Guillermo del Toro as a film studies maor in Guadalajara, Mexico. He is at center behind the camera.
In 1985 my husband, Andrés Olivares, played the supporting role of Señor Quezada in “Obdulia,” an Indie movie filmed in Guadalajara, Mexico, where we lived . Juan Antonio de la Riva, the director, was launching his career with low-budget high-quality movies to enter in film festivals and contests. Guillermo del Toro, a 20-year-old film studies major at the University of Guadalajara, was assistant director of “Obdulia.” Señor Quezada is the owner of a shoe factory where an underage employee named Obdulia is part of a grim, desperate, and tragic plot. Andrés, my spouse for 27 years, was an eye surgeon with an avocation for theater. He was Papá to our three children and Abuelito to our seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild. He died in 2020. Movie making and performing in stage productions were satisfying pastimes for him. As for the young assistant director, Guillermo del Toro went on to become an international icon in the film industry.
For a better experience watching the movie, go to this post’s main page and click “Watch on YouTube.”
Roma is fictionalized autobiography written, co-edited, co-produced, and directed by internationally acclaimed Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón, who lived in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City when he was a child. It is a silvertone tapestry of sights and sounds recreating the feel of Mexico in 1970 with details that bring back the rich texture of ordinary days—the shrill whistle of the knife-sharpener, the soprano beep of the camotero’s bicycle, a sing-song voice hawking miel de colmena, children shrieking, cars honking, a radio blaring “Espera un poco, un poquito mas,” the rhythmic thump of damp laundry on concrete lavaderos, the visual messes of life in a surprisingly small kitchen, a rooftop work area, a narrow courtyard, a dining room and a TV room–where people gather in a mostly presentable and almost luxurious house. Cuarón explores the awkwardly intimate relationships of his middle-class Mexican family–parents, maternal grandmother, three brothers, one sister, and a dog–with their indigenous servants, Mixtec girls from Oaxaca, in particular Cleo, the character based on Cuarón’s nanny, whose real name is Liborio (Libo) Rodriguez.
A dramatic work should have a beginning, rising action, climax and conclusion. Real life, on the other hand, just goes on and on. In a dramatic work, significant scenes foreshadow things to come. Life sometimes foreshadows terrible or wonderful things, but then more often than not, nothing happens. Something terrible or wonderful happens when you least expect it, and at times it happens in such small installments that you miss the terror or wonder of it. Life goes on, zigzagging haphazardly through highs and lows, with no discernible rising and falling action or clear denouement, no background music to signal how you should feel. But every now and then, the richness of an ordinary sight, sound, taste, texture, event, or emotion takes your breath away. That’s what Roma is about.
Subtle visual clues and ominous silences had me waiting expectantly for something terrible to happen. During the long opening scene, I think blood may start to flow with the water cascading over the tile floor and down the drain as Cleo prepares the narrow courtyard for the day. I’m afraid Borras will run out and get hit by a car, or mild-mannered but edgy Papá will step in Borras’s poop, explode in a rage, and beat the poor animal to death as the horrified children look on. Sofía, like an arrogant villain in a telenovela, will probably treat beloved Cleo with cruelty and injustice. Then there’s the raging New Year’s Eve fire at the Norwegian relatives’ luxurious rancho that will certainly wipe out the family fortune. I am convinced that at least one of the children will drown in the ocean on a beach holiday. My expectations are influenced by scenes from thousands of movies and years of real-life maternal fretting about the real and imagined dangers of growing up human, especially in Mexico.
There is no blood in the opening scene, just a lot of water, Ajax, grime and dog poop. Borras survives; his one escape to the street ends with the kids unceremoniously hauling him back. Papá does indeed step in caca, but his rage emerges as a whining complaint about disorder in his house, implicating Sofía and the maids, and weakly justifying his decision to seek domestic order elsewhere. Sofia is not a telenovela villain; she is a kind woman who struggles, sometimes unsuccessfully, to behave like a proper middle-class matron. She is more egalatarian with the housemaids than I ever was with our own Esperanza. The raging fire at the Larsson rancho was a Scandinavian New Year custom that got out of hand. It is extinguished with buckets of water wielded by shouting, laughing family members and houseguests, including small children. It ends with Uncle Ove in Krampus costume singing poignantly Eg veit ihimmerik ei borg (I am longing for a heavenly home), echoed by the nostalgia in Cleo’s quiet comment, “This reminds me of my pueblo.” The near-tragedy at the beach is frightening, like a few scenes from almost anyone’s childhood, but Cleo, thrashing about, unable to swim and with no real lifesaving skills, manages to get Paco and Sofi back to safety on the shore.
