Spring 2010

Imagine us, two friends, me, a "gringa", in my early 60s, and Lina, a Mexican, just over 40.  We are sitting on the couch in the downstairs room of my little rented casita in Pátzcuaro. It is grey outside and raining. We are both knitting scarves, talking about life, and relaxing together. 

She tells me that when she was a child on cold rainy days like this her mother would build a little fire on the floor and they would sit around it trying to stay warm.  She remembers being alone there with her mother feeling close to her, although she believes some of her siblings must have been there too. They were no doubt hungry at that time, as they were much of the time, but they were together, and warm, and her mother would tell stories of her childhood. 

I'm guessing that the warmth of the love Lina and her mother shared, plays a big part in what makes Lina the loving person she is. 

“It is so hard to imagine you living in poverty, sitting on the bare floor around a fire built inside the house.”, I say.  “No”, she said, “Nobody can imagine my life as it was, not even my children.”

Lina was born in a “popular” suburb of Mexico City. Suburbs in Mexico are where the poor people live and “popular” in Mexico, when referring to a town, means a town teaming with people living in poverty. They lived there until Lina was 4 years old. At that time  Lina was the 5th and youngest child of her parents, Maria and Juan (All names are changed except Lina's.) They had a house and ran 2 businesses from their home, one selling chickens and the other selling wood.

Lina’s mother told her the early years with Juan were good years and that Juan was good to her and their children. He liked to travel and explore and he would take them on trips around Mexico to see the sights as a family. Unfortunately, this was before Lina was born. But, still, they had enough to eat and a house to live in, even a car and a TV, for Lina’s first 4 years.

One day, not long before Lina was born, a young girl of around 16, named Elvia, arrived at their doorstep with her baby daughter, Alicia. She was hungry and had no place to stay the night. Maria wanted to give her a place and to feed her and the baby. Juan said “no”, that the girl had a bad reputation and she should not stay there for even one night. But Maria was kind-hearted and felt worried for the baby, so she persevered and finally persuaded her husband to let them stay the night. Thus, Elvia came into their lives and never left, and things began to change.

After a couple of weeks with them living together in the house, Juan suggested that Elvia move to another house and manage another one of his businesses selling wood.  Of course, Juan and Elvia ended up sharing more than a business. When Maria discovered the situation, she told him it was okay with her but, “please, do not leave me”, and so for a time things went on. Lina was 6 months old when her father moved out to live with Elvia. 

Unfortunately he didn’t stay away. He returned often and he had become violent.  Juan insulted Maria regularly and put her down verbally, robbing her of any sense of self-esteem she might have had. And he beat her horribly over and over. Many times she ended up having to go to the hospital. Still, she stayed with him!

Finally, one day Juan had Maria on the floor beaten unconscious while the children looked on in horror. Then, suddenly, he took up a long thick piece of lumber, and held it up ready to finish killing Maria. One of Lina’s sisters threw herself over her mother and Maria was saved to continue her life. 

Still, Juan continued to be a part of their lives, coming and going at will. During this impossible time another baby was born, the last of Lina’s full blood siblings, Lucas. At the same time, Elvia bore him a daughter, the first of their 5 children together. The business began to go downhill, the situation getting worse and worse. 

Up to this point, except for the horrible violence, the family was living in simple but comfortable enough circumstances. There was a house, somehow in Maria’s name, a car, a TV, and enough to eat. But things were soon to get much worse. 

Maria found a lover. Somehow papers were Xed, as Maria could never read nor write, and one day a woman came to the door and demanded that the family leave. The lover had sold Maria’s house to this woman! 

Lina remembers the day when she and her 4 older siblings and little Lucas  waited on the patio surrounded by what furniture and few things that still were theirs. Their mother was off looking for where they could go. Lina was 4 years old. 

Then she remembers a tiny room with 2 beds, a stove, and a TV, nothing else. The stove and the TV were soon also sold. They lived there for about 6 months As Lina begins to describe this time our eyes begin to tear up. We are sitting in the sun on my patio. I go inside to get us some Kleenex.

