Interview 1

Wednesday May 8, 2013
Howe Library – Hanover, NH

Me: So last time we talked you gave me a brief summary of your whole life story and I was wondering if you could start from the beginning again?

Mr. Salazar: Well in the beginning I created the heavens and the earth.

Me: Hahahaha

Mr. Salazar: That’s a different story. Well I came to the United States to go to school, back in March of 1964 and here I remain.  Umm I came basically because a lot of turmoil after the overthrow of the dictatorship in Venezuela was a transition time between democratic government and the left over from the dictatorship.  So colleges and schools were always closing down, opening up and closing down a lot of protests going on.  My father gave me a choice either: “you get out of here and try to become somebody or you stay here and become nobody.”  So I decided to leave.  So I ended up in Massachusetts – Lawrence, Massachusetts through the sponsorship of a Cuban friend of my family in Venezuela.  I came here with no knowledge of what the United States was, whether the city I was going to even existed and I knew where Boston was, and so I arrived in Boston one afternoon and my friends who went to get me at Logan airport they missed me because I missed my flight twice in New York because I didn’t understand American English.  So I was stranded at the Boston airport until the police in Lawrence went looking for my friends at their house and then the family went to get me.  Since then I tried to enroll in a college and I had a hard time getting in the college because I was not enrolled from Venezuela, I was walking in to get into the college and I didn’t get the best reception.  So the priest at the college said or what do you call the person that is…

Me: The person in charge?

Mr. Salazar: The person in charge of admissions or whatever.

Me: The head administrator or…

Mr. Salazar: Something like that.  He, I guess he gave me a little bit of a hard time he said that I needed to keep up with my English in order to be able to keep up in the classroom and so on.  Even though I had English in Venezuela since I was in kindergarten, but I was not fluent speaking because there was nobody to speak it with, so I knew grammar but I didn’t know how to converse or perhaps even comprehend a lot of terminology, especially college terminology.  He talked me into going back to school so I went back to high school for one year to get my other “degree” in high school. Hahaha, second time around, and I spent a year in high school in Massachusetts and I did graduate I took the SATS, which I didn’t even know what they were for, and I went back to the college after graduation to try to enroll and again I found the same stonewalling.  I said well I got a high school diploma from here; I speak English now I think, and I’m ready to go.  He said, “well, you seem to converse well but as a freshman you will have to live in the college.”  I said well I have a friend that I live with that he’s my guardian.  He said, “Well no, still first year students have to live in the college in the college dorms.”  So I said okay when do I move in?  He said, “oh no, we don’t have any rooms this year.”

Me: Aw man.

Mr. Salazar: So, after about half and hour talk and then he telling me there was no room for me anyways, I used the worst English I could muster and I let him have a few choice words of my mind, and I walked out.  So I figured well, I’m gonna be without school this year so I’m gonna go look for a job, which I did and I ended up working at a paper mill.  That taught me that I should use my brain rather than my body ‘cause I worked very hard.  I worked, the time I started working in the mean time I got married, a daughter came along, and I worked very hard, and I was rewarded for it.  My bosses liked me, I got promotions, I was sought out to lead little projects and do things so when the company decided to move to New Jersey they wanted me to move with the company to New Jersey, which I declined because my wife’s family was all in Massachusetts, so we didn’t go.  From there I went on to work at selling insurance. I did well at that, out of 400 salesmen my first year I was thirteenth in the company in sales despite my limited English which the college didn’t want.  Then I gotta use my brain and I ended up from the insurance company, I ended up working for a company that did community work with minority people, so I was like a numbers man for minority people, an interpreter, I tried to create programs even Christmas programs, whatever it was. I created the first newsletter in Spanish with information about health issues and jobs and things like that for people to understand since there was nothing else in Spanish.

Me: So was it to ease their, kind of their incorporation into society here or?

Mr. Salazar: I hoped to but some of them have very deep seeded, I don’t know, heritage

Me: and so they were stuck with their…

Mr. Salazar:  They were stuck with things and very hard to get them out of their stuff, the adaptability wasn’t really they didn’t know any better so I guess they were reluctant to adapt because they were set in their ways and that’s the way it was and that’s the way they wanted to keep it so I said, “well if you want to progress in this country, you gotta try to adapt to the country, you’re either here or there. You cannot have a foot here and a foot there, you gotta be in the middle and settle on this side.”  But still I did that for several years and I also taught conversational Spanish at a couple of major companies in Massachusetts to the high, senior management people, some of them that were senior management on the floor where the employees were so they just wanted to learn how to communicate with the employees and be on the same footing sort-of.

Me: Right.

Mr. Salazar: From one of the companies offered me a full time job with them and so I went to work for them and when I was working with that I was also representing the company in some of the chamber of commerce events and stuff like that, and I met some people there, from the college that I had gone to apply and was rejected from.  This guy was like the senior administrator and we met a couple of times and he asked me how come I didn’t finish my college education.  I said, “Because your college wouldn’t let me in!”

Me: And it was the same administrator who had denied…

Mr. Salazar: No, no, no, the administrator that was there was a priest and apparently he was no longer there because he was very cantankerous or something I don’t know.  But they offered me a full scholarship and at the end, two months before I was supposed to start classes I had to decline the scholarship because I needed income in order to survive and the bank that hired me because I was going to the college and BREAK!