Commonplace events are the real drama in Roma. Antonio leaves on a business trip and never returns. Fermín, a street kid saved from drugs and bad companions by martial-arts training, gets Cleo pregnant, and when she whispers during their Sunday movie outing that she has “missed her month,” he excuses himself to go to the bathroom and doesn’t come back. These events are so common in real life that it usually takes a good backstory to make them into movie material. Cuarón, nevertheless, has created an engaging film without much of a backstory. That little Pepe, who regales Cleo with disconcertingly detailed descriptions of real or imagined past lives, grows up to become an acclaimed filmmaker might be a good one, but we don’t learn Pepe’s destiny from the story line.
The climax, if there is one, is Sofía’s universal cry, “We are alone. No matter what they say, we are always alone.” The grammatical gender of solas–alone–tells us that this is about women–women who from the time they were little girls have been trained to find Mr. Right and hitch their lives to his dreams. The cry is almost comical. Sofía is a little tipsy and has demolished part of the car and part of the courtyard wall, attempting to navigate Antonio’s unwieldy Galaxy into the narrow space. She squeezes herself out of the car on the passenger side (an essential measure that she learned from Antonio), grasps Cleo’s face, and utters those words. Days later, in a burgeoning spirit of emancipation, she shows up in a brand new Renault, which fits nicely into the courtyard-garage.
A bloody event of historic proportion intersects with the household drama, but it remains a backdrop. On June 10, 1971, paramilitaries, government-trained in martial and other military arts, responded with violence to a peaceful student protest at the National Polytechnical Institute. The paramilitaries, called Halcones, attacked protestors first with bamboo sticks, then knives, then firearms, following some of them into hospitals and gunning them down in front of horrified patients and staff. The Mexican government denied responsibility for the massacre, and the press played it down, but forty-seven years later people are still asking questions.
On that real day, our semi-fictional Cleo, with the help of live-in grandmother Teresa, is shopping for a crib. The protests turn violent in front of the furniture store. Fermín, Cleo’s erstwhile lover runs into the store brandishing a pistol in pursuit of terrified protestors seeking shelter. For a moment, he turns the pistol on Cleo; he freezes and their eyes meet before he turns and runs. Cleo’s water breaks. Grandmother Teresa, with some incompetent flapping about, competently manages to guide Cleo out of the store and into the car that takes an excruciatingly long time to reach the hospital. She gives such information as she can to get Cleo into the delivery room, where the drama of any birth for the woman experiencing it contrasts starkly with what is just a day’s work for the hospital staff–even the calmly professional attempt to resuscitate an infant. The child, a girl, was stillborn.
The near-tragedy at the beach takes place after that, on a holiday for Sofía, the children, and Cleo. When the danger of drowning has passed, Sofía, Cleo, and the children huddle on the shore, sobbing and laughing with relief. Cleo says something that sounds like an apology for letting the children go out too far, but it is really a confession. “I didn’t want it,” she sobs. Sofía replies that the children are fine. Cleo insists, “No. I mean I didn’t want her to be born. Poor little thing. Pobrecita.”
“We love you, Cleo. We love you mucho,” Sofía assures her. Cleo probably would have cared lovingly for her daughter, but her honesty sears through eons of maternal myths. Earlier, Sofía had also turned some female myths around as they were relaxing in a little oceanfront cafe, and she tells them that Papá will not be coming back, that they have taken this holiday so he could pick up his books and things. She could have indulged in pity for herself and her abandoned children, poisoning them with bitterness toward Antonio forever. Instead, she affirms that he loves them very much and assures them they will survive no matter what. She has taken a full-time job, and everything will be a new adventure for all of them. There will be tears and changes, but they will survive. No rising music and bucolic landscapes tell us that from now on everything will be okay, but we know it will.
Life will go on because that’s what life does. If we’re lucky, we will occasionally perceive the richness of ordinary days and the terror and the wonder of it all.
