My Family RootsMassiel OliveraEDF2085

Family Origins

My family ancestors were from Spain, Islas Canarias.

Motivation They came to the new world in search of

new ways to invest their money in the new promising lands. By then, Spain was involved in a war with Morocco and jobs were not abundant at that time. They could either join the war and stayed in Spain with no jobs, or travel to the new world to invest whatever knowledge and money they had left. By the beginning of the 1900s they finally travel to Venezuela and after doing some arrangement, traveled to Cuba to settle down in San Jose de las Lajas, a small town closes to Havana.

Difficulties

It wasn’t really difficult for them. They had knowledge regarding cultivation of potatoes and tobacco. Since Cuba was already been transformed, its Indians were tough the catholic religion and the Spanish language. When my ancestor arrived to Cuba they almost felt like they were home. In fact, as of today, Cuba is famous for the quality of its famous tobacco Habano.

Family business

My ancestors remained in the Agricultural business. As of the women of my family, they were very dedicated to the cousin and taking care of the little ones. My grandfather didn’t really continue the agricultural business. He moved to Havana and became an Elementary teacher along with my grandma.

They were part of the “Campaña de Alfabetizacion”. A movement formed by teachers to take the education all across the country.

Language

My ancestors had always spoken Spanish and since Spain colonized Cuba, also there, Spanish were the first language.

Traditions

My grandpa has 7 siblings that still live in San Jose de las Lajas, so the cultivation of tobacco still remains as the main source of money in my family and is consider tradition. Also Hispanic cousin is pretty much what survived all this years.

Family Name

Pérez is a surname with at least two distinct origins: One is a Spanish surname meaning "son of Pero, Pedro, or Peter." The other is a Hebrew surname Peretz, derived from Perez (son of Judah). Our origins however came from Spain. It hasn’t change at all as far as I could reach.

Experiences

The circumstances I face today as an immigrant are very different from the one my ancestors experienced when they went to Cuba. They were the ones who set the traditions, the language and the religion. I am not a religious person, and I only believe in faith but I had to adapt to new customs, blend my traditions with the American traditions and learn a new language in order to succeed as my ancestors did when they settled in Cuba

As an Educator In my case, to conduct this research wasn’t very difficult

because I keep in touch with almost every member of my family. We like to be very united. However I think that not everyone has the same communication with their parents and relatives. Others can be adopted and even though they have communication with their foster parents, to not really know what your real roots are can be very frustrating. In any of these cases my idea would be to encourage these students to communicate more with their families and I will try to get the parents involved in exercises like this one. In cases of any student that has any trauma or any particular situation and the student feels like this exercise is impossible to do, I would suggest the student to do some research in the roots of any important personality that has influenced, in a good way, the student. The same way I feel inspired by one young teacher who lost her life in the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary. As a teacher I would make my students feel like we are all part of a big happy family.

As an Educator

Victoria Soto is my new inspiration to become a teacher. She was so dedicated to her students that she died literally taking bullets for them. She wanted to change our community and so she did when she protected her students until the last moment of her life.

Victoria Soto, 27, a first-grade teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.