"The family was going to escape to the United States. Before they fled, Bernal's best friend knocked on their door to say farewell. "'I brought you my marbles,'" Bernal remembers his friend saying, and added, "They were his most precious possession." Young Bernal wrapped the marbles tightly in a sock and took them with him as he headed into the unknown: "Everything else, including my childhood, I left behind.""
"So began the first of four personal stories told to a large and enthusiastic audience Saturday evening, Sept. 13, on the mainstage of The Armory, Portland Center Stage's home space. It was the latest gathering of The Immigrant Story Live, the immigrant organization's series of live storytelling and music-making - the latter, in this case, an exuberant post-intermission mini-concert by the mariachi singer Gemanereida Barragan Cruz and Forest Grove High School's crack band Mariachi Tradición."
Bernal Cruz fled Guatemala at 13 during a 36-year civil war after his father decided the family must escape to the United States. He carried a friend's marbles wrapped in a sock and left his childhood and most possessions behind. The Immigrant Story Live presented four personal narratives and featured a mariachi mini-concert by Gemanereida Barragan Cruz and Forest Grove High School's Mariachi Tradición. Bernal settled first in Florida and later in Oregon, where he has lived 35 years while maintaining Guatemalan memories and traditions. Sankar Raman founded The Immigrant Story in 2017 to amplify diverse immigrant experiences and build cultural vibrancy amid political hostility.
Read at Oregon ArtsWatch * Arts & Culture News
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