Transforming Communities One Life at a Time

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic during the Cuban Missile Crisis (1). When he was six years old he obtained a visitor's Visa to live in Puerto Rico (2). He then gained permanent residence when he was 10. Ramon moved to the United States mainland in 1980 in order to learn English, get his college degree, and take advantage of the better opportunities that the United States had to offer. He worked as a medical device specialist and surgical consultant for 15 years before starting his own organization that focuses on transformational leadership, service learning, and social innovation called Impact Lives.

A DIFFERENT TYPE OF POVERTY

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I grew up in the midst of an invasion where we had about 58 to 60 thousand Marines. Our family was caught in the crossfire between the rebels, the government troops, and the Americans. My dad was the first one who was able to leave the country and then he was able to get my mother out and then the rest of my family was able to come out. I saw a lot of people struggling with food. Usually things were better when you were on the countryside because you always had a tree of some sort: banana, plantains, mangoes, sugarcane. So if you were hungry, you could always go out and grab something. In the city it was a little bit different. In the city I saw a lot of people coming on my grandmother’s door pretty much starving to death. And my grandma would be eating, then she would stop, get a new fork, and give them the plate. And that’s something that I will never forget. She would do that consistently, to the point where her sisters and older sons would say, “people are taking advantage of you” but they were not. People were truly hungry. The political landscape was tough. Not only the invasion, but also prior to that, the country was under dictatorship for about 30 years, and there was a lot of stabilizing that needed to be done, so that’s how I grew up. And then we moved to Puerto Rico, which was a different type of poverty. We had a house, we had a clean place to sleep, we didn’t have a lot of furniture, but we had a school. And one thing, for the first time, that changed for us was that we could eat in school. So we knew that we always had lunch and we had a little breakfast before school. Food and having a house for our family was the biggest difference between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. We lived in a two bedroom house in the Dominican Republic, and there were about 17 of us.

I WAS CAUGHT IN A NIGHTMARE

My mother took a 600-dollar loan to buy me a ticket, half a ticket, and she gave me 200 dollars. I came here, not knowing a word of English, with barely any belongings to my name. I only had one suitcase and it was all clothes. I had a clock, a watch, and a book of poetry. My entry point into the mainland of the United States was New York. After spending a few weeks there, I went to Sioux City, Iowa, to attend Briar Cliff University. I thought that the rest of the United States was the same as New York City, big skyscrapers and everything. Then I landed in Iowa and there I was, cornfields left and right. I was like, "what the heck?!" I was caught in a nightmare. I will tell you that it was very shocking the first year. A lot of farmer kids had never been exposed to a black person, or to a person who had an accent. People had no idea that Puerto Rico was a part of the United States and they asked me, almost innocently, “do you live in trees?”, “do you have plumbing in your houses?”. The other thing that used to bother me a lot was when people would ask me “do you speak Mexican?”. I would reply, “No I speak Spanish.” Every Latino is proud of their heritage. There were a lot of people that did not like immigrants. Every time that we would go and play basketball some other schools would throw bananas on the floor and call us monkeys. One thing that I was going to mention is when I came here, I came here with a deep sense of pride that I will not go into any of the governmental programs. So for example, I never went on food stamps, I never went on welfare, I never went on anything.

I WANTED TO FIT IN

I wanted to be more American; I wanted to be more like you guys. I wanted to adopt your culture and your values. So I wasn’t thinking about “I want to keep my heritage”, in my case I wanted to fit in. I became an American citizen after I graduated school, on July 4th. That was a very special day. Back then you just filled out the application. After you filled out the application, you had a background check, Next, you had an interview. After that, you took a test and they asked you questions. At that point, once you passed the test, it’s pretty much done. You then had the ceremony. And I’ll tell you something funny that I did. I changed my name. I changed my name to John prior to the ceremony. When I told my friends, they said, “Don’t!” They got mad at me. So I changed my name back to Ramon just minutes before the ceremony. After I became a citizen, I became a Naval officer in the U.S. Navy. I loved this country so much that immediately after I graduated from college, I decided that I wanted to pay back by serving. As an immigrant who came a long time ago, I’m grateful for the benefits I received being here; my education, the people that I have met, and the opportunities that I have got. I feel that nowadays it’s not the same. We need to give back. It’s like having a garden, if you just go and take the vegetables that you produce the first time, and you don’t plant, what are you going to find next year? Nothing.

THE AMERICAN DREAM

When you come here, it’s not about the American dream, it’s about the opportunity to help your family back where you came from. I saw an opportunity that I was able to help my family where they were. It wasn’t about me becoming rich, or having a big house, or a three car garage. But the longer you stay here, the more you start adapting to those values. You start thinking “that three car garage”, “the lake house”, you become completely assimilated into the culture. What I like about being here in the United States is that you don’t have to be culturally assimilated unless you want to be. Once you get exposed to all of this and you start seeing, and you start, do you think you wanna go back again where you were? By the end of the 1990’s, I didn’t want to go back to the Dominican Republic because I knew what was there. I knew that there was poverty. There’s a sense of guilt and shame to overcome, and I did. I went back to the Dominican Republic and when I walked through some of those places and my heart sank. I then asked the question to myself “what am I supposed to be doing?” So, that’s why I decided I wanted to help people all over the world. 

IMPACT LIVES 

I left that to start this organization called Impact Lives, which focuses on transformational leadership, service learning, social innovation. This is my way of giving back, teaching people to understand how they can create transformative environments, not only for themselves but for other people as well. This is my way to teach young people all over the world critical thinking skills, how to understand problems and problem solving skills. I am fearful that if we don’t teach young people this, we’re going to lose what we have and I feel that we’re losing it already and we’re losing it fast.

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Years from now, I see myself continuing to mentor others and to support the new generations of leaders. It’s not my stage anymore, in fact, now when I work with students like you I try to give them as much opportunity as I can. It is their stage for them to lead. I see myself more serving from below and from behind and trying to create environments, give them ideas, and pour everything that I have learned into them.

I’m always trying to improve myself and the world around me. I love people, and that is something that is very common in my culture; serving, improving, moving forward, and progressing. But for me, it’s my Dominican and Puerto Rican heritage, because you know both of them are closely intertwined. My identity is that of loving and serving people, and helping people deal with, or creating the condition for people to become who they were created to be.

Footnotes

(1) The Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest the world has ever came to a nuclear war. It was a 13 day political and military standoff in October 1962 between the Soviet Union, Cuba, and the United States. The Dominican Republic was caught in the midst and aftermath of this conflict, causing many American soldiers to be stationed there.  

(2) Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the United States, meaning it is a free associated state of the United States. The only thing a Puerto Rican cannot do is vote for the President of the United States.

Image Credits

(3) This is a house similar to the one Ramon grew up in with 17 others. It had two bedrooms and no running water.

(4) One of the things Impact Lives does is pack and deliver food to impoverished countries. This image is of a boy from the Dominican Republic hugging a box of food. This box will feed him and his family for a few months.

 
Story Facilitators

Brianna Berg, Nate Hugo, Allison Trefethen