What does it feel like to be undocumented? This is how the successful writer Rafael Agustin remembers it

Rafael Agustin says that when he was in high school he was desperately trying to be a normal boy from Southern California.

He was a young American who liked action movies, series like

and, of course, Paula Abdul.

However, he wasn't because he had a big secret.

"We came as immigrants and they never told me we were undocumented. I grew up an ignorant but all-American kid and,

," he explains with a bittersweet smile, more than thirty years later.

Agustin, a brilliant 41-year-old Hispanic screenwriter, producer and actor, came to the United States in 1988 when his parents decided to emigrate from their native Ecuador to seek better opportunities.

I had to discover that I was undocumented before the Dreamers movement.

I thought he was the only one in the world."

rafael agustin

"I had to discover that I was undocumented before the Dreamers movement. I thought I was the only one in the world because no one in my family, nor any of my friends knew what to do with me or how to support me," he sadly recalls.

After participating in successful productions such as

and his tireless work as director of the Latino Film Institute, Agustin recently published

, a memoir in which he recounts his life journey in the United States where he grew up as a migrant and all the adventures that entails being an American with Latin American roots.

[“I had to deal with very abusive male figures”: soprano Nadine Sierra on the challenges of being a Latina in opera]

The fear of speaking in Spanish

One of the most moving moments of the work captures a terrifying incident for the author.

Early one Sunday morning, he was walking with his father on the beach in San Clemente, California, in the late 1980s.

Suddenly, a man ran past like hell, until he was stopped by two armed immigration agents.

Agustin never forgot two things.

He first asked, "Daddy, what's going on?"

And then he saw the intense fear in his dad's eyes as he ordered, "

.

The author with his mother, on the left, and his grandmother.Rafael Agustin

I decided not to speak Spanish for the rest of my youth, and that hurts me a lot."

rafael agustin

"Now that I'm an adult, I understand that he was telling me not to speak Spanish while the migra was there. But since I was a child and I saw my father with so much terror in his eyes, I decided not to speak Spanish for the rest of my youth, and that It hurts a lot," he says.

"I decided to leave my language behind because of my father's fear and that was delayed until I reached high school. That's when little by little I began to speak Spanish with my parents again," he says proudly in his native language.

I walked into our apartment and realized that our entire home was about the same size as one of Oliver Stone's offices.

It took me years to realize how walking into that Santa Monica office affected my young, impressionable mind.

That office showed me a world of endless possibilities.

A universe of wild curiosity.

I was 9 years old and there was no way to forget the laboratory of that creator.

Although up to that point I had lived in a small apartment in Duarte, in my head, I was already living in Oliver Stone's office."

fragment of 'illegally yours'

In his book, the author explains that he finally became a US citizen after his parents obtained permanent residence, but it was a process that lasted many years in which he had no documents and that inspired him to write his memoirs.

"I always wanted to tell our story as a comedy because, for me, it is very important that it be accessible and entertaining. I have read other memoirs that are more 'cut veins' and very sad, but I don't see the world like that," he says about what which counts on

.

Agustin bases his narrative bet evoking the memories of his upbringing with large doses of humor and many pop references.

Legendary series such as

,

,

and action classics such as

and

parade through its pages .

[Guillermo Arriaga: "The pandemic stirred up the sewage, that's when you realize how corrupt the systems are"]

In

as happens in the great Latin American melodramas and in the classics of magical realism, one cries and suffers, yes, but also bursts out laughing when the writer connects the vicissitudes of his youth with his rich Hispanic heritage.

"I want anyone, documented or undocumented, to be able to read the book and not only laugh or have fun, but also feel identified," he warns seriously. 

Hispanic writer Rafael Agustín.Marvin Lemus

The memories of migrants

Agustin's volume echoes the experiences narrated in other contemporary works such as

, by the writer Reyna Grande,

, by the journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, or even

, the recent collection of poems by Christopher Soto.

In his exercise to remember, the author starts from the individual migratory experience to draw correspondences with the collective correlate of the hundreds of migrants who, daily, continue to arrive in the United States.

We have to change the narrative of immigrants in this country."