Esperanza Zamora Tello, who took care of our children and our house in Guadalajara for 15 years. She is holding Rubén. c 1972
In case you were wondering, or even if you weren’t…There are remnants in Spanish and in the memories of older generations of a time when five meals a day were usual in Spain and Latin America: DESAYUNO, ALMUERZO, COMIDA, MERIENDA, and CENA, in that order. Nowadays in Mexico, it usually comes down to DESAYUNO about 6-7 a.m., COMIDA (sometimes called ALMUERZO) at 2 p.m. and CENA after 9 p.m. The merienda is almost archaic, but the word hangs on in the MERENDERO, where you can grab a taco, a sandwich, and a soft drink, or some traditional bread with coffee or chocolate for an afternoon-to-early-evening snack.
The evolution of Cinco de Mayo, a minor recognition of the Battle of Puebla, into a United States-Latino-Chicano drink-fest is something of a mystery to people in Mexico. On May 5, 1862, an insurgent Mexican army surprisingly and soundly drove impressively equipped and uniformed French invaders out of the city of Puebla. However, in 1862, the attempt to extend Napoleon's Empire to Mexico was far from over.
Mexicans all over the world, with the exception of Mexico, now celebrate Cinco de Mayo, joined by non-Mexicans looking for an excuse to drink tequila and eat guacamole.
I am annoyed by excessive excitement surrounding Cinco de Mayo, but I am annoyed by excessive excitement surrounding anything. However, when I became a Spanish teacher in a small Texas town, I could not escape Cinco frenzy. The school allowed Spanish teachers to have classroom parties for cultural objectives on certain days. “When is Cinco de Mayo anyhow?” the principal asked as we worked out the calendar for a new school year.
High school students will never forgive a teacher who passes up an occasion to bring food to class, so I reluctantly planned a Cinco fiesta for the sake of taquitos and cokes. I retrieved the red, white, and green cut paper banners I had brought from Mexico, some Mexican flags and a few overworked serapes and sombreros from the closet to justify a little feast during otherwise forbidden school hours.
Long before taking that Spanish job, I had lived in Mexico, where Cinco de Mayo is not an official holiday. History teachers mentioned the Battle of Puebla in their classes on that day, television stations projected stock history documentaries, and newspapers published a perfunctory editorial or two from their archives. In Puebla, where the battle took place, there are muted celebrations. Sometimes May 1, Labor Day, which is a holiday in Mexico, and May 5, Mexico’s semi-holiday would come together with a weekend to give a pretext for a puente, a five-day weekend bridge, always welcomed joyfully by teachers and students struggling toward the finish of another school year. That was the extent of excitement about Cinco de Mayo.
Determined that students should at least know that Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico’s Independence Day, I searched for the only teaching tool that students will possibly pay attention to on party day: a movie. I found one that was both entertaining and enlightening–at least to me and a few adolescent history buffs. Juarez, a 1939 release, featured Bette Davis, big-eyed iconic film star from the early days of cinema, as the beautiful but unfortunate Charlotte of Belgium, who, with her hapless Hapsburg husband, Maximilian of Austria, occupied the imperial throne in Chapultepec Castle from 1864 to 1867. That was when President Benito Juarez ordered the execution by firing squad of Maximilian, who refused to abdicate even in the face of defeat.
You see, that surprising Mexican victory back on May 5, 1862, in the city of Puebla, had been bittersweet. It was followed by a long, hard struggle to drive out the invading French. If, like me, you are a somewhat lazy aficionado of history, a Napoleonic Time Line might be just what you need to better understand what was happening in Mexico while our ancestors north of the border were killing each other over the legality of trafficking in human beings.
Mexican insurgent attacking French soldier, Battle of Puebla, May 5, 1862The beautiful, unfortunate Charlotte of Belgium with her hapless Hapsburg husband, Maximilian of Austria, Emperor and Empress of Mexico, 1864-1867
As a ninth-grade student of Spanish, I was fascinated by a textbook picture of Carlota in overlapping ruffles and a crown. Mexico, just a day’s drive away from my home in Texas, had once upon a time been ruled by a real Emperor and Empress, who lived in a real castle at Chapultepec. Many years would go by before I knew for sure that this was NOT a good thing.
