Magda in her home on a late Tuesday afternoon doing a pedicure for a Brazilian client. Photo by Gabriela Campos

Eleven years after arriving in the United States, an immigrant family from Poços de Caldas, Brazil, still struggles to survive in Miami as illegal aliens.

Magda, her husband Wagner and their two sons, Leonardo, 24, and Leonam, 21, from Magda’s first marriage, are four of the 11.9 million illegal immigrants the Pew Hispanic Center estimates are currently living in the United States.  A third son, Leandro, 25, also immigrated with the family but was caught using illegal drugs and deported back to Brazil.

These Brazilians, who asked to keep their last name private for fear of persecution by U.S. immigration authorities, entered the country in early 1998 with tourist visas on the premise that they were coming to visit a relative in the United States.  But Magda, 46, said her family had no plans to go back to Brazil after the visa expired.

“We came to see my mom, but we also left Brazil because we had decided to come in search of opportunities,” Magda said.  “We came already knowing that we would go through tough times and difficulties.”

The family initially lived with Magda’s mother, Teresinha, who is illiterate.  She immigrated to the United States in 1986 and became a legal resident in 2000 after marrying a Cuban-American.

But nothing came easy to this Brazilian family.  When they decided to move out of Teresinha’s home into their own place, many landlords asked Magda for legal documentation she could not provide.  Eventually they found a landlord who only asked for financial information and was willing to rent to them in Little Havana.  Three years later they relocated to Doral, Fla., before settling in their current apartment in West Miami.

Magda said being an illegal immigrant in the United States is like living in the shadows.

“We are no one for now,” Magda said.  “We don’t have an identity here.”

They cannot obtain any documents, including driver’s licenses, making transportation difficult.  Leonam, who still lives with his parents, relies on rides from friends.  Leonardo gained legal status through his marriage to an American woman and drives Wagner to work, helping his stepfather with electrical work throughout Miami.  Magda spends most of her time in the family’s small apartment, where she works as a self-employed manicurist.

Teresinha, who had previously worked for 20 years as a cleaning lady in Miami, helped her daughter find jobs cleaning house for Brazilian families in the area.  After cleaning their homes, Magda often offered manicures to her clients.  They liked it so much that she stopped cleaning their houses and became a full time manicurist.

“I used to work Monday through Friday cleaning and on Saturdays I would only do nails,” she said.  “Later I found a way to only do nails and so today I am only a manicurist.”

Wagner worked as a fireman in Brazil, but after working odd jobs in Miami for several years, he got some training and now works as an electrician for people who are willing to pay him under the table.

One year after arriving in Miami, Wagner was in a serious car accident, making matters even worse for this family.  The accident left him with a broken foot, shoulder, jaw and eyebrow, as well as a fractured vertebra.  Wagner spent a month in the hospital and three months recovering from jaw surgery.

“It was hard because he is the breadwinner,” Magda said.  “I had to drop everything I was doing and stop working so I could help him at home.”

Though life in the United States has been hard for Magda and her family, their life back in Brazil was worse, she said.  In Poços de Caldas, in the state of Minas Gerais, Magda struggled with poverty and supporting her family after her first husband died, leaving her a widow with three young boys.  After she married Wagner, they both grew concerned with raising a family in Brazil, where the crime rate was rising and where they lived in impoverished conditions.

“Here, everyone can live in a good place,” Magda said of Miami.  “There isn’t much violence.  We can walk in the street, you can roll down your window while in your car.”

Throughout the years, Magda has tried to learn English, but as her clientele is mostly made up of Brazilians who come to her house, she has had a hard time learning the language.  Her sons also struggled with the language barrier when they arrived in the United States, but through school and friends they have learned English and Spanish and today speak English better than Portuguese, their mother said.

Although Magda never graduated from high school, her belief in the value of education was a big factor in her decision to move her children to the United States.   She and Wagner believed that the boys would have better opportunities in Miami.

“We were mostly thinking about their future,” she said.  “I don’t know if the boys would have had the opportunity to study [in Brazil] as they had here.”

Their sons were able to finish high school, but Leonam is frustrated he cannot attend college without legal documentation.  For now, he works as an electrician with Wagner, but he dreams of studying criminal justice and hopes to become a legal U.S. citizen.

“It’s as if I was born here, but not having papers makes it all a little harder,” Leonam said.  “Once I get my papers, I really want to go to college.”

His mother is convinced that immigration policy will change and allow her family to live here legally.

“I don’t know when or where, but the time is going to come when the government of this country is going to have to do something,” Magda said.  “We are waiting.”

