Waiting at an outdoor table in front of the small coffee house where Samuel Henriquez had agreed to meet me, I looked up to see a short, stocky man standing at the corner, wrapped in a bright blue parka against the cold. His hands were deep in the pockets, the hood pulled over a yellow knit cap, and most of his face hidden. When he glanced down the street to where I sat, I walked up to the corner and asked in Spanish, “By any chance are you Señor Henriquez?” He was.
I introduced myself, and we sat together at the table beside the busy street. I offered to get him a coffee or tea or something, but no, he didn’t need anything. He does not drink coffee, he had just eaten, he was full.
Still, food was what he was most eager to talk about. He offered advice: “There are many things that people do not know. If one wishes to improve health, one must stop eating a lot of things: red meat, carne asada, seafood, pork, potatoes, wheat flour, bread, sugar, tortillas, pan dulce. Maybe one time per month, but not every day.”
These are the very foods he grew up eating in El Salvador, but now they are a danger to his health. “Now, I cook fish, or chicken. I eat vegetables and fruits.” No more fried bananas with beans and heavy cream.
In the past few years, he has had to completely change the habits of a lifetime.
Samuel Henriquez has lived in the United States for more than 30 years. He came here in his 20s, when El Salvador was deep in a civil war fueled by U.S. support for a repressive government. Though it took years and several court cases, eventually many Salvadorans were granted asylum due to the violence in their country; Henriquez was one of those. A legal resident of the United States, he said he understands a lot of English. “It is necessary, for work.” Yet together we spoke only Spanish.
He is the second of four brothers and four sisters; they are scattered all over the United States, with some family still in El Salvador. He has remained single: “It is a rare to find a woman who doesn’t care how much money you have, but only cares for the love you can give.”
He never described himself as “sin casa ni hogar” or “homeless.” He doesn’t see the story of his life that way. “Soy aventurero,” he says: “I am an adventurer.”
As a boy in El Salvador, he worked alongside his father in the fields. Their home was in cool, mountainous country, surrounded by coffee plantations. The family was poor, but they had a little land, and “there was enough to eat.”
At age 6, Samuel contracted polio. His legs became weak, his feet splayed out, his knees collapsed inward. For many months he could not walk. Though he gradually recovered, it left his body forever a little chueco – crooked. He has suffered much as a result; physical pain, as well as rejection.
When Samuel entered his teens, El Salvador was becoming dangerously violent, and the family was driven from their home. “My father lost everything – land, animals, everything.” They moved to the capital, San Salvador, hoping for better opportunities. The move was difficult.
“To go from the country to the city is hard,” he said. “In the country you grow what you need, and make what you can. But in the city, you have to buy everything.”
But Samuel found work in a bakery; his first paid job, at the age of 14. To this day he thinks of baking as his true profession. He never went to high school because he was always working. “I had the duty to support the family.”
He described those years in the capital. “I saw the rich, how they were,” he said. “They would buy something very fancy, very expensive, and give it to their dogs. They treated the dogs better than the poor people. In the civil war, the teachers took up arms and fought against the government. They saw that the children did not even have a chair to sit in at school. The government did not respect the people.”
Samuel was the first to venture north, and then one by one his other siblings came. The United States looked more stable, less perilous.
“In the U.S., there are opportunities.” Henriquez said. “In El Salvador, nothing. In El Salvador you cannot even enter where the rich people are; there are gates and fences. In the United States, you can walk right past the houses of the rich. And if you have the money you can go into any restaurant and eat there.”
He admits he sees problems in this country, too, of course: “Yes, yes, I have seen prejudice in the U.S., against Hispanics. But it is not like in El Salvador. The rich are separate there. They are different.”
Still, he speculated that someday he might move back to his home country. “The air there was clean, not heavy. Here in the U.S. they put chemicals in the air, and it is too heavy. In the U.S. they add so many chemicals to the food, it causes diabetes. My sister had diabetes. But she went back to El Salvador for one month, and the diabetes was gone. Milk in the U.S. has sugar added to it. But in El Salvador it comes straight from the cow, so it is healthy.
