The Children of Sanchez (3 page)

T
HIS BOOK IS ABOUT A POOR FAMILY IN MEXICO CITY
, Jesús Sánchez, the father, age fifty, and his four children: Manuel, age thirty-two; Roberto, twenty-nine; Consuelo, twenty-seven; and Marta, twenty-five. My purpose is to give the reader an inside view of family life and of what it means to grow up in a one-room home in a slum tenement in the heart of a great Latin American city which is undergoing a process of rapid social and economic change.

In my research in Mexico since 1943, I have attempted to develop a number of approaches to family studies. In
Five Families
, I tried to give the reader some glimpses of daily life in five ordinary Mexican families, on five perfectly ordinary days. In this volume I offer the reader a deeper look into the lives of one of these families by the use of a new technique whereby each member of the family tells his own life story in his own words. This approach gives us a cumulative, multifaceted, panoramic view of each individual, of the family as a whole, and of many aspects of lower-class Mexican life. The independent versions of the same incidents given by the various family members provide a built-in check upon the reliability and validity of much of the data and thereby partially offset the subjectivity inherent in a single autobiography. At the same time it reveals the discrepancies in the way events are recalled by each member of the family.

This method of multiple autobiographies also tends to reduce the element of investigator bias because the accounts are not put through the sieve of a middle-class North American mind but are given in the words of the subjects themselves. In this way, I believe I have avoided the two most common hazards in the study of the poor, namely, over-sentimentalization
and brutalization. Finally, I hope that this method preserves for the reader the emotional satisfaction and understanding which the anthropologist experiences in working directly with his subjects but which is only rarely conveyed in the formal jargon of anthropological monographs.

There are very few studies in depth of the psychology of the poor in the less well-developed countries or even in our own country. The people who live at the level of poverty described in this volume, although by no means the lowest level, have not been studied intensively by psychologists or psychiatrists. Nor have the novelists given us an adequate portrayal of the inner lives of the poor in the contemporary world. The slums have produced very few great writers, and by the time they have become great writers, they generally look back over their early lives through middle-class lenses and write within traditional literary forms, so that the retrospective work lacks the immediacy of the original experience.

The tape recorder, used in taking down the life stories in this book, has made possible the beginning of a new kind of literature of social realism. With the aid of the tape recorder, unskilled, uneducated, and even illiterate persons can talk about themselves and relate their observations and experiences in an uninhibited, spontaneous, and natural manner. The stories of Manuel, Roberto, Consuelo, and Marta have a simplicity, sincerity, and directness which is characteristic of the spoken word, of oral literature in contrast to written literature. Despite their lack of formal training, these young people express themselves remarkably well, particularly Consuelo, who sometimes reaches poetic heights. Still in the midst of their unresolved problems and confusions, they have been able to convey enough of themselves to give us insight into their lives and to make us aware of their potentialities and wasted talents.

Certainly the lives of the poor are not dull. The stories in this volume reveal a world of violence and death, of suffering and deprivation, of infidelity and broken homes, of delinquency, corruption, and police brutality, and of the cruelty of the poor to the poor. These stories also reveal an intensity of feeling and human warmth, a strong sense of individuality, a capacity for gaiety, a hope for a better life, a desire for understanding and love, a readiness to share the little they possess, and the courage to carry on in the face of many unresolved problems.

The setting for these life stories is the Casa Grande
vecindad
, a
large one-story slum tenement, in the heart of Mexico City. The Casa Grande is one of a hundred
vecindades
which I came to know in 1951 when I studied the urbanization of peasants who had moved to Mexico City from village Azteca. I had begun my study of Azteca many years before, in 1943. Later, with the help of the villagers, I was able to locate Aztecans in various parts of the city and found two families in the Casa Grande. After completing my study of village migrants, I broadened my research design and began to study entire
vecindades
, including all the residents irrespective of their place of origin.

