Many children of migrant workers pass through critical years of development separated from one or both parents. Fourteen-year-old Steve Alberto Eb Pech struggles to find himself without a father figure in his daily life. Steve lives with his mother and grandmother in Hoctun, Mexico, while his father, whom he alternately resents and idolizes, lives in Dallas, Texas.
Steve Pech-Eb remembers a phone call from when he was in kindergarten almost like it was yesterday. He was in his home in Hoctun, a small town in Mexico’s Yucatan state. It was Christmas time, and he had a conversation with a man he’s never met. His father.
“How is it there?” Steve asked, his imagination striking his curiosity about his father’s life in Texas.
After describing the heat of Texas summers and cold winters Carlos asks, “How is it in Hoctun? I don’t remember.”
Steve, now 14 years old, reflects on the phone call with a smile. “That was the most beautiful conversation,” he says.
Photos by Alana Holt
Steve Alberto Eb Pech, 14, begins his morning chores by sweeping the house. Steve's chores usually consist of cleaning the house, helping his mother and grandmother cook, and feeding the animals.
Photos by Alana Holt
Steve sits on his hammock with his mother, Wendy Liliana Pech, and two of his cousins in their living room.
Photos by Alana Holt
Steve holds his two favorite pictures of his parents: signing their marriage license and standing on the altar where they were married.
Photos by Alana Holt
Steve sits at the head of the table eating lunch while his grandmother, Clara Maria Perez Cutz, waves away flies and his mother continues preparing food in the kitchen for lunch.
Photos by Alana Holt
Steve admires the ship his grandfather bought him for his 10th birthday. Steve would like to sail with his father when he comes back to Hoctun.
Thirty days after Steve was born, Carlos left their gray, concrete house to cross the border and find a job in Dallas. He is undocumented and hasn’t visited his family for 14 years.
When he left, Carlos told his wife he was leaving to give them a better life. He told his newborn son that he wanted to give him all he could and “to make of him a person I couldn’t be.”
Steve knows his father only as the man in the pictures on the walls, the inconsistent checks in the mail, and the unscheduled phone calls he receives every couple of weeks.
He’s a round-faced boy with a hint of facial hair reaching across his upper lip, and he’s quick to smile. He has his father’s crooked teeth and he’s proud of it. He vacillates between love and resentment for his father, idolizing him even as he struggles to fill the empty space he left behind.
Worker migration has left an empty space in the Pech-Eb family, as it has in hundreds of other families in Hoctun. In 2008, an estimated 700 people – 600 of them men – migrated from Hoctun to Dallas, according to a study published by the State Institute for Gender Equality (IEGY) from the work Dr. Pedro Lewin-Fisher of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History.
Community leaders have taken note of the effects on children left behind. Raul Lam, director of the community cultural center in Hoctun, says even the seemingly positive benefits of migration – such as gifts purchased abroad – may have negative effects. He’s disturbed by some children constantly asking for gadgets and withdrawing from customary interactions when they withdraw into a cell phone or an Xbox. In 2015, $137.7 million was sent back to the state of the Yucatan in remittances, according to the Bank of Mexico. Depending upon his earnings, Carlos tries to send back 2500 pesos – about $130 – every two weeks.
Steve weighs the extra income against his loneliness. “I think yes, [his absence is worth it],” Steve says. “Even if he sends just a little money it’s a help.”
“Carlos told his wife he was leaving to give them a better life. He told his newborn son that he wanted to give him all he could.”
Carlos first migrated to Dallas as a single man. He worked in a restaurant where a chef named Steve took him under his wing. Carlos was so inspired and grateful that he promised to name his first-born son after him.
After three years in the U.S. Carlos returned to Hoctun and married Wendy. He kept his promise when Wendy gave birth to a son. Carlos knew he’d need more money to support his family. He returned to Dallas, and since 2012 he’s been working 50-hour weeks as a cook in an Italian restaurant.
Carlos never finished high school and recognizes the limits that has placed on his earning potential. He says he’d come home now to be with Steve if money allowed.
Steve hopes to become a chef like his father because he says he has the “Pech touch.” He plans to be a third generation Pech cook. His love of cooking makes him an oddity among the boys in his school.
Steve knows he doesn’t quite meet the societal expectations of what a young man should be. He wonders if it would be easier if his father were there to guide him.
He’s been bullied at school lately, and he’s begun to tally the moments he misses his father most. He longs to hear his father’s gruff voice say in person that he loves him and that he will never leave again. He feels his absence when he’s unable to answer questions on his homework: “What do you like to do with your father? What sports do you like to play with him?”
Photos by Alana Holt
Steve feeds the family's horse branches full of leaves. Feeding the horse and their cow is part of Steve's daily chores which also include helping to clean and cook.
Photos by Alana Holt
Steve talks to his best friend, Katia, before class ends at Jacinto Canek Middle School. Steve is in the seventh grade and his three closest friends at school are Katia, Gloria and Ninive.
