The Trip that Changed Everything

The year was 1971.

Leticia Arryo Pastrana was 15-years-old about to embark on a journey that would thrust her future into the unknown.

She was home in Barceloneta, Puerto Rico when her grandmother; her father’s mom who was living with them at the time, got struck with illness. After the news of Pastrana’s grandmother being sick spread throughout the family, she was relocated to Milwaukee to spend some time with her daughters who already resided there.

But while in Milwaukee, her sickness got worse. Pastrana’s father received a phone call warning him that if he wanted to physically see his mom alive again, he would need to travel to the States and visit.

Pastrana, her father, her mom and her brother all packed their luggage and headed to the airport, where she laid her eyes on an airplane up-close for the first time in her life.

As a kid Pastrana would gaze into the sky whenever an airplane would fly over her while she worked at her family’s farm as if it was a shooting star. At that time, she never thought she’d be able to sit in one.

“I was raised in the country and we used to look at the airplanes, but far in the sky,” Pastrana said. “We never even had the privilege to even be around an airplane.”

Nonetheless, what she didn’t know was that that trip to Milwaukee would be the start of a new life.

Move to Milwaukee

She and her brother were defiant when they got the news that they weren’t returning home to Barceloneta.

“I was not happy, neither was my brother,” Pastrana said. “We were leaving our comfort zone. We had our friends and we had our family and to think about coming over here to another country and not knowing the language. It was scary for us.”

The glorification of the States had a common presence in Puerto Rico.

“We thought we were coming to the greatest place,” Pastrana said. “We were living in the country poor, taking care of animals. And to make that transition to Milwaukee, people were saying we were coming to the greatest place. It was very hard for us and through the years I said, ‘It’s just the same as over there; the only difference is the weather.'”

Pastrana and her family settled in on the east side of Milwaukee on North Ave in 1971; in the same house she raised her own family in, the same house in which she still resides today.

Her father who had only a third-grade education brought his family here and managed to become a successful carpenter and electrician.

Coming to the States came with a lot of firsts.

When Pastrana first got here, her cousins took she and her brother to the park where she slid down a slide for the first time.

It was in Milwaukee Pastrana first experienced something a lot of Midwest natives either love or hate; snow.

One of the toughest hurdles Pastrana and her brother had to overcome was the language barrier.

A freshman, she enrolled into Lincoln High School; now known as Lincoln Center of the Arts; where her children would later attend middle school, where she began her journey of learning an entirely new language.

A journey filled with bumps, bruises and trauma.

Learning English “was not easy.”

The other kids made fun of non-native speakers over how they pronounced the words. One specific instance of the hardship was when she was jumped by a group of girls in school, unaware of the reason why. They took her purse and told her if she said anything they would “beat her up.”

The Next Chapter

Graduating in 1975, the traumatic entrance to a new life however led to some of her most monumental experiences.

Topping that list, her four greatest creations; her children.

Melvin, Sarai, Josue, and “her baby” David.

Pastrana has yet to be back to Puerto Rico and her children have yet to take their very first trip there.

“It’s been a transformation,” Pastrana said. “I came here in ’71 and haven’t been able to go back. I want to take my children to see Puerto Rico and where there were sugar cane plantations. That’s been replaced with apartments and houses.”

She wants her kids to understand their culture and have an understanding of where their roots lie.

“One thing I want to say is that even though I came to Milwaukee and my children have been raised here,” Pastrana said. ”I make sure that they know about their roots.”

Her second-oldest child, Josue, highlighted one of the most prominent features of Puerto Rican culture; the food.

“When it comes to Puerto Rican cooking, our flavors are different from every other ethnicity. It’s very in-depth.”

His favorite dish is Puerto Rican rice and beans.

Some of Pastrana’s favorites are arroz de gandules and pigeon peas.

“Also pasteles, which is kind of like we take the roots of green bananas. We make like a paste and then we make meat on the side.”

Josue mentioned how African culture is rooted in Puerto Rican culture.

Some of the similarities regarding food include two yellow rices: jollof, a West African forte and the aforementioned arroz de gandules, a Puerto Rican specialty.

Pastrana currently lives in the same house she moved to in 1971 when she first came to Milwaukee.

She recently visited her old her high school with her brother as they reminisced about first arriving in the states.

“The high school where I graduated, Lincoln High School, turned into a middle school and my children were able to go that school. Me and my brother were looking at his kids who went to that school too. We were just walking around the hallways and remembering back then, when we had just come from Puerto Rico.”