BREAKING THROUGH THE WALL OF POVERTY

EL DORADO — From a young age, she knew she wanted to be a nurse.

Born in California, Lidia Custodio, 22, of Guatemala, remembered living in a cramped apartment with other Hispanic families before moving to Arkansas.

“There were a bunch of people,” Custodio said. “And you end up paying a good arm and a leg just to sleep on the floor.”

At 8 months, her family moved to Decatur, Arkansas, where her mom and step-dad worked at a Peterson Farms plant, she in the processing plant and he in the hatchery. After seven years in Decatur, they moved to El Dorado and both worked in the hatchery division of what would later become Pilgrim’s Pride.

In 2008, the El Dorado plant shut down and thousands of people were out of a job. Meanwhile, Custodio’s mother and step-dad separated. In spite of uncertain employment and a lingering divorce, Romero said, “that was when God took care of her the most,” according to Custodio’s translation.

Leading up to the Pilgrim’s Pride Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, the El Dorado plant manager tried transferring Romero and other employees to Nacogdoches, Texas or Oklahoma. While some transferred, others stayed. Romero was offered a position, she said, and prayed with her pastor, asking God for “the feeling of leaving or staying.”

“That week God started answering prayers through Willie McGhee,” she said.

When she didn’t have gas, groceries or money for utilities, McGhee and other locals in the community would help.

“At times he’d bring sacks of food over here,” Romero said.

Soon, she said she made contact with a social worker that provided her family with assistance through SNAP benefits, SSI, and AR Kids — Medicaid for children in a home with low-income — options that were not available to her when she was fully employed.

“Through McGhee, she was also able to get two houses [for her cleaning business].”

Without the job at the hatchery, she started cleaning houses to support her four children, which became her full-time job. February 11, 2016, Romero was diagnosed with cervical cancer, in result she lost her customers she accrued over the years. Four months later, she became a survivor, and began rebuilding her clientele. She cleans

houses to this day to support herself and her family.

Looking back, Romero said she’s grateful for the city of El Dorado, comparing it to the land of milk and honey.

“If she would have went somewhere else, we wouldn’t have the El Dorado Promise,” Custodio said.

With the El Dorado Promise scholarship, Custodio had 95 percent of her tuition paid. And her younger brother had 100 percent of his tuition paid. Currently, Custodio is able to raise her two children at her mother’s home in Murmill Heights, while finishing school at South Arkansas Community College. By December 2015, she graduated and passed her tests to become a licensed nurse. Her goal is to become a registered nurse by the end of this year.

What Now?

There isn’t just one way out.

The El Dorado Promise by itself won’t solve the problem for those in poverty.

City officials can’t only be held responsible.

The blame can’t be placed on those living in poverty day-to-day.

And the community can’t continue to ignore it.

“I think people’s attitudes are basically the problem,” said Johnny Carey, a retired sergeant major for the U.S. Army. Originally from El Dorado, he graduated high school in 1966 and moved back to El Dorado in 2006.

“It was a booming city when I left here. It wasn’t modernized, but the streets were clean. And when I came back here — there’s no more pride. That doesn’t fall into just the ward. That falls into the city as a whole.”

Different issues related to low-income or impoverished areas are scattered throughout the city. Most of the complaints that Ward 3 aldermen Kensel Spivey and Willie McGhee receive are related to trash, or limbs, that don’t get picked up.

McGhee said he knew of a woman whose father lived on the poorer side of town. The woman noticed that her father’s limbs weren’t being picked up as often as in other areas of town, if at all.

“He knows if he leaves them in his yard it will be a couple of months,” McGhee said. “Take it to her house and they’ll be picked up the next day, maybe the next two or three days.”

For many of the residents interviewed for this series, housing was at the forefront of their minds.

In the 90s, as an assignment for himself, an El Dorado High School professor made a short video documenting different sides of the city. From his photos he found that on the south and north sides of town were houses without indoor plumbing or electricity. Donnell Hegler said he did this to show teachers and staff where their students came from and why some had behavioral problems.

“You had two populations: the haves and have-nots,” Hegler said. “I wanted to show why some people don’t do homework, some who don’t have coats. It’s because of where they’re living. Sometimes for a student coming out of that environment, the quietest place was school, because you had heat, you had air.”

These environments have an effect on how many people pursue higher education after high school. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 20 percent of the city’s population who are 25 or older have received a bachelor’s degree or higher.

For some, these homes with foundational problems were the only ones they could afford. Recently, housing prices have increased to accommodate industry professionals in the city, and many families are either renting from “slum lords” or moving out of the city because that’s what they can afford, Hegler said.

Some who were interviewed feel that if they attempt to request a hearing with the city council about issues in their neighborhood, it goes nowhere.

“Those in prosperity have some form of responsibility,” Hegler said. “The reality is, when you’re a city as small as El Dorado — when you have great poverty and great wealth — somehow its going to have effect on great wealth.”

Another face of poverty is homelessness. Janice Bush, President of the NAACP chapter in El Dorado, is trying to get funding for a local homeless shelter. Since volunteering at the Salvation Army, she has seen people who are in homeless communities throughout the city, she said. Most of them hide in wooded or abandoned areas to avoid law enforcement.

“A lot of them are veterans who have mental issues. A lot of them just need to get a hand up.”

After the exodus from Katrina, a family of four arrived in El Dorado who lost everything, Bush said. They lived in their car and relied on the Salvation Army until they could get back on their feet. One of the churches helped too. “Now, [the father] works at Clean Harbors and has started his own business as a caterer,” Bush said. Adding, “There are a lot of stories like that, but equal amount of stories that are sad.”

On Madison Street sits an off-white brick house, which overlooks the Hillsboro viaduct, and further north is the downtown square. From her porch — let’s call her Lisa — enjoys sipping her coffee or diet Mountain Dew in the mornings when no distractions are around: no trains, cars, or bills to bog her down.

In the kitchen, three of her cats gathered around a pot of mashed potatoes on the floor, and around those were a swarm of roaches. Inside the living room, a gossamer web hung from one of her lamps. “I’m fighting spider webs all the time,” she said, and bought some spray recently; her cataracts and semi-blindness in one eye didn’t help.

In spite of her circumstances, she said she is able to see both sides: why people are excited for the renovations downtown and why others are cynical.

“Growth’s expected, but I don’t know… the East side needs help,” she said. “It’s like they’re not trying to improve it.”

So much of the issue lies in ignorance, like an ostrich with its head in a hole.

“You know, I put that picket white fence around and everything’s all right. I don’t wanna go two blocks over and see how people really live, as long as my little area is okay,” McGhee said. “Now, that don’t really help if you know something is not right and you don’t do anything. To me, you’re part of the problem and not part of the solution.”

If there’s an issue that needs to be addressed before the city council, they aren’t going to fix anything unless there’s a plan. “We have to be visible and vocal,” Spivey said.

It takes a sense of pride and love to change things, said Johnny Carey, a man who lamented the changes he saw when he returned to the city after 51 years away.

There were many times when the odds were stacked against Romero’s family. They kept their heads above water and counted their blessings where it mattered most.

Custodio attributed her own success to her mother’s story.

“I feel like if my mom was able to do it, I’m able to do it too,” Custodio said.

We should all take note and rethink what it takes to break the wall of poverty in the city of El Dorado.