La Construcción:
A door to prosperity for some Hispanics

by Garry Kranz
for Virginia Business
May 2006

At 26, Juan Cabrera is one of the youngest project managers in Virginia, if not the mid-Atlantic region. His job with Southland Concrete Corp. in Dulles entails making sure construction jobs run on schedule and within budget. Not bad for a kid who didn’t really want to work in construction.

His pathway into the field differed slightly from many Hispanics who work in Virginia’s construction sector. Although born in El Salvador, Cabrera came to the United States at 14 when his father took a job as a carpenter with Southland. He learned English and graduated from South Lakes High School in Reston. When he joined Southland at 19, he already was fully acclimated to life in America. Today, he has eased comfortably into the American middle class.

Like many of Southland’s employees, Cabrera owns a small stake in the company. That’s because Southland established an employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP, several years ago. Under the arrangement, employees invest in Southland stock, ostensibly giving them an incentive to work harder and remain with the company.

Cabrera earns a nice living, enough to support a family and home in the suburbs. In February, he and wife Yvette celebrated the birthday of 1-year-old Jocelyn, the couple’s first child. And last year, Juan Cabrera earned his U.S. citizenship after being sponsored by his bosses at Southland. “I knew I wasn’t going back to El Salvador,” Cabrera says. “This is where my family lives, and it’s where I’m going to spend the rest of my life.”

For many Hispanics, Cabrera’s story serves as inspiration to achieving the ultimate goal: settling down to enjoy the fruits of America’s bounty. Construction may be one of the surest paths to reaching that dream, at least in Virginia. Even so, other Latinos say they can’t get the jobs they want in construction, even if they have professional degrees from their native lands.

Although trained as an architect in her native Colombia, Paola Valencia was ignored by several architectural firms after arriving in Virginia several years ago. A striking beauty with piercing blue eyes and a perpetual smile, Valencia now works as an assistant to Carlos Sol, an El Salvador native whose Del Sol contracting company builds upscale residences in greater Richmond.

Before that, though, she worked in customer service with a major electronics retailer. That’s because architectural firms refused to seriously consider her, despite heaping praise upon her credentials. “They would tell me, ‘We don’t have anything right now but maybe check back with us in a year.’ It was just a polite way of saying no.”