This International Women’s Day, I’m Honoring a Luchadora from Chiapas
Everyone told me Georgina Díaz was a fighter and hard-worker; I learned she’s also a survivor and a good friend.
There is a woman in southern Mexico who wakes every morning before dawn and works steadily until the sun goes down. She is 36 years old, has strong shoulders, sinewy arms, a prominent mole on the left side of her nose, and deep brown eyes.
Her name is Georgina Díaz, and she’s a superhero.
Against her family’s wishes, Georgina left her hometown of Reforma as a teenager to follow love. She and her boyfriend got married and moved to Tuxtla-Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas, where they landed jobs, bought a modest home, and eventually had three healthy boys.
That is the simple version of Georgina and her husband’s story. The one that doesn’t include how much he drank and then verbally abused and assaulted her over the years.
Her personal breaking point came one day when he had her pinned to the linoleum floor of their home. His hands gripped her throat and squeezed the breath out of her, while her young sons huddled in fear nearby. One thought kept her clinging to consciousness: “My sons, my sons! What am I going to do?”
Georgina fought for her life. She landed a solid kick to her husband’s groin and, while he was doubled over, she ushered her sons outside to the patio. She knew that as long as she remained in sight of her neighbors, they would be safe.
Georgina shared this story with me nearly two years ago, in March 2016, as she sat inside the clinic in Reforma, which is supported by Compaňeros En Salud, as Partners In Health is known locally. As a PIH writer, I was there to follow a community health worker through her typical day. Several people talked about Georgina with reverence, saying she was a real luchadora and trabajadora, someone well worth writing about. Thankfully, she didn’t mind me tagging along with her.
We were close in age, both mothers of three children, and weren’t afraid of hard labor. She had a quick wit, devilish smile, and a daring spirit that I immediately admired. I wanted to know why she had made such a strong impression on her friends and neighbors, and why they had entrusted her with one of their most prized possessions: their health.
Every week, Georgina visited — and still visits — patients with chronic conditions, such as depression, hypertension, and diabetes, to ensure they took their medication and to keep them company. In addition to her job with PIH, she gardened a small plot of land, tended livestock and a small lime orchard, and sold used clothing on market days. She cobbled together enough money to meet the needs of her sons, and any remaining funds were dedicated to building a house down the road from her father’s, where she and her boys would live someday. She spoke of that future home as if it were Shangri-La.
I returned to my home that March, an hour outside Boston, but Georgina stayed on my mind ever since. So when I had the chance to visit her again in November 2017, I grabbed it. Dr. Jimena Maza, PIH’s director of primary care in Mexico, and I drove to Reforma one evening armed with cake and chocolate milk for her sons.
A lot had happened since we last visited. Georgina had begun a relationship with a man she met years ago and had become pregnant. When she broke the news to him, he wanted to keep the baby, and said they should all move to San Cristobal, a three-hour car ride away. The only catch was that she would have to leave her other sons behind in Reforma. They weren’t his after all, and he wanted to start a new life with her and the baby.
That was a no-go for Georgina. Her sons were her life, her “motor.” She broke off the relationship and told her family about the pregnancy. Her mother was outraged, called her a prostitute, and threatened to kick her daughter and grandsons out of the family home.
Georgina knew she had to finish building her own home sooner rather than later. The house still lacked doors, electricity, and a bathroom — but at least she could live there in peace with her small family. One Saturday late last summer, she and a hardy group of volunteers — including fellow community health workers, their husbands, and one of her brothers — worked from morning until night on the house. Well into her third trimester, Georgina prepared tamales and made sure everyone was well-fed. By day’s end, the house was a home, and Georgina and her sons moved their things into the one-room, mud-brick structure. Finally, she had gained independence.
Then, in early October, an earthquake struck off the coast of the neighboring state of Oaxaca and sent shockwaves through Chiapas. Georgina awoke at midnight to the ground moving beneath her. Shocked speechless, she ran around the room shaking her sons awake. They stumbled to the front door, but the earth’s violent movement had already jammed the metal lock. They ran to the back door, which luckily still opened. The four tumbled into the pitch-dark backyard, Georgina dodging blows from her groggy 9-year-old son, Giovanni, who begged to be carried.
The family stayed outside that night. When dawn broke, Georgina assessed the damage. Some of her colleagues and friends had lost their homes. Her case, luckily, wasn’t as bad. Still, the zinc roof above her outdoor kitchen had collapsed. Her electricity was out. And, worst of all, she noticed a grieta, or crack, zig-zagging down the back wall — the longest and tallest of the modest building. If that wall split, she knew it would pull everything else down with it.
Georgina and her sons took refuge in her family’s home the next day.
Several weeks later, Georgina gave birth to her fourth son, and 12 days after that, Jimena and I visited her in her parents’ home with treats for her older children. The baby was so new that she still didn’t have a name for him. Maybe Denis. Or Hector. She wasn’t sure, she said with a broad smile as she held the swaddled boy tight to her chest. Secretly, she’d hoped for a girl, but that didn’t seem to matter as she smiled sweetly at the infant feeding at her breast.
Once her son had fallen asleep, she handed him to another pair of warm arms and took us on a short walk down the rutted dirt road to her abandoned home. Giovanni tagged along, stealing one-on-one time with his mother.
Georgina passed through an opening in the chicken wire fence around her property and up a small rise to her home. Flowers bloomed at the windowsills and broad-leafed plants lined the front. She took us around the back and pointed to a crack splitting the rear wall. Friends stopped by shortly afterwards, and together they made plans to fix up the place in coming days and get her back home. There was hope that this was just a temporary hurdle, an unfortunate twist of fate.
This International Women’s Day, I will think of Georgina and how hard she’s working to raise her four sons to be good men. She is a fighter and a hard worker. But she is so much more. She is a woman who cares deeply for her children, who will fight off death to ensure they have a better life than the one she’s lived so far. She knows her own strength, even in those moments when she is down on her knees. And she cares — not just for herself and her own, but for all those who have lifted her up when she has fallen.
She is a mother, a sister, a daughter, a friend, a caregiver. And thanks to her, I have a new superhero to admire.
This International Women’s Day, share your #ThanksToHer story.
Learn more: pih.org/thankstoher
