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another surprise awaited: smoke was rising from the streets in midtown Manhattan. Espinoza didn’t say anything, but wondered who could possibly be cooking underground? It took him a while to learn that the smoke billowing from the innards of the city was steam from a heating system.
    Espinoza found a job in the first place he asked for one: a shoe factory on Twenty-first Street and Avenue of the Americas, where he would sew ballet slippers eight hours a day for $200 a week. Given that his workday started at eight in the morning and ended at four, Espinoza thought he could add a second shift to his schedule, and he found another job two blocks away, on Twenty-third Street, doing the same work. He toiled eight hours there, from 4:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., for $185 a week. Then he headed to the Port Authority and took a bus to Jersey City, where he would collapse into bed at one thirty and rise five hours later to head back to work. At the end of the week, Espinoza could barely focus his eyes. Whenever he looked up from his labor, he would see dots—like small black insects—fluttering around on the edges of his vision. He would have to close his eyes for a moment before he could refocus on the shoe at hand. He feared he would go blind.
    He kept at it because it pleased him enormously to chip away at his debt and send money home to take care of his family, andbecause he felt comfortable in his new job, surrounded by recent arrivals, just like him, but from the Dominican Republic. He could speak Spanish with his coworkers during their lunch breaks and express longing for his family, which they understood. There were about fifty thousand Ecuadorians in New York then, so few that they were hardly noticeable in the city. 3 The majority of Hispanics were from Puerto Rico, who are born US citizens and therefore not considered immigrants.
    Three months into his punishing routine, Espinoza was called into the manager’s office at his second job and told his hours and his pay would be reduced. The season was over, and the demand for their shoes had plummeted. Espinoza began looking for another job.
    A relative of David, his wife’s cousin, told him that in Bay Shore, Long Island, a fine restaurant called Captain Bill’s was looking for workers. Espinoza went to the waterfront restaurant the following Sunday and got a job washing enormous pots encrusted with tomato sauce. The pots were so big he had to rinse them on the floor with a hose. The pay was about the same as in the city, but food was included. To Espinoza, that seemed like a raise. He quit his jobs and moved to Bay Shore with another friend, who had rented a two-bedroom apartment. After a year washing dishes and pots, he was promoted to making salads. At first Espinoza struggled with the language. Someone would ask for an onion and he would hand him a tomato, but in time words such as “chicken,” “salad,” “cheese,” and “dressing” became part of his vocabulary.
    Two years later, in 1984, a friend mentioned that he had found a job at a restaurant called South Shore, in the Long Island town of Patchogue. Espinoza had never heard of it but was ready for a new job, especially one that came with a $40-per-week raise. Where he lived was less important than how much he made.
    When Espinoza arrived in Patchogue, he and his friend GaloVázquez discovered they were the first Ecuadorians to move to the village, where a little over eleven thousand people lived then in an area of 2.2 square miles. Espinoza liked Patchogue. It seemed peaceful, pretty, and safe, a good place to raise the family he desperately wanted to get back. He rented an apartment in a twelve-unit building at 5 Lake Street, just off Main Street, and, because he was always fixing things, the owner made him superintendent.
    Inflation in Ecuador had made it possible for him to pay his debt to the chulquero faster than he would have otherwise, but he was still supporting his family while spending about $300 a