Category: Neto, his family and friends

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Loca

Ernesto has two daughters by Loca, a woman from his neighborhood. He is adamant that he didn’t like Loca and never married her, but he has always loved his daughters. He calls them Princesa and Reina. In this essay, I call them Uno and Dos.

Loca’s mother owned the house that Neto and Loca rented when the girls were young. Most mornings, Loca’s mother would put her fat head in his bedroom window and yell, “Get up you good-for-nothing lazy ass.” When I first met Ernesto, he was working nights as a security guard at a parking lot. He had often just returned home from working overnight when his landlady appeared at his window.

The first year Neto worked for me, he was excited  about Christmas. He saved $700 from his paychecks to buy gifts for Uno and Dos, who were six and ten years old. It was the first time he had money to spend for gifts. He bought bicycles and art supplies. The girls were delighted when they saw their gifts on Christmas night. They called him Papí and gave him hugs and kisses.  After he put the girls to bed, he came back to the living room and Loca threw him out of the house. She told him never to return. He was too embarrassed to tell me or his mother what had happened, so he went to sleep on the beach. The girls woke up  the day after Christmas Day and he was gone.

When Neto came to work for me the next day, I asked him, “How was your Christmas?”

“It was nice,” he told me. “The girls really liked their gifts.”

Neto spent the next nine months sleeping in the sand. He slept on the beach until he moved into my house the following September.

Loca tormented me the entire time I lived in Mazatlán. She didn’t want Neto to live with her and the girls, but she didn’t want him at my house, either. Eventually, she chased me out of Mexico. She was not the only reason I left, of course, but she was one of the main ones.

Loca’s weapon was the telephone. She called my house at all hours, wanting to speak to Neto. If I answered the phone, she hung up and immediately called back. One night, when Neto was at his AA meeting, she called sixty-three times in a row. It was a landline so I could get calls from the U.S. After that, I unplugged the phone and only plugged it in when Neto was home.

Loca knew that Neto was devoted to his daughters, especially Dos. She would call late at night with alarming news:

“Dos has been raped. You need to meet me at the hospital.”

“Dos is choking. You need to take us to the hospital.”

“The girls have run away. You need to help me look for them.”

Neto would jump on his bicycle and fly out of the house. Of course, all of these were false alarms, but what father would take a chance? Certainly not Neto.

The five years I lived in Mexico, I noticed that the girls wore clothes that were dirty, torn and wrong for the season. They didn’t do well in school. Uno failed two grades in elementary school and didn’t move on to middle school until she was thirteen years old. Neto tried to get custody of the girls but was denied by a judge, who was bribed by Loca’s mother.

One day, I heard someone pounding on my front door. I opened the door and saw an armored truck full of police carrying automatic weapons.

“We have reports that you have kidnapped this woman’s children,” said a policewoman, who spoke English. “Where are they?”

“I did not kidnap them! They are not here,” I answered.

Loca was standing next to two policemen. She was speaking in agitated Spanish. I lost it. I started screaming in a mixture of English and tortured Spanish. “This woman is crazy! Because of her, I’m leaving Mexico and never coming back.”

“Please don’t leave,” the policewoman said. “We believe you. But we had to check this out.”

I left Mexico in 2010 and Neto went back to living at his mother’s house. They girls visited him every Sunday, asking for money and food.

Follow-up:

Uno is now 28 years old. She has a son and a daughter, by a man from the neighborhood. He is a known drug-dealer and is often in rehab. Uno lives with her mother-in-law and works full-time. She calls Neto about once/week.

Dos is 24 years old. She has two daughters. She lives with a man who is an Uber driver and she calls Neto only when the Uber car breaks down. She seldom calls, unless I am visiting. Then she calls relentlessly, just as her mother did years ago.

The parish priest recently came hurrying down the street to find Neto. A band a neighbors were close behind.

“Neto, you have to do something with Loca.”

“Why? What is she doing?”

She is standing outside my church, yelling, “The Virgin Mary is a whore!”

“Call the police,” Neto told them. “I’ve never been able to do anything with that woman. She’s Loca!”

