A Winnie the Pooh journal and the promise of a trip to Disney World—those are the almost two-decade-old memories that stand out in Camila Cabello's mind when she thinks about her and mom Sinuhe immigrating from Mexico City to Miami when she was just 6 years old.
For nearly seven years of her life, the future Fifth Harmony standout turned solo pop star had split her time between her birthplace of Havana, Cuba, and dad Alejandro's native Mexico City when suddenly one day her grandmother wrapped her in a tight embrace, her mom handed her a backpack with her doll and that Winnie the Pooh journal, and told her that they were going to Disney.
Together they crossed the border from Mexico to the United States, leaving behind her father, who wouldn't be able to join them for a year and a half, "literally risking his life for his family to physically make it here," she wrote in a poignant 2017 essay for PopSugar.
"I didn't realize it then, but, boy, does it hit me now," she shared. "I realize how scary it must have been for them. For my mom to leave the streets of Havana where our neighbors were our friends, where we gathered every holiday to eat pork and my grandma's rice and beans, to not hear the malecón and the heartbeat of her city pulsing with every crash of the wave. For my Dad to leave behind his four brothers and sisters, the memory of his parents, the street vendors selling the elotes con mayonesa that I would beg him to get in the mornings before school, the best friends he'd grown up with...everything. To decide to start from the ground up."
Which is what they did, her mom abandoning a career as an architect to stack shoes at a Marshalls near where they settled in Miami.
They had no family in the United States, Cabello noted, no clue of what was to come next, just a couple hundred dollars, the clothes on their backs and the hope of something better. "Like my mom said, 'I don't know where I'm going, but I can't stay here,'" Cabello wrote. "And that was enough."
And Cabello is just one of millions with a story to tell of the strength and perseverance it takes to risk everything you have for the slimmest promise of something better.
In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month—also known as Latinx Heritage Month, it comes to a close Oct. 15—we've rounded up more stories from stars whose families put it all on the line to add to the beautifully blended melting pot that is America.
Anytime she faces something scary—big awards show, live performances, helming a highly anticipated adaption of a beloved children's tale, for instance—Cabello reflects back on the lesson in courage she received from her mom Sinuhe.
"Whenever I have to make a decision now and I'm afraid, my mom always reminds me of that day," she wrote in a 2017 essay for PopSugar about crossing the border from her dad's native Mexico to the U.S. with a couple hundred dollars and a dream. "'That day, I knew if I thought about it, fear would make me turn back. That's why when you're afraid, you force yourself to jump. You don't think, you just jump,' she says to me."
What followed was a day facing off with an immigration officer, a 36-hour Greyhound bus ride to Miami where they'd stay with her grandfather's colleague and months of watching her mom balance night school (to learn English) with a job at Marshalls (to put food on the table) until a chance encounter allowed her to use the architecture skills she'd developed in her native Cuba.
"This country was built on immigrants," Cabello wrote, explaining the pride she has for her Cuban-Mexican heritage. "People who were brave enough to start over. How strong we are to leave behind everything we know in hopes of something better. We are not fearless, we just have dreams bigger than our fears. We jump. We run. We swim, we move mountains, we do whatever it takes. And so next time, when anybody wants to tell you they want to build a 'wall' on our border, remember behind that wall is struggle, determination, hunger. Behind that wall, could be the next cure for cancer, the next scientist, the next artist, the next drummer, the next anything they work hard enough to become!"
In an emotional 2014 L.A. Times op-ed, the Orange Is the New Black and Jane the Virgin alum revealed the years she spent worrying her parents—who "came here from Colombia during a time of great instability there"—would be deported.
"Throughout my childhood I watched my parents try to become legal but to no avail," she explained. "They lost their money to people they believed to be attorneys, but who ultimately never helped. That meant my childhood was haunted by the fear that they would be deported. If I didn't see anyone when I walked in the door after school, I panicked."
The worst came to pass when she was 14: "Lights were on and dinner had been started, but my family wasn't there. Neighbors broke the news that my parents had been taken away by immigration officers, and just like that, my stable family life was over."
Having been born in Boston, she was allowed to remain behind, moving in with parents of a friend, "but I had a rocky existence," she wrote. "I was always insecure about being a nuisance and losing my invitation to stay. I worked a variety of jobs in retail and at coffee shops all through high school. And, though I was surrounded by people who cared about me, part of me ached with every accomplishment, because my parents weren't there to share my joy."
Able to make visits back to Colombia in the summer, she considers herself one of the luckier ones. "My story is all too common," she said. "Every day, children who are U.S. citizens are separated from their families as a result of immigration policies that need fixing."
Courage, perseverance—he got it from his Mama and his Dada, the That '70s Show alum explained while presenting Sobeida and Balbino A. Valderrama with The Judy and Hilary Swank Award at the 2016 Looking Ahead Awards. "This award truly is about the force behind the actor," he explained. "It's about your parents; it's about your family; but it's the individual that at some point in your life told you that you could."
And for the actor, those were his parents. Born in Miami, he returned to Venezuela with his family at age 3 only to watch them sell "everything they had" to move to California years later. There, he recalled shopping at the local 99 Cents Only Store for Cocoa Buffs and "the Lucky Charms with the guy without the hat," he said. "But we were proud of that, because at the end of the day my parents said, 'Hey, we're here. We're already winning.'"
