dayton Baptist Association. And I did it at the statewide level. I was a treasurer for years. I actually had involvement with a Hispano Brotherhood Center, which was started, by, well not really started by the Catholic church, which supposedly had the support of the Catholic church, and they did a lot of the work with a lot of the immigrants. Then they withheld their funds and that really upset me. So my church stepped in, and gave us a house that they owned, a vacant house in Lexington Avenue, which is the west part of Dayton. They gave me the house, to house immigrants. We turned it into a house where you could live for a couple of months as you migrated out of the fields. All the furniture was donated by NCR, NCR was National Cash Register, which had its headquarters here. And it was funded by different organizations and so the church was very good about doing that and that’s how we started. Unfortunately when we left, when we were sent to Alabama … I don’t know what happened. I –whoever took over did not continue to grow it. But … yeah, without the church … I don’t think a lot of it would have been possible. I think after that the Catholic Church realized that there was competition, and they started stepping in and did help the Presbyterian Church had some programs that were focused on helping the minority, the Hispanics. So I think that the other churches started growing as a result of seeing the need for it. But, I – without my faith I don’t think that I would have been able to do anything. I really don’t, it has always been a…we have always been in evangelistic efforts for our church. And that’s what I see it as, a ministry.
Economically, we’re rising. Educationally, we’re seeing some improvement. But I think as far as politically, which is really where the game changing plans lie, we’re not doing it.
EF: If you were to offer advice to immigrants to Ohio, what would you tell them?
GR: Well, language is very important. They need to learn the language. They need to learn…they need to…assimilate. Not to leave what they have, but to understand how this country works, how this society works, how business works, how everything works. I’d say that…and I think that the other thing is…and I – I think we’re really missing this as Hispanics because I’ve been involved politically; we need to be involved politically. You can make so many changes with a protest, you can call attention, but you cannot make long, sustaining changes without becoming part of the system. You need to be part of the system. And you need to institutionalize, and do a systematic way of changing things. And you just can’t do it when you’re on the outside. And I think politically, we have not even begun to touch the tip of the Hispanic vote, and what we need to do. And it’s like a battle for the souls, one party has more of the values; the other party offers more language, maybe not in language, but in ways. You know, they tell you they’re going to do it for you – and then they don’t do it for you. The other party really is aligned with you more, but they don’t ever tell you anything, so their perception is that they’re not accepting of you [Hispanics] …s o you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. Traditionally … we have, I think, in our history of Mexico, if you study … and I’m not from Mexico, I’m a second generation … but when you go back and look at it, we were a very political country. We have survived, through revolutions, we have taken the downtrodden, we have elevated, we have believed in pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, yet we don’t reflect that here in the United States. We don’t vote like we should. And … we don’t get involved politically … well actually we don’t even protest. (Laughs) Which sometimes you do have to do that, we have to understand that to change the system you have to be part of the system. So I think we haven’t gotten to that level. I don’t think we’ve risen to that level yet. Economically, we’re rising. Educationally, we’re seeing some improvement. But I think as far as politically, which is really where the game changing plans lie, we’re not doing it.
EF: What message would you like to give to your kids or grandkids …you’ve got grandkids now … about life in general?
GR: Well, I think you get out of life what you put into it. And I think that if you don’t have a faith in a higher power, that you are missing the best part of living. And so I would just encourage them to take advantage of everything that’s available. There’s a speaker I once hear that said that … that her father had said that, “Life was nothing but papelitos.” She says that, “You’re born with a papelito, you work for a papelito, and when you die they put a papelito.” And that’s very true. You know, you need to get all those little papelitos along the way and to survive. What I would tell them is…you cannot help anybody if you cannot help yourself. You need to get a job. You need to get an education. And then, in turn, you can pay that back to other people that haven’t gotten that opportunity. And so I think that if we don’t do that, we’re not going to continue to prosper as a people. We might prosper as individuals, or families, and that, but to really empower our people, I think you have to go back and help. And you need to do that.
