The Children of Sanchez

by Oscar Lewis

  There are lots of cases of abandonment of children in Mexico. It happens all the time. The government should take a hand in the matter and put a stop to it. I wish we had laws in Mexico, in my country, like you have in the United States. We wouldn’t have so many bums … all this rotten treatment of people, speaking frankly, all of this is bad for children, for people, for the whole country. All of this freedom is bad for people. They should close up 80 percent of the saloons, build more schools, close up 80 percent of these places that breed vice. There should be more control over youngsters, over youth, rich and poor alike. “O.K., tell me, how many children do you have?” “Well, four.” “How old are they? Fifteen and up, right? What do your children do, who supports them, how do they spend their time, where do they work?” “Well, they’re not working.” “Why aren’t they working? You make them go to work and if you don’t, you’ll get a week in jail to start with.” No bribes, a week in jail, and when it happens the second time, then it’ll take a year and you’d see how much more orderly everything would be and how the Mexican people would behave more decently if we had stricter laws, because the laws we have here in my country are very loose. The Mexican people are going under, because there’s no leadership and no faith, and there’s so much lousy corruption, as you can see.

  If we ever got a really tough government here, and it called up everyone who had been a president and said, “You go to the Zócalo and pile up all the millions you’ve robbed from the people,” why, there’d be enough to build another capital!

  You have to live among our families to see what we suffer from and how it can be cured. They haven’t made a thorough study of the problem. Those gentlemen who rule over us have expensive cars and many millions in the bank, but they don’t see what’s underneath where the poor people live. Why, they won’t drive over to look from their cars. They stay down there in the center of town where all the fashionable stores are, but as for the sections where the poor live … they just don’t know what a miserable life we lead. They disregard this great and deep problem which exists in Mexico today. They disregard the fact that right here in the capital there are lots of people who eat only one or two meals a day.

  There is not enough money, not enough work and everything is so expensive; prices went up again today. The cost of living has gone up a great deal within a few days. For example, take a family with eight, or six mouths to feed. How are you going to support them on a wage of eleven pesos a day? True, they’ve raised the minimum wage a peso a day. What does a peso amount to if the stuff you buy has gone up three or four times? Well, that’s the way it is. We need different rulers who can make a better study of Mexico’s problem and do something for the people, for the worker and the peasant, because they are the ones who most need help. Take a worker in the capital for example, if he gets two hundred pesos on pay day, he’ll throw away 150 or 180 in the saloon and take twenty pesos home. People don’t know how to use the money they earn. Poor mothers, and the kids half naked! You see kids five and ten years old with tuberculosis. What do you think is the reason? Lack of care by the parents in the home, lack of responsibility and lack of money. They spend more out on the street on foolish things than they do for what’s needed at home. There are very few fathers who try to meet their obligations. A fellow who is halfway decent and tries to do what he’s supposed to, he’ll find some way to make out, one way or another, he’ll bring some bread home to his family.

  I’ve gone so far as to tell some people I’d like to see us have an American president here in Mexico. Then we’d see how Mexico would change and make progress. He’d pull in all the bums, all the tramps. “You don’t like to work? Off you go to the Islas Marías for the rest of your life.” None of this passing out a little money and this and the other and back they come. No sir, they stay right there. They’re parasites.

  Yes, there has been progress and some have benefited, thanks to the governments that have concerned themselves with the workers. But they never helped me! My situation is better because of my pigs and the lottery. I have been very lucky in the lottery. I won my first prize with No. 9878. I never forget the numbers that have given me prizes. With that money I bought the radio. With the same number I won again and I bought the bed. My biggest prize was five thousand pesos, which I won with No. 19228. With part of that money I built my house in El Dorado. And with the rest of the money, I bought the wall clock. The little I had, I used well and it helped me get ahead.

  But in the thirty years I’ve been in Mexico City, the life of the poor people has changed very little, very little. Some of them call it a big change when, for example, they used to make one or one and a half pesos during the Calles period, which was very little, right? But then sugar and beans cost fifteen centavos. Now take beans; you make eleven pesos and beans cost from three to four pesos. That’s a fact! So where is the improvement? Now, for example, you have things which cost twenty pesos yesterday and they’ve gone up to thirty-five. All right, so for one reason or another they reduce it two pesos. So you say something, and they tell you, “Why, no, sir, if it was thirty-five yesterday and it’s thirty-three today, we’ve reduced the price.” Reduced the price … with an increase of thirteen pesos! That’s the way they reduce prices here today. So what’s the advantage for the people, for the worker, for the peasant? None at all, the way I see it. On the contrary, every day they’re squeezing us more. So what?

  We need officials who study and take a look at what’s going on in the home of a poor family and actually see the misery in which people are living, and how they’re practically dying of hunger. Why don’t they do it? Why do thousands and thousands of farm hands leave Mexico? Here you have a proof you can put your fingers on. Because there’s no security here, because wages are terribly low, miserable wages which aren’t enough to support any family. Naturally, people have to scout around for a job where they can make a little more and bring something home to their families.

