This encounter also made me grateful that we had run DNA tests on all four brothers before we got there, because I know that not all look-alikes are reared-apart identical twins. I will never forget the disappointment Susan experienced after learning that a girl seemingly identical to Susan’s adopted Chinese daughter was not her twin.10 Since then I have worked with other look-alike pairs impatient to celebrate their newfound identical twinship, but I have encouraged them to keep the champagne on ice until the DNA laboratory says they have reason to pop the cork.
La Paz to Vereda: Hiking or Horseback
We had two options for getting to the brothers’ childhood home: hike or ride a horse. Their mother, pregnant with twins, had made that difficult journey twenty-six years earlier on foot until she reached a place where cars could pass. Everyone said that the walk was easy, but it turned out to be dangerous and daunting to an outsider even though some sections had been cleared the day before by the twins’ relatives using machetes. William had also arranged for increased security to ease any concerns we might have had.
We saw no obvious markings along much of the route, so we followed William and Wilber and their friends, who had made this journey many times. The group had to contend with sharp hills and a rusted iron fence but came across no real signs of habitation. The locals kept assuring us we were “almost there,” although a considerable distance remained. At one juncture we faced the choice of negotiating a rock-strewn, fast-moving stream or traversing an aging suspension bridge with lots of missing rungs, and ropes that hung about twenty feet above the stream. I took the bridge. Although Carlos had never done this, I followed him closely, carefully placing my feet exactly where his had been. The young children who lived there moved swiftly across the bridge and the terrain, coming from behind and beating us across. Jorge said that if his young son, Santi, were there, in “two minutes he would tell me to pick him up.” His view—that the children of La Paz grow up suffering and must fight harder for more things than city kids—is a bit of wisdom that took Carlos longer to understand. But Jorge was not the switched twin, so he could appraise the situation dispassionately.
I had brought along a shiny purple suitcase with gifts and supplies for the day. I soon found that while this tote is easy to wheel through airport terminals and along city streets, it was a burden along the uncharted route we were taking. William, the strongest of the bunch, slung it over his head for a while, then handed it to Carlos and insisted that he carry it. This act may have been William’s way of drawing his switched counterpart into this other world, exposing Carlos to the challenges of country life that are not so easily overcome. Carlos complied, but he resisted the events of the day in other ways by wearing shorts, not slacks, and sneakers, not boots, and later exchanged his muddied sneakers for flip-flops. He sometimes stood apart when people were taking pictures or making family introductions.
* * *
After we had walked a full hour in the hot sun, we suddenly came upon a house and a lot of people. We found no gate and no entrance—we were just there. Outside, a wooden picnic table stood laden with what looked like vegetables, and we could see a barbeque pit constructed of large sticks where the pieces of one of Carmelo’s freshly slaughtered cows, sprinkled with salt and other seasonings, were grilling about a hundred yards away. Meat in rural Colombia, like the carne a la llanera we were served, is often tough because of overcooking to destroy the bacteria on animals that are killed for food. The only bathroom was the privacy of the surrounding bushes and trees.
People looked around, eager to catch sight of the twins, two of whom they would be meeting for the first time. Some neighbors gazed at the rest of us curiously but also respectfully, knowing we had come from the United States to meet the twins and their families. The former mayor arrived and as a politician was eager to engage my help in promoting tourism in the area at some future time. A pair of five-year-old identical twin boys stood next to each other in the crowd, and I felt happy for them, knowing that they had each other to play with in this outlying area. With no other houses in sight and no reasonable roads, playdates and soccer moms simply don’t exist. That kids had to walk the same distances as adults if they wanted to see their friends was just a normal part of life.
The vegetables I had spotted were actually two kinds of potatoes that Ana had prepared and placed on plantain leaves spread across the wooden table for guests to help themselves. (Plantain leaves save on tableware and covering.) Beer and a delicious homemade alcoholic drink called guarapo de caña, made from sugarcane juice, were available, but we had only two hours to eat, drink, and chat because returning to La Paz before dark was important. Still, we had time to talk to the La Paz parents in one of the three open spaces at the front of the house. Carmelo said little, crying silently as he followed his wife’s words.
Ana wore a purple V-neck sweater, light-colored slacks, and black tennis shoes, the only sensible attire in this remote area, although dark-colored pants would be more practical for hiding any stains from soil. She had on the long earrings and beaded bracelet typical of Colombian women, and like many of them she kept her hair long and pulled back, accentuating her thin face. Aging women in the United States tend to cut their long hair short in the belief that it makes them look younger, but ages and dates are not an obsession in rural Colombia the way they are in the United States. Ana rarely smiled when she spoke, probably because the baby switch was still a tender topic. Carlos’s reserve and the deaths of her two sons, no doubt brought to mind that day, might have contributed to her generally serious demeanor.