She has no plans to go back to Brazil and wants to remain in Miami with her family, hoping for a chance to become a U.S. citizen and to live a better life than in Brazil.

“If we have our minds centered, we will be able to overcome our barriers and there is going to be a time where we will be able to have our own house and the boys will be able to go to college,” Magda said.  “We are going to be able to do it one day, even if it takes awhile.”

Young Capoeira students stay off the streets and enjoy themselves at Capoeira Maculele, Homestead Fla. Photo courtesy of Capoeira Maculele

For 20 Hispanic children living in the Redland Center in Homestead, Fla., “Capoeira” classes provide stability and an opportunity to stay away from drugs, gangs and HIV/AIDS.

Twice a week, instructors from “Maculelê Miami Brazilian Arts Institute” teach a one-hour Capoeira class, an Afro-Brazilian martial art, to impoverished children aged 3 to 15, inside a small room in the Redland Center, an agricultural migrant housing community in Homestead.

“When we started, the kids all came from homes that had pretty serious problems, and they came here to get relief from their everyday life,” said Joshua Broadhead, a Capoeira instructor known as “Mico.”

Capoeira began in Brazil more than 500 years ago by African slaves brought to work on plantations.  Today, it is the second most popular sport in Brazil and is practiced all over the world, according to the Brazilian Capoeira Confederation.

Though there is much debate on whether Capoeira is a dance or a fight, unlike other forms of martial arts like Jiu-Jitsu or Karate, Capoeira does not involve punching or physical contact.

“Capoeira Maculelê” is an international group with partner schools in Brazil, Europe and the United States. Their location in Kendall, Maculelê Miami Brazilian Arts Institute, is a nonprofit organization that fosters knowledge and appreciation for the Brazilian arts while providing community service through Capoeira classes.

“The organization in Brazil has literally saved lives, and we hope to do the same thing here,” Mico said.

Thanks to a partnership between Maculelê Miami Brazilian Arts Institute and “Sembrando Flores,” a nonprofit organization and ministry inside the Redland Center, Capoeira classes seek to encourage safe and healthy lifestyles for at-risk children inside the housing community by intervening in their free time.

“[The children] get to learn self respect and we keep them off the streets, healthy and from getting into trouble,” Mico said.

These at-risk children live about 35 miles southwest of Miami, inside the Redland Center, one of four housing communities in Homestead specifically for migrant farm workers working in agricultural farms in the area.

Sarah Tibwell, youth services coordinator at Sembrando Flores, said drugs are the biggest problem inside the impoverished community, where violence and risky activities are prevalent.

“The Capoeira program is the most successful youth program that we have,” Tibwell said. “Every time, they have a full class where the instructors are very committed.”

Though Sembrando Flores, which provides counseling, advocacy, social activism and HIV testing for those living inside the housing community, funded the classes at first, Maculelê Miami Brazilian Arts Institute now voluntarily provides the classes.

When the program began over two years ago, the children were unruly.  Mico recalls that it took the instructors nearly the entire class time just to get the children to behave and pay attention before they could teach Capoeira.  Now the kids are well-behaved, learning Portuguese through songs and improving their Capoeira skills.

“In an hour class, we would spend 55 minutes just trying to get them to pay attention,” Mico said. “It was really difficult.  For many days I left here kind of having mini freak outs, but I kept coming back.”

The program also encourages children to perform better academically.  In order to participate in Capoeira classes, they must turn in weekly academic progress reports.  Children with bad grades are placed on academic probation and must spend the Capoeira class doing their homework until their grades improve. Since the program started, the instructors have seen the children progress academically, as their grades have improved and fewer have been on academic probation.

“They get structure here that they don’t get at home,” said Natalie Castillo, program coordinator at Maculelê Miami Brazilian Arts Institute.

Gelene Bonilla, an 11-year-old student attending the Capoeira classes, is one of the many who has benefited from the program.   Mico said that when Bonilla began the program two years ago, she never smiled, never apologized and always looked unhappy.  Since then, due to the Capoeira training, she has matured and gained confidence.  She is now one of the best students in the class and spends her after-school time training instead of hanging out with older children in the community.

Tibwell and the instructors agree that the Capoeira classes provide an opportunity for the children, usually from Mexican or Central American heritage, to break free from the influence of drugs, gangs, violence and sexual behavior that surround them everyday inside the Redland Center.

“If it weren’t for the classes, they would come home, be out in the streets until the sun sets, not doing anything productive,” Castillo said. “And since there are a lot of drugs here, the kids are out and see it, and they would follow what they see.”