The room was out in the country in a town called Iztapalapa. They lived in a “vecindad”, a one story building made up of about 5 rooms, each one occupied by a family. Lina was 4 at the time and little Lucas was 2. Her 2 older brothers, Marco, 6, and Luis, 10, lived there also. Her sister Carmen, 8, lived with her father’s cousin. The oldest child, Renata, was 12 and was living nearby with her husband!

Not long before this Renata had been quite ill. When her mother took her to the doctor it turned out she was pregnant. Maria insisted that she marry the father, a 30 year old divorced neighbor who had children the same age as Renata.

Back in the room where the family had gone to live, little Lina and Lucas spent much of their time alone. Maria had had to go live and work as a “maid” in another family’s home to earn the money to feed her children. No doubt she had to care for other children there, doing for them all the things she wished she could do for her own. She was only able to return from time to time to bring food. 

When he was at “home”, Luis would act as the parent, preparing what food there was, but he and Marco went to school during the day. Each day Renata would bring by the same pasta soup. Lina now finds it impossible to eat that kind of soup. 

Lina has vivid memories of being there, 4 years old, huddled in a corner with her baby brother 2, terrified, hugging and crying. She remembers, too, spending time outside in a field pulling the neighbors beets in order to have something to eat. Of all the years, and of all she has gone through, Lina remembers this time as the worst. One day before she had been living in relative comfort, her mother at home with her, and the next she was alone with her brother far from anything she knew, hungry and scared. 

Recently, some 40 years later, Lina went to Mexico to visit her mother. All of Lina’s brothers and her sister Renata (who is still married to the same husband!) where there. They began to reminisce. As they sat together talking about those days in that “vecindad”, Lina and Lucas recollecting being huddled together alone, hungry and scared, Lucas began to cry and then he sobbed, and he sobbed. I think of him as little Lucas, and imagine him as part of a little bundle of fear made up of him and his big sister, Lina, but he is a man over 40 now. And he sobbed and sobbed as they remembered. (Sadly, Lucas died a few years ago.)

Lina does have one or two happy memories of that time when she lived in that room clutching her little brother. One was the Chinese lanterns. She remembers the town’s people making the lanterns of many colors, then lighting little fires inside them and launching them into the night. They floated up into the sky, brightly lit in all different colors and slowly disappeared. Beautiful. 

The other was a enormous clay outdoor oven where the women were making giant loaves of bread to give to the dead for the night of the dead. The loaves were golden brown and smelled delicious. The women gave Lina some bits of that bread, which were as wonderful as they smelled and looked.

After about 6 months of living in that room, Lina and her 3 brothers were taken to live with her father’s sister, Alicia, and Alicia’s adult son Pepe. If the time just before was the worst in Lina’s childhood, this time might have been the best. 

Pepe, a bachelor, become the father Lina never had. He treated the kids with love and care, taking them on outings, to movies, celebrating their birthdays, playing games with them, and making them oatmeal in the mornings. He spent extra time with Lina and Lucas giving them their own little classes while their brothers were in school. Lina began to read at this time, something that she has loved doing ever since. 

Pepe, like Maria, had a big influence on Lina, showing her the value of love. 

Suddenly, from Lina’s viewpoint, Maria had a new boyfriend and without a word to anyone, and with no time for a goodbye or thank you, Lina and her brothers were moved out of Alicia and Pepe's house into another room in another “vecindad” with her mother and her new man, Martin. Here she was again, torn from what had felt like a stable and loving home with her aunt and cousin to live with this stranger. The room was similar to the terrible room she had lived in before, but this time at least her mother was there.

Soon there was “good” news as Maria’s “co-padre” offered her the chance to buy a piece of land for practically nothing . Having lost the house they had lived in, Maria was desperate to own a place where they could live. Of course the land had a story.

The co-padre and many others had taken over a piece of land as squatters. As it was not their land, the government caused them many problems coming and going, trying to violently evict them. The various squatters also had their disagreements which often became extremely violent. This was a ugly and dangerous place to live. Still, the squatters stayed and improved the area, each one claiming their own land and building their own houses. 

The co-padre lived alone in a tar paper shack next to a big tree where one night someone was hung and died. The co-padre was terrified and thus he made his "generous" offer to Maria. Maria, though she knew the circumstances, took him up on it. 