(Raining outside)

Mr. Salazar: So I was working for the bank because they recruited me because of the fact that I was offered a full scholarship, I don’t want to give you the name of the college because I don’t want to embarrass them okay.  So I turned down the scholarship two months before I was supposed to begin classes and I told the bank I can’t because, you know, who’s gonna support me? My daughter and my wife, so the vice president, they offered me a job as an assistant branch manager of one of the branches of the bank and I say, “sure!” So I started working as a branch assistant and in about four months into the job, my boss called me in and said, “we want to make you a manager, and I want you to learn everything you can about the branch from another man” that he didn’t want to teach anybody, and the customers didn’t like him at all.  He even carried a gun.

Me: He carried a gun in the bank?

Mr. Salazar: And they were all Spanish people that went to that branch.  He was a cantankerous old Irish man he didn’t like Hispanics.  He tolerated me because he had no choice.  So anyways, I learned as much as I could, boss made me the boss and it was a time where you were branch manager where you had to learn how to open accounts, and how to balance the tellers, know how to make a loan, know how to check the credit and in those days there was no Credit Bureau like it is now you make the phone call to the Credit Bureau and you talk to Angie or Mary whoever and she went to the files of people and give you the information and so on.  So that’s how I learned for five years I was a branch manager there and I guess I did well the bosses like me I got my promotions.

Me: Yeah, that’s always good!

Mr. Salazar: Not to bad for yourself and after five years there, I decided that I wanted to go back to where I came from.  I wanted to go back to Venezuela and it was not easy because my wife was very reluctant to do that, and we already had our first home, we owned a nice little home and my daughter was twelve years old.  And finally, I convinced her to go and we went and I got a nice job there with Citibank working in the international department of Citibank.  And more money than I ever made over here even at the exchange, yeah.  It was more money than you would of made here in dollars.  So I was doing very well there, yeah I was.  So, but after three months my wife said she didn’t like it there anymore and she wanted to leave so we agreed to go half way between Venezuela and Boston, that’s Miami so we ended up in Miami.

Me: Nice weather.

Mr. Salazar: Yeah.  I arrived in Miami without a job; in two weeks I had a job.  I made it my job to go off everyday I get up like I was going to my job, but my job was to look for a job and in two weeks I had a job as a branch manager for some bank, one of the major banks there.  Surprisingly I went from branch manager of a branch with ten people, I ended up managing thirty-two people.

Me: In Miami?

Mr. Salazar: In Miami at a bank that was just turning into a branch because they didn’t have branch banking in those days.  It was a unit bank it was a bank with its own board and all this stuff.  So but they didn’t have a board anymore they were transitioning so but anyways I had to manage it as though I was the president of the bank and do projects and do projections and do all the things that you do in order to run a business.

Me: You without a college education, but with a lot of pride and a lot of heart.

Mr. Salazar: I call it nuts you know oomph.  You just I figure if you believe that I can do it I’m going to do it.  Give me a plane I’ll fly it I mean if you think I can fly it I’ll fly it.  So, I did that and I was there for a year and then I was helping three or four other branch managers of different banks that had to do the same thing I had to do.  They asked me to show them how I did mine because mine is the one that came within what they expected it to be.  So I was teaching three other people how to do the stuff. So again I, I don’t know if I just got along with my charm or what because I’m not brilliant at anything but I just got along and did my job.

Me: Worked hard.

Mr. Salazar: And I think I worked hard, I enjoyed so it didn’t seem like hard work.

Me: That’s good.

Mr. Salazar: And so I went I kept getting asked to go from different banks to different banks cause they keep recruiting me to go, paying me more money to do this next one so I said, I changed about three different jobs in Florida.  I was in almost 11 years in Florida, when my daughter went to high school and my son was only 14 months old when we got to Florida, so he went through all his grammar school in Florida, Fort Lauderdale.  After those 11 years, my family, my wife’s family, kept asking for her to come back up because they were getting old, my grand, my father-in-law was having Alzheimer’s and stuff.  So, we ended moving back up here, went back into banking, I had a substantial cut in pay, cause they don’t believe in vice presidents, they just didn’t want to make you any kind of office since they don’t want to pay you.  But I had to take the job because I wanted to work, I don’t care how much it paid I’ll take it.  It’s better to be employed and making little than be unemployed and making nothing.

Me:  True that is true.

Mr. Salazar: So I continued my career, so I did about twenty-seven years worth of banking.   I was recruited for, by a minority company, small, very small company.  We put together about ten million dollars worth of funds from the major banks in Boston to finance ethnic minority businesses.  We provided financing for any type of business plus technical assistance, which banks could not do because the liability issue for banks to tell somebody how to run their thing, their business so we did that.  But Boston, the commute alone was a thirty-five mile commute each way everyday, and after a year my boss referred me to work nights IN the Boston area.  In areas that are minority, now I’m a minority, but I was afraid of being in some of these minority places especially since I didn’t know the area that well.  So I, after two years, I refused to do it, and then we had to part ways.  I went back to, so then I don’t remember how but I got an interview with somebody from the state and I started working for the state of Massachusetts as a finance specialist for one of the regions of the state.  About a year into it, my boss decided to move to Oregon or Washington state, and I remained as a finance specialist for the office, plus I was also the, what do you call, the interim director.  So for about six months they looked for a director, they could not find one so they asked me if I would be the director, and for ten years I was the regional director of economic development for the northeast part of the state of Massachusetts.  And almost to the end now, then I got laid off by wonderful mister um, some guy who was running for president.

