An independent voice

By: Dan StrumpfWith slicked-back hair, black leather jacket and aviatorstyle sunglasses, Horacio Esparza looks more like a biker than an activist. But maybe that’s because the soft-spoken man from Mexico wants to keep you guessing. After all, Esparza, blind since he was about 7, doesn’t have the luxury of relying on appearances.

Esparza, 48, is director of Progress Center South in south suburban Park Forest and a longtime activist for people with disabilities. The office he oversees is a satellite office of Progress Center for Independent Living, a nonprofit that advocates for people with disabilities and provides them with independent living skills and peer counseling. “We need to train and educate our families about the importance of people with disabilities to become independent,” Esparza says.

Esparza also hosts a weekly Spanish-language radio show called Radio Vida Independiente. The show, which airs each Sunday at 11 a.m. on WNTD-AM 950, seeks to educate listeners about disabilities and disability issues, Esparza says. “The biggest barrier for people with disabilities, many times, is not their disability. It’s society’s disability.”

Last year, Esparza led a group of Latinos with disabilities during the immigration demonstrations downtown, where he spoke to the crowd about undocumented immigrants with disabilities and about healthcare for people with disabilities. Esparza says his devotion to advocacy for people with disabilities can be traced back to his childhood in Mexico. He was about 7 years old when he suffered a retinal detachment and, soon after, blindness. Esparza’s school lacked the services to accommodate people with disabilities, and he says his parents saw no point in educating a blind boy, so they withdrew him from school.

While his parents assured him that they would support him financially his entire life, Esparza says he desperately wanted to continue his education.

Five years later, while riding in a taxi during a visit to Guadalajara, Esparza and his mother stumbled upon a boarding school for children with visual impairments. He pleaded with his mother to let him matriculate. When she finally agreed, it was one of the happiest moments in his life, Esparza says.“That was the greatest experience. When I felt that there was a door open for me to learn and to have an education.” In 1973, his family left Mexico for the United States, settling in south suburban Blue Island. Esparza said he attended high school there and eventually got his Bachelor’s Degree in Hispanic Literature from the University of Wisconsin- Whitewater before returning to Guadalajara to teach at the same school for the blind that he attended years earlier. “I always thought I learned many things here in the U.S., and … those children there would benefit from the skills I acquired here,” he said.

In 1999, Esparza brought his son, Fernando, who was about 8 at the time and also suffering from retinal detachment, to the United States for treatment. Esparza has lived in Blue Island ever since. Esparza had always believed that his own blindness was caused by a childhood accident. “I never thought it was something in my blood,” he says. “But now, considering that both my son and my daughter had retinal detachments, I want to think … that it’s in my genes.” Esparza talked with The Chicago Reporter about the many challenges that Latinos with disabilities face.

What are some of the challenges that Latinos with disabilities face?
First of all, the language. The other thing is cultural barriers. Latinos come from countries where people with disabilities are suppressed, where there are not enough resources, where people with disabilities still seem like second or third class, where assisted technology is not available, and if it is, it is very expensive. When they come to this country, they don’t know how to advocate for themselves or look for services. Even people with disabilities in this country, they don’t know how to search for resources.

Did being a Latino present additional obstacles?
Another challenge that is Latino families are overprotective. It’s probably the first barrier we have to fight against. For example, I lost my vision when I was about 7 years old, and I spent [several] years of my life not attending a school. I was 11 years old when I went to kindergarten. I always wanted to go to school. My mom always said, “Don’t worry about it, you don’t need to go to school, there are no schools for children who are visually impaired.” I said, “There should be schools. I don’t think visually impaired children should stay at home.” She said, “Don’t worry, your father and I are working very hard so that when we die, this house is going to be yours, whatever we have is going to be yours.

You host a weekly radio show called Radio Vida Independiente on WNTD-AM. What is the purpose of the show?
In 2005, we started a radio show in Spanish. The purpose of the show, besides informing, educating and providing services to people with disabilities, is to educate the community about people with disabilities: who we are, what our needs are. Even sometimes people know [about us] and they just ignore it. So the purpose of this radio show is to educate our community that we want the same opportunities. We don’t want compassion. We don’t want people to feel sorry for us. We just want to have the same opportunities that anyone has in this society.

What are some of the subjects you discuss on your show?
We present stories of people with disabilities, successful and unsuccessful. We interview politicians, doctors, leaders in the community. We present the resources and services available, and we advocate for people with disabilities. One of the biggest problems for the Latino community are people who don’t have regular immigration status in this country. Many of these people don’t qualify for many services, so we have to struggle against that. You’re a minority being Latino, you’re a minority being disabled, and then you have the other issue, being undocumented. They are the most vulnerable. Unfortunately, the show is just one hour, and one hour flies by, and you can only do so much. But I think after a year and a half that we’ve really made a change in some families’ lives.

What is the most interesting story to come out of your show?
A man who listened to our show called me because he needed a wheelchair. I asked him what happened. He said he had an accident at work and had a leg amputated. He didn’t seem sad or upset or frustrated. … Then he told me he had been listening to our radio show every Sunday. He listened to it out of curiosity; it was something he had never heard before, stories he thought were interesting, but he never thought he would be on the other side. And when he called me, he said, ‘If it wasn’t for the radio show, I would be probably be sad and embarrassed of my disability. But because of your radio show, I’m just going to keep going on as before, getting used to my new physical condition.’ It wasn’t embarrassing for him. I think that’s one of my most impressive stories.

When you came to the United States in 1973, you knew very little English. Being visually impaired, was that a special challenge?
It was. For me, I took some English lessons from The Hadley School for the Blind. Those were correspondence courses through the mail. When I first got the job here, I think I was the first staff member with a visual impairment, and the office of rehabilitation services provided me with a computer, a Braille printer, a scanner— all the equipment I needed to do my work. They spent probably close to $10,000 in equipment. If people with disabilities don’t work, there are two reasons: because employers are not providing the opportunity, and because you don’t know about resources or assisted technology. Fortunately, I’m not part of that 75 or 80 percent of people with disabilities who aren’t working, and I’ve really taken advantage of those resources that are available.

What kinds of projects are you hoping to do in the future?
I’m working very hard on this radio show, and I would like if that could grow and get more funding or sponsors to have more time on the air, and maybe do it on TV. But more than that, I want to continue educating the community—not only Latinos but the community in general—about disabilities. Many times people with disabilities who are advocates, we work in the same circle with the same people at the same conferences, but we never include, say, people from the chamber of commerce, we don’t participate in other events. I think we need to be inclusive.