missing and missed
(also available at the News21 2010 ASU Team site and in pdf)
Maria Hernandez missed her mother’s long-awaited church wedding in Mexico City. But her mother, Concepcion Tlatenchi, did not want to miss Maria’s wedding day in Pennsylvania.
So Concepcion set out with Laura Delgado, a 21-year-old neighbor from the state of Morelos in Mexico, to make the precarious journey north. Concepcion was coming for Maria’s wedding and to visit her grandchildren. Laura was headed to join her father in New York.
They never made it.
It’s been a year, and no one’s heard since from either woman or the man hired to smuggle them into the United States.
Their families’ hopes that they are alive fade a little more each day, just like those of thousands of families whose loved ones have disappeared in their attempts to enter the country illegally.
“I think the worst that happens to a person is missing someone that you love and living with not knowing where is that person at, and having that faith that one day she’s gonna appear – and that’s the worst,” said Maria, herself an illegal immigrant. “Because if your mother dies you… in your heart, you know that she is dead and you pray for her and everything, but you know that she is dead. But in my situation, I don’t know if she’s dead [or] she’s alive.”
Maria tries to keep hope, but her mind inevitably wanders.
“They say that they have people working like slaves, that they use their body and sell it, so many things I heard everywhere, and I’m always thinking where is she, where is she, and it’s very hard…If she’s dead, I only want to know where she’s dead so I can cry over her body.”
She feels pangs of guilt but says she went on with the wedding because that’s what her mother wanted.
“Sometimes I feel guilty because she came for me…she came to see me. She came for my wedding, she came to help me. And a lot of people told me to don’t get married anymore because she was not here. And I told them that was the [dream] of my mother, to see me with a white dress,” she recalled.
“I was gonna do it, no matter what, no matter if my wedding was not what I was expecting, to be the happy ceremony that I always expect but it was the wedding my mom always want for me.”
A better life
What Maria’s parents wanted for her and her siblings was a better life. It’s a familiar story, one shared by her mother’s missing traveling companion as well.
As a child, Laura Delgado lived in San Carlos Yautepec, Morelos, with her mother, Maria del Carmen, and her brother, Jose Ernesto. Her father, Leonicio, had gone to the U.S. “to give them a better life,” he said in a series of e-mails.
“She was a very happy child and during that time we only talked by telephone,” he recalled.
Laura graduated from elementary and secondary school, but by 15 she was married and had a daughter named Maria Fernanda.
“But after the birth of her daughter, the husband practically abandoned her in Mexico,” her father noted. “Seeing herself the situation she was in, she told me she wanted to come to change her luck because she didn’t have any work and it was very difficult for her…She asked me to help her to come (to the U.S.) to give a better life to her daughter.”
She would send for her daughter when she could. Her boyfriend was in New York as well as her father.
Delgado said Laura took a bus to Mexico City on July 30, 2009, then took a plane to Hermosillo, Sonora. She arrived at 9:30 p.m. at a hotel named El Aguila.
“She sent a message to Carmen (her mother) asking about her daughter, Maria Fernanda. The next day she sent another message saying that she was going to try to cross the border and then we never heard from her again,” Delgado recalled.
The search
Maria last communicated with her mother by text message. Then a week passed and she heard nothing. Worried, she used the only contact information she had for the man paid to guide Concepcion and Laura.
“First he says he didn’t know where she was, then he told me to wait, then passed two weeks, three weeks, and it was too much and I didn’t know where she was,” Maria said. “First he told me that immigration probably caught them and had them with them and that’s why he didn’t know nothing about them, then he told me that last time they see my mother was crossing the border from Nogales to Nogales, Ariz. in a town called Rio Rico, and then immigration comes and everybody separate and everybody run, and then that was the last time they see my mother. They never see my mother again.”
From Pennsylvania, Maria began to search for her mother.
“I call immigration and they look for her if they have her in there,” Maria said. “So I call them and I ask about her and they sent me to different places, and I call them and call them, and all of them told me that they don’t have no record of her in there.”
