She is known as "nonna" in Italian, "abuelita" in Spanish and "Grandma" in English. But across cultures, the grandmother is the matriarch and foundation on which the family unit is built. In ethnically diverse East Boston, home to a large immigrant community, a new mural serves as a visual tribute to grandmothers and the values that residents of what is known as "Eastie" share across ethnic lines.
"It makes me feel identified," Salvadoran-native Guadalupe Gonzalez said of the mural, known as "Immigrant Grandmothers," which stands tall underneath an overpass along a park known as the East Boston Greenway. "I identify with these grandmothers that came with nothing, [like me], that came with a dream," said Gonzalez, a 59-year-old mother of two and grandmother of four. She shares a powder-blue, triple-decker home with two other immigrant families from El Salvador in what is now an area comprising mainly immigrants from Latin America.
