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=> Adelita: Part Two

Adelita: Part Two
Posted by Farid (Moderator) - Monday, December 8 2003, 19:36:24 (EST)
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Adelita: Part Two

Just when I was thinking a store would be beyond her, Adelita took the mile walk along the dusty road out of the river valley from her pueblo to the highway where she flagged down a bus for the twenty mile ride into San Miguel to report to my lawyer. She brought with her three sheets of lined paper filled with the names and prices of products sold in the two or three tiendistas in the village. People there have to ride the bus out to get fresh produce and just about everything else if they want to buy in "volume" and save some pesos. I met such an elderly woman on her walk back, carrying two bags filled to bursting with a weeks supply of groceries. I stopped the Bourbon and offered her a ride the rest of way but protocol says she can't accept a ride from a single man, so she politely declined and walked on.

On a fourth pece of paper Adelita had sketched a rectangle measuring 31/2 meteres by ten which would be the store we'd have to build. Her friend Manuel had calculated it would take about $350 to buy the materials and she figured his rate of pay at about $120 a week...a six-day week. What's happening now is that the store owners are either takig the bus or their own vehicles into town to the main supermarket where they purchae their stock they then add a few pesos to and sell back at the village. Like the poor everywhere, these people pay more for their odds and ends than lawyers and doctors do.

We were all pleased that she'd shown such resolve. It was a good sign. Adelita isn't stupid by any means. Her handwriting was neat and spelling correct, I was told. Like women everywhere she grew up from childhood knowing something was terribly wrong in the world but knowing exactly what or why it had to be that way and what she'd done since birth and bfore to deserve it...why she had endure injustice and suffering just because she was a woman. And like amost all intelligent and capabale women she became "Man-Stupid". In her life men, starting with God and his priests, were her oppressors...her rapists, her attentive for-a-few-minutes and abusive from then on lovers and husbands. As intelligent as she is, she fell for it: a man was the way out, even at the price she more than likely knew she'd have to pay. There is a gap in years between her last son and her last baby daughter...probably a "reconcilliatory" rape.

This time, Sunday, I went out with a female friend of the lawyer's. After my last visit I noticed the men eyeing me a little too warily and it reminded me of Cervantes and his branding me a convicted rapist in another village. While Adelita may trust me a little, it must seem odd to the rest of them that this gringo is all of a sudden interested in a family with so many children. So I took along some insurance this time. I also wanted Adelita's permission to photgraph them all and their rancho. People can be shy about that sort of thing but when asked Adelita seemed perfectly fine and gave her consent.

This time out I'd bought several kilos of oranges and taken my hand-juicer. Also some pineapple and bananas. Malnutrician in the villages is a serious problem in Mexico and though they get some variety in what they raise, fresh vegetables and fruits are hard to come by. I had some more warm clothes, good shoes and things. I also took a soccer ball for the boys. I asked the women I know here what a fourteen-year old girl would want and they all agreed make-up would be at the top of the list. I had some ambivolent feelings about it...seemed to me we were setting up the next daughter in line for a hard fall...but if that's the way it is. The woman and I stopped off at the major store on our way out and bought a nicely packaged set of perfumed soaps and toilet water (You'd think they could find a better name for the stuff)...also an industrial sized make-up kit with which you could snare several men to make you miserbale for as may lifetimes.

After clearing the two gates where the cows were munching, we drove out the road round the corn fields by the river. In the distance I pointed out Adelita's house on the hillside perched above the river. As we got close first one then another figure came out from the cardboard lean-to and by the time we pulled up at the base of the hill the entire family was out to greet us. Myra, the fourteen-year old wasn't there but her older sister and her two-month old girl were. We shook hands all around and I was formally introduced to the younges son, Junior. Probably has the father's name and she can't stand to be reminded. Chairs were drawn up outside...pigs and goats chased away. My friend began chatting with the women, cuddled the baby girla bit while I walked back down to the Bourbon with the three boys trailing. I gave them the new soccer ball and pump to go with it.

