Marina Trejo survived a tough childhood; today, she helps local Latinas celebrate.
Marina Trejo is a dreamer.
From the age of 11 when she first set foot in the United States to labor as a maid, she’s been imagining a better life for herself. She’s worked — sometimes three jobs at a time — to turn her dreams into her truth.
She’s another kind of dreamer, too. Trejo is one of 700,000 mostly Mexican immigrants who, as of 2012, were given special immigration status under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA. The law was created to provide opportunities for children who were not born in the U.S. but who had spent much of their lives here — the “dreamers.”
“DACA completely changed my life,” she says. “I was able to get a better job and that changed my life, one hundred percent.”
Today, Trejo is a mother of two, a fitness instructor, a small business owner. She is generous and gracious, eager to explain her culture and to shine on whatever stage she is standing.
She has come so far from that scared little girl who slipped over the border to support her family from afar, even though she had not yet finished fifth grade.
“I had no clue whatsoever,” she says of the chaos of her pre-teen years. “Just a big ol’ angel behind me!”
Trejo, now 34, says she was four years old when her mother remarried and left her to be raised by her grandmother in a small town in central Mexico.
In 1995, the Mexican economy took a hit. Her grandparents felt they had no choice but to smuggle her into Texas to work and send her earnings back home.
At 15, her first dream became reality when she met a kind woman who asked if she would like to return to school. Maria Consuelo Fernandez offered to give Trejo a place to live. She could still work, but after school and on the weekends. Trejo’s heart soared at this chance.
Fernandez only needed Trejo’s grandmother to transfer custody to her, so she could register Trejo for school.
This is how much this meant to Trejo: She crossed the border into Mexico by herself, took a 14-hour bus ride to her village, surprised her grandmother when she walked in the door unannounced. She and her grandmother traveled back to the border, crossed the Rio Grande to enter the U.S. Her grandmother signed custody over to Fernandez. And Trejo entered high school.
A year later, Trejo moved to Florida to reconnect with her mother. But, she says, their relationship was difficult. When Trejo graduated high school, she asked her mother to be there. She didn’t go. That devastated Trejo.
“To this moment, it still hurts,” Trejo says, tears welling in her eyes.
Trejo moved out and on her own. She had a high school diploma, yes. But as an illegal immigrant, she had no work visa, no driver’s license. She found a job as a receptionist at a hair salon. And a boyfriend who was kind and steady.
“He was the safe place I needed,” she says.
She had her son, Oscar, when she was 19. A daughter, Saheli, followed three years later.
But in 2009, Trejo and her boyfriend split up.
Trejo says her need to keep chasing her dreams created friction. “This is not where I stop,” she remembers saying. “I always like to improve myself. You either come with me — or you don’t.”
In 2010, Trejo arrived in Roanoke and took a job at the Sheraton Hotel as a restaurant host. She moved up, step by step until she became manager of the housekeeping department, with 35 people under her.
“That was a challenge,” she says, “but I learned a lot.”
She took a second job cleaning at a Gold’s Gym — mostly to get the free membership that went with her pay.
One night, a group of gym friends went out after work and a fitness instructor saw Trejo dancing. He was impressed, she says, and told her she should train to teach Zumba classes at the gym. She discovered she loved it and has since become certified in seven different exercise formats.
Another dream came true in 2012 when she first received her DACA status. For two years it protected her from deportation. It allowed her to work, to drive, to open a bank account. Every two years she re-applies to have her status continued.
DACA also allowed her to request a Habitat for Humanity house. In April 2018, after 300 hours of physical labor, after asking friends and family to work on her house with her, after cooking for volunteers weekend after weekend to thank them for their time, Trejo and her kids fell asleep in their very own bedrooms.
Trejo is not done dreaming. Three years ago, she helped a Roanoke friend plan a Mexican coming-of-age party — a quinceañera. The next year, she helped another friend. She realized there was a need — and she had the particular talents to fill it.
So she started a business — called Dream Dance XV. Families hire Trejo to choreograph the two dances at the heart of the event. They rehearse for two months — choosing music, dance styles, steps and outfits.
The more quinceaneras Trejo plans, the farther her reach. She says she is getting calls from as far away as Radford, Martinsville, even Durham, N.C., these days. She’s recently expanded to choreograph first dances for weddings, as well.
But Trejo could lose everything — her business, her work, her home — if her DACA status is revoked. The federal government has announced it no longer wants to support deferred status for “the dreamers,” but the courts — so far — have kept the law in place.
“It’s not like I think about it one hundred percent of the time, but I’ve got to keep it real,” she says. “It could all be taken away any minute.”
No matter what, Trejo says, she will keep dreaming.
About the Writer:
Christina Nifong is a writer with a decades-long career profiling interesting people, places and ideas. She’s also a committed locavore and mother to three kids, four chickens and one very sweet kitty. Find more of her work at christinanifong.com.
