This article is part of a feature series by The Globe profiling individual students at Salt Lake Community College and the international journeys that brought them from their unique hometowns to their new homes in Utah.
Emmanuel Jiménez didn’t speak any English when he moved to Salt Lake City with his mother in 2018. They came from a small city in the western, coffee-growing region of Colombia called Manizales, where Spanish is the predominant language.
When they first arrived, Jiménez said his mother knew more English than he did.
“I thought that maybe because of [English] songs and movies and all that I would absorb some, but I didn’t know anything,” Jiménez said.
Jiménez, now a psychology major at Salt Lake Community College, originally came to Utah with his mother so she could become fluent in English and eventually return to her well-paying bank job in Manizales. They planned to stay in the U.S. for five years and then return to Manizales, where Jiménez’ father was also working in a bank and his brother was attending university.
Manizales is known for its universities, Jiménez said. The city is also known for its picturesque elegance, with surrounding forested mountains and volcano, coffee plantations and roasteries, and a vibrant culture that includes legal graffiti and a myriad of festivals.
Life in Manizales
Much like the U.S., Colombia is divided into multiple states, called “departments.” As the capital city of the coffee-rich Caldas department, Manizales is one of three major cities in what is known as the “Coffee Triangle,” or “La Zona Cafetera.”
According to Statista.com, Colombia produced 11.3 million 60-kilogram bags of coffee in 2023, amounting to about 15% of the world’s coffee production. This fact is not lost on residents of Manizales like Jiménez, who remembers his hometown for its smell of rain and coffee roasting.
“When you enter the city, you pass the plantations, so there’s the smell of coffee,” Jiménez said. “But when it’s roasted, that smell is very [strong].”
One reason the area outside Manizales can grow so much coffee is because of the amount of rain it receives. According to Colombia’s meteorological institute, IDEAM, the municipality experiences over 200 days of measurable rain annually.
“You know the smell [of rain] but it’s hard to explain,” Jiménez said while thinking about his hometown. “But that’s the smell of my city.”
Underneath the persistent shroud of rain clouds and fog is a sprawling, mountainous city. Manizales sits at just over 7,000 feet on a steep slope in the Andes mountains. In the distance, rising above the city skyline, is the Nevado del Ruiz volcano.
The city itself stands out from the surrounding forests with its mix of small, colorful homes and towering apartment buildings. Jiménez said the government provides financial support to homeowners in Manizales who paint their homes vibrant colors, but only those who have trouble paying for their utilities.
“Let’s say you cannot pay for water, and energy is kind of expensive … you can paint your house like pink, blue, orange, yellow … but if you’re in [a higher income bracket], they won’t pay you to do it,” Jiménez said. “So, it’s mostly for people who cannot afford their utilities.”
In addition to the colorful homes, the Colombian government allows legal graffiti, which Jiménez said covers the city.
“Graffiti is huge in my city,” Jiménez said. “They try to do that to make it more colorful for the people that go [visit]. It’s everywhere.”
“It’s legal, but you draw something that doesn’t make sense, of course they’ll erase it,” he continued.
Adding to the city’s vibrancy is its annual lineup of street festivals, the largest of which is the Manizales Fair in January. Bull running, a remnant of the Basque Spanish culture that is infused in Colombia’s heritage, used to be the main attraction of the annual fair, but it has since been outlawed due to outcries of animal cruelty.
Now, the festivals in Manizales tend to promote a mutual love of music, food, old cars, horse riding, and socializing with new people.
“You go and you can meet a lot of people,” Jiménez said. “In my case, it was good because you can hang around and go to parties … and the city, back then, was really secure to walk in … my city was known for [being] the safest city to walk in Colombia.”
Walking was important to Jiménez in his youth. Every day before school, he said his mother would give him money for a taxi or bus, but he’d opt to walk with his friends instead, saving the money for other things.
“I used to gather with my friends and walk to school and get a lot of fruit and food on the way,” Jiménez said. “Also, in Colombia, when it’s time to go home, there’s always a bunch of people outside the school selling things … it could be toys, fruit, anything. Every single day I would go for a mango or ice cream.”
