Boletindenewyork.com started out as a personal project. It really is a project of a broken heart. When the founders of this website left Peru, they pretty much left with only the shirt on their backs. We don’t mean to be all melodramatic on you, but there’s really no other way to describe that situation. They had to leave, and they had to leave quickly.
Their first few years in the United States are nothing short of challenging, gruelling and, in many cases, excruciatingly frustrating. Jobs were few and far between. The kind of jobs that they did find were not all that meaningful, unless you consider washing dishes and shining shoes meaningful.
But after a few years and community college and educational supplementation, the founders of this website started working at higher paying jobs until they started their own chains of Peruvian-themed restaurants and businesses catering to the larger Peruvian immigrant communities in several parts of the United States.
They have since become pillars of the Peruvian-American community as they owned their own homes, fully paid off their cars, and otherwise are living the American dream.
We share this story with you to highlight both the struggles as well as the promise of the United States. A lot of people still believe that the moment you land on American soil, your life will drastically change overnight. They are looking forward to this amazing black and white transformation as far as their finances are concerned.
Well, those dreams are exactly that. They’re just dreams. For any dream to become a reality you can see, touch, taste, smell and hear, you have to put in the work. And often times, you have to work with tears streaming down your face because the homesickness that a lot of people report when they first migrate is all too real.
Now, if you’re in Peru reading this, you might be chuckling to yourself. You might be thinking, well America’s so awesome. There’s a lot of things going for it. There seems to be no shortage of things to do. But that’s precisely the big challenge. It’s very easy to get lonely in a crowd here.
Unlike in Peru, where you are plugged in to the community and everybody is basically just one large extended family, in the United States, we are a community of strangers. And that accounts for both its strength and also speaks to the profound and deep sense of disconnection many people have. It is definitely not an unqualified blessing.
We say this not to denigrate the great benefits and blessings America brings to the table, and it definitely brings a lot of that, but if anything, we want people to look at the Peruvian-American experience with wide open eyes. It is not some magical journey to some sort of proverbial promised land flowing with milk and honey where all your problems magically disappear.
If you are struggling with any sort of personal issues now, chances are, you will continue to struggle with them over an extended period of time until the American experience changes you.
A lot of people don’t get this. Being in America from another culture is actually a two way conversation. You bring in culture, so in your small way, you change your surroundings, but the preexisting culture also ends up changing you.
We want Peruvian-Americans to have an open mind regarding this experience because it can be a very beautiful thing. We have a lot to offer the greater culture here in the United States because we have a lot of traditions and customs that would truly be a loss if we let go of them, but we also have to overcome all sorts of personal and cultural and social challenges to become full participants in our new home.
This is the bittersweet sentiment that drives Boletin de New York. It is a bittersweet love letter to both our home country as well as our new motherland, the United States.