  The political gang won’t let good men run. They’ve got these gangs here, like everywhere. When Alemán was running, as I found out—you always find out a lot of things, right?—a lot of propaganda money went to the people who sell narcotics, also to the bus owners, the bus monopoly. They told them, “If we win, we’ll let you raise the fares five centavos.” He won and the fares went up.

  And the trade-union leaders don’t help either, everything right into their pockets. Take my union, one of those fellows owns one or two houses and sixteen taxicabs. There’s nothing to hope for there. No, sir! I pay five pesos a month dues in my union. But there are lots of us, thousands. When somebody dies, we give another five pesos apiece for the family of the dead man, in addition to the five pesos every month. What do we get in return? Nothing! We haven’t had a convention for years. All we get are dues slips. They deduct on payday. So if you owe for two slips, it’s ten pesos. If somebody has kicked the bucket, another five pesos. So I tell the fellow, “Does this go to the dead man or to a live person?” He says, “A live person, of course, are you kidding?” Then I tell him, “Listen, I don’t know what you’re doing with my money that you keep deducting; we’re making very little and everything is so dear nowadays, so the money doesn’t go far. It looks like people are dying too often here.” And that’s the way it goes.

  I do not see that the unions help the worker much. I see the Sindicato as a cave, a trap, to exploit the mass of workers. The leaders become rich with the workers’ money and I ask myself why the government allows such a thing. Isn’t it possible to arrange things in favor of the workers without having leaders? If the government could eliminate the unions and make special departments to work out matters between the workers and the bosses, all that money they collect every month from the workers’ dues could be used to build schools, hospitals, and other things for the workers’ children, instead of buying cars and homes for the leaders.

  I am not an educated man but I see that before the workers were exploited in one way and now they are exploited in another way,
and will go on being exploited. Naturally, Mexico has progressed, but the worker continues to be a worker and continues to be poor, and will be until he dies, because when he gets a raise of fifty centavos, food goes up one, two, five pesos. So the raise doesn’t help the worker, it only hurts him because there is no effective control.

  That’s why I don’t worry myself about anything but my work. I don’t know potatoes about politics. I read one or two paragraphs in the newspapers, but I don’t take it seriously. Nothing in the news is important to me. A few days ago I read something about the leftists. But I don’t know what is the left or what is the right, or what is communism. I am interested in only one thing … to get money to cover my expenses and to see that my family is more or less well. The worker should only see that his family has what it needs, that there should be food at home. Politics is very complicated and let those who were born to it take care of it. If there is a third world war, the gentlemen who provoked it will go to the grave along with millions of others. I don’t worry much about it.

  I don’t understand this business of communism. This communist commotion started in Russia, didn’t it? They had a war there, they killed the czars and all of that. Lenin and that other fellow, Trotsky, killed a lot of people there. The other fellow died, or they threw him out, this fellow, what was his name? Stalin. They say they couldn’t stand him any more and I think they bumped him off because he was getting ready for another slaughter, another purge in the army. He was quite a killer, this fellow was. How can they kill so many people, I ask you?

  I would like to visit Russia, even for one month, to travel all over the country to personally see how the worker lives and to find out if socialism or communism benefits him. According to the newspapers, they are worse off than in Mexico, so I doubt that communism is good for the proletariat. But since I never go to Russia or anywhere else, how can I really know?

  I suppose they also have a gang over there that runs the country, according to the papers, don’t they? Here the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) runs everything, so if there’s another candidate they stick a machine gun in his face. So who won? Well, the PRI candidate. That’s all there is to it. Like now its López Mateos, and the PRI says this and that and the other thing, he’s the candidate, he’s already president. It’s a sure thing.

  Things must be different in the U.S. Well, maybe it’s better that we just have one gang running the country here, because it’s got a pistol in each hand. Don’t you know this story about two fellows who were playing cards and one had two aces and the other fellow asks him, “What do you have?” “Two aces. And you?” “Two pistols.” So he says, “O.K., you win.” And that’s the way the PRI is here; it’s got the pistols and anybody who objects, well, he gets run over by a car.

  And as far as there being any protection for the rights of people who live in the country, the peasant keeps on eating beans out of an earthenware pot and hot peppers which he mashes on a stone slab, that’s all the peasant eats, and he goes around half naked all his life. He doesn’t make any progress, he doesn’t get ahead. If the government happens to be a decent fellow, the gangs that control him won’t let him do anything. Anytime there’s a good man who wants to do something for the people, the other fellows won’t let him.

  There’s nothing dirtier than politics. It’s pretty rotten, and there’s been a lot of bloodshed too, and who knows what else. How many people die so a man can get into power? Things are muddled up, not aboveboard, I’d say. Of course, the people have no education, they’re ignorant, they’re like a flock following wherever the shepherd leads them. He tells them, you go this way, and they go this way, you go that way, and they go that way. You should see how they act in the unions when there’s a meeting. They tell them this, that and the other. All those in favor? Everybody votes in favor. They don’t even know what they voted in favor of. The other month we got two dues slips. What for? Well, you voted in favor of it, didn’t you? You see how it is? The people, the masses, follow any spellbinder who comes along; as a result, instead of things getting better for them, they are worse off. And if sometimes you want to talk to them, try to make them understand, reason with them and show them what they’re going to vote for is against their interests, they won’t even listen to you.