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Ransom

Two years ago, Ernesto qualified to compete in the Mexican National Surfing Contest. He was elated. It was the second time in his life that he qualified for the tournament. The first time was more than forty years ago, when he was 21 years old. That year the tournament was canceled because the waves were not high enough for competition.  Neto went home, disappointed and disgruntled. He had trained for a year and didn’t have his moment to shine. He decided to leave Mexico and go the United States. He wanted to learn to speak English and surf the California beaches. He didn’t return to Mexico permanently for almost twenty years.

Now, at the age of sixty-two, he had a second chance to compete in the Mexican National Tournament. He had accumulated enough points in two separate spring trials to compete in the fall. He was determined to get in shape and win. He surfed throughout the spring and early summer. He was a man with a mission.

Neto called me one night in July, 2022, clearly upset. “I just got the worst news of my life,” he blurted out.

“Oh, my God, what happened?” I figured someone had died or been in a terrible accident.

“Someone broke into the warehouse and stole a lot of surfboards, including my two competition boards.”

I was relieved that no one had died. I didn’t understand that this was traumatic for Neto. Without his boards, he couldn’t compete in the national tournament. He couldn’t practice. There was no longer a reason to get in shape or even get out of bed in the morning.

Dear readers, you need to understand that surfing is Neto’s life. It is his reason for being. His passion for the ocean is what has saved him all these year. This was a major existential crisis.

Neto and the other surfers who had their boards stolen mounted a campaign to get them back. They combed the beaches and notified their friends in surfing towns up and down the Pacific Coast. They visited every surf merchant and pawn shop in town, to no avail. The boards had disappeared.

Neto learned to surf when he was thirteen years old. He was a surfing pioneer  and is easily still one of the best surfers in Mazatlán. His style is smooth and graceful. He looks like a dancer on top of the water.

Neto’s surfboard is as easily recognized as he is. It is bright blue, and 6’4″ long. He’s had it since 2010. Looking out into the ocean, seeing that blue board bobbing in the water waiting for the next big wave, everyone knows that Ernesto Flores is about to take another ride. No robber could sell or pawn that board without getting caught. But it was gone. Nowhere to be found.

Without his board, Neto became more and more depressed. He didn’t want to go to the beach. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. He started drinking again. He laughed and pretended that he was ok, but he wasn’t.

This winter, more than a year after his board was stolen, Neto stopped looking for his stolen boards and bought another board. His new board is yellow and black. It is a 7’4″ long-board. He was happy to be surfing again. His friends were happy to see him back on the beach.

Two weeks ago, the surfing community was buzzing. There were rumors that someone knew where the original stolen boards were being kept. They were still in Mazatlán, in someone’s garage. Publio, Neto’s best friend and surfing buddy, found the man with the garage. The man swore he wasn’t the person who stole the boards, but he was willing to return them ~ for a price. He wanted  Publio to be the intermediary. He didn’t want Neto to confront him in person.

Neto was willing to deal. He would do anything necessary to get his blue board back. He scraped together the ransom money and gave it to Publio. Last Tuesday night, Neto waited anxiously at Publio’s house, while his friend drove to the suspected garage. Two hours later Publio returned, the blue board strapped to the top of his silver Volkswagen station wagon. 

Neto’s board is back. So is he!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Old Guys Rule!

 

Many of you wrote asking if Neto won the surfing competition in La Ticla last week. I want to start with the good news:

Neto came in fourth in the senior’s competition on Friday. Because he was in the top six, he is eligible to compete again today in Mazatlán.

But Neto’s big win came last Saturday afternoon, when he placed second  in the over-all competition. Second in a contest of more than fifty surfers of all ages! Second place for an old guy who hasn’t trained for competition in forty years. He won a new rash guard, some board wax and a set of fins for his board. Most importantly, he scored more than 800 points for the day.  “It was a wonderful day!” Neto proclaimed, as he told me about his big win.

I was wrong last week when I said this was the Mexican National Surf Competition. Actually, it was a preliminary qualifying tournament. The Big Tournament will be held sometime next winter. Meanwhile, Neto will surf again today. He wants to win. He wants to keep earning points.

