INTERVIEW WITH DOÑA JOSEFINA
...s so beautiful, my mother, I mean; she had a perfect porcelain skin, a little nose, big and beautiful green eyes and a long dark hair. In contrast my father had really strong features. My mother’s family disapproved their wedding from the very beginning, they all said that my father was very ugly, and she, being as beautiful as she was, needed to find someone fit for her. I never understood the dislike her family had for my father; he was a nice and hard working man. My father was a pig merchant; he traveled every week to Mexico City so he could sell all his pigs. I have to admit, we were kind of wealthy at that moment; we had two big houses in Guerrero. The one where we lived, in Iguala, and the other where we spent our vacations, in Teuzizapan (hometown of my dad).- “You said your father died. When and how did he die?” -He died when I turned five years old, I am not very sure how he died, I remember that one day he arrived with a strong headache, also he had a small lump in the back of his neck. Then he had a strong fever, my father stayed in bed for several days, the lump grew and suppurated something, then he died. My mother told me he died because of a poisonous spider, it was very sad. – Josefina made a long pause- After he died we moved to my dad’s family house, called “El Naranjo”. My mother sold the two houses and we took all of our things to El Naranjo, place where stayed very little time. One day a fire began in the house, no one knows how it started, everyone got out in time, but because of the fire we lost all of our belongings.- “After what happened in “El Naranjo” what did you do?” -My mother’s brother took us to a little town called Sta. Rosa, in Guerrero, near Taxco. There I started to learn how to read and write. In this town my mother met someone and got married. Her husband had cows and many lands; of course, he did not like us, he wanted his own children. My mother tried to live with us and with his new husband but it didn’t work out. So she decided to leave us with his brother, she gave him money and a little land. “El tio Chucho”, how we called our uncle, took us with him to a town called Alejandra in Morelos. There we started the elementary school properly. When I was sixteen years old I finished the elementary sch...