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Three Generations in Cuernevaca: A Travel Memoir
Kathy Stradley
My mother thought of it first. She was good at plotting and scheming. She had long studied Spanish at adult night school, never improving very much, but having a wonderful time trying to speak to as many people as possible. She volunteered at the local hospital with her friend Pat translating for patients, nurses and even doctors, although I’m not sure how accurate these translations were. Even to my untrained ear, her accent was horrible. However, she had no fear of getting it wrong. She would get smiles and chuckles, but most people would grasp a little of what she was getting at, and rephrase it for her in less crazy language. If she didn’t know a word, she would make one up using her long remembered high school Latin or she’d use an English word with a Spanish ending. An extreme extrovert, she was never at a loss for words.
My daughter Becky was getting fluent by now, having taken four years of Spanish in high school and some college classes. Last summer she visited Costa Rica with a group of students from her junior college for a month of intensive language instruction, travel and culture. She came back enraptured with the beautiful scenery and friendly people, but not with the giant sized bugs inhabiting both rain forest and beaches.
She loved her grandma’s idea at first hearing. Another summer adventure and immersion experience was just what she needed to break through to real fluency in Spanish. Since she planned to get a California teaching credential, fluent Spanish would be a great asset in her career.
I was less adventurous than either my daughter or my mother, but as a first grade teacher struggling with a large Spanish speaking population at my school, I too was attending Spanish classes for busy teachers. These classes met once a week. They were never intensive enough for me to progress beyond a certain basic level. I could usually follow a parent’s conversation enough to know the subject, but not what they were saying about it. Verbs in their many forms were my downfall! Therefore, an immersion experience in Spanish appealed to me both as a travel adventure and as a tax write off.
My mom had originated the idea, so she insisted on making the arrangements. Becky had been impressed with her Costa Rica experience. She wanted to go through her junior college as she had done before. However, I needed upper division units to receive service credit as a teacher. In the end we relinquished the making of arrangements to my mother. She attended an orientation at her local state college and signed us all up. Becky and I shared some slight reservations with this plan. It wasn’t as if mom hadn’t traveled all over Europe and the Middle East on prearranged tours, but sometimes planning the details escaped her. In addition, she was somewhat naïve in money matters, being of a generation in which husbands handled all financial matters. In the end we cast our reservations aside, and with great anticipation filled out forms, checked passports, paid fees and packed.
I was only able to attend the last pre trip meeting, which occurred on a Saturday. Here we met our tour guide, academic advisor and fearless leader, Dr. Cuervo. With his professorial glasses perched on the end of his brown nose, he looked rather like a Cuban Bill Cosby. Invariably social, he chatted about the wonderful program we had in store. As chairman of the Spanish Department, he assured us that he had been leading these tours for over five years and that we were in good hands.
Finally, with bags in tow, we boarded our Mexicana airlines flight from LAX, headed for Mexico City, and to our ultimate destination, the garden city of Cuernevaca.
Straining our eyes to find the sign for our group among the multitude of tour guides, relatives and friends meeting the flight, we soon spotted our amiable professor with four bewildered students in tow. We joined the party hoisting our bags through the crush of people. As we waited for the professor to collect others, we chatted with our fellow travelers.
A very tall, athletic black woman was traveling with her son, who was ten years old. She was married to a professional basketball player. She looked like she too could tear up a basketball court without any trouble. A short, pretty, oriental girl about the age of my daughter was also in a teacher training program. She had the unusual nickname of Cricky. She and Becky bonded instantly. The last two members of the group were friends, but they were completely different in looks and temperament. One had blond, Swedish good looks while the other was a tall, stout brunette. Both were quite fluent in Spanish, loved the Mexican culture, and had traveled extensively in Mexico already. We were glad to have some experienced travelers in our midst. Our professor completed his roll call. We were herded outside to the bus waiting to whisk us to our destination.
The bus trip from Mexico City took about an hour, but we were fascinated by the scenery rolling by, telling ourselves over and over again that we were in the heart of Mexico. This was no Americanized border town. We wanted the real thing. We arrived in the beautiful city of Cuernevaca, playground for the wealthy, steeped in history and tradition. I fell in love with the beautiful old campus of our language school, a center of bilingual and multicultural study, one of the most well established in the region.