In order to avoid the anger of the neighbors, the transition was made in the dark of the night. Trebling in fear, they arrived at the house, but couldn’t find the door! In order to enter, they had to rip a hole in the tar paper wall. This is where Lina lived for the next several years, often cowering in fear at the things that went on around her, in the very “popular suburb” of Santo Martin. (I wonder if this is where Lina remembers sitting around the fire with her mother.)

During the next few years Maria was able to stay home more and care for her children, though she worked doing ironing or taking in clothes to wash. In spite of a serious drinking problem Martin was good to them for a time. Lina remembers her mother fixing dinner for her and her siblings when Martin was not at home. Lina would save a plate of food for him. When he got home he would insist that the children share it with him.

Things were soon to change. First a new baby boy was born dead and then, when Lina was 10, her little half sister, Valentina, was born. Martin began abusing his wife and her children, sparing only Valentina and Lina. Lina was not beaten, but she had to stand by and watch as the others were thrown and hit and bloodied. Her worst memory of this is of Luis stepping in one time when Martin was violently beating Maria, and bashing in Martin’s teeth!

I imagine that seeing her mother and siblings beaten, but not being beaten herself, and feeling so helpless, has something to do with her long time desire to help suffering children.

The family continued to live in the tar paper shack surrounded by their angry neighbors in this land that was not really anyone’s. Finally the government decided to give the people the land and to improve it with electricity and roads and such. This would have been all good, but it also meant that the families would have to begin paying taxes and fees which they could not afford.

Along came an organizer, one lone man, Sebastian, who organized 50 women to protest with him. For two years he and the 50 women went into Mexico City almost every day and protested in the Zocalo. They met with various governmental underlings as they tried to meet with the president. They marched and sat and returned over and over. Then, finally, they lost the land. It was not the loss of the land that made Martin angry however; it was his wife’s determination and her independent actions that infuriated him. This gave him the needed excuse to beat his wife even more.

Lina wondered at the time why her mother didn’t just stay home and not make Martin angry. Now she feels awe at her mother’s determination and bravery. She understands how badly she didn’t want to lose her land for a second time.

Incredibly, though all this, Lina still ended up feeling sorry for Martin. She believed his alcoholism was an illness. When he come home drunk at night, she would bring him food and he would thank her and call her “Lino”, his pet name for her. Martin was never violent with Lina, though causing one’s child to observe her mother and siblings being abused is it’s own form of violence. In any event, Lina cared for Martin in spite of all that happened. I could see this in her face as she talked about him today, in the sun on my patio. 

When Lina was 14 her mother ended up in the hospital. She was extremely stressed and ill. Her doctor called in all the children and told them their mother would not survive with all the stress, and that they must make Martin leave. Since Lina was the only one who did not completely despise Martin, and who could even bear to speak to him, she was elected to tell him. She called him aside. “Martin”, she said, “I have to talk with you”. “OK, Lino” he said. “Of course”. And they sat down together. She began to tell him what the doctor had said, but could hardly speak having burst into tears. “The doctor said you have to leave.” “OK, Lino. I will go.” And he did.

Several months later he arrived back at the house in clean clothes, shaved, sober, with his AA sponsor at his side. They persuaded Maria and the family that he was ready to return and be a good father and they were right. He was taken back into the house where he remained clean and sober. He worked and brought money home to the family. He was not violent and he was good to them all – a dream come true. A least for a while!

One day Martin's son from a previous marriage arrived a the door and asked for some help, and Martin provided it. Unfortunately, the first wife got wind of the change that Martin had undergone and had asked him to come back to her. Away he went, only to return for a while when he was ill and needed some help.  While he was with his first wife he did not provide any support to Maria or her kids. 

And thus the cycle repeated and repeated.

Various Memories

One day big sister Lina set out to iron Lucas’s shirt. It was his only shirt and, unfortunately, was made of some sort of cheap synthetic material that melted as soon as it was hit with the iron. To Lina and Lucas’s horror a big hole was immediately formed in the middle of the front of the shirt. Always resourceful, Lina got out a needle and began to sew on a patch. But suddenly she made a bad stitch and the needle was excruciatingly pushed under her thumb nail all the way to the quick! Needless to say she began to scream. Lucas tried to pull it out but he couldn’t. “I’m going to die. I’m going to die”, she screamed. “You’re going to die. You’re going to die”, he screamed. And there they were again, huddled, afraid, crying, and screaming. A neighbor came and pulled it out. And nobody noticed. 