Maria also contacted officials at the Mexican Embassy; they had no record of her mother. She called Derechos Humanos — an immigrant advocacy group in Arizona, who had heard nothing. Maria asked the group for help checking the morgues. There was no trace of her mother.
Family members like Maria call anyone they think may have information or be able to help – local law enforcement, humanitarian groups, consulates, morgues and even immigration.
Detective Sgt. Jose Cota of the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department says it is routine for family members of the missing to do their own investigations and to contact multiple agencies looking for information. They worry that officials will find the body of their loved one.
“That’s what they fear the most,” Cota said. “That this person is now dead.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not have a centralized place for family members to call, but the agency lists its detention centers and contact information by state on its website.
In Tucson, the Mexican Consulate has set up a 24-hour call center that has fielded inquiries from all over the world. There are also non-governmental organizations like Coalición de Derechos Humanos that help family members track of missing persons.
Kat Rodriguez of Derechos Humanos guides callers through an intake form used to collect information that can identify someone by physical characteristics – height, weight, hair color, scars – or track possible places to search – date of crossing, who else was traveling in the group, where they were going to get picked up and if anyone else in the group was apprehended.
“They call. They find us online. We try not to go back and forth because we don’t really want to re-victimize people, so we get the data, as much as we can,” said Rodriguez. “If there was somebody in the group, that’s ideal, and I’d rather talk to that person than third hand through the father who the cousin told the father… so I go directly to the person.”
In cases like Maria’s, there’s little that officers or officials can offer.
“They only told us to wait and wait and wait,” Maria said. “And next Monday’s gonna be a year, waiting, on what’s going on, and nothing happened – nothing happened, and it’s already a year waiting.”
Without answers, families struggle to cope with uncertainty.
“My dad is so desperate to find her,” Maria said.
When no more information came, her father, Nicolas Hernandez, contacted psychics.
Nicolas also went to the Mexican side of the border himself to look for his wife, checking with police, government groups, border crossing points and even the hotel where she may have stayed in hopes of getting more information. On the U.S. side, Laura’s father did the same.
Both families were left with a sense of uncertainty.
**********
Maria says short moments and mundane activities take on new meaning when a loved one is missing.
“It’s hard. It’s hard because you don’t know to cry of her death or cry because you don’t know nothing about her or be happy because probably she’s alive or…” Maria said, pausing. “You gonna eat something, and you don’t know if she’s already ate something, you’re happy and you don’t know if she’s happy.”
Two worlds, two weddings
There are two sets of wedding photographs in Maria’s living room. One set is from her mother’s day and the other from her own. Each is a daily reminder of what the family has gained – and what it has lost.
Maria’s parents spent over 15 years in New York, bringing their two children to keep the family together. But after a brush with immigration and several failed attempts to get legal residency papers, Concepcion and Nicolas decided to retire to their house in Morelos, Mexico.
Their younger children, Hector and U.S. -born Elizabeth, went back, too. But Maria had recently relocated to a small town in Pennsylvania with her long-term boyfriend and her two U.S.-born. Maria stayed.
The transition was tough for everyone. Her parents had to deal with a harsher side to life back home.
“They saved a little bit of money, but the money over there go fast, and when they end up with they almost have that their savings is gone, and when my dad start working, and he find out that the money over there is nothing, it goes very fast, and there’s less,” Maria said.
While Maria’s parents struggled financially, her children asked about their grandparents frequently.
“It was lonely,” Maria said.
Even celebrations turned bittersweet. Having been together over 30 years, Concepcion and Nicolas decided to get married by the church. Maria and her family were unable to attend; they’re missing from the pictures on the wall from Mexico City.
Then it was Maria’s turn to plan a wedding.
She remembers telling her mother that she was engaged.
“She said she wanted to be in the wedding, and I told her no because it was too dangerous,” she said. “Then she said, ‘I’m going to do everything to be in your wedding.’”