Ana wept as she retold and relived the events leading to her knowledge of the switch and its aftermath. She spoke of William’s beauty, kindness, and sweetness, a son so different from his presumed twin brother in appearance and behavior, and acknowledged that he had lived a harsh life. Because she and Carmelo never had enough money to send him to school, he had joined the military to experience the world beyond La Paz. Devastated that William would never meet his biological parents, and that Carlos had never known his real father, Ana found pleasure in knowing that Carlos had grown up well and felt grateful to Luz for raising him. But it hurt her that her newfound biological son did not say hello to her “as his mother.”
That afternoon we experienced a wonderful moment when the reunited twins Jorge and William stood before the guests to thank them for coming and to introduce us more formally. As expected Jorge did more of the talking, even though La Paz was where his twin had grown up, but William added freely to the conversation when he sensed it was called for. The crowd was quiet and attentive, but their eyes darted from one twin to the other, constantly comparing and contrasting, finding it incredible to see a double of the boy and young man they had known and watched for twenty-six years. I delivered a short speech with the assistance of one of the interpreters; I thanked everyone for their hospitality and for the opportunity to visit the La Paz brothers’ home. People cast plenty of stares in my direction, probably because the people in this small town were not used to having visitors from abroad. Some newspaper photographers were also running around, setting up cameras and placing the twins in various poses. It was a pretty big deal.
A Day in the Life
Views of the green hills and tall trees were quite beautiful from certain locations around the house. But this was also territory over which guerillas, the left-wing rebels whose terrorist organization had waged battle with the Colombian government since 1957, had roamed during the brothers’ childhood. The guerillas stole chickens, cattle, and crops from the people who lived there, rather than demand cash, because the guerillas knew that farm families were poor. But the guerillas sometimes abducted children and turned them into combatants. Approximately two hundred guerillas had combed the area where the family lived, but, as Wilber explained, “When you’re a little kid you don’t understand what’s happening so you’re not afraid.” But he had plenty to fear as a sixteen-year-old when the guerillas took him and a friend and forced the pair
to walk with them for about ten minutes. Upon reaching a huge hole the guerillas asked the boys their names, but Wilber was too terrified to answer, so his friend answered for them as Wilber thought about another of his friends who had been taken and held for eight days. Then the guerrillas told the boys to wait and they disappeared. “They came back twenty minutes later and told us to leave,” Wilber recalled. “I thought we were going to be killed.” His parents said little about what had happened because this was part of daily life in La Paz. The guerillas and the Colombian government reached a peace agreement in 2016.
Some harsh elements in the La Paz brothers’ home life were related to the strict manner in which the children were raised. The family usually gathered for dinner, but Carmelo never spoke and the children had to stay silent. “When we eat, we eat” is what he said, according to Wilber. And Carmelo occasionally struck his children, three smacks with a belt or a branch when they didn’t do their chores or misbehaved in some way. William and Wilber angered their father with their constant fighting, but as Carmelo got older, his sons got faster, so when he reached for his belt, they ran away and stayed hidden for several hours. Still, Carmelo had the final say when it came to what they could and could not do, and they were often afraid to ask for his permission. Ana sometimes intervened, counseling them to be good in order to get their father’s approval.
Their childhood days were highly regimented, beginning with awakening at 5:45 a.m. and bathing in a tank filled with water drawn from a well. Homes didn’t have plumbing, but the family had the great outdoors. “There was no privacy,” William recalled. “But we were mostly men, so my mother took a bath after we left for school.” The schoolhouse was a long walk each way, over the same rough terrain we had covered. When the children got home, they had chores to do, followed by dinner from about 5:00 to 6:00. “Working in the fields means that you eat early,” William said. They had a little free time for play after dinner, but few distractions before going to bed at 7:30 p.m.
Their childhood was difficult; while the family had enough to eat, the kids often walked barefoot because there was no money for shoes. Working on the farm was required, and everyone did it because they knew no other way of life—William recalled that the hardships became apparent only when he looked back.
* * *
As 3:00 p.m. approached, it was time to begin the long walk back to La Paz, which seemed slightly less intimidating now that we had done it once. But it was hotter now, and the hard-packed dirt had melted into mud in lots of places. Although a family friend guided us skillfully, I lost my balance halfway down and sat squarely in a soupy puddle that darkened my clothes and stained my handbag forever. Next came the same dizzying one-hour ride to La Paz in the four-wheel-drive vehicles and a quick stop at the restaurant. There we were all offered dinner and a sampling of the luscious Colombian treat of bocadillo con queso, cheese topped with sweet guava paste. These treats were arranged for by Yesika’s sister Alexandra, who surprised us by making the long trip to La Paz to drive a few of us back to Bogotá.
Despite everything we had done that day, or perhaps because of everything we had experienced, we felt a lingering excitement and elation brought on by an extraordinary day that had revealed a way of life far removed from the familiar. We became aware in a deeply personal way of the ramifications of restricted opportunities for personal growth and development and understood them more clearly than is possible from reading most professional or popular articles on the topic. Poverty took on a whole new meaning—most people think that being poor means lacking money and the goods and services it buys, but poverty can also mean merely a lack of conveniences. The people of La Paz did not have paved roads, running water, or modern bathrooms, but they were not poor in the conventional sense because they raised their meat and vegetables, and they had no need to pay water or electric bills.