Neto talked constantly about surfing when I first met him. He watched endless, back-to-back surfing videos until I thought I’d lose my mind. I had never seen actual surfers until I moved to Mexico. My house was two blocks from Olas Altas, one of the many surfing beaches in Mazatlán. I watched scores of teenagers ride their boards over the waves until they inevitably lost their balance and plunged into the sea. At the end of the day, they staggered out of the water, looking beat up as they headed for home.

When I finally was able to see Neto surf, I knew he was no ordinary surfer. He was graceful and sure-footed. He rode wave after wave, gently steering his board away from rocks and swimmers. The bigger the wave, the better! He occasionally turned his board backwards so he could catch the same wave twice. People on the beach stopped what they were doing to watch him. When he came out of the water, some of the younger surfers shook his hand. They seemed to recognize Neto. I was just getting to know him. 

Neto learned to surf when he was thirteen-years-old. It is his passion. It is what feeds his soul. He needs to live near water, and preferably near high waves, in order to feel fully alive.

Now the Not-So-Good-News: While Neto was competing in his age category, someone stole his backpack. ¡Carumba! It was in a pile of backpacks that all looked pretty much alike. They were all black, dirty, well-worn packs heaped into a pile. Surfers take excellent care of their boards but trust that their backpacks will be safe wherever they land. 

At first Neto thought that someone picked up his backpack by mistake and surely would return it. That’s what he would have done. But, oh no! The thief looked inside and found an envelope of money along with Neto’s bank card and some clothes. The pendajo decided to keep both Neto’s backpack and his own. Luckily, Neto left his phone and his charger back in the motel.

With his money stolen, Neto had no way to get home. His Mazatlán buddies left without him on the bus. A lot of surfers came to the tournament with only their surfboard and very little cash. They were busy pan-handling money for their return home.

Neto found a sport-fishing company and offered to scout for tourists who wanted to fish for tuna, marlin and diablo in return for a “finder’s fee.” When he still didn’t have enough money, he called his boss in Mazatlán. His boss sent him some money to go to Toluca (near Mexico City) so that  Neto could pick up an auto part for him there. Neto took a bus to Toluca, stayed with friends, and eventually made it home. 

Now The whole episode is behind him. He can’t wait to compete again today in Mazatlán. It’s all he can think of. Buena Suerte, Neto.

Good luck! Ride like the wind! 

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You’re Never Too Old

This weekend Ernesto is competing in the Mexican National Surfing Contest in La Tikla, Michoacan. He is in two separate competitions: the competition for surfers in his age bracket (ages 60-65) and the open competition for surfers of any age.

Forty years ago Neto competed in the Mexican Nation Competition in  Guerrero, Mexico. He came in sixth place in the overall competition. The following year, he trained hard for ten months  while working as a fisherman in Petacalco. He surfed every day and believed that he could win the Mexican National Championship. But the competition was canceled due to lack of high waves. That was it! All the surfers were told to go home.

Neto moved to the United States and spent the next seventeen years going back and forth across the border. When he returned to Mexico in 1997, he resumed surfing for fun but he never forgot the thrill of competition.

Two weeks ago, Neto got a call saying that a group of surfers from Mazatlán were going to La Ticla, a small surfing village in Michoacan. Nothing could stop him. Not even the fact that he has not been training for competition for forty years. He packed his bag, grabbed his fastest board, and headed for a bus filled with other surfers from the state of Sinaloa. Pure joy!

The bus took two days, going from Mazatlán to Ticla, with an overnight stop in Compestella. As soon as they arrived, the group jumped in the water and paddled out to catch the incoming waves. They rented rooms in town and fell asleep to sweet surfing dreams.

I talked to Neto last night. He was tired but excited. He came in fourth out of a field of fifteen surfers in his age group. Because he was in the top six, he qualifies to surf in the final competition today. He also registered to surf in the open competition, competing against eighty other surfers of all ages.

I hope Neto wins today but it really doesn’t matter. He’s already won.

Neto’s motto is, “I’m never too old to surf.” It is his joy. His passion. He is my inspiration.

What are you never too old to do?

