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JANUARY 2012 EDITION

SERVICES

A world without borders

By María Elena Salinas
Syndicated Columnist

Overybody loves a rags-to-riches story, but astronaut Jose Hernandez’s long journey from the fields of California to the International Space Station is beyond that. Hernandez is part of the seven-member crew aboard the space shuttle Discovery. During the 13-day mission, he will be the chief engineer in charge of the navigation system, but when he looks back to see planet Earth, he will once again be that little Mexican-American boy who dared to dream big dreams.

His obsession began when he was only 9 years old. Back then, he was the one in charge of holding up the rabbit ears on the family’s old black-and-white television set as they watched blurry images of Apollo 11’s landing on the moon. He said to himself, “Today it’s the moon, tomorrow Mars, and after that we can go even farther.” But before even thinking of walking on the moon, he walked the fields in Central California, picking cucumbers to help his family make ends meet.

The youngest of Julia and Salvador Hernandez’s four children, Jose’s birthplace was determined by the harvest. The family lived in the Mexican state of Michoacan, where they spent the winters, then they traveled to California as migrant workers during the spring and summer to work the fields. Jose and one of his brothers were born in the U.S. because it was harvest season, and his two other siblings were born in Mexico in the winter.

In an interview conducted a couple of years ago, Hernandez described vivid images of those times: “After a long, grueling day in the fields, my dad would look at us sitting in the back of the car, sweaty and weary, and would say, ‘If you don’t study, this is what your future looks like.’”

The future Jose envisioned for himself was very different. He knew there would be a chance to reach his goal when Franklin Chang Diaz, the first Latino astronaut, was accepted into the space program. As Hernandez worked toward bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering on a scholarship, year after year he would send a letter to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration requesting to be included in the space program, and year after year he would get a negative response. He was competing with more than 4,000 people for 15 spots. Twelve years had gone by, he was close to 40 years of age and his optimism was beginning to wane.

Ironically, it was the last rejection letter from NASA that opened the door to the opportunity he had been waiting for. Hernandez was offered a job as an engineer, and moved to Houston from California and continued to seek his lifelong dream. Eventually it paid off. In March of 2004, he finally got the call. He was accepted into the new generation of astronauts.
It took a while, but Hernandez can finally say that he has reached his goal in life. It is with much pride that he goes into space embracing his cultural heritage. “I’ll try to sneak in a Mexican flag or something,” he joked in 2006. He not only has made his family proud, including his parents, his wife -- who runs a Mexican restaurant in Houston -- and his five children, but he also got a call from Mexican President Felipe Calderon congratulating him on his feat.

Hernandez is not the first Mexican-American to go into space. In fact, he is joined on this mission by astronaut Danny Olivas. Who knows if he was able to sneak in the flag, but he certainly will be making a bit of space history by becoming the first NASA astronaut to file bilingual Twitter updates from space, under the name Astro-Jose.

The space program is fascinating to many Americans. The idea of being able to travel to space, explore the endless possibilities and conduct experiments that could greatly benefit us here on Earth is mind-boggling. But for Hernandez, the most amazing moment will be when he is able to look out the window and see a world without borders. “Looking at it from that distance, you cannot distinguish borders. Borders are created by humans,” he claims. Buen viaje, Jose -- you make us proud.