She was Antonio's great-grandmother.
This woman was from a caste that we call the peninsulares.
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| A Peninsulares family |
She was a lovely lady, who could carry a conversation with anyone and she and I had one delightful exchange. She asked about my fathers bullfighting and my mothers travels and seemed so delighted to have met me. I left thinking I had met a woman with a gentle life and a gentle family.
What I did not know then, and did not know for over twenty-five years is that when she was a young girl in her early teens, she was forced into exile during the Mexican revolution. That idea enough is a hard thing to image, but what I find so much more heart wrenching is that she witnessed her whole family being murdered; strung up by their feet until their temples exploded. Her parents, and brothers. She had to cross the border in Arizona... and somehow ended up in Phoenix where I would have the pleasure of meeting her forty years later.
When I was told this story about her, my heart hurt. I began to think back on all the dictatorships, riots, rebellions, the fear of the Shining Path, the Colombian Civil war. All these warlike experiences that I had managed to live through I realized that when you are an expatriate there is a huge possibility of this very thing happening. Being an outsider is never easy.
1 comment:
What a horrid story. Yes I know what you mean about the dangers of being an expat. I once went to Greece to see the revolution. What an idiot
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