FRESNO -- Claudia Valenzuela has two children. When the Culiacán, Sinaloa, mother was seven months pregnant with her second child, she chose to become a single mother.
Her oldest daughter, now 7, was 5, and Valenzuela decided to migrate to the United States to free herself from an abusive husband.
During a break from her day job as a salesperson at a furniture store in Madera, the native of Sinaloa says she didn't get married thinking she would end up divorced; it just happened. "Times have changed and for good," she says. "Women don't put up with much and we don't have to stay quiet. It's enough."
She says she doesn't want to give her children a bad image of their father, or to pitt them against him. "The one who made the mistake was me," she says, "for not looking out."
Even though ending her six-year marriage made her mother worry, Valenzuela knew that being far from the father of her children would bring tranquility for the family. She had to make a choice, she says, between a bad marriage in which the children would suffer, and giving the children a peaceful life with only one parent.
When she arrived in Sanger in the middle of 2005, she began a food business at construction sites around Fresno, selling food she prepared out of ice chests in her car.
"I didn't know how to do anything, or how to move here in the United States," she remembers, but she learned to make tamales, tortas and burritos.
In México, Valenzuela worked in the public relations department for a baseball team, but in the United States that didn't help her much; she didn't know how to speak English and she never worked during the six years she was married.
In Sanger, she arose at 4 a.m. to prepare the foodand have everything ready by 8 a.m., when she had to take her daughter to school. After that she would go to the construction sites, taking heryoungest child with her.
For three or four months she followed that routine until one day she met the owners of a "lonchera" (taco truck) and asked if she could work for them. Her new job was just as demanding, but at least she didn't have the responsibility of preparing and transporting the food.
One of the people she met was a sales employee for a radio station. That person encouraged her to look for a spot as talent for 'La Máquina de Fresno,' after learning that Valenzuela studied communications in México and had an aptitude with words.
Valenzuela, now known as 'La Potranca' on 103.1 FM during the afternoons, didn't initally have the courage to go to the radio station.
Prior to her audition, she accepted a job as a cashier at a Mexican products supermarket, but finally decided to try her luck in radio. It was Dec. 12, 2006, when she debuted on air for more than 12 hours, during the transmission of the celebration for the day of Virgin Mary.
"I am very thankful for this country because it is a place of opportunities," she emphasizes.
Now her children go to school and stay later in the 'After School' program. Valenzuela picks them up, feeds them, and at night, leaves them with her brother so she can head to the radio station.
Valenzuela's only concern before leaving México was the fact that kids in the United States know how to dial 911 and can manipulate parents with that when they are disciplined.
"The government is very influential when it comes to our kids growing up more rebellious, going to gangs or wanting to grow up independent when they depend on their parents their whole life."
She also makes it clear that she is not in favor of violence, but "sometimes you discipline your kids with the healthy intention of making them good people. For them to be good Christians, good human beings, people who are humble, for them to be prepared persons."
Valenzuela works even on weekends, Saturdays at the furniture store and Sundays on the radio.
Of her kids, she says, "They are the best kids in the world." Of her radio show, she says she has received "so much love, so many friends."
Valenzuela is aware of the lack of a paternal figure for her kids, but she says that "there are things that one can't rely on" and laments the lack of communication between her kids and their father.
She even recognizes that she has made the mistake of telling them that he sends them gifts when it is actually she who buys them for the kids.
"I know that it would be ideal for my kids to have a father, and they do have him, but he's not with them. He doesn't look after them as I would like him to."
Valenzuela says he sometimes sends money to the kids, but only when he wants to.
Valenzuela would be happy if her children's father would at least call them on the phone more consistently.
"I thought that I had not made a mistake in searching for a good father. And now it's too bad, I have to face whatever comes.
"He still throws it in my face that it is my fault, that if I don't live with him it is because I don't want to. But he knows why I don't want to live with him."
Her own mother waited more than 20 years to get a divorce from an abusive husband; Valenzuela says she knew she wouldn't follow the same path.