The celebrated victory at the Battle of Puebla had the unhappy short-term effect of causing the French, backed by Mexican Imperialists, to dig their heels in even deeper, wanting to prove they could prevail on the American continent. The movie provides more or less true-to-history details about Mexico’s fight to remain independent, and about Benito Juarez, the leader who is celebrated as the hero of that struggle. Juarez was a great admirer of Abraham Lincoln, a detail not lost on the moviemakers.
Mexicans all over the world, with the exception of Mexico, now celebrate Cinco de Mayo, joined by non-Mexicans looking for an excuse to drink tequila and eat guacamole. They commemorate a battle that happened in Mexico, while Mexicans themselves are doing whatever they do on any other ordinary day. “Mom, what is the big deal about Cinco de Mayo?” my kids had asked just after we moved to Texas from Guadalajara, Mexico. “The Spanish teacher wants us to tell her classes how we celebrated this amazing festival in Mexico.”
“Tell them,” I said, “that you celebrated it pretty much the same way they celebrate the Battle of Gettysburg.”
Katherine Hae-Jin Yu interviews “Abue” Mary Ann Lesh on feminism
What is feminism?
Feminism, as I understand it, is a social and political movemet—many movements, really, to move society toward equal treatment of all human beings, focused specifically on injustices in the treatment of women.
Have you heard of any stereotypes about feminists or feminism?
I guess one of the most common ones is the “FemiNazi,” who is always angrily pointing out injustices and who takes offense at just about everything. Another is that feminists are likely to be Lesbians or women who are too ugly or too obnoxious to find a husband.
Do you think anyone can be a feminist?
Of course. However, just as with racism, you can’t comprehend what it’s like to be treated unequally if you have not experienced it, so it’s harder for a man to be a fully committed feminist than it is for a woman, and there’s a special kind of bonding that happens when groups of women get together to advocate for equal rights.
Are you a feminist? Why or why not?
I consider myself a feminist ideologically, but I have evolved from unthinking acceptance of dominance in the world by men. (I remember helping some of my boyfriends and boy-friends with homework in high school in the 1950s and wondering when it was that boys got so much smarter than girls because in school, girls seemed to be so much better at so many things except athletics. However, I took it for granted that something happened between high school and “life” that made men more suited than women to be doctors, lawyers, judges, entrenpneurs, etc.) The 1960s were a real eye-opener for me. I am not a feminist activist because I have never found myself in a situation that stirred up my passion about gender inequality. Teaching has always been much more open for women than other professions. I never wanted to be a principal or superintendent—those positions were usually reserved for men—so I didn’t collide with that particular “glass ceiling.” I have been a union activist, but I was more interested in equity for teachers in society in general. It didn’t really occur to me that a lot of the inequities in the way teachers are paid and regarded had to do with the perception of teaching as a “womanly job.” The same was true of nurses and secretaries. (This is ancient history to you, but it was part of my life and part of my mindset.)
Do you think that all genders are treated the same? If not, why not?
Much more nowadays than in the 1950s and 1960s and before, but there is still a lot of work to do, and there are way too many retro-jerks (of all genders) when it comes to respect for women (that includes self-respect.) I think a lot of women ARE the problem because they want to be taken care of and not really have to grow up.
How, if at all, do you think feminism has affected you in your life?
Its greatest effect has probably been in changes in the way I perceive myself and my worth as a human being and the aspirations I have had for my daughter and my granddaughters : ). I happily and willingly accepted being a wife and mother. I was glad that I could also be a teacher. I loved my work and enjoyed having a paycheck of my own, but I settled for much less than I might have because I saw my main role as subordinate to my husband’s.
It took some hard experiences to make me aware that each man and each woman (and whatever other genders there may be)—each person–should be a whole person psychologically, spiritually, and professionally, regardless of who is their partner in a love relationship. Everyone should be empowered to build the life they want economically and creatively without depending on another person. Then, if two people decide to work together in that special relationship we call marriage (or life partnership or family-building), they will be much more powerful than if one is the master and the other is the slave, and no one will be destroyed if the partner dies (something that is sure to happen eventually) or leaves (which happens all too often in traditional relationships).
Did you find it useful to take part in this interview?
Yes. It made me think, and that’s always a good thing!
