An ode to the Mexican woman
because we are fierce, independent, and strong as hell
When I hear the words selfless, hard working, and love, I automatically think of my mom. She is the most influential person in my life for various reasons, and what she has done for me and my family is more than a lot of people will ever do in a lifetime.
She was born in a small pueblo called Tirindaro, in Michoacan, Mexico. She is the third oldest of ten kids, and the first born woman in her family, which made her have a lot of responsibilities growing up. She was a woman of many professions. She took the role of raising her many younger siblings, helped her mother financially and emotionally, and found the time to go to college and become a teacher. She met my dad in the pueblo where my dad was from. They got married two years after dating, and my dad took her out of her home country.
She did not want to leave Mexico. Mexico was all she knew at that point in life, and she was afraid of the life she was going to have in the United States. My dad payed the coyotes two thousand dollars to smuggle in my mom at the Arizona boarder. My mom told me the process was not as scary as she thought it was going to be, and was in her new life within 24 hours.
My mother did not face many of the hardships that are told in Gloria Anzaldua’s book Borderlands: La Frontera. But many of the things that she accounts for are true. I told my mom about the statistic in the book that said one in every three immigrants get caught in the process of coming into the United States, and she was not surprised at all. “A bunch of people I know have failed, Jassy,” she told me. “I’m just fortunate I was not one of them. And I’m fortunate that I had your father to help me and to protect me against los coyotes.”
Mexican women are taken advantage of all the time. We are seen as women who are obedient to their husbands, do a lot of housework, and as ultra Catholics. Because of this, “la mojada, la mujer indocumentada, is doubly threatened in this country. Not only does she have to contend with sexual violence, but like all women, she is prey to a sense of physical helplessness.” We are seen as feeble minded women that will never amount to anything, and have such a target on our back. This is the typical stereotype that you see of the Mexican women, but little does everyone know, we are a force.
We see the strong sense of Mexican women during the Mexican Revolution, with the movement of the soldadera, which means girl soldier. At first, women in the revolution were seen as women who would just fulfill the domestic and sexual needs of the men who fought in this revolution, but later became a more powerful symbol.
To gain the men’s respect during this time of war, some women who wanted to be a part of the revolution disguised themselves as men. They wanted to be a part of this revolution because they wanted to “emerge from obscurity belonged to the middle class and played a prominent role in the political movement of the revolution.” These women wanted social change, not only for them as a race, but for them as a gender.
To speak of the ultimate women in a Mexican perspective is to talk about Our Lady of Guadalupe. She is a Catholic figure that appeared to a peasant named Juan Diego back in the 1500s. The fact that she appeared to a peasant says a lot in itself, because peasants usually get no sort of recognition or power in the world, but the Virgin of Guadalupe gave it all to him.
Our Lady of Guadalupe has become a symbol of justice, because she holds “an appeal to the poor, to marginalized people…we can see her as representing people standing against oppression, declaring their independence.” She has empowered not only Mexican women to become better and to strive for a peaceful world, but she has also empowered men in the sense that it gives them hope. Her miracle came at a pivotal time in the history of Mexico, and the fact that when she came down to Juan Diego and did not ask for him to go immediately to the church and say a rosary for her but to just trust in her and believe that everything would be okay really instills a lot of hope and peace in people. I traveled to the Basilica where her image is preserved in Mexico City, and let me tell you it has to be one of the most breathtaking things you could ever see. By being in there and seeing her image, you can feel her presence — you can feel all the positives and overall good feeling radiate off her image onto yourself, and that is the type of shit that just sticks with you. This is the Mexican beacon of hope, and what every Mexican women aspires to be.
The Mexican women is powerful. Despite all the hardships that stand in our way — such as forced domestication, sexism, and a lack of opportunities, we just come right back up. If we as Mexican women empower each other and embrace the things that make us different, we can achieve a better tomorrow.