In October, 1956, in the course of my study of the Casa Grande, I met Jesús Sánchez and his children. Jesús had been a tenant there for over twenty years and although his children had moved in and out during this time, the one-room home in the Casa Grande was a major point of stability in their lives. Lenore, their mother and the first wife of Jesús, had died in 1936, only a few years before they moved into the Casa Grande. Lenore’s elder sister, Guadalupe, age sixty, lived in the smaller Panaderos
vecindad
on the Street of the Bakers, only a few blocks away. Aunt Guadalupe was a mother substitute for each of the children; they visited her often and used her home as a refuge in time of need. The action of the life stories, therefore, moves back and forth between the Casa Grande and the Panaderos
vecindad
.

Both
vecindades
are near the center of the city, only a ten-minute walk from the main plaza or Zócalo with its great Cathedral and Presidential Palace. Only a half-hour away is the national shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico, to which pilgrims flock from all parts of the nation. Both Casa Grande and Panaderos are in the Tepito section, a poor area with a few small factories and warehouses, public baths, run-down third-class movie theatres, overcrowded schools, saloons,
pulquerías
(taverns where
pulque
, a native alcoholic drink, is sold), and many small shops. Tepito, the largest second-hand market in Mexico City, also known as the Thieves’ Market, is only a few blocks away; other large markets, La Merced and Lagunilla, which have recently been rebuilt and modernized, are within easy walking distance. This area ranks high in the incidence of homicide, drunkenness, and delinquency. It is a densely populated neighborhood; during the day and well after dark, the streets and doorways are filled with people coming and going or crowding around
shop entrances. Women sell
tacos
or soup at little sidewalk kitchens. The streets and sidewalks are broad and paved but are without trees, grass, or gardens. Most of the people live in rows of one-room dwellings in inside courtyards shut off from view of the street by shops or
vecindad
walls.

The Casa Grande stands between the Street of the Barbers and the Street of the Tinsmiths. Spread out over an entire square block and housing seven hundred people, the Casa Grande is a little world of its own, enclosed by high cement walls on the north and south and by rows of shops on the other two sides. These shops—food stores, a dry cleaner, a glazier, a carpenter, a beauty parlor, together with the neighborhood market and public baths—supply the basic needs of the
vecindad
, so that many of the tenants seldom leave the immediate neighborhood and are almost strangers to the rest of Mexico City. This section of the city was once the home of the underworld, and even today people fear to walk in it late at night. But most of the criminal element has moved away and the majority of the residents are poor tradesmen, artisans, and workers.

Two narrow, inconspicuous entrances, each with a high gate, open during the day but locked every night at ten o’clock, lead into the
vecindad
on the east and west sides. Anyone coming or going after hours must ring for the janitor and pay to have the gate opened. The
vecindad
is also protected by its two patron saints, the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Virgin of Zapopan, whose statues stand in glass cases, one at each entrance. Offerings of flowers and candles surround the images and on their skirts are fastened small shiny medals, each a testimonial of a miracle performed for someone in the
vecindad
. Few residents pass the Virgins without some gesture of recognition, be it only a glance or a hurried sign of the cross.

Within the
vecindad
stretch four long, concrete-paved patios or courtyards, about fifteen feet wide. Opening on to the courtyards at regular intervals of about twelve feet, are 157 one-room windowless apartments, each with a barn-red door. In the daytime, besides most of the doors, stand rough wooden ladders leading to low flat roofs over the kitchen portion of each apartment. These roofs serve many uses and are crowded with lines of laundry, chicken coops, dovecotes, pots of flowers or medicinal herbs, tanks of gas for cooking, and occasional TV antenna.