Lina may have been 8 or 9 at the time. Often she would work in other people’s homes washing dishes in order to earn a few pesos. Finally, one day, when her thumb was completely infected and swollen to twice it’s normal size, the woman she was working for noticed it. She cleaned it for her. Her thumb nail is still a bit deformed. She showed it to me today as she told me the story and I felt the ridge right in the middle of her nail all the way from the tip where the needle went in to the bottom of the nail where it hit the flesh.

While Lina had started to work washing dishes in people’s homes when she was about 7, little Lucas was selling water. It was rare that anyone had any running water in their make-shift houses. Lucas would take the long walk to the town well and get two pails of water which he would take from house to house to sell. 

One day little Lucas had a new shirt. He was so proud as he buttoned it up getting ready to go out and show it off. It wasn’t often he got a new shirt. To his horror, when it was all buttoned up he found that the shirt-tails were different lengths. Still, he wanted to go and show it off, so he got the scissors and cut the longer one off to make them match. Good idea, except he soon discovered that in his hurry he had buttoned his shirt wrong from the top. Now his shirt really did have tails of two different lengths!

Lina's sister Carmen lived with their father's cousin where she was well fed and clothed making Lina quite envious. Sometimes Carmen would come to the house with her Barbie dolls and show them off to Lina. No one Lina knew had such wonderful dolls, but Carmen never allowed her to touch them saying she was too dirty and would spoil them. Sometimes Lina would run into Carmen in the street, Lina scruffy in her dirty patched dress, and Carmen with her friends dressed nicely carrying their Barbies. “There’s my sister”, Lina would shout. “Hi, Carmen”. But Carmen would turn away and tell her friends she didn’t know her. 

Recently when Lina and her siblings began to talk of their childhoods and how it had affected each one of them, Lina began understand and forgive her sister. Lina learned that though the cousins gave Carmen many things, she had to sleep in the servants quarters and was not treated as part of the family. Carmen longed for a family, but also wanted the things that money could buy.

When Carmen was about 14 she moved in with another "family" where she felt welcomed. Lina describes her as desperate to feel a part of a real family that also could provide for her. The family didn’t live far from where Lina, now about 10, was living with her family and Martin. Lina heard that there was a lot of drinking of alcohol in the house and she was afraid for Carmen. She went to the house and saw that Carmen was drinking so got her brother, who went and took her away. Still Carmen returned to the house where she lived off and on. Maria finally went to retrieve her once and for all. Lina later learned that this was a house of prostitution and Carmen was being indoctrinated to become a young whore. 

Carmen was married at 16. She now lives with her husband in Florida working as a maid!     I wonder whose children get the chance to love her?

From the time Lina was 4, until she was 7, she hadn’t seen her father. One day a scared little Lina was invited to go with her older sister to visit her father. He gave her a kiss and a few coins. At that time Lina and her family were living in complete poverty, with little to eat and rags on their backs.  Her father was relatively well off. He and Elvia traveled and enjoyed life. 

Suddenly that kiss and the coins gave Lina hope that maybe things could improve.  She sent him a nice note asking if her would buy her a dress and shoes. A few days later her father sent for her. She was excited and happy because she was sure he would give her the dress and shoes she had asked for. Instead, as soon as she arrived at his house he began to yell at her. He had called her over to deride her for having spelled a couple of the words in her note incorrectly. Lina left terrified and, of course, with no new dress or shoes. 

Lina’s father had 5 children with Elvia. They all lived with him as did Alicia, the first child of Elvia, who was not Juan’s daughter. Juan physically abused all the children in that family and Lina’s two older brothers. He was never physically abusive to Lina, but she observed him with the others. He was particularly abusive with Alicia who was unaware that he wasn’t her biological father. 