We waited in a large hall as the last of the travelers trickled in. All waited with anticipation and excitement for the Mexican families to arrive and claim us as their own for the duration of our stay. We were lucky! Mom, at age 75, was the oldest of the group, so we were housed with a family nearby, only a short walk from our school. We were lucky also, because, unlike some of the wealthy host families who abdicated their role as mentors to hired help, our family took care of us themselves; cooking dinner each night, spending time at the table after dinner coaching us in conversation, answering our questions and comparing viewpoints on many issues. We learned so much from them about life as a middle class family in Mexico. Much of what we learned no textbook could ever teach us.
To add to our pleasure, Isabel, the mother of the family, was a gourmet cook delighting us with empanadas, watermelon juice squeezed on her big home press, and wonderful concoctions of vegetables and cactus pears. Alberto, the father of the family, had cable television (a rarity in Mexico). He kept up with CNN, world events, and news. He could talk knowledgeably about foreign relations with China, compare our social security system with Mexico’s retirement system, and discuss world trade matters. We felt blessed to have been sent here!
The family had two grown daughters; one married and living on a ranch some 30 miles away, another an artist who managed an art studio in town. Their youngest, a modern thinking young woman, had decided to forgo planning a fancy Quinciniera and instead take a trip to Europe with her older sister the following summer.
The home of Isabel and Alberto was a two-story gated Spanish style house with wrought iron bars on the windows and a yard graced by anabundance of flowers and a few old trees. A welcoming front patio withwrought iron bench provided a place to sit and contemplate the garden. Theair had a soft, tropical feel and the exotic sounds of wild parrots and other unknown species of birds filled the air.
At an earlier time, Isabel’s family had owned a much larger acreage,but they had gradually sold off plots of land to three neighbors. During onestressful period, when the vagaries of a changing government did notrecognize as legal the deed to their property, they were required to rebuytheir home after having it completely paid off. Essentially, they had boughttheir house twice. Alberto, a retired postal worker had a relatively good governmentpension, but with three children, one still in secondary school, Isabel still used payments from the language school for housing their students to help make ends meet. And Isabel worked hard! She was up before us each morning making watermelon juice in her juice press, firing up the big stove and preparing savory dishes with the freshest fruits, vegetables and chiles she could find. She had a girl come in once a week to help with the heavy cleaning. She attacked housecleaning with the fervor of a fanatic. Her standards were the highest. Alberto, being retired, helped with the washing up after dinner and the heavy lifting, but Isabel insisted on doing all of the cooking herself. We came to be known as “Los Tres Generaciones”, that is “The Three Generations”, by our family and others at the language school.
Saturday morning after our arrival we were walking through cobblestoned streets lined with ancient buildings to our venerable language school for placement testing. This hour long examination would determine our level of Spanish proficiency and set our schedule of classes for the duration of our stay. We were grouped by levels. Becky scored “advanced”. My mom was designated “intermediate” while I barely made “beginning intermediate”. I was relieved to find out I had gained “intermediate” status,as the rank beginners attended classes at a satellite campus. I would remain with my family in the beautiful old buildings of the main campus.
Our core class was an intensive three hour language session with only six students to a teacher. Here we would have many opportunities to practice speaking with others at our level of ability. There were larger lecture classes on the idioms and expressions common in Spanish. We would have fun comparing English expressions like, “You’re pulling my leg” to the Spanish equivalent “You’re pulling my hair”. Both indicate you are joking with me. Some of the literal translations were hilarious to us. We
spent many free moments first trying to use these expressions in conversation, then laughing at the results.
After our lecture class we would eat at the picnic tables on the patio where volunteers from the community would converse with us about anything we found interesting. This was a great opportunity to ask questions, get advice and learn about the city of Cuernevaca. The only request was “Spanish only, please”.
For the diehards there was one on one tutoring, which could be conducted anywhere they wanted to go. The local bar, a restaurant, shops or the downtown square, called the zocolo, all were places to practice with a tutor.
In the late afternoons we could meet with other students at a “café social”, usually conducted at a local eatery, where we could order coffee or a drink and converse some more. The only rule in all of these locales was to speak only Spanish. That was sometimes hard among our three generation family. Grandma was the worst. She would easily lapse into English when talking to Becky or me. The point for her was always to say as much as possible. It was frustrating for her to have to say it right. I had the opposite
problem. I wanted to say it perfectly or not at all. I would always try to say something far too complicated for my language ability. I would not settle
for the easy phrase. We were always “shushing” each other when a faculty member came by after we had inadvertently lapsed again into English.