Me: Romney?

Mr. Salazar: Romney.  I got laid off after exactly ten years of my anniversary I got laid off.  So I went to work for a city as their economic planning director.

Me: Planner?

Mr. Salazar: No it wasn’t planning it was economic director for the funding of different projects and managing the construction of baseball fields or any kind of funding for any kind of social programs and stuff.  And, then I retired, then at 62 and a half I retired, I said the “heck with this.”  I put in enough years and waiting until I’m sixty-six is gonna give me another $14 a month, and social security *pfft* so I decided to retire.  Then I went to Florida to help my youngest brother with his business, he’s, he had a window, hurricane window thing like this kind of windows and he was doing well but he needed some assistance so I went and I went to Florida for about a year and a half to work with him get the business going.  And then I decided to come back here, and I came up cause my wife was up here with my daughter, taking care of her children.  So I came up here, my daughter asked me to stay so here I am.  I still have my house in Massachusetts, but I never go there so.

Me: So you spend the majority of your time here?

Mr. Salazar: Yeah.

Me: What type of things have you gotten into here?  What are your big hobbies?

Mr. Salazar: Sailing.  My sailing.  I was a photographer for 20 some years, well as a second job, and as something to clear my hobby, a moneymaking hobby, to pay for the kids’ school.  They all went to private school all their years so had to make the extra money to pay for that, to fund that.  So I did wedding photography for twenty-two years, on the side, and very successfully may I add.  I told you I never lost a penny.

Me:  Running you own business.

Mr. Salazar: Running my own business.  Well I used to tell people how to run their businesses you know.

Me: Yeah, why not try it myself?

Mr. Salazar: So and I been lucky, I was lucky, my children were smart enough to be able to manage going to a college like this one here [Dartmouth].  And both of them liked it, both of them did pretty well and they have very successful lives.  And as a father from the type of country where I came from, a father’s wish is to hope that their children do better than they did so on and so forth.  So I think I accomplished that much so I can check out now God, I don’t, I’m all set.

Me: No

Mr. Salazar:  Just buying my time there sailing a little boat.  So, but that’s it and I do some work for my daughter when she needs me I do whatever she ask me to do.  It’s totally different than what I did all my life, I mean most of my life I didn’t push a dust machine, push a chair from the desk type of job and now I carry garbage, clean up construction sites, clean houses, clean toilets, whatever comes.

Me: Whatever she needs you to do.

Mr. Salazar: It’s you know, if you make a dollar you make a dollar.

Me: Yeah, yeah.

Mr. Salazar: So a job, work is work.  You can’t be, “I don’t do that because I was a banker” *pfft*.

Me: Mhm you can’t be picky about it.

Mr. Salazar: Naa no no.

Me: You really can’t be picky about it.

Mr. Salazar: You haven’t been something is just what it says, haven’t been.  You are not anymore so you have to adapt to what you are now.

Me: Right. It’s a good attitude to have, I feel like a lot of people tend to lack that.  It pulls them down sometimes.

Mr. Salazar: Yeah you cannot live in the past.

Me: No.

Mr. Salazar: You know the past you cannot bring back and no matter how much you liked it or didn’t like it, because I loved the last job I had with the state of Massachusetts, I loved that job.  I was heartbroken when I was let go there because I thought I was doing a real good job better than I did in the banking business, okay.  When you feel that type, all a sudden it’s fashioning what you do, and how you’re perceived, especially when I had to deal with sixty-four cities and towns and I had to deal with the mayors and the city council people and the congressmen and the senators from each of the regions and we were all on a familial basis of a dealing with each other we didn’t call, like Spanish you have usted and tú.  We were all tú you know we didn’t have…

Me:  The formalities, no formalities.

Mr. Salazar:  The formalities, nothing, we were very informal.  And they would see me and they would, “Hey Orlando how you doing.”  So maybe cause I’m a social animal I, the being I don’t know, being liked or being appreciated and respected was more important to me than money.

Me: Right.

Mr. Salazar: I said I beat the odds.  I could be on welfare, under a bridge somewhere, or dead, drugged out, or having kids that are in jail.  You know I, I couldn’t ask for anything more.

Me:  Yeah, yeah.  So what exactly, did you get to interact with people that you were helping then in your Massachusetts, in the last job that you had with the state of Massachusetts?

Mr. Salazar: You mean interact, that’s all I did.  It’s basically a public relations job.  My job was to bring businesses from anywhere in the country or from overseas into my region of Massachusetts.

Me: So did you use kind of did you use your roots, your Venezuelan roots?

Mr. Salazar: No.

Me: No, not at all?