Though Lina was terrified of her father, she was envious that Alicia got to live with him, as they had a house and what should be the basic comforts of home, food, clothes and shelter. One day, when she was 7 or so, probably not long after the event when she had asked for the dress and shoes,  she told Alicia that Juan wasn’t her father. She has felt guilty about it ever since. From that time on things got worse for Alicia.  Before that Alicia had accepted her beating as that of a daughter. (What a concept!) When she knew she wasn’t his daughter, she became  rebellious and protested, saying he had no right to tell her what to do. And the beatings and abuse became worse.

As we sit on my little patio on the 4th or 5th Wednesday of our lovely new tradition of weekly visits,  I continue to be fascinated hearing her history so full of pain and to see her so full of love for the orphans she works for, the abused women she tries to help, for her own children, and for life itself. 

Lina tells me more about her father. She visited him more frequently after that unhappy time when she wrote him to ask for a dress and some shoes. In spite of all the horrible stories she tells, I hear some respect and sympathy for him coming through, though in the end she says, “He was not my father, only the man who gave his sperm for me to come into this world”. 

After Juan left Lina's mother and moved in with Elvia, his businesses went under. Lina says he later told her it was because Maria was a witch and put a curse on him.  Elvia ended up working in a factory.

Juan would buy up a bunch of pumpkin seeds, cook and salt them, and he and his sons would package them in little plastic bags. He’d carry them into the Merced (a giant market in Mexico City) where he would sell them. When he returned he brought back a big bag with peanuts, oranges and jimicas. He’d get into his bed and start watching Mexican movies and eating the peanuts, oranges and jimicas, scattering their skins around him. She assumes he also brought home some money for the family! “He had an old falling apart TV but he could always rig up something to make it work.” she says. "He had to have his movies."

Lina often visited her father’s home in her early teens. One time when she arrived she found all the children, a baby and 4 others the oldest being close to Lina’s age, crying. She learned that Elvia had left the home taking one boy, Pedro, with her. Lina’s half siblings told her their father was depressed and drinking heavily. “Please stay and help us, they begged”. And she did. She returned to Maria’s home to tell her the plan, then went back to be the “mother” of her father’s other children. 

Soon Juan arrived crying about how much he loved Elvia and how much he missed her. He begged Lina to go to the factory where Elvia worked and ask her to return. Lina went and confronted Elvia as she left work. Elvia told her that she, Lina, was “old enough to understand”. She couldn’t return to Juan as she was now with another man. 

Lina describes the next several months as rather pleasant. She didn’t mind being mother to the other children, cooking, cleaning, taking care of the baby. Then one nice sunny day when “we were all at home and all was fine, suddenly "Papa saw Elvia coming down the road with Pedro.” She had decided to return and Juan was thrilled. 

Lina was devastated that her father would take her back after he had been left for another man. She immediately packed up and left the house without eating the food she had prepared for the family, and she never returned even to visit, except twice more after she was married. Lina had lost respect for her father.

The last time Lina saw her father he was extremely ill in bed. He was in diapers, blind, had no teeth and had bed sores. Elvia was begging Maria to take him back but, good for her, she didn’t. Lina’s sister Carmen was still involved with her father and had kept asking Lina to come and visit. Finally she did. She took her 3 children, the youngest being 3 at the time, to meet their grandfather. Juan was very happy to see them. He gave them lots of kisses and tried to sing for them. 

Lina was kind to him on the visit she and her children made, but inside herself she did not forgive him. When, a few months later, Carmen called to say their father had died and asked her to come for the services Lina refused. “No”, she said, “This man was not my father!” 

Tall for her age

Last Wednesday when Lina and I sat down to talk about the past, after drinking our coffee and relaxing a bit as we reviewed the week, Lina told me what it was like to be tall for her age. Although much of it was hard at the time, her descriptions had us laughing. 

“Because I was so tall people expected a lot more from me and were often surprised by my responses. They’d ask me how old I was and I’d tell them my age. Oh, they’d say, that explains it! And I never understood what it explained. People often told me I was lying. When I was 8 or 9 I had friends who were 15 and 16. They had boyfriends. Sometimes the boys would talk with me and flirt a bit. Then I’d say something silly and they’d ask me how old I was. Goodbye, they’d say. Still, I didn’t understand. I was really innocent.”

