Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 215
mysteriously appears in certain individuals. It is the most powerful remedy that I have
seen and one that I strive to encourage.
Not every child born to poverty necessarily has to end up on the streets, even in a city
as poor as Cochabamba had become. But I think case studies show that the hope for
improvement resides mostly within each individual, not so much in society. In 1968 I
met Felix Mamani, then a boy around 12 or 13 years old who was working as a
roustabout for the masonry subcontractor erecting walls on the house I was building in
Aranjuez, Cochabamba. My brother Chris and I were impressed by his dedication to
duty and desire to learn despite the fact that he apparently didn’t have any parents.
When other youths his age were taking to the streets to steal and scam, he was
working. When the job was finished, we hired him as assistant janitor in the engineering
company. He enrolled in night school and worked during the day. I had the pleasure of
seeing him graduate from high school. At work, he rose through the ranks and by the
time I left, he was already in charge of the printing and binding operations for the
company. Chris kept him as a trusted employee and even taught him the discipline of
daily running.
A couple of years after Chris moved back to Texas, Felix, somehow, followed us totally
on his own. He arrived in Houston and began making a living however he could, with no
help from us. No doubt his cultural and financial shocks were orders of magnitude
greater than mine upon my arrival in New York. Over the years he learned all the trades
of residential construction. Today, Felix is taking bigger risks. He also is becoming a
real estate developer. Without asking for any government handout, he is trying his hand
at redevelopment in rundown areas of Houston, a tremendously worthy cause. He is the
epitome of success in America - a totally dispossessed child from the streets of a poor
third world city who made his mark in America. His mere friendship has continued to
enrich my life.
No recounting of exemplary persons whose metamorphosis from underprivileged
conditions to a successful and happy life that have affected my own experience would
be complete without including my son-in-law, Ricky Soto. I have introduced him and his
relationship with my daughter Lis earlier in the book. Ricky was the seventh and last
child of a migrant farm-working family. He practically grew up in a van going from farm
to farm as the harvest seasons required. His parents upheld very strong family values,
and although they didn’t place much value on education, taught all their children the
ethic of work. Not one of his siblings finished high school with their normal age groups
but all of them got a job, got married and had children.
Somehow Ricky found the inspiration to escape this cycle. As if driven by an internal
force still unexplained to me, he made a college education his goal. His parents
supported him but it was mostly up to him to finance his quest. He applied to Texas
A&M and was accepted. Following two years of active duty, he joined the Army
Reserves and worked full time summers and part time all during school. As I write in
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