The moment that truly sticks out, he reflected, was a promise he made to his mother while watching her struggle to carry their bags on the miles-long walk home. "I looked at my mom and I said, 'Mom, one day we're going to drive,'" Valderrama recalled. "She said, 'Okay mijo.'"
Having fought in the Cuban revolutionary war, Pitbull's grandmother watched as "basically the majority of the country made the wrong decision," he shared in a 2015 YouTube video for Immigrant Heritage Month. So she made the choice to send her daughter, the singer's mother, to America in Operation Peter Pan, a mass exodus that saw 14,000 unaccompanied minors migrate between 1960 and 1962.
His father, meanwhile, was granted access through the visa lottery, "So there's a lot of history there," Pitbull noted. "Definitely very deeply rooted and that's why I appreciate every opportunity this country has to offer."
Their greatest struggle, continued the "Feel This Moment" rapper (born Armando Christian Pérez), "I would say, the language barrier. And then just figuring out a whole new system. But they were very ambitious, very positive, all they would speak about is hard work, hard work, hard work, hard work, hard work and they knew that this country, what it had to offer is you is that you could control your own destiny. You had opportunity. And you had the number one thing which was and which is freedom."
Though Vergara got her first taste of fame at just 17 when she appeared in a Pepsi commercial, she didn't initially envision a future as one of the highest paid television stars. Instead the eventual Modern Family actress—raised on her family's cattle ranch in Barranquilla, Colombia—focused on dental school, marrying her childhood sweetheart Joe Gonzalez and welcoming son Manolo.
Divorced just two years later and with violence escalating in her hometown, she moved to Bogota, collecting more acting work until a travel show led her to Miami. But it would take more than a decade of steady acting gigs until she was able to become a citizen.
"It took me a lot of time to get my residence even though I was working here for a long time," she revealed on Jimmy Kimmel Live! of acing her 2014 naturalization exam. "But it was fun and I got all my questions perfect."
Two days before Christmas, a then-21-year-old Milan approached his mom and said he was headed toward America. With dreams of working in Hollywood as an animal handler and $100 from his dad tucked into his sock, the native of rural Culiacán, a city in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, spent weeks trying to penetrate the border at Tijuana.
"My life was just against the wall. It's almost like an animal in the zoo against the wall, back and forth, back and forth," he recalled in a 2019 interview with DailyMailTV. "Many times, I let the immigration catch me, so I can eat, because the Mexican police won't feed you, but the Americans do. At least they gave you bread with bologna and a coke and that gives you some sugar, and some carbs, and some salt. That's pretty much it. That's not a really healthy meal, but it at least kept you alive."
He was running out of options when, "This guy comes out of nowhere, very thin guy, dirty, and he's smoking a joint and he said, 'Do you want to cross the border? I'll charge you $100,'" he shared. "That for me was a sign, because nobody knows how much money you have."
After crawling through a canal and spending two months sleeping under freeways, washing cars and dishes, he made his way to Los Angeles, where he transformed a job as a dog walker into a gig washing kennels—and then into his own Pacific Point Canine Academy and finally a TV empire—with a little help from pal Jada Pinkett Smith, who hired him an English tutor.
"We come with the whole survival spirit, fate, passion to feed our families," Milan, who became a U.S. citizen in 2009, said of himself and his fellow immigrants. "We left home not because we wanted to. It's because there are no opportunities, so we are here to push your economy faster than you could ever think. We're the fuel."
Most of the icon's 70-some trophies are displayed inside her office at the home she shares with husband Emilio Estefan—with four notable exceptions. Her three Grammys "are on the mantel in my living room—they are very special," she told People, as is the Presidential Medal of Freedom she and Emilio were each awarded by President Barack Obama in 2015 for their contributions to American music.
The singer—who came to Miami from Cuba at age 2 with her schoolteacher mom Gloria and her Vietnam War veteran father José—first met her husband in 1975 and began fronting his band, the legendary Miami Sound Machine.
"Emilio and I were the first couple to receive it together," she said of their prestigious medal. "We're immigrants who came to this country with nothing, and this country tells you, 'You can be who you want to be.' Our cultural differences are our strength and only enrich this country. The United States is supposed to be a place of freedom and opportunity for everyone, and we cannot allow that to change."
Tapped to executive-produce Netflix's 2019 docu-series Living Undocumented, the Texas native felt particularly inspired. "In the 1970s, my aunt crossed the border from Mexico to the United States hidden in the back of a truck," she revealed in an op-ed published in Time that October. "My grandparents followed, and my father was born in Texas soon after."
Two decades later, she continued, "in 1992, I was born a U.S. citizen thanks to their bravery and sacrifice. Over the past four decades, members of my family have worked hard to gain United States citizenship. Undocumented immigration is an issue I think about every day, and I never forget how blessed I am to have been born in this country thanks to my family and the grace of circumstance. But when I read the news headlines or see debates about immigration rage on social media, I feel afraid for those in similar situations. I feel afraid for my country."
While she acknowledged that immigration is a divisive, complicated issue that's generated countless arguments and few clear-cut solutions, "Immigration goes beyond politics and headlines," she noted. "It is a human issue, affecting real people, dismantling real lives. How we deal with it speaks to our humanity, our empathy, our compassion. How we treat our fellow human beings defines who we are."