December 11, 2012. I am back from my first session of learning how to make alebrijes at the Museo Arocena in Torreón. Rubén and I presented ourselves just before 11 a.m. and were escorted to the taller (workshop) downstairs, a place very well equipped to encourage would-be artists and people who just want to get their hands messy with paste and paint. We are to spend five Saturday mornings there, along with some 10 classmates, completing our own original alebrijes, for a total cost of 200 pesos each (about 15 dollars), including materials.
Alebrijes originated in the 1930’s in the feverish dream of Pedro Linares, a papier-mache artisan in Mexico City. Pedro was a specialist in making piñatas and carnival masks. When Linares was thirty years old, he became very ill, and the high fever caused him to hallucinate. In his dream, he found himself in a forest where the rocks and clouds turned into vibrantly colored strange creatures with horns, wings, tails, fierce teeth, and bulging eyes. The creatures were saying the word, “alebrijes, alebrijes.” When Linares recovered, he started re-creating the creatures in papier-mache and cardboard. His work got the attention of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, who commissioned him to make more of them. In Oaxaca, artisans inspired by the original alebrijes began making them as wood carvings.
At the museum, the young instructor, who asked to be called just “Rosy,” gave us a brief introduction to alebrijes and then instructed us to sketch out our ideas for what we would like to make. She handed us a stack of newspapers, a roll of masking tape, some wire and wire cutters. We watched a video in which an artisan was making an impressive dragon-like figure, and then Rosy told us to start bringing our sketched-out creations to life. My idea was cute enough: a cat head with rabbit ears, a giraffe neck, the body of a tiger, and the tail of a peacock. Fashioning it into a frame with wadded newspaper, tape, and wire was not so easy. I quickly ditched the peacock tail when I discovered the difficulty of working with wire and instead gave the creature two simple wings. Symmetry was a real challenge, and so the feet turned out to be barely functional. The creature could not stand. After a lot of wrapping, bending, and taping, I was able to get him to stand on his own…sort of.
Rubén inherited his father´s talent for all kinds of visual art, so I didn´t even consider getting into the competitive mode with him. I just sat back and admired, as his sketched-out dragon fly turned into…something else…much larger than my flying catiraffe.
It was an intense three hours, and Rosy told us that if we didn’t finish our skeletons today, we might have to come on one or more Sundays in order to complete our fantasy animals. I spent a lot of time just looking at my poor little animal and wanting to start over. By the end of the three hours, I was tired and hungry–more than ready for a plate of shrimp and rice at “El Barquito,” our reward for a hard morning’s work.
At the end of the session, we left our mummy-like creatures on a big table at the front of the workshop, to be covered next week with toilet tissue and Elmer’s glue, followed by a coat of similarly treated brown wrapping paper. I just hope I can thus cover up my messy tape job, somehow fashion some ears and a tail (the peacock tail is now down to a bunny tail, and the lion’s body may end up being a duck’s body before the poor little creature is finished) and cover all of my artisanal sins with a bright coat of paint!
My son Rubén and I took a class a few years ago at the Arocena Museum in Torreón to learn to make “Alebrijes,” fantastic creatures made of mixed-up animal characteristics in bright colors. After making our papier-maché creations, our final assignment was to write an origin story for our creation. This was mine.
Me llamo Titomar Teodoro, pero todos me decían “Tom,” con excepción de la gatita Micifuz. Ella me decía “Teadoro.” No siempre era así como me ves ahora. Yo era un gato común y corriente anaranjado y blanco. Trabajaba de cazaratones en un zoológico de la ciudad de México. Todos menos los ratones me querían mucho, sobre todo los elefantes, porque yo espantaba a los ratones para que no les molestaran. Ya saben que los elefantes temen mucho a los ratones. Bueno, ya sé que ustedes se están preguntando, “¿Pero, cómo llegó usted a ser así?”