  They listen to the follow who’s on top, sitting behind the desk, even though he’s not doing them any good, see? Then they applaud him. So how are you going to straighten things out. What can you do?

  Now besides all of that, the Mexican people have no unity. They’re not united, one pulls in one direction, the other in another and so on. If people would unite, in union there’s strength, they say, then things would change. I know in other countries, if they don’t like a president, they toss a nice little bomb and you have a different president. Not here. That’s what they should do here, but they don’t. A bit of cyanide, a heart attack, yes, there’s what many of our presidents and governors and police chiefs need. Well, it’s not nice to say so and admit it because they are my compatriots, eh? they’re Mexicans, but like I told you a little while ago, the truth will always out.

  I struggled and worked day and night to establish my home, a poor home, as you can see, but I have my happy moments with my grandchildren. It is first for God and then for my grandchildren that I’m on my feet, plugging away. When I’m downtown, I’m careful about traffic. At my age, it isn’t myself I have to watch out for, but the kids. I won’t be able to give them very much but at least they go on living and growing and I hope God will allow me to be with them until they can earn their own living.

  I want to leave them a room, that’s my ambition; to build that little house, one or two rooms or three so that each child will have a home and so they can live there together. But they don’t want to help me. I asked God to give me the strength to keep struggling so I won’t go under soon and maybe finish that little house. Just a modest place that they can’t be thrown out of. I’ll put a fence around it and no one will bother them. It will be a protection for them when I fall down and don’t get up again.

  AFTERWORD

  At 6:00 a.m., on January 5, 1987, Jesús Sánchez left his home in a Mexico City suburb and set out for the job he had held for sixty-one years. The barren, salty patch of land he bought in an undeveloped area more than thirty years earlier was now surrounded by factories and high-rises and sat just off a broad avenue with dense traffic. To reach the bus stop, Jesús had to cross where there were no traffic lights, crosswalk, or median. Manuel, who had been pressuring his father to retire and had succeeded in getting him to work only two days a week, said he constantly warned him to watch the traffic on the avenue. That morning, as Jesús stepped off the curb, he was struck by a hit-and-run driver. A neighbor who saw him lying on the pavement called his family and an ambulance. Jesús died at the hospital several hours later without regaining consciousness. He was eighty-two, the father of fifteen, grandfather of thirty-six and the great-grandfather of at least forty-three.

  Among his surviving children were all four who contributed to this book. Manuel had been living with his wife, María, and their children in the room at the Casa Grande until the previous year. After sustaining structural damage in the 1985 earthquake that killed twenty thousand and left a million homeless, the Casa Grande was added to the list of vecindades to be destroyed in the government’s post-earthquake urban renewal plan. Casa Grande residents, including Manuel’s family, were offered makeshift temporary housing until replacement housing could be built.

  Roberto had left the Casa Grande after his marriage more than two decades earlier and moved to a house—several rooms off a central patio—owned by his wife, Andrea, and her sister. Over the years they improved it with electricity, concrete floors, and a modern bathroom. And, with money received from the government for taking part of their property to widen the street, they had built a room to rent out.

  The sisters, Consuelo and Marta, had also long since moved from the Casa Grande. Marta went to Acapulco;
after her separation from Baltasar she never took another partner; she raised her eleven children alone, mostly with her earnings as a street vendor and a good deal of help from her father. As the older children began working they helped Marta build a house of her own. She became deeply religious, an evangelical, and although never personally ambitious, had worked hard for her children’s advancement. She had just returned from spending the Christmas holidays in Mexico City with her father and brothers when word of his death reached her. She immediately got back on the bus and returned to the city.

  Consuelo was the least settled of the four. After completion of the book, she worked part time as a field assistant to Lewis in Tepoztlán (where she converted to Seventh Day Adventism) and in Puerto Rico. She married in 1966 and had two sons but separated from her husband in the 1980s. For much of her married life she lived in Nuevo Laredo and worked part time in a library. She was the only one of Jesús’s children absent from his funeral but, because it was held the day after his death, she probably could not have reached Mexico City in time had she wanted to attend.

  The four children had always maintained contact with Antonia and Marielena, the two daughters Jesús had with Lupita while married to Lenore. Marielena, who had become a nun, led the graveside services with prayers and hymns. In contrast, Jesús’s four eldest did not have a close relationship with the eight children their father had with Delila, the youngest of whom was only eleven when Jesús died. Reportedly there was jealousy on both sides: Delila’s children envious of the attention the eldest received from their association with the book, and the four eldest resentful of Delila for trying to ensure that all of Jesús’s property and other assets would be left to her and their children. Jesús had realized his dream of building rooms onto his house for their eldest children but he wanted to provide for the security of their youngest too. To this end, and despite their differenees, he and Delila had formally married after years of living in free union.1