Mr. Salazar: I don’t think I ever used them for anything.  Except for when I got my first, my second job I guess when I was working for the community helping Hispanics and stuff, but none of that helped me.  The fact that I was writing, remember you gotta remember the time that I came to Massachusetts, I went to Massachusetts, the city I went to there were no more than fifty Hispanics in the whole city.  So we were looked upon as some strange bird or something.  And like now though we’re looked upon as a threat, before I was looked as a curiosity, now we’re a threat.

Me: Right.

Mr. Salazar: Unfortunately a lot of people that came up originally they were all hard workers, originally.

Me: Right.

Mr. Salazar: But then they dragged on relatives that came that they have a different idea of what life is supposed to be and they found out oh these giveaway programs and things and they made it their business to get very successful at taking advantage of the system.  So, but, when I came they were nothing special.  I mean there was nothing for Hispanics there was no special programs, they didn’t need us, they didn’t care if we lived or died.  You’re here, you survive, I mean you either sink or swim.  Yeah and I don’t know if it’s because of my background in Venezuela as well or what not a total abject poverty.  I didn’t have those hang ups of poverty that you owe me living, give me street of my people back, you know.  The slave years and that kind of stuff *ayyy*.

Me: You didn’t have any of that.

Mr. Salazar: That’s not their fault.  I’m here now.  So I always felt if you discriminate against me what’s your problem, not mine.  You just don’t have to deal with me; you go your way I’ll go mine.

Me: That’s a good way to have it.

Mr. Salazar: So now to this point I use to tell my employees, “Everything is on the attitude, if you have an attitude that is positive you do well.  If you have a [bad] attitude you gonna do very” [poorly].  Attitude is priority.

Me: Is everything.

Mr. Salazar: Yes.

Me: So did you, speaking on Venezuela, did you maintain any maybe like cultural practices or how did you?

Mr. Salazar: Yeah some of the food.

Me: Some of the food.

Mr. Salazar: Yeah

Me: So that was the main thing that you?

Mr. Salazar: Well what else is there?  I mean the religion.  I’m still a catholic, you’re catholic here or there you’re still the same.  I’m not a very well, good practicing catholic, but I see myself as a catholic anyway.  But we dress the same.

Me: Yeah.

Mr. Salazar: Like my, the kids in high school use to ask me if we dress the same in here, as in Venezuela.  I said, I remember telling them I said, “You know my father use to be a chief of a tribe and he knew somebody at the embassy in New York when I came here they had clothes for me to dress up just like you guys dress up.”  And I certainly dressed better than they did that’s for sure. But, you know that was the mentality.  I found the American mentality to be so regional and so obtuse, in a sense.  Just to them going from this town to the next town was like a disease, “Oh we don’t go there because these are other people.”  I swear to God that’s the way they were.  I don’t know if the word regional is the right word, but very…

Me: Confined to their, set in their own ways.

Mr. Salazar: Yeah and they didn’t need to know anything else.  They only knew the city, outside their environments they didn’t care.  Many of them many, many of them that I dealt with in high school never even been to Boston, 38 miles away, 30 miles away.  And they, I had teachers that asked me if Caracas was the capital of Buenos Aires.  I said, “Oh my God.”  I said, “Well this is very…” So I used to play with them sometimes because I felt kind of frustrated to be so ignorant.  Because I felt that I knew more about here than they did about anything else outside of their environment so.  But that was the only time that I felt like, I was like, “Wow, this is the type of place, how you deal with these people?”  So cause you know we grew up thinking, “America, wow everybody is looking forward.”  My picture of America was Norman Rockwell, from those pictures.  You saw the policemen helping people cross the street, you see a policeman now they’re beating the hell out of you, shooting at you and the people are not sitting at the table eating their dinner like I see a family with the turkey and the people saying their prayer.  That’s what I thought. Father Knows Best, have you seen those movies?

Me: No, I think I saw one of them maybe in like eight grade briefly.

Mr. Salazar: Yeah Father Knows Best, some of those things the guy used to sit at the table at night, he came home from work he supposedly was an insurance, some employee of some insurance company.  And he wore a tie, a suit, and when he came home he had his vest or his tie and he would sit at the table with his tie and a suit.  When does your father sit at the table with his vest and a tie, unless you’re at a restaurant?  But this is what I thought of, this is what America was.

Me: Propaganda? Ehhh

Mr. Salazar: I don’t know if it was propaganda, I don’t think it was intentional but I mean it was

Me: False impressions

Mr. Salazar: False impression, yeah and they didn’t try to persuade you from it but this is what you figured it was so.

Me: Right

Mr. Salazar: They never told me in there that you never here in Venezuela that there’s poverty in this country.  Or now you do because social media change all that but in the 60’s United States poverty, I didn’t even know about the discrimination in the South until my parents came to the states back in 1960 or something like that.

Me: So before you came?

Mr. Salazar: Yeah before I came. My father and my mother came to see a, my father use to, I told you my father was in the boxing, he, they went to Miami to see a fight of Ingemar Johansson and Floyd Johnson or something like that, I don’t remember.  And my father showed me some pictures of where they had the, the public for blacks and for whites and stuff like that.  And I didn’t see that until after.  So I thought colored means you know the thing was colored, I didn’t think it was color for people.

Me: People, right.

