“When everything goes wrong for you, it’s not the way,” said Mexican Luis Enrique García he thought when he was deported from the United States not to be able to go back, despite having lived there for so many years.
It happened in the nineties, but thanks to that García is a successful businessman now in Mexico City. He owns a radio station, Radio Mojarra, with his countrymen in the United States as a target audience. Radio Mojarra broadcasts from Mexico to the U.S. Additionally, Garcia helps other Mexicans.
“Mojarra”: “espaldas mojadas” or “wetbacks”, as those who cross the border into the United States, especially from the south, are generically called. The term comes from migrants who cross the Rio Bravo (Mexican side) or Rio Grande (U.S. side) along the border between Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas, and Texas. In Atlanta, where he lived, Luis García took over the term and his identity as a migrant. So, as a joke, he used to introduce himself as a “Mojarra.”
Luis Enrique García told Gardenia Mendoza for a report for La Opinión that he lived in Atlanta for 20 years. He had emigrated with his uncle. In the United States he worked as a day laborer and a waiter. When he was serving tables he met a broadcaster who hired him and introduced him to radio.
García’s mother became ill, so he returned to Mexico. A few months after that, he wanted to go back to the United States. He tried to do it through Canada, entering with his American driver’s license, but he couldn’t. In time, he entered through Texas, but was held and deported.
“Of course there is life after America,” exclaims Luis Enrique Garcia, quoted by Gardenia Mendoza.
That is how it all started.
It was 1998. With the savings from what he worked those years in Atlanta, he bought an apartment in Mexico City and founded Radio Mojarra.
“Radiomojarra is a station for Mexican migrants in the U.S. who are aware of the problems and realities of the American Dream, also known as mojarraescuchas,” says the presentation in its Facebook page.
Until 2018, according to the article in La Opinión, Luis Enrique García broadcast up to ten hours non-stop daily to Raleigh, Orlando and Atlanta.
Nowadays, Radio Mojarra has one million listeners, on just one program per week, with reflections and stories about the migration of Mexicans to the country now governed by Trump.
It is the big success of Radio Mojarra that supports the station. García’s fellow countrymen in the United States are so confident in him that they send him money to distribute in Mexico to whomever he feels needs them.
Twice a year, García gets into a van and tours Mexico. The van is upholstered with logos of his sponsors. During these trips, Radio Mojarra transmits from those places, with the voice of García. He tells stories of the villagers, as well as giving people the dollars Mexican from the lands he visits send to García from the U.S.
Like in Sinaloa, where García gave $100 (2,000 Mexican pesos) to a pumpkin farmer, Agustín. Or in Saltillo, Cohauila, where Radio Mojarra broadcast from and collected $700 that they gave to elderly people without resources, as well as to homeless people.
“We have come to give up to $42,000,” García tells Gardenia Mendoza.
Radiomojarra has its own marketing – T-shirts, fees, caps–. Luis Enrique García made a clothing brand. He has invested in real estate. He has traveled to 40 countries.
“Being deported from the United States is the best thing that ever happened to me.”