 

 

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Goodbye Mamacita

If ever a woman was a force to be reckoned with it was Zelmira Rodriguez. Born in 1928, in the rural village of Hacienda del Tamarindo, she was the only girl in a family of five boys. She was tiny, with wild, black curly hair and flashing obsidian eyes. Her mother died in childbirth when she was seven years old. From then on, Zelmira and her brothers were raised by their Aunt Petra, another woman of force. 

Petra was the only sister of Zelmira’s father, Ignacio Rodriguez, an exceedingly stubborn, selfish man. When his wife, Zelmira’s mother, was dying the doctor told him, “I can save your wife or the baby. What do you want me to do?” 

“Save the boy,” Ignacio answered. Soon after he came home with a new wife, already pregnant. From that day forward, Ignacio was not allowed inside the house. Gerardo, Zelmira’s older brother, told his father, “You stepped all over our mother when she was alive. You will never step inside her home again.” It was a lesson Zelmira never forgot.

I don’t know if Petra raised Zelmira in her image, or if Zelmira was just born tough. I know that she rode horses and fed cattle, just like her brothers. I suspect that both Zelmira and Petra wore trousers, at a time when most girls were still in long skirts. She was a girl with grit. She worked hard and took risks. She probably didn’t go to school past the fifth grade but she was smart and well informed. She knew what she wanted in life and went after it, until it was hers. She was a woman who took charge of her destiny.

Zelmira loved to laugh. She loved being with family and friends. She had boundless energy and a stubborn persistence. She was determined all seven of her children would go to school and study hard. When Neto became more interested in surfing than in studying, she threw his surfboard in the trash and watched as the garbage man drove away with it.

When her oldest son needed money to go to college, Zelmira started selling fruits and vegetables out of their living room. She traveled by city bus to the big market every morning at 5:00 and came home in a taxi, with bags of food, ready to open her store.

When that money wasn’t enough, she added a small breakfast cafe on the back patio. When she realized she could make even more money by going to the U.S. to buy second-hand clothes to bring back to Mazatlán, she closed her store and moved to California, taking her youngest daughter with her. She left the two youngest boys at home with their father, with strict instructions that they needed to stay in school. She returned home four times a year, to make sure they did.

In the 1980’s, Zelmira traveled to Europe twice ~ once to Rome to see the Pope and then to Fatima, Portugal to visit the shrine of the Virgin Mary. She saw the Pope twice more, once in Los Angeles and again in Mexico City. 

Can you imagine such a life? For a little girl born in 1928 in Hacienda del Tamarindo? 

Zelmira’s life, was also full of heartbreak. Her beloved husband, Jesús, died in 1993. She lost two sons, as well as four of her brothers and, of course, her dear Aunt Petra. She outlived some of her nieces and nephews, and most of her friends. 

Zelmira, herself, died peacefully this week at home, at the age of 93. Padre Lalo came every Sunday, to give her the last sacraments. We all knew that Zelmira would die when she was ready.

She will be buried next week in the family cemetery in Hacienda del Tamarindo, in the town she loved, next to the people who made her who she was. 

Vaya con Dios, Mamacita. Go with God. We will never forget you. Your feisty spirit will live in us forever. 

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Feliz Cumpleaños, Mamacita!

Neto’s Mamacita, Zelmira Flores Aguilar, turned 94 last week. It’s a very long time for a woman to live in Mexico. Last year, when she turned 93, no one expected her to live another year. It’s not that Zelmira is sick or in pain. She is simply very old.

Zelmira lives in her house on Papagayo Street with Neto, his daughter, Vannya, and Vannya’s children, Danya and Emanuel. Neto isn’t sure how old the children are. He thinks that Danya is four and Emanuel is two. But he thought the same thing last year. I’m sure Vannya knows, but age just isn’t something that Neto thinks about unless he has to. 

Zelmira has had a long and interesting life. She raised seven children and provided for them by turning her living room into a neighborhood grocery store and breakfast cafe. Later, she followed Neto to California, worked as a housekeeper for a Cuban family in Echo Park, and ran an illegal business on the side, transporting clothes from California to Mazatlán.

