For Hispanic laborers, literacy is opportunity

WASHINGTON -- They are grizzled men with cold-chapped hands and paint-splattered sweat shirts. They are wise in the ways of the world, experienced in the art of survival. They are also kindergartners, starting from scratch.

"Attention, companions! Here we go. Va, ve, vi, vo, vu."

That's Roberto Villaroel, the teacher, pointing with his plastic ruler. He, too, has work-scarred hands and wears a hooded jacket. He, too, spends his good days hammering drywall and his bad days killing time outside a 7-Eleven. But he has something many of his fellow Hispanic laborers lack: an education.

The students hunch over their writing tablets, the kinds that have triple lines for capital and small letters. They grip their pencils too firmly. They frown in concentration, forming the unfamiliar stems and circles of the alphabet. No spitballs. No snide comments.

"We do not make fun of each other in this class. We are all equals," Villaroel reminds them at the start of each class.

Jose Rivera always sits in the front row. He is 51, graying, old enough to wear reading glasses. He has three children, all educated in the United States. Most mornings, he rises at 4 and drives to his construction job.

But two nights a week, along with 20 other men, he reports to the free Spanish-language literacy class at the Woodrow Wilson Library in suburban Fairfax County, Va., a program sponsored by a Methodist church.

"I can't write my letters very fast," Rivera says with an apologetic laugh. His tablet is half-filled with the word paquete, or package, copied on line after line. Younger men on both sides of him have already filled their pages.

"Don't worry. Take your time," Villaroel reassures him. In another life, he taught sociology back home in Bolivia. He has a college vocabulary, a dignified demeanor, and a passion for change. He organized the class with a Guatemalan friend, Leonardo Garcia, and they share classroom duties.

Along with Spanish, these teachers try to impart self-respect to men who are often alone and far from home, scratching out a living at the margins of a society that is deeply ambivalent about their presence.

The teachers pass out fliers and cards at day-labor sites, urging workers to come to class, but they say many are too shy or ashamed to attend. According to private literacy program directors , thousands of Hispanic immigrants in the area are past school age but have no formal reading or writing skills. Becoming literate in Spanish first, they say, paves the way to learning English.

"Let's try the letter Q. That's Q, as in ri-que-za na-tu-ral," Villaroel says, rolling the Spanish R and whistling the Z. "Who can tell me what that means?"

Now the spelling lesson becomes a lecture on environmental conservation. "Natural wealth is the trees, the oceans, the animals. It is us, the world, the equilibrium of nature," he explains. The men listen, spellbound. "Sometimes factories poison the earth or ships spill oil and poison the oceans, and then all of life is affected."

Jose Sanchez raises his hand, nodding in recognition. "I have seen paintbrushes being washed in water drains. Then it all goes into the rivers," he says.

Sanchez always sits in the second row. He is a leathery Mexican of 45.

Sanchez, who grew up in a village with no school, picked up a smattering of written Spanish as an adult in Mexico City. Now, he says, he wants to improve his formal Spanish so he can eventually learn English.

"I work in a restaurant," he explains. "When a customer asks me about something on the menu, I always have to excuse myself and go in the back and ask."

Another bitter winter night. The classroom is empty. Villaroel lays out pencils and rulers, confident the students will appear. Several young men shuffle in, ball caps twisted backward to give them confidence.

"Any preparation?" Villaroel asks politely. They shake their heads. One shy, sinewy man mumbles that he can write a few numbers, but that's all. "The school was so far from my village," he explains sheepishly. "Is it true this class is free?"

"Even the pencils," Villaroel answers.

The students pull up chairs around a small table. They will spend the entire class in silence, laboriously copying letters into workbooks. Standing by the quick-erase board, Garcia is teaching the letter J tonight. J as in Julia, justo, jaula, jornalero, he said. The last word means day laborer.

J as in mujer, which means woman, he adds.

Again the lesson takes on a larger dimension. "Your wives need to learn to read and write, too," he says. "That way they can provide more moral support and help the family succeed."

Rivera, sitting in the front row, bends over his writing tablet, adjusts his reading glasses, scratches his head. He is struggling with the letter Q. Instead of writing querer, to want, he writes guerra, war.

"I'm stuck," he confesses, laughing at himself. His dream is to become a US citizen, but he has failed the test twice because his English was not good enough.

"Don't worry," Garcia says. "You have all the time in the world."