The visit also underlined the universal importance of family ties—that a mother can love a son she never knew; that a son could not immediately feel affection for family members despite the biological ties between them; and that another son could mourn a mother he would never know. These were important takeaways that would add layers of understanding to everything we learned about the twins.
In one of my waking moments on the ride back to Bogotá, I remembered that on the way back to La Paz we had retraced the route Ana had taken twenty-six years earlier when her twins were about to be born. That led me to thinking more deeply about an issue that had been in the background of all our interactions with the twins and their families: how mothers know who their babies are. Most mothers insist that you “just know,” but the basis of mother-infant recognition is far more complex.
Who’s My Baby?
Amazingly, most new mothers can pick out their own newborn from a group of three to five other infants.11 This is an adaptive behavior because it doesn’t make good evolutionary sense to care for someone else’s baby at the expense of your own.
A mothers’ accurate identification of her baby is based on various cues, including the infant’s smell, the texture of the baby’s skin, the quality of the child’s cries, and the general appearance of the infant’s facial features. Most mothers who spend just half an hour with their infant can tell their child from other infants, based solely on the odor of the babies’ breath. However, the amount of time that mothers spend with their newborn doesn’t seem to make a difference, because mothers who stay with their newborns for longer periods of time are not more accurate than those who stay with them for shorter periods. Of course, not all mothers are correct in their judgments, perhaps because of their own sensitivity to smell or the intensity of their baby’s odor.12
The story changes when it comes to identifying a newborn based on odors lingering on the baby’s clothing. When babies are one day old, mothers are not especially good at telling their own child from someone else’s when sniffing a cotton vest worn by the baby for twenty-four hours. But by the tenth day after delivery most new moms are quite adept at this task, and mothers who cradled their babies on their breast for about a half hour after birth are better than mothers who handled them for less than five minutes. Early exposure to the baby made a difference.13
Another curious observation is that mothers of young children are better than nonmothers at detecting the odors of four-day-old infants. One explanation is that mothers experience more complex mental and emotional processes than do nonmothers, although this happens only when the mothers are exposed to the odors of infants, not to the odors of adults. Even more exciting is that researchers have found long-term changes in the part of the brain that processes information as women transition into motherhood.14 It seems likely that these changes are a unique biological part of becoming a mother, making moms exquisitely sensitive to the condition and needs of their child.
Some adoptive mothers have described their child’s body odor as strange or alien, but recognizable because of their shared time.15 Perhaps the pleasantness or unpleasantness of an infant’s odor affects the mother’s recognition of, and/or bonding with, their baby, but this has yet to be investigated. Switched twins and their mothers are ideal candidates for a test of this idea because they are biologically connected to one baby but not to the other and don’t know it. However, at present researchers have documented only nine switched-twin pairs, too few to obtain a definitive answer. Moreover, the critical window for conducting such a study, which would be at or soon after birth, would have passed by the time the switch was discovered.
The significance for the mother-infant bond of mothers’ early exposure to an infant’s odors is of great interest, but remains unclear. The nature and extent of Luz’s and Ana’s early physical contact with their twins is unknown, because of their newborns’ premature status and the eventual baby switch. Luz may have cradled William just after delivery but only briefly until he was taken to the nursery, and Ana never enjoyed immediate physical contact with Carlos because both mother and baby were in poor health. We know that William was hi
s mother’s favorite child, although he was not her biological son. But he was, and is, the only one of his siblings who makes an extra effort on her behalf. And there was always less affinity between Carlos and Luz than she had with her biological children, although she loved Carlos dearly. Maybe his smell, his temperament, or his appearance were at odds with those of his siblings and, therefore, he seemed unfamiliar to his mother early on in subtle, nonconscious ways. Of course, in some cases a new mother’s predisposition for infant care conceivably could override the unpleasantness or lack of familiarity of her baby’s odor or other features, or could affect the evolving mother-infant relationship in ways too elusive to detect. Women who love newborns may gain great pleasure from giving infant care and seeing their baby smile, and some adoptive families request special needs children for exactly these reasons, knowing that some developmental milestones may be delayed.
Although smell is important, humans rely most heavily on visual cues when it comes to identifying family, friends, and foe. Thus it is not surprising that new mothers can distinguish their own babies from others in a photograph array. However, first-time mothers, especially those who have spent little time with their infants, are much less accurate than second- and third-time mothers, who are quite successful. Anxiety, fatigue, less affectionate feelings toward their infants, and/or reduced opportunities to learn which facial traits best distinguish their child from others may separate the new mothers from the experienced ones. But once new mothers spend seven hours with their babies, sometimes less, they are just as good as the veterans.16
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