Mr. Salazar: So I really never really heard about this deep seeded discrimination until after I got here.  So my picture of the United States was totally different.  Not totally incorrect ‘cause over here, one thing I learn about the United States is United States doesn’t give you anything.  It gives you the opportunity, and then you make with it whatever you want.

Me: Yeah.

Mr. Salazar: And I think people appreciate it more, that’s why it’s become what it is.  You have people like it is in Venezuela now where the people are getting, they’re getting a stipend to live.  Then they offer them a job and said, “What do I want to work when I’m getting a stipend?”  And even though that job is gonna pay you more, they rather sit on their [behinds] and collecting well like welfare.

Me: Yeah.

Mr. Salazar: You cannot get somebody living on welfare for fifty years to get a job.  They learn how to adapt to living within those means so why do they need anymore?  So it kills your ambition it kills your desire for any future.  It leaves you hopeless I think.

Me: I wonder if some of that is, I think that kind of is true here too, to a certain degree.  I think it’s almost like once you get trapped in the cycle, and if your parents were on welfare, and if you grow up and your family depends on welfare, and there isn’t access to good schools, and there isn’t access to opportunity, then you just get trapped.

Mr. Salazar: But even, yeah you could.  But there’s always somebody that steps, breaks out.  You know there’s always somebody that breaks out of that mold because they seem to say something else or they got the chance to see somebody else do something they say, “Hey, I’d like to do that.”  And you went for it, but a lot of them just sit there. Ehhh, just sit there, “Who cares?”  So that’s, but like I said, United States don’t give you anything but the opportunity.  You, what you make with it is your problem and that’s it.  And that’s the way I accepted it, and if I didn’t take care of my family nobody was gonna take care of my family for me.  And if I didn’t get my education for my children nobody was gonna give it to them, so I had to give it to them. What do I have to give it to them? What does it take?  Money. So you go make money.

Me: And you have to work hard to…

Mr. Salazar:  Work two jobs; you gotta work two jobs, three jobs? You have to go work three jobs.  That’s what I don’t know if it has anything to do with this but, in my work with minority people from different countries, I found out I mean if its like a positive thing or not.  But I found out with the blacks, the darker black you are, the less of a person you are, the lighter black you are, the better you are.  Then when you came to other nationalities, I’m not saying that they are I’m just saying that’s the way they’re perceived.  But other things that I did find out is that, the blacks here complain about the blacks in Jamaica and the blacks from Haiti.  They didn’t like, they still don’t like them, you know why?  ‘Cause the Jamaican works three four jobs, the Haitian works two jobs.  The Mexican works whatever job they can get.  But the black ones sit back and say, “You did this to my people, you owe me.”  If you’re gonna have that attitude you’re not gonna go anywhere.  But I saw first hand, and I couldn’t understand how people can think that way, and now I’m starting to realize that people in Venezuela that are on the low level of society they think the same ways.  “Our country has oil, you owe me.”  Try to eat that stuff it’ll give you diarrhea!  You blow the petroleum and you see how Bill Riley does the path.  But the government or the politicians keep telling people, “Oh, we have the oil we’ll give it to the people, we give to the people.”  So the people always expect to get something.  Sad. And I’ve become a real philosopher in my old age; I said, “That won’t do me any good.”  What do you think you have any questions?

Me:  Do you have, so it doesn’t sound like you have, I don’t want to put words, not trying to put words in your mouth, but do you have any desire to go back to Venezuela?

Mr. Salazar: Not really, not anymore.  I’d like to go see before I die and you know how I to go see?  I want to go back to take pictures ‘cause when I was there I took everything for granted, like you take this country for granted.  And there’s millions of people that come here to be tourists each year and they probably don’t even know their own country, but they know this one because they want to see the United States.

Me: See the big picture.

Mr. Salazar: Yeah, so I’d like to get to see where I came from and I’ve seen some sceneries from there I said, “Oh man I’d like to shoot some of these pictures.”  But that’s basically it.  I don’t really, I have been out of touch with a lot of my family that I, if I see them or don’t see them it just doesn’t mater because they’re like strangers to me.

Me: Right, right.

Mr. Salazar: But it would be nice to go back to see, if they’re in front of me I’ll say hello, but it’s not like I’m saying, “Oh I want to see this person!”

Me: So badly, yeah.

Mr. Salazar: Yeah.

Me: So there weren’t, who did you leave behind when you left?

Mr. Salazar: Oh *pfft* who didn’t I leave behind? Oh God I left behind, at that time I left behind at least sixty-eight first cousins.

Me: Wow.

Mr. Salazar: My aunts and uncles, my grandparents, both sides.

Me: So did you have any siblings?

Mr. Salazar: Three older brothers and that was it.  And I came over here to this friend of mind that is more like my brother and say goodbye to the culture and come to the new culture.  And, another thing I don’t know if he held me back though he appreciated whatever he did for me is that he’s a guy who had no education himself.  When he left Cuba he had not even, he never finished high school cause he had to escape Cuba.

Me: I was gonna say did he leave in the, after the ’59 revolution?

