Hopscotch, the school burned in the Los Angeles fires: “We cannot let this dream in Spanish die”

When the first two children walked through the door to join the school in 2015, Liliana Martinez I could hardly believe it. Kieran and Samantha, children of a Spanish mother and an American mother, thus became the seed of a Spanish immersion preschool in Los Angeles, Hopscotch -in honor of Cortázar’s masterpiece- who had been educating young children in a second language for almost a decade. That dream, that of forming bilingual souls in the south of Californiawas destroyed by flames on Wednesday morning. Martínez can still believe that his school is no longer there.

“This is being a nightmare,” says this Colombian educator who emigrated to the United States in 1993. “There are ten years of struggle, of tenacity, of overcoming obstacles, of dreaming of training children in Spanish.to teach them the language of my parents, who have been destroyed in a matter of a few minutes and with the helplessness of not having been able to do anything to save it.

She is not alone. The street where the school was in ChangedMariposa, was completely destroyed in the Eaton Fire, one of the large fires that are devouring the second largest city in the United States. The fire had no mercy on the small school, nor on the legendary hardware store across the street, Altadena Hardware Store, nor on a spiritual center that was right next door. “The street is totally unrecognizable. Yesterday, when I went up for the first time to see what was left, I completely broke down. “I’m devastated.”

It was the nerve center of a neighborhood located on the side of a mountain, a small commercial street where everything was small businesses: cafes, a printing press, clothing stores, bicycle stores, an anomaly in a country so overwhelmed by franchises in commercial areas. .

Right now, Altadena looks like a city under siege. You cannot go through, except for the media, for fear that there will be robberies in the houses that still remain, even in those that have been burned down. In fact, on Friday night, there were 20 arrests of people trying to loot homes in the city.

Hundreds of families have passed through Hopscotch, forming an intimate and unique community that included many nationalities. Not only children of Mexicans, Colombians, Argentines, Spaniards, Salvadorans, Peruvians, Venezuelans, but Japanese, Americans, Filipinos, Indians. Of everything.

“I feel desolation for everything that happened, but at the same time the support of a huge community that has formed over the years and that is springing up from everywhere to help with the reconstruction of the school,” he explains. “They are donating money to us through Gofundme, and I hope that anyone who reads this can contribute, even if it’s just five euros, which doesn’t change anyone’s life, but would make a world of difference to us right now. Let them look for us. We continue to be Hopscotch School.”

Martínez cannot help but immerse himself in the memories of everything he experienced in that building, the transformation of a space that he began renting and that he had managed to buy, “from being a driving school without charm to a school full of life, with a beautiful patio, decorated with the children’s jobs, for the love of the teachers, all Hispanic, heads of the family, incredibly good and hard-working women.

He says it is an especially cruel moment because they had just renovated the school, “painting the building inside and out, with an air conditioner that we had just brand new and a new Apple computer that we enjoyed for a single day. We just have to get up and continue. We cannot let this dream in Spanish die with the fire“.

Kathryn Barger, president of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, remains hopeful: “Don’t worry, we will rebuild; whatever it takes”.

The death toll from fires that broke out earlier this week in the Los Angeles area has risen to 16, according to the local medical examiner’s office.

According to the latest update made by the Los Angeles County medical examiner, 11 of those deaths are due to the fire Eaton located northeast and near the cities of Pasadena and Altadena. The other five correspond to the fire Palisades the largest and most extensive yet, only 11% contained.

The fires have devastated at least 15,000 hectares, destroying about 12,000 structures, including cars.