The cleaning supplies closet is a place that students rarely visit, except by accident while searching for the bathroom. Opening the door reveals organized cleaning tools filling a dimly lit space. And only sometimes are we lucky enough to see a woman standing there, in a dark blue and white uniform, her hair tied back in a ponytail or bun, radiating quiet confidence.
For the past 25 years, Rosa Garcia has worked as a member of the Poly Prep Housekeeping Staff. Garcia is her stories, her passions for music, travel, and family, which are all intertwined with her Mexican identity. Born in Puebla, Mexico, to a family of ten siblings, Garcia now has a family of her own: her husband, dog named Brady, and three kids — two girls and a younger boy — whom she raised in Brooklyn.
As a teenager, Garcia explained, “it was only me, my mother, and my little sister who were still [permanently] living in Mexico.” Garcia worked as a kindergarten teacher in Mexico while her boyfriend lived in the U.S. It was a total of two years that Garcia went without seeing her boyfriend and the rest of her family. However, “in that time, we wrote letters to each other.”
When she was 19, Garcia moved to New York and decided to stay to raise her kids until they finished school. “Now, my two daughters are done, but my son is still in trade school and will finish by this February,” she said. Garcia will move back to Mexico soon after her son finishes school, but her kids will all stay in the U.S. “My kids are making more money here than they would in Mexico…they grew up here, so they don’t want to live in [Mexico], but they will come and visit,” Garcia said.
On weekends, you can find Garcia in Sunset Park, eating at Mexican restaurants with her husband and Brady. However, over longer breaks, you might find Garcia in Mexico, Italy, or even Japan. Just speaking about travel made Garcia’s face light up. “My dream is to travel and see the world.”
Garcia has also already traveled to Mexico three times this year. “I go [to Mexico] often, the last time I went was this August for two weeks.” There, she travels between her hometown of Puebla, where she has a house, and Cancún, where she and her family rent an Airbnb.
Maité Iracheta, Poly Spanish Faculty, appreciated how Garcia “takes any opportunity to go back and visit family or to travel through Mexico.”
Along with her love for travel, a huge part of Garcia’s personality is expressed through her dancing. Iracheta has known Garcia since 2006. Having been to Garcia and her husband’s 25th Anniversary and the quinceñeras — and later weddings — of Garcia’s daughters, Iracheta recognized that Garcia and her husband “know how to celebrate.” Garcia remarked, “I love to dance. We go to dance often, especially on the weekends. There is any kind of music: salsa, bachata, cumbia, duranguense. You just go to have fun, and you forget about everything.”
Over the past three decades, Garcia has explored Brooklyn and found her community and her home. According to “Spectrum News”, “Mexicans had the fastest population growth among Latino groups in [New York] city from 1990 to 2010…by 2015, they made up 22 percent of Latinos in Brooklyn.” The Mexican population is “now a piece of everything that was before.” Additionally, according to the New York City Mayor’s Office of Foreign Affairs, “immigrants from Mexico represent the second largest group (16 percent)” of immigrants in New York.
Despite living in Brooklyn for as long as she has, Garcia hopes her Mexican identity will be passed down through the generations of her family to come. According to a story published by “The Atlantic”, “Linguists say that in many cases, a heritage language becomes all but extinct by the time a family’s third generation is living in a new country.” Garcia raised her kids bilingual (speaking English and Spanish), but now that one of her daughters is having her own two kids, Garcia has found that her granddaughters know almost nothing in Spanish. “My granddaughters don’t speak Spanish, just English. And I told [my daughter], ‘You got to teach them’…English, they will learn in school, but Spanish, they won’t.”
Garcia’s Mexican identity is one of the most important things to her. Brooklyn is her resting place, but Mexico is her home. Garcia reflected, “If I reach 62, I will go back to Mexico. You can only live life once.”