The result of all this conversation in Spanish was exhaustion every night from the effort of dredging up the correct Spanish words to express ourselves. Exhaustion also resulted from the effort of listening to others speaking Spanish and trying to piece together the meaning of what they were saying. Now I could understand why my Spanish speaking first graders got so tired struggling to express themselves in English.
There was also Spanish homework each night after dinner until our tired brains shut down and shouted “enough!” I slept each night like the dead, without movement or interruption.
Becky was quickly immersed in the younger crowd, most of them still in college or a few years into their first job. Some were teachers while others planned to become teachers. Most were already fairly fluent including the two young men who became our substitute tour directors when we discovered how flighty and disorganized our professor could be.
The first young man, Raul, was short and intense. He was half Mexican with small round glasses and the look and drive of a Russian revolutionary. He was an intellectual, identifying with the poor and the powerless. The second young man, Jeff, was a middle school teacher with great compassion and wisdom in one so young. They both had an excellent command of Spanish, knowledge of the culture and the savy of a native in getting around the country.
We quickly discovered that our professor had no sense of direction. He would ask for directions from any passerby every few blocks as we trailed behind him. He was prone to forgetting about us when he began socializing at a bar or nightclub. Raul and Jeff helped us out more than once, after we had been abandoned by our fearless leader.
Crickey was the sweet Oriental girl Becky had met at the airport and there were three or four others who became Becky’s constant companions.
A young man who taught some of the advanced classes at the school found the time to walk Becky home a few times. With her dark eyes and flashing smile she could almost pass for a native. I think he was a little smitten with her, although she assured us that they were just friends.
In my small, intensive grammar and conversation class there were more people my age. I recall a lawyer from west Texas who described himself as a “yeller dog” democrat. When we asked what that meant, he said he would vote the democratic ticket even if a “yeller dog” was the candidate. We discussed politics a lot with our young teacher, Miguel Angel, named for Michael the Archangel. He was from the mountainous silver mining region of Taxco where Isabel of our host family had grown up. We discussed the issue of discrimination against the indigenous peoples of Mexico which still exists in many regions today. We remarked on the distrust of government and official news media we observed among the Mexican people we came in contact with. We plied Miguel with questions about his experiences as a child and as a citizen of Mexico today.
There was another female teacher, in addition to myself, the Texas lawyer and a young college student from Northern California in our class. We had many lively discussions with so many points of view, as Miguel goaded us on, aiding our pronunciation along the way and helping us to rephrase our garbled Spanish.
As I walked around during breaks I heard German and Swedish accents as well as British and American English accents. It was truly an international community!
My mother quickly developed a friendship with her intensive Spanish class teacher, Maria Teresa. She was an attractive woman in her forties with grown children. I’m sure Grandma kept her classmates laughing with her improbable, made up words and her thick accent.
Isabel prided herself on her job as spiritual intercessor for the entire family. Her indigenous ancestry gave her a fierce religiosity while the faith of her husband, Alberto, was lukewarm at best. Being Roman Catholic ourselves, we asked about religious services we could attend. Isabel assumed the task of guiding us. She did not attend the local church. Only the cathedral downtown with Mass presided over by the bishop would do. She enlisted the aide of her oldest daughter and her husband to drive us to the cathedral the following Sunday. Since there was no parking available nearby, her son-in-law had to slip the policeman a small bribe so we could park in a no parking zone.
Isabel insisted on arriving quite early so that we could occupy the first pew. It was as if the first pew in the cathedral would guarantee us the first seat in God’s heavenly kingdom. The bishop entered with pomp and ceremony as we admired the beautiful old building. We enjoyed the solemnity of the service while Isabel prayed ferociously. At the communion she led us up to the altar and back to our seats with possessive authority.
We appreciated her guidance although we would have felt much more comfortable sitting in the back of the church, where we could observe the whole scene rather than being the ones observed. When the bells had rung their last and the bishop had departed we returned to our residence for an early Sunday dinner.
