Project Vision 21

Francisco Miraval

What can you do when it seems nothing can be done and people assume all hope has been lost? According to Eugenio, that is the best time to go out to talk with people, helping them to keep their hopes alive and to overcome the fear that many times prevents them for sharing their stories and improving their situation.

Eugenio is a Mexican immigrant who lives in Colorado. In 2005 and 2006, after the local legislature passed a package of anti-immigrant initiatives, life became difficult for all immigrants in Colorado, both documented and undocumented. For Eugenio, that was his call to action and since then he has dedicated his free time to talk with people, hoping to motivate them.

I met Eugenio last week at the parking lot of a Latino market at a busy intersection in a Hispanic neighborhood in west Denver. We never met before and we were not planning to meet each other there. We went to that marker because the exterior walls of the building were covered with large photographs of immigrants and friends of immigrants.

Eugenio wanted to be part of that project, not because of personal vanity, but to promote solidarity in the community.

“I have been supporting immigration reform for many years. I also support a path to citizenship. For that reason, I always see the faces of immigrants, mainly undocumented immigrants. Now, thanks to this project, everybody can see those faces too,” Eugenio told me.

“These faces are the true faces of the immigration reform. These are the faces that reflect the suffering, hope, hopelessness, fear, and desire of those who need the reform,” he added.

For the past eight years, Eugenio was working at a restaurant and, in his free time, he volunteered at a local community organization. He visited homes, business, and churches to talk with those who thing nobody is listening and to listen to stories told by those who assume they have no stories to share.

This year, the Colorado legislature passed several laws in favor of immigrants. Also, there is a possibility that a comprehensive immigration reform could be approved in the next few months. Because of those changes, Eugenio decided to leave his job at the restaurant to be a full-time volunteer, with the goal of encouraging immigrants to tell their own stories in support of the reform.

Eugenio can be seen almost any time of the day and almost any day of the week visiting different zones in metro Denver to talk with those that, like him in the past, used to think they did not have a voice and their stories were worthless.

“When I see all these faces I want to cry because I have been waiting for many years to see immigrants on the streets sharing their own stories,” Eugenio told me.

Thanks God, Eugenio is not the only one. There are more like him. We need to be thankful for all those whose selfless, unending task is to renew our hope.