Aresnio Vega, Oral history interview and audio recording.

Interviews
Puerto Ricans--New Jersey
Oral history

The digital audio recording of the oral history interview conducted with Aresnio Vega.

Christopher López.

Interview conducted on Father’s Day, Saturday, March 7th, 2022

Courtesy of Christopher López. Copyright held by Christopher López. Restrictions are only in regards to publication; any researcher may view or copy any document in the collection.

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MP3

English
Spanish

Oral history (digital audio file)

1980s

00:08:00

192 kbit/s

Arsenio: [00:00:00] And then he came, my father, he was in Puerto Rico. He came I had to pick him up in a at at the airport.

Arsenio: [00:00:10] He say, that was Friday. I don't know if for some reason, when you die that day, don't make a difference where you go. My father came from Puerto Rico, and I want him to stay until Saturday because I used to work early in the morning. Well, he I don't know why it's so anxious to to go over there because, he told me, hey, I wanna see my daughter, I wanna see my daughter. By, I say by 10 o'clock. 9 or 10. I tell him, okay, get dressed, I take you over there. That was Friday. By 4 o'clock in the morning, she was there with the other one. I don't know if it's part of our life. You know? Well, they were I never see a fight between my sister and her husband. You know? And the kids, I used to go over there and the kids used to jump on me, and say, uncle, uncle, uncle! I say Friday, take my father to my sister's apartment. Right? Friday, about 9 o'clock or 10 o'clock. And I come we come back. By 4 o'clock, a friend of mine, my cousin, he used to have a girlfriend over there. He called me. There was a fire in the building, but I don't know if no. Because every every week where there is a fire, where, there's a lot of people living here. And then we went over there early in the morning about 5 o'clock in the morning. And the building, the fire is, was off. The fire, then, who was there? They didn't they don't find. By 6, 7 o'clock, they can find nobody. By 9, 10 o'clock, they tell us where they find the family. Altogether in one of the rooms upstairs because they live in the fifth floor.

Miriam: [00:00:08] A puesta con puesta de me cuñada, vivía un familia. Y esa muchacha era novia de un primo de el. Entonces, nosotros enteramos por ese fuego a las seis de la mañana. El primo del me llamó porque yo no podría creer. Me dijo, Miriam por favor es la verdad. El building donde Annie vive esta encendida en fuego. Hablé con la mama de ellos y me dijo Miriam es verdad. Yo dejé la nena aquí con una muchacha y nos arrancamos por allá. Ya cuando fuimos, el building había quemado completo.

Arsenio: [00:03:33] Well, the hard part of that is they told me they, I have to go to the morgue to identify them. And then, it was sad part because they got I remember it was 14 altogether. My family of 6.

Jeannette: [00:04:00] Our's was 7?

Arsenio: [00:04:00] Another family in the second floor was 4. And 3 more. I think there was between 12 14 people in there.

Jeannette: [00:04:12] El tuyo fue siete.

Arsenio: [00:04:12] I had to go. And then they got everything together, you know, in a small room. And you have to go 1 by 1, taking this cover and find out who it was. I have to identify 1 by 1. They got one over here, one over there. They put, they wasn't together.

Jeannette: [00:04:37] Tu estuviste solo?

Arsenio: [00:04:42] No. I had to help with my cousin. What she say, you know, you don't allow her to go inside.Part of our family, they allow me to go in there, but not her. Usually, I am they never, got, like, they died from smoke. Only my father and my brother-in-law, got a little, you know, burned, but nobody really was, you know, had big burns. In my family and the other family, they got one guy that's completely burned. But, I've think that the police, in that time, they don't care about nothing there. Because it wasn't after that, it was more fires. For a whole year, it was fires all over in Hoboken. I don't know. So they got some version that people would say that they wanna build condominiums. And that's what they did. They did it. A five story building they built 5 condominiums. Maybe they're gonna sell the house within that time because $60,000. If they got sell 5 apartment, they triple the price.

Jeannette: [00:06:39] Probably 10 or 15 years after the fact, you know, when I was a little bit older, and I was very curious because I was only 8 years old. You know, my sister and I were very young. I remember going to the library and getting as much as I could from all from the Hoboken library, you know, what was in the newspapers and stuff. It's like when somebody passes away, right, you mourn, you go through that. But when somebody passed away in in the degree like this, there's a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of, a lot of questions where, you know, there had to be somebody at fault. And then to kind of relive the fact that, hey, it was foul play. It was something that was done so wrong, you know, it was purposely done because I think that everybody could attest that 99% it was done on purpose. It was not something that was an accident. And you know and look right now we can't we know that we're not gonna get an answer as to why. We're not gonna get that. So trying to get that, it's not gonna be what we want. But to be able to say, what you said, to at least somebody's you know, my aunt and my cousins and my uncle, my grandfather didn't die with, you know, just a random clip in the newspaper.