Photos by Alana Holt
Steve and his family wait in silent disappointment for Carlos's phone call. Steve's dad, Carlos Adalberto E Perez, promised he would call at 4 p.m. Steve looks forward to these infrequent phone calls with his father who lives in the U.S.
Photos by Alana Holt
Steve ties the hood around his mother's chin as a light drizzle turns into a rain. Steve, Wendy and Clara drive to what used to be the back yard of Steve’s grandfather’s house at the Dziuche henequen hacienda a few times a month to cut down plants to feed to their horse and cow.
Photos by Alana Holt
Steve gives his mother a kiss in the hacienda. His grandfather worked there and the house he grew up in still stands. The family plants corn behind his grandfather's house where they also pull up the plants they feed to their livestock.
Steve turns a photo of his mother, Wendy, to the light. She is young, dressed in a voluminous white dress next to Carlos, who stands angled towards her, head high, in a black suit on the top step of a church altar.
They married in 2001 when she was 24 and he was 23. Steve gazes at two other 4x6 photos – one of Wendy and one of Carlos, each signing their marriage license with smiles as their eyes meet. These are Steve’s favorite pictures of his father.
Wendy pulls her own favorite from a faded pastel-colored album. It’s a grainy picture of the three of them together in a church, Wendy cradling days-old Steve and Carlos with his arm behind her. It’s one of only two photos of the three of them together.
Steve lives with his mother and grandmother, Clara Perez, and his paternal grandfather, Roberto Eb, but they are not close. Steve barely interacts with his grandfather.
At Jacinto Canek, the middle school in Hoctun, Steve dresses in the school’s standard white polo shirt bearing the school logo and brown pants to indicate his seventh grade level. His best friends are girls, Katia, Gloria, and Ninive.
“He started to get along well with girls because with the boys he feels isolated, lonely,” Steve’s Spanish teacher, Nancy Gamboa says. “The absence of his father has influence on the bullying he suffers here at school.”
In fourth grade, Steve and his classmates were assigned a project to complete about their fathers. A classmate overheard Steve explaining to his teacher that he couldn’t fulfill the assignment because he’d never met his father.
“You are like an orphan,” the boy laughed at Steve. “Your father has abandoned you. He has another family.”
Steve skipped his next class and ran into the bathroom to cry. By phone Steve told his father about the incident and asked if it were true – did he really have another family?
Carlos reassured Steve that he loves him. “I don’t have another family,” he said. I’ve always been like this – living with my friends, with people who live in my apartment and that’s it.”
When he talks about being bullied it still brings tears to Steve’s eyes, though he puts on a brave face. “He is fine and I am not alone,” he says.
“Steve longs to hear his father’s gruff voice say in person that he loves him and that he will never leave again.”
“What can I say?” Wendy says, her shy smile revealing two gold-rimmed teeth. “We are too far away, so we only talk about little things.”
Steve senses a growing discord between his parents. When he overhears them fighting on the phone he sometimes climbs a crude metal ladder to the flat rooftop of his house. It’s become his refuge, a place to breathe fresh air and think. He’s been spending more time there recently.
If his father were here, he imagines the fighting would stop and his parents would have a better relationship.
Carlos doesn’t send as much money as his family needs, so Wendy and her mother began cooking and selling traditional Mexican dishes, relleno negro, relleno blanco, puerco empanizado and puerco asado.
They make 100-300 pesos a day. Wendy doesn’t solely rely on Carlos’s remittances (money sent from outside the country) because they could live off of selling food, but she thinks she would separate from Carlos if he stopped sending money. He hasn’t sent any money this month.
“Our relationship now is not the same as it used to be when he was very focused on us; he would call us very frequently,” Wendy says. “Now he’s more distant.”
Steve and Wendy try to fill an emotional hole with material items. Often, what Steve asks for he receives. He knows his father through gifts such as a cell phone – which Steve almost always has in his hand or pocket – and Xbox, clothes, and money. But he doesn’t always receive a phone call from him, and what Steve wants most remains 1,800 miles away.
One recent afternoon, Steve is ecstatic. He smiles and bounces on his heels as he monitors the clock. Carlos has promised he would call at 4:30.
But with dwindling hope, he grows frustrated as the time comes and goes without a call. After many attempts to reach him, when Carlos finally answers, he says he is too busy at work too talk. Another letdown.
Steve sits down and wraps his arms around his standing mother’s waist and stifles his cries against her stomach. She puts her arms around him briefly before she steps away, returning a minute later with a yellow cup of water for her tearful son.
Carlos calls back nearly an hour later and gives his son a brief apology for not being a man of his word. His voice is thin on the speaker phone: “I’ve promised things, and I don’t keep my promises at the moment, but I’ve been trying,” he says. “I’ve not been a bad father. [I wish] to have my son by my side.”
Steve remains in a state of longing. His dreams are clear: become a chef, travel, meet his father face-to-face.
His hope rests on the next phone call, the next promise bound to be broken, and the next celebration his dad says he’ll make.
Every summer Carlos says he’ll be home for Christmas.
“He’s been saying that for 14 years.”
“His dreams are clear: become a chef, travel, meet his father face-to-face. ”