According to the Florida Department of Health, Florida ranks third in the nation in the number of persons living with HIV/AIDS. Nearly half of all cases in Florida reside in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.

Both Maculelê Miami Brazilian Arts Institute and Sembrando Flores try to address the problem by providing Capoeira as an alternative to behavior that might lead the at-risk children inside the Redland Center to contract HIV or get in trouble with the law.

Israel Prado, 30, a Mexican immigrant and father of three children in the Capoeira program has seen the difference the classes have made in the lives and behavior of his children. Though he forced them to attend the classes in the beginning, they now are eager to come because they enjoy it.

“The classes have helped them a lot and it has definitely changed and helped their behavior,” Prado said. “They were hyper and anxious, but now they are better behaved, a little bit more relaxed and focused on what they do.”

Prado said Capoeira classes will also help them be successful in the future, especially since their academic grades have improved.  He has seen the most academic improvement in Betsy, 8, one of his daughters, and his 6-year-old son, Israel, who now is enthusiastic about doing his homework.

In addition to Capoeira classes, Maculelê Miami Brazilian Arts Institute makes an effort to get involved in the children’s lives and keeping them out of trouble, particularly from getting involved with drugs that are prevalent in their community. They frequently sponsor day trips to Key Biscayne, to museums and to other parts of South Florida that the children wouldn’t otherwise know about.

In late March, instructors took three  girls from the class to the Brazil on the Beach event in Hollywood, Fla. To show of their Capoeira skills, and it early April, the class went to the Miami Art Museum for a field trip.

“Most of them had never been in a museum or the beach,” Castillo said. “They live in Miami, but they live in this different world where they think that the community is as big as it gets.”

Mico, Castillo and the other instructors try to expose these impoverished children to new things and new places, hoping to broaden the scope of what their students are used to and know. This includes riding an elevator, where most of them had never ridden before and were still talking about it a year later after their visit to one of Miami’s museums.

“This program is really special to us, and it’s our pride and joy,” Mico said, noting the positive impact it has on the children. “We are trying to turn them into good, productive citizens, and as they get older we will start seeing the benefits.”

Comeron sells her homemade headbands to a Perrine Elementary School mother. Photo by Gabriela Campos

Once a literature professor at the University of the Amazon in Brazil, Aldenora Comeron now makes a living selling homemade goods for parents and students out of a suitcase just outside Perrine Elementary School, near Homestead.

Originally from the city of Belém, in the northern state of Pará in Brazil, Comeron, 43, immigrated to Miami 12 years ago, after visiting the United States for the first time.

“I came on vacation and then went back to Brazil,” Comeron said. “Fifteen days later, I decided to come live in Miami for good.”

In 1997, after immigrating to Miami, Comeron was able to buy her own house with the money she had brought from Brazil and the money she was making cleaning houses. But that all soon changed, once she married a Cuban-American one year after arriving in Miami.

“Before getting married, I had my own house and I worked,” Comeron said. “But my husband took everything I had.”

From the very beginning of their marriage, Comeron suffered from domestic abuse.  Jorge Comeron never physically hit her, but she said he was emotionally abusive and prevented her from working outside their home and doing things she loved.

Things got worse once their two children, Bryan, 9, and Alcimarina, 7, were born.  He started stealing money from Comeron’s personal bank account.
“My husband used to take money out of my account and didn’t pay our mortgage,” she said.

When the family was evicted from their home, her husband took off with the car and the rest of their money.  Comeron said her husband left them with nothing and kept constantly tormenting her on the phone.  She said he once threatened to run her and their children over with a car.

“He left me in the streets with nothing but my children,” she said. “We had to start from scratch, with absolutely nothing.”

In an attempt to avoid paying alimony or child support after Comeron filed for divorce, her husband tried to get Comeron and their children deported back to Brazil by telling the U.S. government that she was living in the United States with false documents.  That is when Comeron learned that the Social Security card and work permit she had paid her husband US$3,000 to get from his lawyer were fake.

After meeting a Brazilian lawyer who took on her case, Comeron was able to obtain residency thanks to the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Battered Immigrant Women Protection Act of 2000 and the Violence Against Women Act of 1994.

“Many women suffer silently without knowing that the rule of law is on their side,” Celia Gore, her lawyer, said. “Aldenora was one of these cases, and she was also one of the few cases that I took on pro bono.”

Comeron then was able to move with her children into the Safespace Shelter in South Miami.  The Safespace Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing support and safety for women and children victims of domestic violence. There, they shared a room with four beds and one bathroom with four other families. All of the women and children living there had been victims of domestic violence.