In the daytime the courtyards are crowded with people and animals,
dogs, turkeys, chickens, and a few pigs. Children play here because it is safer than the streets. Women queue up for water or shout to each other as they hang up clothes, and street vendors come in to sell their wares. Every morning a garbage man wheels a large can through the courtyards to collect each family’s refuse. In the afternoon, gangs of older boys often take over a courtyard to play a rough game of soccer. On Sunday nights there is usually an outdoor dance. Within the west entrance is the public bathhouse and a small garden whose few trees and patch of grass serve as a meeting place for young people and a relatively quiet spot where the older men sit and talk or read the newspapers. Here also is a one-room shack marked “administration office,” where a bulletin lists the names of families who are delinquent in paying their rent.

The tenants of the Casa Grande come from twenty-four of the thirty-two states of the Mexican nation. Some come from as far south as Oaxaca and Yucatán and some from the northern states of Chihuahua and Sinaloa. Most of the families have lived in the
vecindad
for from fifteen to twenty years, some as long as thirty years. Over a third of the households have blood relatives within the
vecindad
and about a fourth are related by marriage and
compadrazgo
(a ritual relationship between parents, godparents, and godchildren). These ties, plus the low fixed rental and the housing shortage in the city, make for stability. Some families with higher incomes, their small apartments jammed with good furniture and electrical equipment, are waiting for a chance to move to better quarters, but the majority are content with, indeed proud of, living in the Casa Grande.

The sense of community is quite strong in the
vecindad
, particularly among the young people who belong to the same gangs, form lifelong friendships, attend the same schools, meet at the same dances held in the courtyards, and frequently marry within the
vecindad
. Adults also have friends whom they visit, go out with, and borrow from. Groups of neighbors organize raffles and
tandas
, participate in religious pilgrimages together, and together celebrate the festivals of the
vecindad
patron saints and the Christmas
posadas
as well as other holidays.

But these group efforts are occasional; for the most part adults “mind their own business” and try to maintain family privacy. Most doors are kept shut and it is customary to knock and wait for permission to enter when visiting. Some people visit only relatives or
compadres
and actually have entered very few apartments. It is not common to invite friends or neighbors in to eat except on formal occasions such as birthdays or religious celebrations. Although some neighborly help occurs, especially during emergencies, it is kept at a minimum. Quarrels between families over the mischief of children, street fights between gangs, and personal feuds between boys are not uncommon in the Casa Grande.

The people of the Casa Grande earn their living in a large miscellany of occupations, some of which are carried on within the
vecindad
. Women take in washing and sewing, men are shoemakers, hat cleaners, or vendors of fruit and candy. Some go outside to work in factories or shops or as chauffeurs and small tradesmen. Living standards are low but by no means the lowest in Mexico City, and the people of the neighborhood look upon the Casa Grande as an elegant place.

The Casa Grande and the Panaderos
vecindades
represent sharp contrasts within the culture of poverty. Panaderos is a small
vecindad
consisting of a single row of twelve windowless one-room apartments which lie exposed to the view of passers-by, with no enclosing walls, no gate, and only a dirt yard. Here, unlike the Casa Grande, there are no inside toilets and no piped water. Two public washbasins and two dilapidated toilets of crumbling brick and adobe, curtained by pieces of torn burlap, serve the eighty-six inhabitants.

As one moves from the Panaderos to the Casa Grande, one finds more beds per capita and fewer people who sleep on the floor, more who cook with gas rather than with kerosene or charcoal, more who regularly eat three meals a day, use knives and forks for eating in addition to
tortillas
and spoons, drink beer instead of
pulque
, buy new rather than second-hand furniture and clothing, and celebrate the Day of the Dead by attending Mass at church rather than by leaving the traditional offerings of incense, candles, food, and water in their homes. The trend is from adobe to cement, from clay pots to aluminum, from herbal remedies to antibiotics, and from local curers to doctors.

In 1956, 79 percent of the tenants of the Casa Grande had radios, 55 percent gas stoves, 54 percent wrist watches, 49 percent used knives and forks, 46 percent had sewing machines, 41 percent aluminum pots, 22 percent electric blenders, 21 percent television. In
Panaderos most of these luxury items were absent. Only one household had TV and two owned wrist watches.