I like the dignified way they all behave when they receive anything from me. Adelita acts as if it has nothing to do with her personally. As she'd never deserved the world she'd been born into...had learned to accept the worst god could to do to her...she took the good that came her way with same vague sort of detachment. And she's right. I'm doing this because I want to. It's for me primarily and as long as we both accept that it makes the giving and the taking so much easier.

The boys followed me back up the hill..even tough the village soccer field was ten paces away from us n a grassy level field along the river, they didn't bounce the ball once or go running off to kick each other. We disussed the store and when Manuel would be able to give us the cost for labor. He was working somewhere outside the village that day but Adelita said she'd get the information from im that evening and bring it to town the next day. Before leaving we gave the elder daughter, whom I'd not seen before, the soaps and make-up to share with her sister and a stuffed burro for the younger girl of two. There was also a bright red sweater for Adelita.

Back on the road we talked about how best to proceed. Turns out the eldest daughter is now living with them also...if she was ever living elsewhere. It may be that Adelita said she was married to cover up the fact that she wasn't. The girl is only just 18 herself and now has a two month old girl to care for somehow. If there ever was a husband, it's better that he's gone. It just would have meant several more children after which the bastard would have more than likely left her as well to go do his thing elsewhere. The fucking is easy...the getting fucked lasts a lifetime.

It's also possible her father did it to her...one last gift before leaving. There's a good deal of incest out in the ranchos I'm told...and why not? From God and Lot on down these women are being fucked regularaly...why not dear old dad...when he's this kind of a dad to begin with. And the girl was very pretty.

So there are eight people living in a room the size of a jail cell with a cardboard addition. I doubt the baby girl has been seen by a doctor...or any of them for that matter. This altered things considerably. The first thing the family needed was a decent home...with a bathroom and hot water. A store could be incorporated into a home...but a home was as important. As Adelita was coming in the next day we stopped back at the supermarket and bought a baby carrier, blanket, one-piece fuzzy pyjamas, oil, powder and things like that for Adelita to take back for her daughter and grandaughter. We also need to bring them all in for a medical exam...the baby especially. We had a good laugh at the check-out counter as the same young woman we'd just bought make-up and perfume from a few hours earlier now checked our baby things.

I don't want to set up a store for Adelita and drive the others out of business. That's hardly a decent solution to one family's problem. Then again the way their stores operate now they can't help but be paying a high price for the goods brought in...higher than I pay. That isn't right either. It may be that a warehouse instead of a store...a place where the other store owners could buy more or less at wholesale would be better. But the problem becomes supply...who gets the stuff and how. There aren't enough of them in one pueblo to make it worth the time for trucks to go out...unless maybe there was a warehouse from which several nearby pueblos could stock up.

Then we discussed a once a week market at which they could get fruits and vegetables especially, delivered to them, with a truck making the rounds of other villages. There are wholesale markets for produce to supply all restaurants etc in the larger cities surrounding them. It might be possible to load a truck and make the rounds. I want to throw the Bourbon nto the nearest ditch anyway...maybe I could trade it for a Nissan four-door pick-up...that's the new Burro in Mexico...it runs and runs and is easy to maintain. I'll bet Adelita can learn to drive in no time...and there's her elder daughter who might as well.

Down the road there's the question of what these children do when they grow out of the one room primary school they have in the village. The girls more than likely cast around for a husband while the boys either join the exodus to El Norte or look for work in cities close-by. Everything esssentially stops by about the age of 13 and life becomes a grim task of holding on with your fingernails till you die...which comes sooner rather than later around here. Right now life in a village by a river can be the best place to grow up...later perhaps a move to the city for more schooling. If they were my kids I'd keep them out...but this is Mexico and an education gets you a lot farther, all things considered. Besides, they might really want to learn.

I have this habit of playing god..so I'm told. Though it seems to me I'm acting the part of a human trying to rectify what that Old Bastard has left behind in his wake. Fuck it. Let's just say of all the disasters that have struck Adelita and her family...I'm potentially one more. That's the way she sees me, I'm sure... and it's good enough for me.



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