We discovered how flighty our professor was on a weekend trip to Mexico City. He collected money from all of us to obtain tickets to the Ballet Folklorico, the most famous one, held at the opera house in the downtown area. This is the story as we heard it from Raul and Jeff, who heard it from the professor himself. Dr. Cuervo took a taxi to the city center to purchase the tickets. His wallet slipped out of his pocket as he sat in the back of the taxi chatting with the driver. Upon arriving at the opera house,
he stepped out of the cab, not realizing he had lost his wallet until the cab pulled away from the curb. It must have been a sight to see as he sprinted
down the street in hot pursuit of the taxi yelling “Wait, wait!” at the top of his lungs. Luckily, the cab driver spotted him from his side mirror and slowed down.
The good professor, having a worse sense of direction than my mom, had difficulty finding our hotel. His method was to stop someone on every
corner to ask the way. Raul and Jeff tried to assist in the search. It was only through their intervention that we ever found it.
After having been deposited at the hotel, we had a few hours to relax before we met in the lobby for a walking tour of downtown, the giant Zocolo
(Main Square) and the National Cathedral. On our tour we were struck by the contrast of beauty and ugliness we saw around us. Beautiful old buildings were juxtaposed with trash strewn empty lots. People in formal dress exiting fancy cars contrasted with beggars lying on the street. The Mexico City Zocolo was the largest we had ever seen. Modern buildings rimmed the wrought iron railed flower beds. The ancient cathedral loomed ahead of us, sheathed in scaffolding to buttress its bulk against further
earthquake damage. The inevitable smell of incense filled the air as Aztec dancers performed colorful dances in elaborate headdresses, acorn rattles adorning their ankles. We ended our tour at a small restaurant, where our professor ordered a few beers, greeted an acquaintance, and promptly forgot
our existence. He soon left the restaurant deep in conversation with this new companion while the rest of us were left to get home the best way we could.
Again, Raul and Jeff came to our rescue leading us back to our hotel. We ended up sharing a small volkswagon type of taxi. All of us piled two deep into the back seat. We arrived rumpled but relieved at our destination.
Mom demanded that we retire early, since a trip to the Aztec ruins at Tenochtitland was on the agenda for the next day.
We had a beautiful day in Tenochtitland climbing the steps of the Temple of the Sun for an eagle’s eye view of the entire valley.
I worried about my mother climbing these narrow rock steps, because she
had recently had cataract surgery. She had been warned by her doctor to take precautions against falling. I kept behind her like a rear guard of
the quarterback in a football game. Becky stayed beside her. She was determined to go to the midpoint, then motioned us to do the rest without her.
It wasn’t fear of falling, but lack of breath that forced her to quit. If not for that, she would have gone the distance. Her twice weekly aerobic classes had given her a lot of stamina, but a history of smoking had taken a toll on her lungs. As it was, she received words of admiration and encouragement from our companions because she did so well for her age. That night we watched the beautiful dances from different regions of Mexico at the Ballet Folklorico. The opera house was filled with marble and gilded ornaments. Sculptures lined the impressive foyer. It was an elegant evening. We found our own taxi that night following the performance. Against all advice we rode in an “unregistered” cab, a dangerous thing to do! This cab was of the volkswagon variety. The door on the passenger side had been removed and the front passenger seat taken out. Mom and Becky sat in the back while I crouched in the front, where a seat had once been, giving directions to the driver. We gave him the address of the hotel and a few landmarks close by, but he was unable to find the right street. I knew we were close because I recognized familiar buildings. After driving around another 10 minutes, I finally demanded that he stop and let us out right there. I don’t think he was trying to jack up the fare, he was just lost.
We walked for a few blocks and then a few more until we finally
recognized the hotel street. Walking on Mexican streets is more hazardous
than walking in the U.S.A. because the pavement is so often uneven. There are loose paving stones, holes in the streets and barriers which would never be allowed here. On this evening walk to our hotel we almost lost Grandma.
She tripped and started to fall as Becky and I grabbed her on both sides. We broke her fall but could not save her glasses. They fell to the sidewalk.
Luckily, the lenses were ok but one arm of the frames broke off. The glasses were easily fixed, but the psychological damage lasted longer. She had been so fearless until now, but this partial fall started her worrying about a detached retina or worse. For the rest of the weekend she stayed in the hotel, only venturing out with us once to get her glasses repaired.
