Texas Southern University
Oral History Project
Mexican American History Class
Spring 2014
Interviewee: Raul de La Rosa
Date: 5/10/13
Location: Taco Cabana
Interviewer: Ana Turrubiates
Transcriber: Ana Turrubiates
AT: This is Ana Turrubiartes I’m interviewing Raul de La Rosa on May 9th, or 10th, of
2013 outside the Taco Cabana in Houston Texas. Can you begin by telling me your
full name?
RR: my name is Raul de La Rosa
AT: ok, thank you. And where were you born?
RR: I was born here in Houston, Texas
AT: Wow ok so you’ve lived here all your life?
RR: Yeah born and raised in Houston Texas
AT: Wow ok great. What’s your birth date?
RR: I’m an Aquarius, I was born on February 7th 1978
AT: Ok, ok. What school did you go to?
RR: I ended up finishing up at Fair High School which is here in Houston like in the
east side but I started off going to Reagan here in the heights
AT: Ok ok great did you, is that just high school education, is that middle school is
that?
RR: Those are the two high schools that I went to but I ended up going to some
college at University of Houston Downtown- I took some courses not many but a few
AT: Ok. How was the, how were the classes at University of Houston-Downtown?
RR: It was fine, I mean I enjoyed the atmosphere, but you know just the life of work
got in the way of me finishing up, but the classes were fine.
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AT: Ok did you go to day classes or where you more of a nightly student I mean I
guess?
RR: I would go after work so I would go in the evening, so it was evening.
AT: Ok. I bet that was hard working during the day and then studying at night in the
evening?
RR: Yeah the actual going to the classes was fine but the actual finding time to study
was more of a task I guess.
AT: Ok great. And how many siblings do you have?
RR: I’m the oldest of four. I have a brother and two sisters. So it’s two and two.
AT: Ok, your brothers, or how old are your siblings?
RR: Like I said I’m the oldest of the four and my brother would be the second oldest
and he’s two years younger than me so he’s 33 and then my sisters are thirty and
thirty-one. So we are all kind of grew up together.
AT: Ok so I guess growing up at home it was good because there was two boys and
two girls. Everyone had someone to play with, sort of?
RR: Yeah my brother, kind of, even though yeah I had a brother we were kind of
different he kind of enjoyed different activities as I, but I mean we grew up together.
We all played our typical role. I was the big brother trying to get them into bad stuff
but at the same time I looked out after them.
AT: Ok could you tell me a little about your parents?
RR: Yeah, both of my parents they were born in Mexico. My dad was born in San Luis
Potosi and my mom in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Yeah so they were both born over
there. My dad was a mechanic and my mom for the most part she was a housewife
so she did her job of taking care of us making sure we got to school on time.
AT: Ok, that’s good definitely. So most of the time you lived with your parents
growing up is that how it worked, or did you move out early?
RR: I lived with my parents probably until my early 20’s when I moved out. I stayed
there until I finally moved out on my own
AT: Ok so you were very close to them?
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RR: Yeah we were close; we were a close net family. Most of our other family was in
Mexico. We had a few family members here in Houston but being that there wasn’t
so many of use we kind of just stuck together.
AT: Now were your other siblings your brothers and sister just as close to your
parents as you were?
RR: If I were to break it down. I would say that I was closer to my mother and my
brother was closer to my dad. And then my sisters were both a daddy’s girls. So they
were both closest to my dad, but I was probably the one closest to my mother. Like I
said my dad was a mechanic so he liked, he was outside working on cars doing extra
projects on his free time and my brother really was interested in what he did while I
was probably inside watching my mom bake or cook or something, My interest was
more inside compared to my brother he liked being outside with my dad.
AT: So normally in Mexican families, I can say from personal experience its really
hard for parents to let go of their children, especially moms you know when their
kids are growing up, so when you were moving out was it hard for your mom to let
go or see that you were bettering yourself or looking to seek an outside life?
RR: Definitely I think my mother did struggle the most because I was her first you
know we had a really close bond so she struggled the most letting go and it was just
went I moved out; it was growing up I was the one who fought extend the curfew or
to get the extra freedoms that my siblings took for granted without having to go
through the pulling away stage from my mother and my dad.
