By Michel Leidermann

The national television network NBC presented on Monday, March 24 at 9 in the morning, on the Today Show program, a segment about Laura Luz Castillo-Bahena, a 14-year-old who recounts her life as a Little Rock resident, filming and narrating her joys and her pain living the American Dream in Arkansas while overcoming the obstacles that face her as a Latina.

Laura is the daughter of Laura Castillo-Bahena, a Latina activist who directs the youth soccer league at the community center on Baseline Road in Little Rock and is part of the organizing committee for the Cinco de Mayo fiesta of LULAC chapter 750.

The producers of the program gave Laura Luz a video camera to document her life during a couple of months. The narration by Laura Luz says in some parts: “My name is Laura Luz Castillo-Bahena. I am 14-years-old and am in the 9th grade at Central High School. I live in Little Rock, Arkansas. I sing and dance and act in theater and am involved in many other activities. I also play soccer in the Youth Soccer Association, which is directed by my mother, on a girls team for 12-14-year-olds. I sing every year at the Cinco de Mayo fiesta and in other important places like Earth Day. I acted in the stage play ‘The King and I’ in the Little Rock Rep theatre. During the months I taped for the Today Show, I realized that I do many things, and even visited different places, and I discovered that my family really is very united.”

The video shows Laura receiving her camera and later getting ready to dance together with her girlfriends in the ballet folklorico group, she talks about the pain she sometimes feels when people call her “wetback” despite the fact she is American. Also, it shows the bullet holes on a house, something that she considers to be almost routine. But she affirms her desire to realize the American Dream; receive a good education, have a good place to live and a community that supports her. She says that the objective of the immigrants is to have a job and be able to live satisfactorily and with happiness, in the end just a normal life.

We congratulate Laura for her excellent performance and for the sincerity and warmth that she put into her filming.