Jiménez has been back to visit Colombia once since he moved to Utah. He has friends there, and he loves visiting the coastal, valley city of Cali, Colombia, as well as his hometown of Manizales, whenever he does go back.
“I was born in Colombia, I have a lot of friends in Colombia, so I have that love for Colombia,” Jiménez said. “But if you asked me if I would move back to Colombia, probably not.”
Moving to the U.S.
Jiménez, now 21, was barely 16 when he and his mother arrived in Salt Lake.
Jiménez’ grandmother, also from Colombia, has lived in Utah for over 20 years. When Jiménez and his mother first moved to Salt Lake City, they lived with her, and were soon joined by Jiménez’ father, who left his bank job to join his family in the U.S.
But there were adjustments that had to be made to live in the U.S., Jiménez said. Both of his parents had to become comfortable working jobs they weren’t used to. His mother started a cleaning company, while his father initially worked as a quality insurance specialist in a food production factory.
“My mother had never cleaned before,” Jiménez said. “Back in Colombia, we had people that used to clean for us. So, for me it was really hard, because I was used to seeing my mom with nice dresses, heels, and all that, and now … it’s different.”
“I don’t feel that cleaning places is a bad job – it’s a really good job,” he continued. “But I never thought that my mom would do that.”
Meanwhile, Jiménez had to learn English on-the-go while enrolled at American Preparatory Academy, a private high school in the Salt Lake Valley.
“When I went to [American Prep], I only met one [other student] that spoke Spanish to me,” Jiménez said. “For the first two weeks, he was the only guy who was pretty much able to follow me.”
Jiménez said he eventually made more Spanish-speaking friends who helped him through his first few years at American Prep. But he was determined to speak English fluently and took it upon himself to learn it.
Jiménez said he used Netflix to learn English by watching popular shows in English with English subtitles.
“The first show I watched was ‘Friends,’ where, you know, they’re so expressive, so you have a certain type of intuition of what’s happening,” Jiménez explained. “I was training myself to hear the word plus to know what word it was.”
Life at SLCC
While the Jiménez family initially only intended to stay in the U.S. for five years, they have become comfortable here. They have their own home now, and Jiménez’ older brother just came to live with them two weeks ago, after completing a degree in physical therapy at a university in Manizales.
Jiménez got his first-ever job in Salt Lake City a couple years ago. He said he enrolled at SLCC after completing high school at American Preparatory Academy to continue his education without the financial pressures that come with going to a four-year school like the University of Utah.
Jiménez takes all his classes at SLCC in English. He said he has gotten past the language barrier and now only needs occasional help with minor things like spelling and understanding more abstract concepts and passages.
“It was hard for me when I was in high school, but not anymore,” Jiménez said, before expressing gratitude for the resources that SLCC offers to non-English speakers.
“SLCC does a lot for their Spanish speaking students,” Jiménez said. “And for immigrants they have a lot of opportunities … I’ve been to the ODMA [now the SEEA] and they have a lot of people who speak Spanish. They help you a lot with things like financial aid, spelling, and understanding more difficult passages.”
Jiménez also said that, while the U.S. has been good for him and his family, making friends is harder than it was in Colombia.
“Maybe it’s my experience, but I’ve seen that Americans have their group of friends and they don’t meet more people … in Colombia, you know everybody, you’re friends with your neighbors and all that,” Jiménez said.
Regardless, Jiménez said he has a great group of friends here, and that one of their favorite things to do in the Valley is to go to Real Salt Lake games, where more than a few of the players are Colombian.
“One of [the players] is a really close friend of one of my friends,” Jiménez said. “Sometimes we get to go for free, and that’s why I go, because of my friends.”
“I like living here in the U.S.,” Jiménez concluded, explaining how it’s where he has developed a work ethic with his first job, which was with his mother.
“I got my first job here. I learned how to drive here. And I’m doing college here,” Jiménez said.
Jiménez’ goal is to complete his gen eds at SLCC and then continue with his education in the U.S., eventually seeking to become a therapist or a physician’s assistant and join the many in his family who are in the medical field.