Zelmira is no longer the terror she was when she threw Neto’s surfboard in the trash when he was fourteen. She’s no longer the young woman who made trips to the Vatican to see the Pope and to Portugal, to see the famous shrine to the Virgin of Fatima. Or the woman who went to Mexico City for the blessing of the Basilica. Or the woman who cried when JFK was assassinated. 

Zelmira is no longer the feisty woman I knew when I moved to Mazatlán. Back then, Zelmira would come by city bus, uninvited, to my house nearly every day. She rang the doorbell promptly at 7:45 and announce she had come to sweep my courtyard, even though I told her over and over, that I didn’t want her to sweep my courtyard. In fact, I paid someone else to sweep the courtyard. In fact, I was just waking up. I was happy to have Zelmira come in for a cup of coffee and a piece of bread, but only if she put down the broom. Sometimes that worked. Usually it didn’t. Zelmira was a woman who was always the boss.

Now, Zelmira is no longer in charge. Her husband died in 1993. Two sons and one grandson have died. All of her brothers are gone, except Uncle Mon, and almost all of her friends have died. At this point, Zelmira doesn’t know who is alive and who is not. She often mistakes Neto for her husband and wonders where her friends are. 

Neto’s father was right when he told Zelmira long ago, “Don’t hassle Neto. He’s the one who will take care of you when you are old.” Zelmira is not able to get out of bed and Neto and Vannya provide around the clock nursing care, including changing her diapers, washing her and getting her dressed every day.

As an old woman, Zelmira’s world is closing in around her. Her son, Franco, is not allowed inside the house, because he sold his mother’s cemetery plot to buy cocaine. Her daughter, Rosa, was recently asked to leave town after repeatedly screaming at Neto and Zelmira and then faking a seizure. 

Always a tiny woman, Zelmira is physically shrinking away, according to Neto. She weighs less than seventy pounds and sleeps most of the time. Once in a while Neto puts her in a wheelchair and takes her for a walk around the block. Sometimes he takes her to church, where the neighbors are delighted to see that she is still alive.

Zelmira likes the taste of food but her diet is extremely limited because she has no teeth. She lost her false teeth five years ago, when she visited Rosa. No one knew what happened to the teeth and there was no money available to replace them. Now Zelmira eats tiny amounts of watermelon and feeds herself watery oatmeal with slivers of bananas every morning. Neto makes her chicken broth with fideos (tiny noddles), but he has to be careful she doesn’t pour the broth on herself when she tries to lift the bowl to slurp the last few drops. 

Last week Neto bought his mother a small cake from Panama Bakery. Zelmira forgot it was her birthday.

“Who is this cake for?” she asked. 

Her eyes lit up when Neto said, “It is for you, Mamacita. Feliz Cumpleaños!”

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Welcome to Stone Island

No trip to Mazatlan is complete without a trip to Stone Island. A Gilligan’s Island sort of place with predictable characters, happy catchy music playing in the background, and an underlying premise that people with different personalities and backgrounds need to get along with each other in order to survive.

The first time I met Ernesto, he was selling tours to Stone Island for somewhere between $30 and $80. The price seemed ridiculously negotiable, but I wasn’t interested in going somewhere I’d never heard of, at any price. I told him that I didn’t need a tour. I needed a fountain. And the rest is history.

Shortly after I hired Ernesto to be my handyman, he asked me if I wanted to go to Stone Island with him and Publio the following Sunday.

“Oh, no,” I told him. “That will cost too much money.”

“It won’t cost much at all. We’ll take a panga across to the island. It only costs $1.50 for each of us.”

“What’s a panga?”

“A fishing boat that ferries people across the channel. We can walk to Playa Sur, where they sell the tickets. You’ll like it. It will be fun.”

“What about the cruises you were selling on the beach?”

“Oh, those are only for tourists. You aren’t a tourist any more. You live here. We’ll take a panga across.”

Pangas leave the mainland every five minutes, or so. The boats speed across the channel and arrive in less than ten minutes. People pile in and out of the boats with everything they need to spend a day at the beach. Neto and Publio brought their surfboards. Other people brought beach chairs and coolers of food and drinks. One family even brought a large plastic children’s swimming pool, even though we would be right next to the water. I  just brought my fanny pack with sunscreen and pesos.

