Trabajando en dos paises, primero el primero

En correspondencia a Jessie González:

Hola, Jessie, buenos días, gracias por tu carta, sería una placer como siempre, dedicarle algo de tiempo para contarte acerca de los aspectos de mi vida de los cuales me preguntastes.

I was born and raised on a ranch outside of Rio Bravo, Tamaulipas. I have several brothers and sisters, six sisters, two brothers, so there are nine of us. My father owned a small farm near Rio Bravo where we lived a great part of our lives. Like most of the uneducated landowners of northern México, my father traveled to Tamaulipas from Guanajuato when the government was offering free land to anyone who would use it. Coming from an agrarian, completely uneducated background, my father and mother made a small boxcart, and along with a mule to carry them, traveled to the border regions of Tamaulipas where they received a small landgrant and my father began growing maiz and sometimes sorghum.

I'm not sure exactly why the government was giving away free land. I am aware that most of northern México was not very populated at all in the beginning of the twentieth century, and I am not sure if the land giveaway was to spread out the population, or to create a racial barrier between the United States and México.

Whatever the case, our ranch, like many others, neighbored people that we knew. I suppose that my father either came to Rio Bravo because there was a relative who invited him or he began inviting family to get the landgrants beside his own ranch. A lot of families did this and it helped keep extended families together. There was something like a small village that was formed merely because of the way people chose to distance themselves from one another. Imagine a circle with a dot in the center. the dot represented the village of people and the rest of the circle represented the 'parcelas' the farmlands of each family which lied next to each other.

When the seasons came to start planting seed, the irrigation system was made so that each family would get a specific amount of time to use the water on their 'parcela', so depending on the time of day or night, everyone had to be ready to use the water available when the time came. That was definintely a period of hard word. All of my brothers and sisters worked on the 'parcela' from a young age. Maybe five or six years old is how old we were when we started working out on the 'parcela'.

I think my life has been full of hard work from such an early age. Nevertheless, I still went to school, along with all of my brothers and sisters. There were some families out in the ranches who did not take their kids to schools so that they could work instead. But this was supposed to be against the law and many were scared into having their kids go to school at least until they left secundaria (which is the US equivalent to middle school).

My fondest childhood memory of school was when I was very young. A man came to class who was an art teacher of some kind and told us that we were to draw a picture and the winner would win colored pencils and a sketchbook for drawing. I won the prize, and I still remember that I drew three little ducks in a pond. I was seven years old then, and I cannot forget how happy I was because living in a house with two rooms for eleven people (the rooms were the bedroom and the kitchen) and having to share a bed with six of my brothers and sisters, there was no money for small gifts, let alone shoes for primary school.

When I was about eleven years old, my father (who had become an alcoholic) decided to rent out the 'parcela' to another farmer, and we moved to the city of Rio Bravo. We built our house in Rio Bravo by ourselves. We paid some builders to lay the foundation for one room. My dad and brothers paid very close attention to how the builders made sure the floor was leveled and how they built it. Once they finished, my father paid and thanked them, then got my oldest brother, Gerardo to lead the rest of us on how to make the foundation for the rest of the house. All of us worked together, and we all built the house brick by brick in a part of town that was not well off by any means, but was just a little better than being completely poor.

As we went off to secundaria, my sisters and I began working by cleaning ladies homes and by doing other people's laundry. It was very little that we made, but it was enough to buy our school supplies, some fabric so we could make some clothes, or sometimes even store-bought clothes. I was a lot happier in the city because there was a little more to do, but I always felt self-conscious about having come from the ranch because of the perception of farmers as being ignorant.

I chose to go to prep school out of my own will, and so did a sister of mine, Elisama. This cost a lot more than public education did, but we both figured that an education was the only way to be led away from the darkness of our ignorance as farmers. She and I were both very idealist and we convinced ourselves to go on to prep school in spite of our families poverty because we wanted to have it pay off for the family in the future, or at least for ourselves. This was during the latter half of the 1960's when I went to preparatory school. And in the midst of so much social revolution, classes were cancelled very frequently. I remember students sometimes stopping peseras on one of their stops and forcing the driver out then telling everyone to support the protest or get out.

I had no idea exactly what the political issues were, and as destructive as a lot of the students were, I was not sure that they knew either. Students would burn cars or flip over busses, protest against the school or against the city government. I feared for my safety during my first year of prep school, and also a little robbed because most of the first year was spent striking against the school and not learning anything.

Jessie, I'm sorry that I'm getting a little bit off-topic from the questions you asked, but when I think of my educational history before I started working for the maquiladora, I think I really have to tell you about the protests and about the state of the country. I think it's so important, Jessie, because even though there are not revolts and protests like there used to be, the dangerous environment that these protesters were rioting against still exists to very large degree in México today....well, to be honest, since I have not lived and worked in México in about twenty years I can only speak about what I hear, but even when I worked there, I knew that there was reason to protest, I just did not feel safe when the protests became as violent as they frequently did.

My second year of prep school, there was a student whose name I've forgotten, who had already received his licensiatura (the equivalent of a Bachelor's) fron UNAM--probably the most prestigious university in all of México. He was in his twenties, but was in our prep school after having already graduated from university! We asked him why and he told us one of the scariest stories I've ever heard.

Jessie, have you heard about the killings of Tlatelolco plaza in Mexico City? Not a single newspaper or television station talked about it the day after it happened. I heard stories that I knew had to be true but were awful, and this man who had graduated from UNAM told us all that he was there in the plaza that day! I forget what they were protesting, I think it had something to do with the Olympics being held in México and the government lying to the world about the state of the republic. There were a lot of protestors out in Tlatelolco that day and most were students. The president ordered the military and police to open fire and apprehend the protestors. Students were being shot left and right. Dozens and dozens were being killed and hundreds more were running away from the plaza. I can't remember how many died but I think it was in the hundreds. All of the national media was threatened not to report on the massacre, and none of them did. But the several hundreds who survived told their stories to everyone. I had heard about the killings at Tlatelolco plaza, but I had not heard another piece that the UNAM graduate told us.

He said he was arrested by the police, along with many many more who protested that day. He told us that he was in jail for two weeks where he was beaten by either the military or police. Then a lot of the students were put onto planes and flown over the Gulf of México. He told us that everyone was blindfolded and had their hands tied behind their backs and that a man was walking down the aisle selecting every other prisoner to stand and go to the front of the plane. One-by-one, those who were chosen were pushed out of the plane at God-knows who high the altitude was into the gulf.

He told us that after this was over, their blindfolds were taken off and they were all threatened with the lives of their families and themselves and then all of their papers proving who they were and where they had gone to school were burned, and they were told that the records at their universities had been erased. They were then purposefully scattered all over México and were threatened not to ever return to the DF or to their native lands.

If the government had the power to do all of this and everyone seemed powerless to keep it from happening, what were the rest of us to do? By the time we had heard this story the protests around the country had died down but were still active.

I'm sorry that i have taken more time talking about the political environment, Jessie, but since you have told me a lot about how factories in México mistreat women and my own readings into the history and politics of México now many years after I've lived there, the memories help me see things differently, a lot more different than how I saw them then.

In my next correspondence I will tell you about my experience working in a Mexican factory and then my experiences in the United States. Until then, take care.

Sincerely,

Delia Rodriguez Guerrero