Mr. Salazar: Yeah. So he left Cuba when he was about eighteen and, but he left through the embassy that’s how my father met him and helped him out.  And so, he wasn’t knowledgeable about Boston.  He’d only been in Boston for about a year and a half because I told you before that he went to Venezuela, from Venezuela he went to Miami ‘cause all the Cubans that left Cuba went to Miami. And then there were no jobs in Miami so they got relocated to different parts of the country through the churches.  So he ended up in Massachusetts.  Miami was a sleepy, very sleepy town until the 1950s.  Miami beach use to be shut down, put shutters on the windows until the 1960s they still in the summer they had no air conditioning in the hotels, they had nothing.  Nobody went there in the summer, now the restaurants everything.

Me: You can’t even get a spot in Miami

Mr. Salazar: It doesn’t matter what time of the year you go there it’s like this *crowded gesture*.  So, but I don’t, to be honest with you, thanks to the Cubans, the Cubans very entrepreneurial necessity, the necessity is what makes you do things.  I found out too with the Hispanics, the Dominicans are more entrepreneurial than the Puerto Ricans, Puerto Ricans they happy with the jobs.  Some of them would have work, very nice people, and I have good friends that are Puerto Rican have nice families and they work hard.  But they are not interested in opening up their own businesses.

Me: Right, they’re willing to work for someone else as opposed to being in charge.

Mr. Salazar:  Right. The Dominicans want to open whatever, if it’s selling telephones or selling chicken whatever the heck it is they’ll just, that I found they are entrepreneurial.  And the Cubans, a lot of them that came here were very smart too.  They were doctors, they were lawyers and but in there country.  So they not just the bottom of the barrel came up.

Me: Right, top of the crop.

Mr. Salazar: Yeah, but like here now in Venezuela it’s the top of the crop because the people that came over here after Chavez are people that were at the higher echelons couldn’t deal with the communism and the left for here.  But the poor people the chose to stay there because they were giving them something, or else they weren’t smart enough to think about getting out of there.  What were they gonna get different? You know.  The class of people that come here from Venezuela are probably more helpful, more entrepreneurial than you know. They’re professionals, I got quite a few relatives that are here that are professionals and they’re doing very well.

Me: Did they, by chance, follow in your footsteps or what brought them…

Mr. Salazar: No, no they’ve done better than that.

Me: But I mean just coming did they start out in Venezuela after you did or…

Mr. Salazar: No, I have cousins that I haven’t met personally that are doctors and I have a cousin, second, my cousin’s son is, my second cousin, he’s a big lawyer in Philadelphia.  I have another second cousin that is the head of, of Anesthesiology at one of the major hospitals in Miami.  I have another one that owns his own companies consulting petroleum engineering all over the world.

Me: Taking the opportunity.

Mr. Salazar: Yeah, but they went to school here.  The one that does the petroleum thing he graduated from Northeastern University in chemistry and he decided to do consulting, hiring people to do consulting work for different companies that dealt with oil and stuff, so he’s done well.  I have other ones that are teachers in North Carolina at one of the colleges there, they’re professors.  I got cousins that are psychologists you name it, I’m the only one that…

Me: Yeah but you’ve done well.  You’ve done well, and it seems like you’re enjoying, you’ve enjoyed your path, the path that you took.

Mr. Salazar: I did, my attitude was good. I’m loosing it now but I’m loosing everything uh yeah except for my hair, screw it you know.  I got [thick] hair it won’t fall off ‘cause in my country they say, they have a saying in our country, “He who hasn’t flown an arrow has played the drums,” which is an analogy for either you either black or white or both but you have to either play the drums, because black play the drums or the arrows with the Indians.

Me: So is there, are there, is there a racial divide in Venezuela or was there a racial divide?

Mr. Salazar: I never saw it, like I never knew about the one here, but no, no.  A mixture, that’s what makes it beautiful, the women so beautiful look at you.  You’re a mixture.

Me: Thank you.

Mr. Salazar: Color, color look Miss Universe all Venezuelan women every other year they get the Miss Universe because you got the Italians, Italian man when they go from Italy they love to marry black women okay.  And you have these beautiful, you have these Italians with red hair and green eyes and they marry a black girl or a mixed color girl get this little, these girls with the parents that are beautiful dark skin with green eyes and with hair and Brazil the same thing it’s a very mixed culture.  The only one that was so screwed up about this whole thing, about the mixing the races was Hitler.  He was screwed up.

Me: Yeah, I was, I didn’t know I think there was something where he actually started a German colony in Brazil.

Mr. Salazar: Yeah.

Me: And that’s how Brazil got some of its or that was one of the ways that it got some of its…

Mr. Salazar: Well, I heard something about that but I never really…

Me: I think there was something about him trying to start his perfect, the Arian race…

Mr. Salazar: In Brazil?

Me: There were like 80…yeah I think there was a colony of like 80 twins or something that were blonde haired, blue eyes

Mr. Salazar: The movie The Boys From Brazil, you didn’t see that with Gary Cooper or Gregory Peck, you should, I want to look it up again Boys From Brazil.  I think it has something to do with that yeah.

Me: Yeah.

Mr. Salazar: No I think, thankful for the mixture, I think it makes people stronger.  Your father’s white?

Me: Yes.

Mr. Salazar: ‘Cause I met your mother and she’s black.