One day the man, Sebastian, who was helping the women of the barrio try to find housing, asked Lina if she’d like to go to a movie. Her mother gave permission and off they went. The movie began and Lina was enthralled. What a treat! Suddenly she felt Sebastian put his arm around her. She felt very scared and uncomfortable and began to cry. Sebastian was totally embarrassed and finally asked her how old she was. “Oh”, he said, “that explains it!" 

Lina didn't understand how it was that  the other girls would go to dances and they would “return with babies”. She didn’t understand, but she knew enough not to go to dances. She knew she didn’t want a baby without a husband. 

Being tall and Lina’s Education

If you met Lina you would find her to be a very intelligent and well educated person. She loves to read and talk about many different ideas. She knows about all sorts of things and can speak English fairly well, though she is usually far too timid to do so. 

When Lina was 6 she began her formal schooling. At that time they lived in the tar paper shack in Santo Martin. Before that she had begun to read a bit when her cousin Pepe had read to her and little Lucas. She was very excited about finally going to school. 

The nearest school was in Santa Orsula, which was an hour’s walk from where she lived. She had to make the walk alone every day, along unpaved city streets, passing stores and shacks, markets and bars. She knew only one route and she was scared all the way there and back. She “walked and walked and walked, always on the lookout for something dangerous." On one street there lived a disabled man in a wheel chair. He had no legs and for some reason he seemed to enjoy scaring little children. Lina was terrified of him and dreaded running into him. If he was there when she was going by, he’d push himself into the road and shout out. Because she was too afraid to try and find another route she had to submit herself to this fearsome man whenever he wished to amuse himself this way. She walked this route alone for 2 years when she was 6 and 7 years old, one hour each way!

Lina loved school and remembers it with lots of pleasure. It was a big school with "excellent teachers".  She learned to read very quickly. She remembers one kind teacher who would bring breakfast for those who, like Lina, had probably had to leave home with little or nothing to eat. 

The other great thing about this school was that it was next to the market where cousin Pepe had a stall and sold fruit every day. After school let out, Lina often would go over to the market and find Pepe. He’s drop everything, leave his stall, and take Lina by the hand to buy her some tacos or something else to eat. “Pepe was a wonderful man and he had the biggest, most wonderful smile”, she tells me.

After 2 years they had build a new school in Santo Doming where they lived. Maria told her to enroll in the school for her 3rd year of school, and sent her off to do so alone. Lina had no idea how to enroll in a school but off she went, uncombed, in ragged clothes and rather unkempt. As she wandered around trying to figure out what to do, a woman spoke to her. She asked her how old she was. “Oh”, she said, “That explains it.” Lina, of course, didn’t understand what it “explained”, but now thinks it was her unkempt appearance. In any event, the woman helped her enroll and she there she went, to the big new school with 5 floors, for the next two years. This school was only a half hour walk from her house, rather than an hour’s. 

For 5th grade Lina went to a little “school” nearby that was in someone’s house. They were supposed to build a new school there but it hadn’t happened yet and only Lina’s class met at the house. Unfortunately, Lina had to miss a lot of school  that year. By this time she was working for a family cleaning their house, doing the dishes and whatever else was needed. She’d go to their house every day early in the morning. They were good to her, buying her shoes and clothes and giving her comida (the big afternoon meal which is really dinner) and she was able to bring home a few pesos, but she didn’t finish work in time to make it to her afternoon classes.

Finally, after working with Sebastian and the other women for 5 years, Lina’s mother succeeded in getting land of her own in another nearby “suburb” on the outskirts of Mexico. It was time to move, but Maria told Lina that she needed to go live and work for a family in another place. Lina was 11 at the time and, of course, she did as her mother told her.

This family consisted of 3 women and 2 daughters. Lina describes these women as very large and fat, always shouting and using foul language. They drank and hit their daughters. Finally, after 2 months of living in fear Lina returned to her mother. 

Soon, she was shipped off again, this time to her sister, Renata’s, who lived in a  neighborhood on the other side of Mexico City. Lina was to help Renata with her new baby and her other 5 children, the oldest of whom was about Lina’s age. In addition she was expected to clean the house, go to the market and make the meals. Lina was still 11 years old.  She did a good job with all her duties, but was not always perfect. And Renata was easily angered. She often shouted and screamed at Lina. It seemed that, from her point of view, Lina was always doing something wrong and she wasn’t going to let her get away with it. Still, she was allowed to attend the 6th grade in the local school which Lina loved.

