Name of Interviewer: Xóchitl Bada Date of Interview: April 13, 2016 Location: Chicago, IL Interview Language: Spanish
Marcia Soto was born in 1949 in Durango, Mexico. In 1970, while she was finishing high school in Durango, Marcia came for the first time to visit family in Chicago, Illinois. She then went back to Durango and married a boyfriend she had previously met in the U.S. After marriage, she came back to Chicago. At that time, she had her first two children. Her marriage lasted three and a half years. Her marriage to a U.S. citizen allowed her to get a passport which allowed her the freedom to go back and forth between Durango and Chicago. Upon her divorce, she went back and stayed with his family in Durango. As a divorced woman living in her native community, she felt that she did not fit and decided she would be more comfortable living in the U.S. By 1977, she had traveled back with her two children and sister to live in Chicago. Once Marcia’s family arrived to the city, she enrolled in beauty school and opened her own beauty parlor in Pilsen. She also worked as restaurant manager and in an art gallery. She eventually remarried and had another child. In 1997, Marcia co-founded the club ‘Durango Unido’ an organization devoted to collect funds to assist the community of Durango with medical furniture, computers for public schools, and week-long medical visits led by doctors from the U.S. Marcia Soto has served as president of “Durango Unido”, the Confederation of Mexican Federations (CONFEMEX), and vice president of Alianza Americas. She has also worked as a volunteer at Saint Michael and San Pablo Catholic churches in Chicago.
