Special to El Rrun-Rrun
My father, Ricardo Francisco Roca Villavicencio of Bahía de Caraquez, Ecuador, was a stowaway on a ship from Bahía de Caraquez in 1938 at the age of nine, escaping the poverty and misery of his family’s hometown.
He hid in an ice room for three days with no food and water. The captain kept him on board, and after twenty years of roaming the seas, he settled in Brownsville, Texas. Despite having no more than a second-grade education, he and my mother, Mauricia Roca Chávez Nava of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, México, launched Roca Construction Company, building shrimp boats at the Port of Brownsville.
My three siblings and I worked at the shipyard throughout our childhood -I was typing 25-page contracts by the age of 15, and I learned to weld, drill, cut metal, paint, and sandblast alongside my brothers.
My father thought of shrimp boats as an encyclopedia because they require a little bit of everything, and if it was in the encyclopedia, we did it. The business did not survive the introduction of low-priced imported shrimp, but it did change my understanding of business and the course of my life.
The “richest” piece of my parents’ rags-to-riches story is their long trajectory of hard work, determination and perseverance. They continue to be the rock upon which I have built my life and I’m grateful to them for their unconditional love and support.