“In El Salvador, when you are old, you are free. You are not contained. You can walk around, medicine is cheap, you can see a doctor, there is food.”
Though wistful for the land of his boyhood, he has lived all over the United States, often following family members who helped him find work: in North and South Carolina, in Georgia, in Nashville and New Orleans, Washington, D.C. and L.A.; and most recently in Seattle, Vancouver, Portland.
For all those years, as he roamed about the U.S., Henriquez worked – always manual labor, the basic hard work it takes to keep a giant economy running: factories, warehouses, construction, moving companies; cleaning offices or cars; washing dishes. Despite his crooked legs, he would work all day, 10 or 12 hours or more, and then play soccer into the evening. Nearly 20 years ago he quit smoking and drinking. “If I had not found Christ,” he said, “I would be dead.”
Even after 2008, when “everything went down (“se fue todo abajo”), he kept working. “There were plenty of jobs for manual laborers, but you had to work hard.”
In his 50s, though, physical problems began to slow the adventurer: first, terrible pain in his hands, then his legs. He became weak; walking was difficult. Bit by bit, he was losing the vigor that had sustained him throughout his life. “For four years now,” he said, “I have not been able to work hard. In five minutes I am weak, my legs hurt. I can’t lift 20 pounds.”
He was living in L.A. then, and thought a change to a cooler climate would help. “I moved to Seattle for the weather. Some people, when it’s hot they feel good, healthy, happy. But for me it is better when it’s cold.” He worked for 10 months prepping cars for an auto auction, but continued to feel weak.
Restless and concerned for his health, he moved to Vancouver. He still had a little money saved up, and for a few months was able to pay rent. When his money ran out he found, through the Spanish-speaking grapevine, an auto shop that had no security system. The owner let him stay in the shop, use the bathroom and sleep on a couch in the waiting room in exchange for serving as an informal security guard. They said they would pay him a little per week, but after a few months refused to pay.
His family in L.A. invited him to come back and stay there. “But,” he said, “I didn’t want to be a burden – for them to have to take care of me.”
He moved into Portland, and again his grapevine helped him survive: He learned about the organization Transition Projects, and stayed at one of their shelters for four months. TPI connected him with Northwest Pilot Project, and he found health insurance through the Oregon Health Plan (“You must have insurance,” he advised me). Now, he could see a doctor and try to figure out what was happening to him. He was able to go to the Fanno Creek Clinic, and feels his doctor there may have saved his life. He was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome, neuropathy, spondylolisthesis, diabetes, gout – enough to keep any man down. By then he was also terribly overweight, and a doctor told him he must make a change.
My doctor explained it to me,” he said: “People go to the doctor, they get pills, but they keep eating the same thing; they don’t change their habits. They take the pills, but the pills don’t help them.”
He took his doctor’s advice seriously, and learned about nutrition. He is proud of his success: “I lost 20 pounds, and moved three holes on my belt.”
Northwest Pilot Project helped him get into a studio apartment last July. Although he still imagines someday finding a place out of the downtown area, he is grateful to be housed. It’s better than the auto shop, better than the shelters; it’s certainly better than when he had to sleep on the street in Portland. He has a blender, and he’ll blend avocado, jicama and water. “If you drink it every day for a month, you will be well.”
He feels better than he has in years. He goes to church every week. “I respect God,” he said. It’s a simple life, but for now it is good. With a small Social Security award, he feels he could live well.
Still, despite daunting health problems, he is very clear that he will not give up. “I have normal strength for looking for work, for cooking. To work hard eight hours every day? I do not have the power. I start to sweat, my body hurts.
“But I can empty trash. I can clean, mop, sweep. I know how to bake, make pastries. I can drive; I have a license. But for only a short time, maybe every week, 20 hours, or 25. Then I will be able to keep working for a few more years.” At age 57, he insisted, “it is not time to retire.
“Ando buscando,” he said. “I am looking.”