“Volando alto sin olvidar de dónde vengo,” a popular Spanish saying that can be translated in English as “Flying high without forgetting where I came from,” describes Ernesto Fonseca’s philosophy of life. Although he faced many challenges growing up, they were not enough to stop him. On the contrary, they motivated him to keep working toward his ultimate goal in life: giving back to his community.
Fonseca was born in Querétaro, Mexico, on Dec. 1, 1970. Although his childhood wasn’t one of luxury and there are only about six photographs of his childhood to reminisce about, he recalls it as the happiest time of his life. Family photos show a small house with a tar paper roof on an unpaved street. He remembers making boats from newspapers and joining neighborhood friends to float them in the puddles after a rain shower.
Fonseca recalls how his father would pick up his blue toolbox and ride his bicycle to work as a plumber and to perform construction jobs. Fonseca’s mom made tacos and sold them on the street.
Fonseca attended a public school in a historic part of the city. One afternoon, his mother picked him up from school and they walked by Bellas Artes, a music and performing arts program within the Autonomous University of Querétaro and heard music playing.
“I asked my mom if I could play, too, and she said, ‘Sure,’” Fonseca says.
He started to play the violin at age 6 and played for fourteen years.
“My final solo performance at the end of high school, I got a standing ovation,” he says.
Seeking to satisfy his parents’ hopes for him, Fonseca took courses at two different medical schools but did not do well and switched to studying architecture. While still in school, he designed his first building. After graduation, he worked for his dad, who had started his own construction company by then.
“My parents were always driven and ambitious,” Fonseca notes, “My father became a contractor and my mother returned to school and became a nurse.”
After college, Fonseca’s and his family were doing well. However, Mexico encountered a severe economic crisis in 1994.
“In December 1994, the peso lost its value by half during a financial crisis in Mexico,” explains Fonseca. “At the time, my father was doing a big project and, because of that crisis, my family lost everything.”
Fonseca’s family went bankrupt, which led him to immigrate to the United States.
“I went to Wisconsin on a tourist visa because my brother was there,” says Fonseca. “The people were nice, and we were kind of exotic to them.”
In Wisconsin, Fonseca started working at Applebee’s and Olive Garden as a server.
While working at Olive Garden, Fonseca met Susan, a political activist who would later become his wife. She persuaded him to attend his first political protest. They then went to Chili’s on their first date.
“I proposed to her three times,” he recalls. “She said no three times.”
“Later I was fired from Olive Garden because I got in a fight with one of the cooks,” he says. “But at the time, I saw it as an opportunity to look into other jobs.”
He took a job caring for disabled teenagers and learned American Sign Language (ASL).
In March 2003, after he and Susan married, Fonseca was accepted to a master’s program in climate responsive architecture at Arizona State University.
But a few months later, he was deported.
“I had kidney stones, so we crossed between Douglas (Arizona) and Agua Prieta (Sonora, Mexico) for a doctor, because it was more affordable,” he explains. While crossing back home, Susan was stopped and accused of smuggling people across the border.
Fonseca was locked in a cell and then deported.
Susan collected letters from his university faculty and persuaded Arizona Congressman Raúl Manuel Grijalva to issue him a 30-day humanitarian visa.
When Fonseca returned to the United States, he went back to school and started the paperwork to get a work permit.
“Everything in my life that I thought I had, it had all been taken away in an instant,” he says, remembering his deportation. “But it was a good thing; it made me do something, and I launched my own business as a handyman.”
In 2011 he became a U.S. citizen. He ran for city council in Tempe, Arizona, and, although he lost, he made many connections.
“You don’t lose when you lose,” he says. “Because you are doing something.”
In April 2017, Fonseca moved to Portland and joined Hacienda CDC as their CEO to serve Latinos and communities of color.
“I had a dream to do something socially oriented,” he says. “When I came to Hacienda in 2017, they were doing nothing in real estate development. Since my arrival we have developed over 1,000 units, grown the organization to triple the size, and we have multiplied the budget ten times. I have put my time in this state to make a difference for our Latino community and for communities of color in general. That makes me very proud.”
One of the accomplishments he takes pride in is Portland Mercado, a hub for Latino culture in Portland, Oregon, that allowed businesses to affordably launch and grow. Although the Mercado is temporarily closed due to fire damage, it began as a project of Hacienda.
“When some Latin American women approached us at Hacienda, asking help in finding a place to cook and sell food, we helped out by purchasing food carts and assisting them in other ways,” Fonseca explains. “That grew into the Mercado.”
Fonseca earned his Ph.D from Arizona State University in Environmental Design and Planning and now teaches a quarter per year at Portland State University. As he reflects on his life, he says, “Whenever you have a crisis, don’t let it go to waste. It’s never pleasant, but take advantage of it.”