Sundays at Stone Island are truly a magical experience, with restaurants serving fresh fish and traditional drinks. (Think lemonade, beer and margaritas.) Neto’s friend, Rudy, worked in a restaurant owned by his sister-in-law, so we always went there. Other ex-pats were loyal followers of other nearby restaurants. Rudy had comfortable chairs and hammocks. His English was perfect and his manner was unfailingly charming. His Mexican lunch of fish with rice and beans was delicious.

One of my favorite parts of a day at Stone Island was talking to the beach vendors, who travel up and down the beach, selling jewelry, clothes, rosaries, and wooden sculptures of palm trees and turtles.

Women pay to get their hair braided, and henna tattoos on their arms and legs Children scream and chase each other across the sand. Some tourists haggle with the beach sellers. I never did. I liked talking to them and usually bought something that caught my eye.

One time, I actually paid to take the cruise to Stone Island. We were in a catamaran, a Mazatlán party boat, filled with tourists from the cruise ships. We circled the rocks where a colony of seals barked at us. The crew was jovial and started pouring beer before we even put on our life jackets. When we disembarked, trucks drove us to the far end of island, where we were served fish with rice and beans that wasn’t nearly as good as Rudy’s.

Victor Hugo (his real name!) traveled between tables, trying to entice people to sign up for time-share presentations. By the time we got back in the truck, and then back on the catamaran, a lot of people were suffering from too much beer and tequila, too much sun, and too little good judgement. Once was enough. From then on, I happily took a panga with Neto, and spent the day with Rudy.

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Zelmira Returns With A Broken Heart

In December, 1993, Neto and his brother, Cachi, took a train from Nogales to Mazatlan to see their father. Three days later Jesús was dead from a sudden heart attack. Neto and Cachi were despondent.

“When my father saw how messed-up and raggedy we were from drugs and alcohol, my father decided to take the ride to the other-world in our place.”

Neto has told me the story so many times over the years, I know he’s still haunted by the memory.

Zelmira was living in Los Angeles at the time. No longer working full time as a housekeeper in Echo Park, she was cleaning houses throughout her neighborhood in Inglewood when she got the news.

No one could believe that Jesús was gone. He was seventy-five years old, working full time as a security guard and fixing cars in his spare time. The family waited for Zelmira to return to Mazatlán before they held the funeral and buried Jesús in the Panteon Renacimiento Para Nacer a la Vida Eterna (The cemetery where people are reborn into eternal life.)

“I loved that old man,” Zelmira told people at the funeral. “I always thought he’d still be here when I came back home.” 

Zelmira was a widow at sixty-six years old. She had been married for forty-three years. She put on the black clothes of a Mexican widow and has never taken them off.

After the funeral, Neto stayed behind in Mazatlán for three months to take care of  his mother until she was ready to return to California.

“I wanted to make sure she was all right before I went back to the U.S. I didn’t want to leave her alone. The responsibility I had on my shoulders as a kid, earning money to help her provide for us, came back to me.”

Zelmra appreciated Neto in a different way after the funeral. “Your father always told me you would be the one to take care of me when I was old. I should have listened to him.”

“It’s ok, Mamí. I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life. If I can redeem myself, even a little, by taking care of you now, that makes me happy.”

But an even bigger blow to Zelmira’s heart was still to come. On May 2, 2002, Cachi was killed instantly in a car accident, driving on the road from Hermosillo to Caborca in his Dodge Caravan. Cachi was her second youngest child. Charming and sweet, he often traveled from Tucson to California to visit her. Neto believes that Cachi was his mother’s favorite. “Mamí may have loved him the most and she was crushed.”

 Zelmira immediately came back to Mazatlan for the funeral services. She never went back to California again. “I’m going to let my visa expire,” she told everyone. “I can’t care for other people any more. My heart is too broken.” 

Zelmira’s mother died when she was seven years old. From that moment, she learned to take care of herself. But losing her husband and, nine years later, her son was too much. She wanted to come home to live in her own house, near her friends from long ago. She renewed her friendship with Padre Lalo, and went to daily Mass at the simple Church of the Sacred Heart, down the street.