AT: So growing up celebrating were there specific days or specific traditions that
your family held on to that you can say, that you could clearly remember, did your
sisters have that traditional quincenera’s growing up or how were the celebrations
of birthdays, Cinco de Mayo, and stuff like that?
RR: It’s interesting that you say this today. The mother’s day that we celebrate was
always May 10th the same day as Mexico. So even though everyone here celebrates
on the Sunday, I’m not sure which Sunday of May it is. We always did May 10th so
that was an interesting thing to bring up on today because today in my family its
mothers day. One of my sister’s had a quince era the other one not because we didn’t
want her to have a quince era but more because she was more of an introvert kind
of shy so she wasn’t really wanting one but yea we would do a lot of traditional the
quince era, mother’s day on may 10 even like the way we celebrate other holidays
like new years a lot of time our goal was to when we had vacation was to go to
Mexico and celebrate them there with the rest of our family
AT: So your mother how long has she lived here for?
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RR: They moved here probably two years before I was born, being that I’m 35 now
they lived here. Well my dad passed away. But they moved here two years before I
was born. My mother has been here 37 years
AT: That being said I was asking the question because maybe she’s accustomed to
celebration now having two mothers day the 10 and the Sunday that we celebrate
here in the U.S?
RR: Yeah she’s very aware that there are two days now, she’s been aware for a while
and she tries to take advantage and expect us on the tenth there and then on Sunday
she’ll want us around to. She is fully expecting us to be there both days so definitely
AT: Another topic that I would like to discuss is your job, what you do?
RR: I work for the city of Houston, the department that I work is called the Houston
Emergency Center and we refer to it as HEC and what I do there is I’m considered a
senior 911 tele communicator which in all less I answer 911 emergency calls for the
fire department and for the EMS.
AT: Ok, how many days a week do you work there or your typical as far as how
many hours would you describe a typical week being?
RR: That building there operates 24 hours a day obviously because we always have
to have the emergency center going to answer 911 calls. My typical work week
consist of working 5- 8 hour days. Typical, there’s different shifts the shift I’m on is
from 10 in the morning to 6:30 in the evening. So it’s a petty typical day the only
main difference from other jobs are my days off are not automatically Saturdays and
Sundays my days off are during the week.
AT: How do you like being off during the week, how do you feel it compares to other
jobs that Monday through Friday 8-5 or 9-5?
RR: That’s one of the things that you have to get used to. As far as If you’re going to
work in that type of environment. There’s a lot of family gathering or festivities that
happen on Saturdays and Sundays even like going to church you have to rearrange
some of those things and make them happen on different days but as far as getting
things done; during the week everybody is at work so I’m able to move around the
city without too many people in the way so that’s one of the convenience’s but you
do miss out on a lot of typical things that are done on the weekends.
AT: Now your job, do you live near the area or do you have a far commute?
RR: No, I’m very close to my job and it’s by design I don’t commute that much. I can
probably get to work in less that 15 minutes but my goal was to find somewhere
near to avoid commuting.
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AT: Yes because that Houston traffic is just hectic.
RR: Definitely, that gives me a lot more time to my self other than being stuck on the
freeway here in Houston
AT: Would you describe your job, how do you feel being a Latino it sound like a very
responsible job being in those shoes you say your are almost a senior tele
communicator, I’m assuming that is a big responsibility. How do you think you’ve
impacted it speaking both very fluent English and Spanish?
RR: Every day in my job, I do get paid extra because I do speak Spanish not only do I
answer and process 911 call for citizens that speak English I also process them for
the Spanish speaking people as well. If you are here in Houston and you have an
emergency and you only speak Spanish there is someone here to process your call in
the same amount of time for an English speaking. Every day I handle 911 calls in
Spanish. We are talking about peoples lives sometimes we do have to do CPR, a lot of
medical emergencies, talking through the beginning stages of delivering a baby if
there’s a pregnant female about to give birth. We answer fire calls to if someone is
having a fire emergencies there building is having a fire and they speak Spanish I
process those on a daily basis so speaking Spanish has helped me out and it’s
helping out passing it on and helping others every day.
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