Angel Rama, a religious man, believes in the biblical adage, “There is no Canaan without the wilderness.” Today, his Canaan is in Belleville, N.J. where he bought his house and owns a liquor store. But, for more than 20 years, he plodded through a wilderness of troubles from Spain to Equatorial Guinea to the United States as he struggled to improve his family’s financial situation. His story is the story of an immigrant who believes that America helped make his dreams come true.
Rama, 49, born in Spain, set out for the U.S. twice before he finally reached New Jersey. His first attempt included a nightmare detour to Africa, a sea voyage that he compared to the Middle Passage of Africans to the New World.
Then 19 and a junior student at Maestra-Industrial School, Rama traveled to Santiago de Compostela, in Spain, to complete his last school year. When Rama’s father went broke paying his hernia surgery bill, Rama was faced with a difficult decision: whether to attend classes or find a job to help his parents financially. He decided to go to Bilbao city, in the northern part of Spain, to make an arrangement to go to America, where he had a girlfriend, to find work.
A ship’s captain promised Rama that he would take him directly to the United States. But the captain, Rama said, tricked him. Instead, they sailed in a small container ship to Equatorial Guinea in Africa. In the Port of Guinea, Rama said, the captain made him work without pay.
Rama was not prepared for the voyage. The terrible conditions on the Atlantic Ocean tortured his mind and his body. “I got packed just like sardines in the box without food and water. And I vomited; I became dehydrated.” The ship was mostly full of tree trunks, and the smell was overpowering.
The ship took a month on the Atlantic Ocean, stopping twice in other ports before the captain docked in the Port of Guinea. Rama said he was exhausted when he got off the ship.
The captain, he said, meant business. He mostly cared about getting his job done quickly. The job, according to Rama, was to unload the ship, collect cargo around the port, and load it. “I unloaded and loaded heavy tree trunks for 20 consecutive days in the Port of Guinea,” he said. Sometimes he loaded the ship by hand, and sometimes he used machinery.
Rama said the captain put pressure on the crew to load the container ship quickly. The captain was in a hurry to sail back to Spain. Rama said the situation was a nightmare. He was working in this port like as a slave, rather than attending classes at Santiago de Compostela. “Today I’m laughing while I’m sharing this bitterness, but back at that time I was crying,” he said.
It took Rama another month on the Atlantic to return to Spain in the same ship. In Spain, he said, he received a salary of 92,000 pesos ($800) from the shipping company.
Still, Rama couldn’t get America out of his mind. He pictured the U.S. as a land of opportunity where he could best fulfill his dreams. In Spain, he rapidly collected money from his relatives. He added it to what he got from the shipping company. Then he went to the U.S. embassy and obtained a visa to visit the United States.
On Dec. 31, 1973, Rama came to America to visit his girlfriend, the former Mary Cubelo, for the Christmas holidays. She had lived in America for years and sent her close friend to greet him at Kennedy Airport. “My trip to America was much more enjoyable than my trip to Guinea,” Rama said.
On his first day in America, Rama was shocked by the weather. In New York, the temperature was foggy. It was raining and snowing, which, he said, contrasted with the nice weather he left behind in Spain. However, he enjoyed the exciting view of American buildings, expressways, and the Holland Tunnel. And Mary’s friend, he said, drove him straight to Ferry Street in Newark where Mary lived.
Rama was attracted to Ferry Street’s neighborhood because it was a place of mixed ethnic groups where Spanish was spoken. There were Cubans, Jews, and Polish immigrants living in the neighborhood. Communication, Rama said, was not a problem. He said he mostly spoke Spanish, his mother tongue, with Cuban people.
Once settled in New Jersey, Rama worked hard and saved money to help his parents. On Jan. 1, 1974, Rama was first employed in the Engelhard factory in Newark. This factory, he said, made silver and gold products. Rama worked there for 10 years and saved his money. He also worked part-time at Ocean Leather in Newark. He fulfilled his dream when he sent 100,000 pesos ($1,000) to Spain to pay for the construction of his father’s house.
In 1974, he married Mary; they had two children. Rama was laid off from work in 1983. In spite of it all, he remained an optimist. He realized it was the time to move on to another direction in his life. He carefully weighed a new strategy. Months later opened his own liquor store in Belleville, N.J.
During 1997, he worked part-time at United Parcel Service in Parsippany, N.J. He worked in the morning in the store and at UPS at night. After several months, he said, UPS granted him medical coverage for the entire family. UPS, Rama said, served as a comfortable financial bridge. A fire, however, destroyed his store in February 2000. Rama struggled to pay his bills.
Patiently and optimistically, Rama worked to overcome his mounting financial crisis. The money he earned at UPS remained his unique source of revenue. Just like a thirsting land yearning for water, he couldn’t wait to go back in business. Rama said that several times he begged his store’s insurance company to do its best to quickly get the place repaired. In March 2003, the insurance company called to inform him that all repairs were done. And Rama, at 10 A.M., was back in his liquor store business.
Rama remains philosophical. He believes that troubles do not last, and all experiences are valuable whether good or bad. But, what makes him so proud, he said, is that America helps him make his dream come true. He solved his parents’ financial crisis in Spain. In America, he bought his own house in Belleville, N.J., where now he runs his business. His son Lito graduated in 2000 as an architect from Catholic University in Washington. His daughter Christina, in 2000, earned an associate’s degree from Essex County College in business administration. She is enrolled at William Paterson College. Rama’s wife Mary, a licensed beautician, is self-employed in Bloomfield, N.J.
“That happens only in America,” Rama joked. Rama overcame devastating experiences in Guinea and in America. And, finally, he succeeded.
Pierre A. Louis is a journalism and media studies student at Rutgers-Newark.