Finally, however, Lina was fed up and returned again to her mother's. 

Lina decided that instead of trying to find a new school she would continue attending the same school for the rest of the year, when she would graduate from primary school. Her plan was to travel for the 2 hours necessary on the bus and metro in order to get there.

This worked for a short time until one day Lina ran into her teacher while she was waiting  for the bus. “What are you doing here?” the teacher asked. Lina explained. The teacher told her she needed to enroll in the local school and told her where to go. 

So there she went the next day, again all alone, to enroll in the new school. When she told the director she was 11 years old and wanted to enroll in the 6th grade he didn’t believe her. She was too tall and mature looking. He said, “When you are ready to tell the truth you can return and enroll in the school. It is a shame you tell lies when you are so young”. Though, of course, she was not lying, she felt shamed. She left that school never to return. 

She was afraid to return to the other school and tell the teacher what happened, but she didn’t give up! Lina loved school and loved learning so she signed up for adult education classes. Nobody there asked her age, and she was able to attend classes until time to graduate. At that time they sent her to her old school for her credentials. When she returned with them, however, they told her one had to be 15 years old to attend that school so she would not be able to get her certificate of graduation from primary school. 

Thus it is that Lina never officially graduated from primary school because she was too tall! 

Sebastian and the Feminists

Maria’s  land was land “in common” with many other women. So, though she owned her own land, it was part of common land. This is often the case with land in Mexico. There were 50 woman who shared this common land. One man alone, Sebastian, was the leader of these women. Later Sebastian helped 500 other women get land in another spot. Lina remembers him as short, with a long beard and long hair, and a big hat. All the woman thought he was wonderful and always cooked for him. Sebastian was the one who had worked with them to get the land and now he was helping them start many projects to provide money for them to live. Lina now suspects that he became very rich on these projects, but still, overall, he gave a lot to the woman.

Many of Lina's friends at the time were older than she, and were self professed, "feminists". They taught her about equal rights and Lina learned her own value. Still, she witnessed at least one of these young women bruised by her boy friend, and wondered how that could be. In any event, in spite of the “feminists”, it was only another year later that Lina was married at 16!

“Why”, I asked her, “did the older girls of 16 want to hang around with you?”  It all started when she met a neighbor, Verónica, the teenaged girl who lived next door. Verónica and Lina became fast friends and remained so until Lina left town with Jorge. So it was that Lina often hung out with Verónica and her teenaged friends and the boys sometimes found her of interest, until she spoke a bit and they realized she was still a child.

One of the big reasons people thought she was older, in addition to her being tall, is that all her clothes were hand-me-downs from the woman her mother worked for. Since she was so tall for her age, the clothes that fit her were from the older daughter whose taste ran to mini-skirts and shorts. Lina said that when she was 9 to 12 or so she was always dressed in these teenage type clothes. Later when she was a teen, she preferred to wear pants.

Various memories of those years

Lina asked if she could join a sewing project where a fiend worked and began working in the workshop sewing buttons. She, at 12, was a rather slow worker and only made about 5 or 10 pesos a week. Later, Verónica asked for work too and she was able to make 100 pesos a week. 

This sewing workshop was located in the common house for the properties of the 50 women of whom Lina’s mom was one. The common house also had places for kids to hang out. At 13 Lina spent a lot of time there playing chess with a bunch of boys. She says she was treated like one of the group, or sometimes as if she weren’t there. This was the case when the boys would talk about their “conquests” of girls. She said they would explicitly describe their sexual activities and she learned a lot – mostly that she didn’t want to date a local boy!

One day Lina was painting one of the rooms in the common house and managed to get pretty much covered with paint. After she cleaned her arms well with paint thinner one of the boys began to tease her. “You know, you are flammable now.” No, she didn’t believe him. He took a lighter and held it near her hands which burst into flames. Lina ran around waving her hands terrified as the boys laughed. Luckily an adult came along and put out the flames with a blanket and miraculously Lina's hands were not burned at all. She ran home scared and crying. Her mother returned to tell the boys off.