During our last week in Cuernevaca, we were visited by Isabel’s older sister and her only son. They lived on a large ranch in the foothills of the mountains where silver is still mined today. Her son was 20 years old.
He was doted on by his mother and two aunts as the only boy child and inheritor of a large and prosperous estate. It soon became clear that he was interested in impressing Becky with his position and his prospects. As we shared dinner that night, both mother and aunt kept the conversation focused on him. A bit of bragging ensued as they extolled the richness of their land, the number of cattle and other signs of favor bestowed by fate on this young man. Alberto, although he didn’t contribute to this conspiracy of adulation, seemed slightly amused by it all.
When the conversation came around to Becky, she, in turn, mentioned her own plans and prospects. Always an ambitious child, she had alternated between plans to become a doctor or a teacher. Her thoughts were far away from courtship. She had had the occasional boyfriend, but none of them had enough influence to alter her plans for her own brilliant future. For her part, she was oblivious to the manipulations going on in this conversation.
I could see the traditional matchmaking scheme of mother and aunt at work, but for a modern young woman from California there was a culture gap a mile wide.
Our three week stay was over far too soon. We were “short timers”.
Others in our group had extended their stay to four weeks. A generous patron of the language school offered her home as the site for our farewell celebration. We were allowed to invite our host families to attend with us. Isabel, her youngest daughter, her sister and the favored nephew accepted the invitation. There was a short formal presentation of certificates of completion, a thank you to the host families, and gifts from the participants to their host families. After the formal ceremonies, we had food, a sing- along and dancing. When all of the cameras came out the inevitable group pictures were taken. We exchanged addresses and phone numbers so we could keep in touch with all of our newfound friends. Dr. Cuervo was in his element; chatting, dancing, joking and charming our hosts.
Grandma had shopped carefully for her teacher, presenting her proudly with a beautiful hand-woven lace tablecloth. We had taken our Mexican family out the night before for a farewell and thank you dinner, and now we presented them with a matching set of plush towels for their solicitude in coaching us and attending to our needs.
We were a little jealous of those staying on, but also eager to get home to our men folk. Becky and Crickie had their heads together already planning a reunion of the younger set. I thought with nostalgia about all the things I had learned on this trip in addition to the Spanish language. The language was really only a part of our communication with this other culture. What we took home with us was a view from a different window than our own onto the world. We had questioned, from a different perspective, our notions of the way this world worked and our place in it.
I couldn’t help but think how wonderful it would be to look from many windows, or many cultures at our world. Language and travel were just tools to expand our vision.
As we were leaving by bus the next morning, we watched the city of Cuernevaca disappear in the distance to be replaced by a rural landscape.
Finally we beheld the cement monuments and teeming masses of humanity in Mexico City. As our plane strained to power the steep assent into the clouds and clear the high mountains surrounding Mexico City, we said goodbye in our hearts to a graceful and generous land.
Today, twelve years later, I reminisce about our trip as I browse through an old picture album. My mother passed away two years ago after battling breast cancer and a series of mini strokes which left her without language for the last few months of her life. And yet, until that last year she had faithfully attended her aerobic classes, volunteered at her church and communicated by e-mail with relatives all over the country. Her life continues to be an inspiration for me.
Becky never lost her taste for travel. She spent her junior year of college in Spain and also visited friends in Germany and the UK. She decided to teach school in England three years ago, to be near the new man in her life, a British engineer living in London, whom she met through a mutual friend. They married last January at an old world Catholic church in the Little Italy section of San Diego. We housed seventeen relatives and friends from England over Christmas and into January.
I am happy for her and I like my son-in-law and his family very much. However, I am a little sad that she settled so far away from home. They
assure me they will someday relocate here. We’ll see. Anyway, I have a great excuse to visit England!
I retired from teaching school last June. I am now in the process of reviving old hobbies, returning to college, and planning trips. I am currently planning to visit Israel, the Holy Land of the Bible. We visited Becky and her husband, Stephen, in London twice and hope to go again next Easter.
We lost touch with our Mexican family long ago, but I will never forget their hospitality and friendship. For all those who study Spanish in Mexico, I wish for them an experience and a family as wonderful as ours!
Submitted by: Kathleen Stradley
(951) 699-5606
kstradley@gmail.com
stradley@adelphia.net