Un día de invierno todo cambio en el zoológico. Los elefantes solían comer los frijoles que dejaban los conserjes humanos a la hora del almuerzo. Y a los conserjes les gustaban fumar cigarrillos. De tanto comer frijoles, los elefantes acumulaban muchos gases. En días de sol, apenas se notaban el ruido y el hedor de la expulsión de gases afrijolados porque los elefantes jugaban al aire libre entre los arboles del zoológico. Pero desafortunadamente, aquel día no salieron a causa de un frio invernal extremo. Antes de darse cuenta de un inoportuno expulsión de gases frijolentos, un conserje tiro una colilla de cigarro cerca de donde se refugiaban los elefantes. Yo andaba buscando ratones en el cuarto de las pinturas cuando oí una explosión horrible. Perdí la conciencia, y cuando reaccioné, mi cuerpo estaba muy cambiado. ¡
No hallaba qué hacer con un cuello de jirafa—y ¡chueco, de pilón!–un cuerpo de pato, y unas alas de no sé qué! Y los colores, ni hablar. ¿Cuándo has visto a un gato respetable de color morado con puntitos dorados? Pasé mucho tiempo triste y deprimido. No me atreví a buscar a mis amigos, y me quedé acurrucado en un rincón. Un día me vio un búho que por estar volando a la hora de la explosión solamente había sufrido cambios menores—se le habían pegado unas patas de avestruz y unas orejas de conejo. Me dijo, “¿Por qué no pruebas esas alas? Ya saben que no son de adorno nada más. Pueden funcionar. Con unas instrucciones del búho, empezaba a aletear furiosamente, y practicaba por muchos días. Pero la verdad es que con este cuello de jirafa, no era nada fácil despegarme. Sin embargo, un día me levanté un poco, y después cada día más y más, hasta que un día el búho quien me había animado todos los días me dijo, “Creo que ya estás listo. Sígueme.” Tenía mucho miedo, pero volé y volé hasta que llegamos a un bosque donde vi a muchos animales como yo—bueno, no exactamente como yo, pero muy diferentes a los animales que yo habitualmente había conocido.
“¡Hola!” me dijo un pato con cabeza de perro y cola de león. “¡Bienvenido al Bosque de los Alebrijes! ¡Qué bonito eres! Me encantan tus colores!”
Y desde lejos vi unos ojos hermosos de gatita que lucia una cola de pavo real y una melena de yegua. Pero no quedaba duda de que era mi querida Micifuz cuando escuché un grito de alegría. “¡TEADORO!”
When I moved to Guadalajara, Mexico, in my early twenties, many things about life there felt exotic to me. I was shocked to learn that my educated cosmopolitan Mexican friends and family members, whom I saw as perfectly normal and modern by my small-town Texas standards, thought nothing of scheduling a limpia (cleansing) before moving into a new house or after a run of bad luck, and they knew exactly which shaman, or curandero, of their acquaintance could do it. Back in North Texas, where I grew up, sweet iced tea was the only tea I knew anything about, and home remedies were limited to merthiolate and mentholatum. We went to the doctor for just about anything that couldn’t be treated with those smelly substances. The doctor would prescribe dreaded shots, pills, or terrible-tasting liquids in mysterious-looking bottes. If all else failed, he–the doctor was always a “he” when I was a child–would put you in the hospital, cut some part of you open, do some sort of magic, and then sew you back up.
In Mexico, I learned about a surprising number of alternative remedies that didn’t involve a health professional. In addition to Vicks Vaporub in the ropero, there was manzanilla (chamomile) tea in the kitchen to relieve tummy aches and te de tila (linden flower tea) to calm down an overwrought family member. A savila (aloe vera cactus) plant in the patio was snipped as needed for healing gel to treat burns from the sun, the kitchen, or naughty kids playing with matches. American cough syrup reeks of eucalyptus oil, but in Mexico you can buy dried eucalyptus leaves in the mercado and make a potion to drink or gargle as needed. Common cooking ingredients like vinegar, cinnamon, and onions, do double duty as home remedies for all kinds of ailments. Agua de jamaica (hibiscus flower water) has medicinal uses, like lowering blood pressure, but it is more commonly just cooled, sweetened, and served as a beverage. Some things, like mangoes and papayas, became normal to my expanding Texan mind, but wherever I look, even after many years, there are sights to see, foods to try, experiences to have, and ideas to explore that still amaze.
PlantsUsedinMexicanTraditionalMedicine, a downloadable PDF compiled by Armando Gonzalez-Stuart, a researcher at The University of Texas El Paso (UTEP), contains a brief history of traditional medicine in Mexico, an alphabetical list of plants used for healing, with their scientific names, some of their common names, and photographs of most of them.
Coffee Talk with Mary Ann Lesh 