Lina’s mother never told her about menstruation. In fact, even when the evidence showed that Lina had her period her mother, nor her sisters, never mentioned it. Lina learned about menstruation one day when she was 11 years old and Verónica told her there was blood on her slacks and told her what is was and what to do. She also had these words of wisdom for Lina, all without any explanation: “Don’t play with boys or sit next to them or you will get pregnant. If you miss your period it means you are pregnant.” 

It was no surprise when Lina told me she missed her next period.  And, of course, then she was sure she was pregnant. Who could the father be? What was she going to do? Again, the poor little girl was terrified and demoralized. She was full of shame. She spent a whole month sure she was pregnant and clueless about what to do. Finally, her second period came and all was well. 

The beginning of the end of Lina's childhood

When Lina was 12, still in her bright colored mini shirts and shorts, there was a delivery of free planters to the neighborhood.  One of the people who was delivering these free pots was a young man of 20 named Jorge. Jorge was an artist who lived in Michoacan. Jorge noticed the young girl in the mini-skirt, but she didn’t notice him.

4 years later there was a big fiesta in the other community that Sebastian had organized. Lina attended the party and noticed a handsome young man there who she paraded back and forth in front of hoping he would notice her. Nothing happened however. 

Lina was good friends with Sebastian’s girlfriend, Lupita, and the three of them went to many parties together. One day Lupita arrived to say there was a party and that Sebastian had the car outside waiting. Lina consulted with her mother who was always comfortable having Lina go places with Sebastian.  So Lina went out to the car and there, with Sebastian, was Jorge the handsome older man she had seen at the party! 

That was the end of March. Each month after that Jorge came to take Lina out. Then one late night in December Lina was in the common house preparing for a Christmas party, making the decorations and such, when Lupita came in and said Jorge was outside and “let’s go”. Lina, as always, asked her mother who consented and off they went with her blessing. Lina didn’t have her blessing however when she didn’t return until a week later! (What happened during that week I do not know.)

As they came closer to the house, Lina became more and more nervous about what her mother would say about her disappearance for a week. She asked Lupita and Jorge to wait outside. Well, Maria was even more upset than Lina expected. She yelled at her, berated her, and screamed that she had to leave the house. Lina, crying, gathered up some clothes and ran out of the house to the waiting car. Jorge told her she was welcome to go and live with him.

And thus she did! 

Before we finished talking that day, with Lina running almost late to work, and me exhausted again from just hearing, Lina told me this: “I am so happy now. My heart is content that I no longer have the resentments that I felt so strongly before, and that I am liberated from the life I had that was so difficult and from the feelings that were so strong and angry.” What a joy it is to hear her say this! What a joy it is to see her so full of life and strengths! She’s a real survivor, but more than that, she is someone who brings love into this world, that so often seems quite bleak.

The transition from marriage to director a children's home

Lina and Jorge were together from when Lina was 16 until they were divorced when she was 40.  These were hard years, but she was a loving mother and her 3 children brought her much joy. They are now adults of whom she is very proud. During those years she also worked in her husband's business, learning various business skills that have served her well in her work with Casa Hogar.

Soon after her divorce she began working in a sandwich shop, and then doing Real Estate, which she continues very part time to this day. She began volunteering with a women's organization, and also helped out in a small private children's home. 

Soon thereafter, Lina got a job in a local orphanage. She worked and lived there 18 hours a day, 6 days a week for several years. She was the caretaker of 5 little boys who she quickly learned to love. She did all the things for them a mother would do, the things she had done for her own 3 children: getting them ready to start their days, and ready for bed at night, sleeping nearby in case of need, taking them to school, caring for them when they were sick, and when they were afraid, wiping their tears and cheering for their successes, playing with them, teaching them to respect others and themselves, and so much more! She also supervised the few other women who cleaned and cooked there. 

It was during these years that she learned what was needed to open a children's home, the skills to run it, and gained enough confidence to believe she could live her dream and open one of her own. She loved working with these 5 boys, and it would be hard to leave then, but she had became more and more aware of all the other destitute and abused children in the streets of Pátzcuaro who had nowhere to go. She longed to help them. And thus her dream began to take shape. 

Click below to see the result of Lina's dream.