On a day many were tipping a cold Corona in celebration of Cinco de Mayo, this group of Omaha students was up to something.
Something that would have made their parents — and grandparents — proud.
The dozen students from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and a few from Omaha South High School spent hours mingling with Latinos three and four times their age. They ate together; they laughed. Mostly, the younger generation presented findings from a semester-long project that had them exploring the challenges of aging Latinos.
“We feel so good they’re interested in us, our ideas, our stories,” said 73-year-old Elcy Vaquero of Colombia. “They could be anywhere; they chose here.”
The students have been spending time at the Intercultural Senior Center, a first-of-its-kind facility in Omaha, as part of a service learning project.
On Thursday, they also invited members of the community to hear what they learned.
What the students knew early on was that relatively little research had been done on this elderly segment of immigrants. They launched into readings and field studies that included interviews with members of the Intercultural Senior Center (el Centro Intercultural para Adultos Mayores).
UNO students Liz Codina, 20, and Clare Maakestad, 21, said they were surprised to find that most seniors they spoke with had enjoyed a positive immigration experience. They figured they’d hear more hardships than pleasantries.
“We expected they were going to have horrific, sad stories,” said Codina.
The reality, she said, was that many had been brought to the U.S. later in life by adult children who already had settled and were working in this country. They often were responsible for watching grandchildren or pitching in with household needs in other ways.
It was actually the senior citizens’ adult children, Codina and Maakestad said, who had faced more discrimination and difficult work conditions.
While many of the grandparents indeed struggled with isolation from the broader community due to language and cultural divides, that disconnect subsided once they found the senior center, friends who spoke the same language and social activities.
To be sure, said the students, younger U.S.-born generations will integrate deeper and be better equipped to navigate the U.S. system. But, Maakestad said, physical and language differences will keep the foreign-born immigrants from fully mainstreaming into American society.
Consider these statistics the students compiled:
>> Latinos are the fastest-growing segment of the older adult U.S. population. Latinos age 65 and older are expected to grow 224 percent from 2008 to 2030, compared to 65 percent for whites of the same age group.
>> In Nebraska, Latinos 65 and older increased by nearly 266 percent from 1990 to 2009.
>> Nationally, in 2007, one in three older Latinos lived in isolated households. More than half were limited in English and had difficulty accessing support services. The students’ interviews with the elderly Nebraska Latinos suggested similar problems.
With greater numbers of Latinos aging in the Midlands, the students told Thursday’s forum that it is vital to prepare. Since their research showed that Latino senior citizens generally avoid government services and traditional retirement centers, Maakestad said the state needs more places like the Intercultural Center.
“It’s got to be more grass roots type of support, like what we see here,” she said.
Students hadn’t figured out, at least not yet, how to make that happen “on a big scale,” Maakestad said. The Intercultural Center currently struggles with rent and other costs of providing informational speakers, meals and other activities at their home in South Omaha’s Sokol Hall, 20th and U Streets.
For now, the UNO students are helping by designing an English-Spanish brochure for the center. A few plan to volunteer after the semester ends and are recruiting others to do the same. Codina is working with Carolina Padilla, the center’s director, to advocate for policy changes to benefit elderly immigrants.
It seems appropriate that the presentation about aging Latinos landed on Cinco de Mayo, said Lourdes Gouveia, director of UNO’s Office of Latino-Latin American Studies, who worked with the students.
The Mexican holiday marks a famous battle in which a meager Mexican army defeated French forces against overwhelming odds. The celebration evokes cultural pride among people of Mexican descent, and local gatherings help educate the broader community about Latino heritage.
Likewise, the UNO and South High students were seeking to shed light on the little-discussed challenges of aging Latinos.
After the presentation at the senior center, the students followed their elders to Marrs Magnet Center. There, the senior citizens danced for an even younger generation — elementary students celebrating Cinco de Mayo with their families.
“It shows solidarity,” Gouveia said. “They’re learning about each other and from each other.”
Contact the writer:
402-444-1224, cindy.gonzalez@owh.com
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