She took charge once again of her house on Papagayo Street, sweeping the sidewalk and the street in front of her house early every morning so people knew she was awake. 

Now, at age 92, Zelmira is an old woman with hardly any teeth left in her mouth and blind in one eye. She has discarded her armor and become an easier, more compassionate person. She lives with Neto’s sister, in the mountains outside Guadalajara, most of the year. She weeps openly every time Cachi’s name is mentioned. Tears spring from her eyes so readily, people are warned never to talk about him.

There are times that Zelmira is visited by ghosts. She sees her Aunt Petra, who raised her, and her brothers who have died. Some days she talks to Cachi as if he is still in the room with her. Once in a while she thinks Neto is her husband, Jesús. When he walks through the door, she calls out, “Hola, Papí. You are home from work early today.”

But in many ways Zelmira is still a warrior woman  ~ tiny, weighing less than 100 pounds, with fierce black eyes and a head full of wild curly hair. Her voice, low and growly like an angry dog, still commands attention. She will always be the matriarch. The most important hen in the hen-house. The glue that holds the family together.

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Zelmira Moves to California and Sees the Pope

Traveling back and forth, from Mazatlán to California, Zelmira got an itch to move to the U.S. full-time. She still wanted to collect clothing to sell in Mazatlán, but she decided that her main home would be California. At least for a while. 

In 1981, Zelmira left her husband, Jesús, in charge of their two youngest sons with strict orders that they needed to finish high school. Zelmira’s daughter Alma, age twenty, was already married and having babies. Zelmira didn’t want Norma to get in the same trouble at age eighteen, so she got her a visa and dragged her along.

Zelmira moved to Los Angeles, a city she already knew. There was a well-worn trail from Mazatlán to California, established long ago by her brothers and other braceros looking for work. Her brothers, Gero, Chendo, and Ramon all worked as braceros, picking grapes in California in the 1950’s.

Three of Gero’s children, Delia, Mercedes and Jesús, moved to Calfornia in the 1970’s. and Zelmira often stayed with them when she went on her clothes-buying missions. She knew almost enough English to get by. 

Zelmira quickly adapted to life in California. She liked working and sending money home to her family. She and Norma lived with her niece, Delia, in Inglewood near the L.A. airport. Norma went to work right away, working in the same airplane parts factory that Delia did, and later working in a ceramics factory.

According to Neto, “California felt like Mazatlán to Mamí and the other immigrants. People spoke Spanish on streets lined with palm trees. Smells of chiles, cooking in oil, and meat roasted on backyard grills, greeted people as they came home from work. Her neighbors stopped at local tortillarias or frutarias before walking up their sidewalks and opening their doors.”

Zelmira quickly found work, as a full-time maid and nanny in a big home in Echo Park, where she had her own live-in apartment. She moved to Echo Park and left Norma in Inglewood under Delia’s supervision.

Zelmira continued to come back to Mazatlan three or four times a year to sell clothes and check on Jesús and the two boys left at home.  Somehow she managed to get visas for the two youngest sons but not for Ernesto.

“I was always the black sheep. I think that’s why I was left behind,” Neto told me. By this time he, too, had discovered California and was able to jump the border easily, even without legal papers.

In 1984, Zelmira called Ernesto to tell him she was going to Italy to see the Pope. Padre Alvarez, pastor of  the Catholic church in Inglewood, sponsored the trip and Zelmira was the first person to sign on. She was fifty-seven years. She came back with stories of everything she had seen and done. For a working woman from tiny Hacienda del Tamarindo to go to Rome and see the Pope was a huge adventure.

“Neto, that airplane was more than a block long,” she reported. She slowly shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe it herself. “We walked all day. Some people got tired but not me. I could have walked all day and still walked home at night.”

Two years later, Zelmira signed on for another trip to Europe with Padre Alvarez. This time to visit the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, in Portugal. She also traveled to Mexico City, to the Basilica of  Our Lady of Guadalupe, when Pope John Paul II appeared there in 1999.

