Andrea González would be the first to tell you she grew up in what she calls a “bubble of privilege” when it came to truly understanding America’s broken immigration system. 

“I know it’s dumb because I grew up in two different countries,” she says, referring to her childhood when she split her time between El Paso, Texas, and Juárez in Chihuahua, Mexico. “I thought that was everyone’s reality.” 

González's perspective shifted permanently when, during her time studying at the University of New Mexico, she started an organization that brought music to places where it was not always accessible like mental health facilities and jails. It’s what led this accomplished cellist to take a small ensemble to a detention center to play for a group of unaccompanied children captured trying to cross the border. The authorities insisted it wasn’t a jail, but the kids there weren’t allowed to leave. 

“I was like, ‘Then it’s a jail,’” she remembers. “So I wasn't really understanding what was going on, and I got curious, and I started investigating, and I was like, ‘Whoa! When people truly understand the immigration system, and they understand that it was meant to fail and to retraumatize the people it’s supposed to protect, there’s no looking away.’” 

With the scales now gone from her eyes, González devoted her life to immigrant justice, including helping create Equity Corps of Oregon, the nonprofit that offers legal support to immigrants. But perhaps her most impactful work has been with Sana Sana Centro de Salud y Expresión, the organization where the 32-year-old serves as co-executive director. 

Named after a soothing song that Spanish-speaking parents sing to their children after they get hurt, Sana Sana provides music classes and mental health services for immigrant children and their families with the goal of helping them heal from the often-challenging experience of emigrating to a new country.  

“What happens after you are fighting your case?” González asks. “What happens with all the demons, with all the trauma you keep accumulating and ignoring? We believe that immigrant families have suffered in silence enough. Now it's the time to be able to create spaces where people feel safe enough to express themselves and safe enough to reach out for support.” 

On the creative side, Sana Sana helped set up no-cost programs to let children of immigrants learn an instrument of their choice or to participate in a community choir. As well, they oversee Sana Sana Live, an online performance series where immigrant musicians share their work with curious young people. Beyond that, the nonprofit works to connect immigrants with culturally conscious mental health services, be it individual and group therapy, or counseling for couples and families. 

“What we kept hearing from community members was sometimes people were going to therapy, but they didn’t have a therapist that they could relate to or understand their background,” González says. 

She also says that her work with Sana Sana is helping rewrite the story of her family’s history in Oregon. When her father was a child, his grandfather moved the family to Woodburn, Oregon, to work on a beet and strawberry farm with the goal of saving enough money to return to Mexico. They encountered an exploitative system that piled mountains of debt on their backs, with everyone forced to work to pay it all off. The family eventually left for Texas where González grandfather continued to work in agriculture and entertain his friends and co-workers with his accordion. 

“When I originally moved to Portland,” González remembers, “I was giving presentations to agricultural workers about legal services that were available. To me, it was full circle. My dad told me he was extremely proud of me for coming here, but didn’t say why. The story he told me stays in my heart now and informs everything I do.” 

Photo by JP Bogan
Profile by Robert Ham