u/clejeune

I read this post today in the Utah subreddit and it really bothered me more than it should. It was essentially about a substack extolling the wonderful news that is Utah.

https://thelibertylettersusa.substack.com/p/utah-is-not-a-theocracy-but-its-not?utm\_source%3Dapp-post-stats-page%26r%3D881u7y%26utm\_medium%3Dios=&triedRedirect=true

Anyway it prompted me to write this post. Every week I see on this sub people asking about why you left and what was the final nail. And for me that is a lot. Hindsight being what it is I should have left a lot sooner. It would have been better for my family and I really feel like I caused them a lot of unneeded harm by staying as long as I did. When I left, my whole family left.

First a little about me. I was born in Nicaragua. My mother is from Venezuela and my father was from Nicaragua. He was in the military (60+ years ago) and trained back and forth in Cuba. When I was just a small child we emigrated to Florida as “Cubans.” I grew up mostly in a small immigrant community outside Miami. Then one day this lady missionary knocked on our door.

Needless to say that changed everything. We ended up moving to Utah and I ended up serving as a missionary in the France, Bordeaux mission from 91-93. I actually left from Florida and my family moved while I was gone so I came “home” to Utah. And as we are taught to do I immediately started looking to get married. Long story short my first marriage to a nice Utah girl didn’t work out. Then I met this wonderful, kind, beautiful woman from Venezuela. She wasn’t a member but she was open to changing that. So before long we have four kids and we are moving around.

Initially we were in Provo. Now mind you, my wife has very dark skin almost what you would consider African. (I know I’m probably doxxing myself here and may delete this later). She is extremely well educated. She has a master’s degree and speaks four languages fluently. I’ve spoken English since my teens (and I’m 52 now). So needless to say we could hear what people were saying. But we just chalked it up to that ward, that bishop.

We moved to Lindon. Same problems. People would enunciate their English like we didn’t know what they were saying. Bitch my wife speaks French and German. We would hear whispers in the halls about “illegals,” wetbacks and such. Unrelated to all of this I lost my job and we had some real financial issues. I joined the army. And I thought things would be different.

Long story short, 9/11 happened, I lived at Fort Campbell (Kentucky) and Fort Bragg (North Carolina) and served a year in Iraq before getting out. And you know what? Their wards weren’t any different. We faced the same racism in three other states at the LDS wards there.

We moved back to Utah after I got out. By this time we kinda had one foot out of the church. We moved to West Valley and told ourselves it would be different. It wasn’t. I made a deal with my wife (ok it was her idea) to go the first Sunday without the kids and pretend we didn’t speak English. I bet you can guess what happened. There was all kinds of talk about illegals and food stamps and welfare and wetbacks. And we heard every bit of it.

We stopped going. But it wasn’t until Prop 8 happened that we finally decided to remove our names and really leave. My mom is still a member and still believes to this day (and voted for Trump).

We left Utah and moved to Costa Rica, then later Colombia. All four of my daughters still live in Utah and I visit as often as I can. I was atheist for many years and then found Liberation Theology and rejoined Christianity.

Thanks for letting me get this off my chest. I can’t believe that substack bothered me as much as it did.