When the Pope visited Los Angeles in 1987, Zelmira was there in Dodger’s Stadium, cheering along with 6000 people as the Pope rounded the bases in his Popemobile.  Zelmira was ecstatic as she told Neto, “You should have come, M’hijo. He spoke in Spanish and English. He told the priests and the bishops they should work to help illegal immigrants become citizens.” 

A picture of Pope John Paul II hangs in Zelmira’s house to this day, along with pictures of John F. Kennedy and Our Lady of Guadalupe. The Pope is a reminder of all she has done in her lifetime. She considers him one of her good friends.

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Ramon ~ The Deer Whisperer

Ernesto’s mother, Zelmira Rodriguez, grew up in Hacienda del Tamarindo, as the only girl in a family of five brothers. Her mother, Maria Aguillar, died in childbirth  when Zelmira was seven, and her younger brother, Ramón, was three years old.

The doctor told Neto’s grandfather, Ignacio Rodriguez, “I can save your wife or your son. I can’t save both. What should I do?”

“Save the boy,” was Ignacio’s answer. Zelmira’s youngest brother, Antonio, lived but all the children were left without a mother.

Ignacio was banished from the house by Gero, the oldest brother. He was furious when his father showed up with a new, pregnant wife, soon after Maria died. The youngest children were raised by their older brothers and their Aunt Petra.  Zelmira turned out to be feisty and self-reliant. Ramón is one of the kindest, most-gentle men I’ve ever met. 

I met Ramón in Hacienda Del Tamarindo in December, 2009, when Ernesto and I were there to celebrate his birthday. The night we arrived, Ramón rode to the party on his bicycle. A quiet, small-built man with light skin, he looks a lot like Neto with the same easy smile and deep brown eyes. But while Neto is exuberant and outgoing, Ramón is reserved and shy. He pulled Neto aside and told him, “Come to my house tomorrow. I have something to show you.”

The next day, we walked to Ramón’s house right after breakfast. His modest home is typical of the other small cinder-block homes in La Hacienda. His beautiful brown horse was roaming, untethered, in the front yard. Laundry hung on the clothesline to dry. A donkey, fenced in the spacious corral, watched us as we knocked on the door. 

Ramón answered the door, wearing the tall white cowboy hat that is the trademark of all the Rodriguez men.

“I want you to see what I have in the bodega. I found her when I was riding through the forest.”

Ramón led us to his shed, where he keeps his tools. There in the corner was the tiniest baby deer I’ve ever seen.

“I call her Bambi. She’s an orphan. I’m raising her until I can take her back to the forest.”

Ramón took off his hat, pulled a baby bottle of milk out of his pocket, and sat down quietly on the steps. Bambi walked over to him and nuzzled his shirt. We watched as the fawn guzzled the whole bottle of milk.

Ramón told us how he found Bambi, lost and alone, when he was out riding the trail behind his house.

“Something must have happened to her mother, because I couldn’t find a trace of her. Maybe someone shot her. Or maybe a wild cat got her.”

“How did you get her home?” I wanted to know.

“I got down from my horse. Bambi had a wound on her leg and I knew I had to save her. I put her in my arms, and climbed back up on my horse. I could feel her heart beating fast against my chest.”

“Wasn’t she scared, riding on top of a horse?”

“I just kept holding her, and talking to her. I clicked my tongue and told the horse to walk slow and take us home.”

Ramón was raised to be a butcher, a job that certainly didn’t suit his sweet, compassionate personality. 

“I was born to be on a horse,” he told me. “I quit butchering and became a vaquero ( a Mexican cowboy) instead. 

“Ramon is also a jockey.” Neto told me. “People pay him to race their horses because he almost always wins.”

If Ramon lived in the U.S., he would surely be a veterinarian. He’s known throughout La Hacienda as an animal whisperer and healer. He rescues animals from the forest and tames even the wildest horses. 

Two years ago, at the age of 85, Tio Ramón was still riding as a charro in the local rodeo. Neto and I saw him on You Tube. We knew it was Ramón right away. He was sitting on his big brown horse, wearing the Rodriguez tall white cowboys hat.