“At Safespace it was 55 mothers, 55 different stories and each one worse than the other,” Comeron said.  “It was really hard living in places like these.”

Comeron recalls staying up every night inside the closet crocheting and watching over her sleeping children in fear that someone would hurt them. She also was constantly a victim of theft inside the shelters, where women and children would steal clothes and the few belongings she still had.

Following their four-month stay in Safespace, the family moved to the In Transition Shelter, where she and the children were able to live more spaciously in their own apartment with government protection for another year and four months.

After creating crochet clothes, accessories and kitchen wear, Comeron spent much of her time selling her homemade goods in front of malls and churches while her children sat patiently next to her.

When she finally made enough money to move her family out of the shelter, her credit record prevented her from renting out an apartment.

“No one wanted to rent me an apartment with two children, and so it was hard since I didn’t have a car or anything because he [her husband] took everything I had,” Comeron said.

Finally, a Brazilian landlord in an apartment complex in Perrine gave the Comeron family a chance and rented her family the apartment where she and the children live today.

Currently, Comeron earns a living and is able to pay rent by selling her homemade goods in flea markets and outside her children’s school, cleaning houses and selling home appliances as a door-to-door sales representative for Carico International and Rainbow Power.

Comeron works every day of the week to support her children, who are both gifted students at Perrine Elementary School.

“She is really creative and works hard,” her son, Bryan, said.

Comeron has no regrets about immigrating to Miami and plans to stay in the United States, so her children can fulfill their dreams of becoming a lawyer and pediatrician.

“It’s time to move forward,” Comeron said enthusiastically. “That’s why we are here, because I know that here we are going to have a better future.”

According to the U.S. government, three to four million women suffer from domestic abuse in the United States each year.

“There is a lack of communication and fear,” Gore said. “The hardest part is trying to convince the women to call 911.”

Comeron agrees.  “Women have to stand up for themselves.”

Born in Salvador, the capital of the northeastern state of Bahia in Brazil, Santos, 39, was living in São Paulo working as a full-time maid for a wealthy Brazilian family when she was invited to move with them to Miami more than two years ago.

Divorced with a 23-year-old son and a father still in Salvador, she didn’t hesitate at the opportunity to start a new life.

“I’ve always liked to travel and to see new places, and there wasn’t much holding me back in Brazil,” Santos said. “It was a chance for me to meet people and learn other languages.”

In Brazil, maids often sleep in small quarters off of the kitchens of the homes they work in and enjoy few luxuries. Santos’s life in Brazil was no exception. With a small house in a poor neighborhood in São Paulo, she used the awful public transportation system everyday to work and back.

Here, Santos lives with the Rigazzo family in a spacious, high end Brickell apartment.  She has her own room overlooking South Miami, a television set and new Sony laptop.

Santos’s weekly schedule includes cleaning, cooking traditional Brazilian food and taking care of the two Rigazzo children, ages 11 and 17.

She is allowed free time on the weekends, when she hangs out with Latin friends at Miami nightclubs and on Key Biscayne.

“I have my obligations, but I also enjoy myself a lot,” Santos said. “I always find time for a little of work and a little of fun.”

Her new life in the United States was almost cut short in May 2008. Fifteen months after arriving in Miami, Santos had to return to Brazil to renew her expired work visa and passport.

Immigration issues nearly prevented her from continuing the life she had come to enjoy in Miami.

Part of the work visa renewal process included an interview with the American consulate and her employer.  It took Santos three months to get an interview appointment and when she did, her boss was unable to travel to Brazil in time, so it had to be rescheduled.

“I had to wait for four more months in Brazil for the next interview because of the entire bureaucracy,” Santos said.
Although she had expected her visit to Brazil to be short, it ended up taking her a total of seven months before she was able to return to the United States.
“I found the whole process extremely lengthy and my boss was the one who took care of much of it,” Santos said.

Yet, despite her difficulty in getting her visa renewed, Santos is glad to be in Miami and has no regrets about coming to America. For her, life in Brazil was monotonous and revolved around hard work. Life in Miami is more comfortable and enjoyable than that in Brazil, she said.

“These past two years have been the best of my life,” Santos said, eyes lighting up and smiling widely.  “I’ve never been so happy, and I feel like a little girl again, and not like a 40-year-old woman.”

Santos saves most of her US$1,200 a month salary with dreams of one day returning to Brazil and buying her own home there.  But for now she is content in Miami and plans to stay here indefinitely.

“I’ve never enjoyed life so much,” Santos said.  “I don’t plan to go back to Brazil very soon.”