Me: And she’s Liberian too, she was born in Liberia.

Mr. Salazar: Is that right? See she had to work harder than the blacks from over here because it’s a different attitude.

Me: Yeah, when you mentioned the Jamaican and black divide, I was like yeah there is because there’s even the African and black divide where in Africa people think, “Well we’ll come here and work harder” and there’s always that tension where one side thinks the other is worse.

Mr. Salazar: Yeah, the I use to go to Washington D.C. a lot when I was working for the for the state because of the state I was going there because I was with the Chamber of Commons was on the board of a group of an organization that dealt with education and for you know people of limited income and stuff like that.  And we had conferences in Washington every year and I met Ethiopians, a lot of Ethiopians in Washington D.C. and you see the Ethiopians they work their [behinds] off.  And then you go on the outside of Baltimore or the outskirts of Washington D.C. and you see the black people that are American people sitting, complaining.  Can’t do that.  They feel that they’re not liked because of their color no, people don’t like you ‘cause your attitude is, you have a [bad] attitude people are gonna be reluctant to deal with you that’s all.  And but they have this…

Me: Like someone owes them something.

Mr. Salazar: Yeah, nobody owes you anything.  You’re lucky to be here, you could be back in Liberia somewhere.  Your mother says you’re from Liberia?

Me: Yeah she is, I was born here, but she was born there.

Mr. Salazar: That was a screw up, that was another experiment, Liberia.

Me: Big experiment.  It was actually, it was interesting in I think sophomore year of high school we got to do a research project on Africa, and I chose Liberia of course and ended up finding actually tracing, I saw family members in documents online about coming from the U.S. going there coming back so it was interesting to track that.  And that’s another thing, that’s why I was asking you kind of what type of things do you do to maintain culture ‘cause I think the biggest tie that I have with Liberia, having not been there even yet is food and music.  I think those…

Mr. Salazar: Yeah, food and music yeah.  But other than that I could probably have more but I’m not, until about five or six years ago I didn’t have any other interests even in what was going on down there because until I started seeing about this dictatorship and the communism and I think, “Wait a minute, that country was a democracy, why is it changing to this? How bad is it?”  I mean, so I started getting interested, so now I live it, now I’m constantly listening and watching and I think it’s sickening.  I don’t even watch American TV anymore.

Me: Yeah, too many bad stories.

Mr. Salazar: Too many thing happening every day so, and I say I cannot believe it.  I can’t believe it, all I do is shake my head, “How people, how stupid can people be?”  Holy mother ahh what are you gonna do?

Me: So you think the political turmoil is what kind of pushed you away or kind of made you push away Venezuela?

Mr. Salazar: No, because I haven’t been there in thirty some odd years you know.  I don’t, I shouldn’t say I don’t care I feel what is going on but it’s nothing that I can do about it, I’m not a Venezuela citizen.  Even though I could be cause according to them we have dual citizenship, but when I became American I gave up that citizenship so I don’t care to have dual citizenship.  I’m a Yankee Doodle dandy!

Me: So then what caused you to go back to Venezuela when you worked in Venezuela?

Mr. Salazar: I didn’t come see like most Venezuelans in the past, not now, we don’t emigrate.  If you go out of the country you go to school, you go on vacation or something but you go back where you came from.  You don’t, we never have a culture of emigration, so I came here and you know from the beginning I said, “I’m going back.”  But then I have my daughter, my wife says, “Oh but wait until she goes to school, until she learns English, wait until she finishes sixth grade until she’s better in the English, wait until she…” I said, “Wait a minute, she’s twelve years old now, fourteen years I been here I want to go back.”  And I put my foot down and then you know having two children you gotta make the choice, mother country cannot take care of your children.  So, and then I opted to come back and I’m glad so.  I could have made it good there or here even though they say that you never profit in your own land but they wanted me I was doing very well because I came from here you see that was the profit.  I wasn’t in my, I didn’t start over there otherwise *pshh* they would say, “Ah you’re another Venezuelan, who gives a [care].”

Me: So your kids are what brought you back here then?

Mr. Salazar: Yeah, most definitely.  I don’t know what opportunities they would have had they never had a chance after three months you don’t get much of a choice of anything.  It wasn’t easy for me being there because my parents lived so far away from Caracas you know like 60 miles from Caracas so I had to travel every day back and forth through the mountains in a bus or in a taxi.  And then I’d leave the house at 5:30 in the morning and get home around 8:30, nine o’clock at night.  Thank God in those days there wasn’t the crime the way they have it now so you felt kind of safe going anywhere.

Me: But no family time, or very limited.

Mr. Salazar: No, very little family except the weekends and the weekends we were going looking for apartments or houses.  It wasn’t easy and…

Me: So did you grow up out of Caracas then?

Mr. Salazar: In Caracas yeah.

Me: In Caracas okay, so you where in the city?

Mr. Salazar: In the city, they call it a city.

Me: Was it bustling or what was life like then?

Mr. Salazar: Very busy. Very busy, sprawling everywhere, big buildings it was a little growth there.  You didn’t see the poverty that you see there now, you didn’t see it as much ‘cause what happens is all the people from in the country move to the city because everything

Me: Was booming?