Rafael Agustin writer

"We have to change the narrative of immigrants in this country to change the minds and hearts of Americans. People have to remember that most of the immigrants from Europe who came to Ellis Island were undocumented and processed in two, three hours. We can do that today, but we don't want to and that's the problem," he asserts.

I won the elections by a landslide (...) I felt bad for my opponents.

They were better students than me and had been much more involved in school.

It was as if he literally took away their jobs!

But I must clarify something: I did not want to be president.

I needed to be president.

I applied because I was undocumented and desperately needed the love of my community."

FRAGMENT FROM 'ILLEGALLY YOURS'

—An important moment in the book is when you find out that you were an undocumented person in the US. What do you remember about that time in your life?

In high school the whole truth falls on me.

The truth is that I was very ignorant of our immigration status, imagine that I was always very nerdy but I couldn't find my place.

I liked both hip hop and punk rock or Carlos Vives, so I didn't know what my group was and when my parents told me that I didn't have a social security number, I got depressed for a while.

But then I started wanting to be the most popular student in school because I didn't want anyone to find out about my reality.

—Was it a way to compensate for the insecurity generated by not having papers in the country?

Sure, I believed that if I was class president or prom king or an honors student, no one would think I was undocumented.

So it was as American as it could be so that people wouldn't find out what I was experiencing. 

"I had no friends at school: children did not understand my love for opera"

Aug. 7, 202204:09

—One of the successes of the book is to be able to recount the hard experiences of his migratory experience with a great sense of humor.

How did you achieve that narrative balance?

–It is true that life is difficult and work is hard, but we never lose our sense of humor or happiness and I wanted to put all that pride and love in the book.

Very soon I realized that my parents understood that the American dream was not for them, but for their children and I think that is the reality of many immigrants in this country.

—Have you recently seen any positive change in the representation of Hispanics in Hollywood?

I wanted to write this book because we never heard the story of undocumented immigrants"

rafael agustin

-The truth is, no.

I agree with studies by the Norman Lear Center that show that, in real life, undocumented immigrants have higher levels of education, own more businesses and commit fewer crimes than what we see on television.

It's a big deal, which is why I wanted to write this book because we never hear the story of undocumented immigrants who are American in every way but one.

I always like to remind people that in Ecuador I am not Latino but Ecuadorian, in Mexico they are not Latino, they are Mexican and that is the case in all countries.

But in the United States we are Latinos so, for me, being Latino is something authentically American.

Cover of 'Illegally Yours', the memoir of the writer Rafael Agustin.Grand Central Publishing

—Many critics see that lack of representation as a step backwards, even compared to the situation in the entertainment industry in the last century...

-Definitely, one of the people who inspires me the most and who impacted the industry the most is the Cuban-American Desi Arnaz.

When people ask me about the problem of the lack of diversity in Hollywood, I always say that in the fifties we were used to one of the main characters of

, the most important series in the country, being a Latino and being in our homes every holy day

We're trying to get back to where we were in the fifties, go figure.

—Despite the fact that there is a large Hispanic population in the US, that is not reflected in audiovisual productions.

What is the challenge for Hispanic creatives in this social context?

-My dream is to continue writing in English for television and cinema because for many years when a Latin story is written, it is automatically assumed that it will be in Spanish and I want to make sure that Hollywood executives know that we exist.

We live in this country and we are bilingual, even some don't even speak Spanish and that's fine.

But to meet that goal we have to understand how to write our stories and it is very important to differentiate between Latinity and gender.

It can be a love story or a horror story or a comedy, but Latin is not the genre, it's something very nice, but the productions have to work.

It's important that we start writing business stories that understand that.

Rafael Agustin accompanied by Diana Cadavid and Edward James Olmos at a preview of 'In The Heights' during the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival in 2021. Kevin Winter / Getty Images

—Many dreamers live in situations very similar to those narrated in

-We are fighting politically for your future and I know it is very frustrating because I have suffered that frustration, but I want you to know that you are not alone.

We listen to them, we see them and we are going to continue fighting for them, and it is very important that they know that they are Americans.

It doesn't matter what anyone tells them, or what the politicians say because they are Americans and we have to treat them that way.