Artemio Benítez Solano was born and raised in a small rural town in Mexico, where from an early age he dreamed of coming to the United States to work in agriculture. At sixteen, with his father’s reluctant permission, he left home with little more than a backpack and traveled by bus to Mexico City and then to Tijuana, where he crossed into the United States with a group of migrants. After a difficult journey through Los Angeles and Oregon, he found work picking strawberries near Hillsboro before eventually moving to Portland, where he held jobs at McDonald’s and local restaurants. In the 1990s, Benítez Solano settled in Washington’s Tri-Cities region, where he worked in construction alongside his brothers-in-law and later founded his own company. Over his decades in the United States, he built a family and contributed to the growth of the local Hispanic community. Reflecting on his life, he expresses pride in his children’s education—especially his son studying computer science—and hopes that his story will inspire future generations to value hard work, family, and perseverance.
View the oral history on YouTube
]]>