Mr. Salazar: Was around you know around the city so everybody is looking for a job in the city. They didn’t think they could get it there in their towns so consequently they didn’t find the jobs they started building shantytowns like you see in Brazil in the Favelas. So but everybody wants to be where the action is.

Me: But then everyone can’t stick it out.

Mr. Salazar: That’s right, so and it was a very safe city I mean I don’t remember ever seeing any crime ever.  So, the only time I saw kind of criminal something was when they overthrew the dictatorship and the army was going around and you’d see the plane flying and the sirens going and stuff like that.  That was what, ’54, I was ten ’58 I was 14 years old.  So when they overthrew the dictatorship that’s the only time I saw anything but I mean I could go anywhere in Caracas.  My grandfather and I walked the whole city I mean that’s not a little city.  Probably longer than Manhattan is and I walked Manhattan from one tip to another a couple times.  And I people were so friendly and so personable or something they treated you with respect now *pfft*.  Last week they had, the people, Congress beat up the other people in the Congress I mean beat up.

Me: Beat up, yeah like physically

Mr. Salazar: Physically I said, “Oh [man].”  They’ve gotten very animalistic.  So anyways how we doing? Are we still recording this thing? Oh my God. You’ll write a book?

Me: Pardon?

Mr. Salazar: You gonna write a book? *hahaha*

Me: I’ll try to. A little one, little one.

Mr. Salazar: Who else are you interviewing?

Me: Just you!

Mr. Salazar: Oh my God, a biography, not an autobiography a biography.

Me: Quick oral history, it’ll be an online biography yeah.

Mr. Salazar: When do you have to do the project?

Me: It’s due June third.

Mr. Salazar: You better get your…

Me: But yeah, but I’m gonna transcribe this interview between now and Friday kind of see what we talked about see if, what other questions I have and what else, kind of share with you what I pull out of it, so that we can see where else, how else you want your story to be told.

Mr. Salazar:  You’re the one who’s telling the story.

Me: Yeah but it’s your, it’s not my story.

Mr. Salazar: Yeah but it’s your appreciation of what I’m telling you.

Me: Yeah, yeah so I’ll see what I pull out and see kind of what else I want to find out about.

Mr. Salazar: Okay.

Me: And then too I was wondering if you had any images you wanted to share.

Mr. Salazar: Like?

Me: Like, images, if you have any pictures from your childhood or if you have like you said you did photography, if you have any of your favorite photos that you would like to show.

Mr. Salazar: No they’re all in Massachusetts and I had a trunk full of them but it’ll take a week to find anything that I might like.  They’re negative pictures they’re not digital.  I might have some pictures of family; oh I have pictures of last year when my son went to Tampa to see my father, my brother, and my cousins, my aunt.

Me: Family reunion kind of

Mr. Salazar: Like a family reunion in Tampa.  Are you looking for the childhood things?

Me: Yeah! No any, pretty much any, I was gonna say the next thing was gonna ask you if you had, for the next time, if you had any key memories or anything that you’re fond of or like a story that you’re fond of from any particular point that you’d like to share too ‘cause that’d be interesting you know, if there’s anything.

Mr. Salazar: I don’t think so.

Me: If there’s anything you can think of…

Mr. Salazar: I’m an open book so I wouldn’t have any fond memories of anything I never met Marilyn Monroe.  No that would be the only kind of things men would think of *laughter*.

Me: Any interesting like conversations, I remember you talked about meeting an ambassador for…

Mr. Salazar: Belarus.

Me: Yeah, so if you wanted to talk about…

Mr. Salazar:  Yeah but that’s no big deal because I also talked to the governors and I talked to the you know it’s like part of my job it’s not like I though it was, “Oh I’m so elated to see you.”  No I never met anything. Oh I met the President of Fuji and I met the guy from Belarus, I worked for three different governors, I met all of the senators in the state of Massachusetts.  I don’t know, I mean they put their pants on the same way I do so it’s just like, it’s part of the job it’s not like a major, “Oh my God I met…” Oh I met, while in Florida when I first moved to Florida, I always get involved in the chamber or something with the chamber there and I met the guy who became the President of Eastern Airlines, he was one of the first astronauts so I talked to him for about five minutes.  But that would have been something but I mean still at this now it’s like so what yeah.  So you have to go soon?

Me: Yeah, I have to go soon.  But maybe I’ll also ask about you’re political, since you…

Mr. Salazar: I’m not political no, not for any party or the other.

Me: No I wasn’t, not even that just kind of ‘cause you seem to have, you’re heavily involved, or you were heavily involved in social aspects, I guess…

Mr. Salazar: Yeah, community helping community development people.  I mean there are people that are worth helping. It’s something like you’re paying back something you know it’s like you’re giving back.  Especially if you can help somebody why not yeah.  So like, “Oh you’re not paying me for it?” No it doesn’t matter I mean it’s, you meet somebody that’s nice and they say they feel that they’re gonna learn something from you why not?  Well I’m here with you.

Me: Yeah.

Mr. Salazar: So that’s like my daughter told me she’ll throw me out of the house if I didn’t help you *laughter*.

Me: Well I’m glad we’re doing it, I’m glad we’re doing it ‘cause we’re getting to know each other