Everyone was aware of the danger.
“Everybody told her, ‘Don’t do it,’ and it was something she wanted to do it so badly so she didn’t even tell us when she was coming, she called me and she told me, ‘Oh, I’m on my way,’ and I told her, ‘Don’t do it,’ but she didn’t listen.”
Moving on
Maria has attempted to make the most of her life in America. In New York City, she had volunteered at a radio station that wanted to hire her but couldn’t because she had no Social Security number. She is now active in community affairs, serving on the board of directors of her church and a community group. She works as a translator.
She has agreed to speak about her mother in the hopes of finding her, in spite of the possibilities that she may put herself in legal jeopardy. She’s going on with her daily life, but there are constant reminders of the uncertainty of her mother’s situation.
Maria’s children ask about their grandmother – at bedtime, at special events, at church.
“We stopped talking about it because of the health of my kids, and I want — I keep everything for myself because I don’t want them to see me sad all the time because now I’m living for my kids right now,” Maria said. “I want them to be happy and not grow up with the depression I have and being OK, and I try to not talk about it. And this affects me a lot.”
When it gets too much to handle, she talks to her husband and to her family in Mexico – her father, her brother and sister, her mother-in-law and brothers-in-law.
Maria and her husband sometimes talk about going back too.
“When you have a birthday or something, you feel lonely because you want your family to be with you. No matter how good the party is or how good everything is, you know you’re missing something.”
But like her own mother, Maria wants her children to do better than she did.
“My kids were born here, my son wants to do something in life, and we take him over there, it’s gonna be hard for him,” she explains.
Her son, Julio, is an honors student. He wants to be a neurosurgeon and at 14 is thinking ahead towards medical school and a practice, possibly back in New York City.
Maria looks forward to the day when he will graduate.
“I will feel very proud, I will feel that all the sacrifice that I’m doing is going to be rewarded,” Maria said. “Cause I’m teaching my kids to be good kids, to be good citizens and to help whoever ask for help, no matter who or what, what color, what person, what age, they always has to help people.”
Laura Elizabeth
In her father's words
Laura nacio el 17 de Junio 1988 en cuautla morelos alas 15:40 sus padres son: Maria del carmen barba patino nacio el 16 Julio de 1968 en cuautla morelos Leoncio delgado castillo nacio I zucar de matamoros puebla en 1954. Laura estuvo vivien su ninez en san carlos yautepec morelos con carmen su mama y su hermano Jose Ernesto porque yo leoncio tuve que emigrar alos estados unidos para darles una vida mejor ella fue una nina muy alegre y durante ese tiempo solo hablavamos por telefono ella estudio la primaria en la escuela cuitlauac en 1998 al 1999 y la secundaria en la escuela juventud democratica
y despues las 15 anos se caso tuvo una nina llamada Maria fernanda Guerrero Delgado despues de nacer su hija el esposo practicamente la abandono con hija en Mexico biendose la cituacion que estaba ella me dijo que queria benir a probar suerte porque no tenia trabajo en mexico y me dificil para ella .viendose en esa cituacion ella me pidiio que le ayudara a venirse para darle una vida mejor a su hija emigro alos estados unidos 30 de Julio del 2009 de morelos alas 8:am tomo el bus para Mexico DF despues ella tomo el avion para para llegar a hermocillo sonora alas 9: 30 pm llego al hotel llamado el aguila y ella mando un mensage a carme preguntandole por su Maria Fernanda al otro dia le mandaron otro mensage diciendo que iva a intentar a crusar la frontera y despues ya no supimos nada mas de ella el coyote Antonio Ayala con quien hicimos el trato dice que se las entrego a otra persona llamada Hector lechuga cruz y el desaparecio con ellas tambien
Translated by Rene Valle
Laura was born June 17, 1988 in Cuautla Morelos at 3:40 p.m. her parents are: Maria del Carmen Barba Patino who was born July 16, 1968 in Cuautla Morelos, her father Leoncio Delgado Castillo was born in 1954 in Zucar de Matamoros Puebla. Laura's childhood was spent in San Carlos Yautepec Morelos with her mom Carmen and her brother Jose Ernesto, during this time her father Leoncio had to immigrate to the United States to provide his family a better life. Laura was a very happy child and during this time we only spoke by phone, she attended elementary school in Cuitlauac from 1998 to 1999 and then went to Escuela Juventud Democratica for her High School years.
