Latino immigrant who taught music to asylum-seeking children wants to set up his little school in Riverside

Ernesto Javier Hernández, who is in the United States on an asylum visa, believes that music saved his life when his family abandoned him at the age of 10 years

Photo: Go Nakamura / Getty Images

The vocation for the music of Ernesto Javier Hernández already came from afar. In fact, he believes that music was what saved his life when his family abandoned him at the age of 10 years , according to Pastor Eddie Ferguson, of the church of Riverside who claims to be trying to help this Nicaraguan immigrant.

Hernández, who since March lives in the United States thanks to an asylum visa, he seeks to create a small school to teach music to children from vulnerable families as He has already done with minors who were waiting in Mexico for their asylum cases to be processed, as Ferguson explains in an email to La Opinion and the teacher himself tells in an interview with Telemundo Noticias .

Ernesto he left from his native Nigaragua with $ 1.5 dollars in his pocket to begin a journey of months until reaching the Matamoros field, a border city located north of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. The Central American says that playing the flute was what allowed him to finance his trip to the north.

In a documentary in which he participated -and that was published in February-, Hernández He said that at the beginning of his nearly year-long stay at the camp, he put music aside. However, little by little he regained the habit of playing his instruments until sharing his experience with others became a need. (You can see his intervention in Oh Mercy from minute 5: 47).