She married at 15 and had a child; her baby girl was named Maria Fernanda Guerrero Delgado. Soon after her child was born her husband practically abandoned her in Mexico. Seeing herself in this difficult situation that she was in, with no work in sight and needing to provide for her child she decided to try her luck and head North. Laura asked if I could help her travel to the U.S. in order to provide her daughter a better life. Her journey to the United States began on July 30, 2009 in Morelos around 8 a.m. she took the first bus heading to the capitol Mexico DF, and then she boarded a plane to Hermosillo Sonora. She arrived in Hermosillo around 9:30 p.m. and stayed at the Aguila hotel, she quickly contacted her mother asking about her beloved Maria Fernanda. The next morning Laura sent another message to her mother informing she was going to try her luck and cross over to the other side, that was the last we heard from Laura. The coyote Antonio Ayala, the one we made the deal with says he turned them over to the next person, a man named Hector Lechuga Cruz whom is also missing along with our beloved daughter.
ties
My name is Maria Hernandez and I live 20 years in the USA with my family.
I have my mother, my brother who's 25, my sister she's 16, and my dad. And my family I have my husband and 3 kids, 2 daughters and 1 boy.
My parents came a year before me and then my mom went and get us to come her to USA with her. it was only me and my brother and my sister was born in New York. 15 years, all together.
Then I decide to come, to live, to PA for my kids - it's a nice to stay, and I leave my mom and dad in new york and my brother and sister, and then my mother decide to go back to Mexico.
My sister left with my mom. Right now we have a problem 'cause when she left she lost her passport in the airport and now she has to start everything again to get her passport, and with my mom missing, she cannot get the passport because my dad has to present a lot of proof that my mom's missing, so it's hard now for my sister to come back and forth.
My mother… never meet her granddaughter… and she was coming to meet my daughter and now my daughter never gonna meet her grandma.
That was a very big impact - not only for me, for my kids, especially for my daughter, that she has 6 years old. Her grandma was everything for her.
They always talking about her - she always talk about her a lot, like "my grandma bought me this, and my grandma bought me those," and she is so - I don't know how I can explain that - she always pray for her grandma, she always, before she go at night, she like, "I want Mama Concha" because they don't call her grandma they call her Mama, she like, "I want Mama Concha to come already, I want Mama Concha, do we know where she…?" We go to church, and she says "I want Mama Concha to appear."
This is my mom, in New York. This is my mom and my dad, dancing. That was in New York - that was in, probably '98. This is my mom and me when I was pregnant with my daughter, now she has six years old, my daughter. This is the family - my mom, my dad, my sister, my son, and me. And this is my mom, when she get married, in Mexico, and that's my grandma. She marry, and I just had my daughter - so my daughter, she represent me to be there, because I couldn't go. She went when my mother left, and she went back when my mother get married, so she went twice to Mexico.
left
My mother decide to go back to Mexico.
She was tired of being in this country with no papers. She was 20 years in this country already.
She tried to fix her papers and she couldn't. My dad and my mom hired a lawyer, asking for a lot of money, and they didn't guarantee nothing for that money, so my parents, they were very unhappy with the situation, so my mom and my dad make a house and they wanna go and live their… their - how you call it - when they grow old, they want to live their retirement over there. So that's why left, they didn't want to feel illegals in this country, they want to feel normally.
I have my sister, she was born here, and my brother, he came when he was 5 years old.
My sister left with my mom and my brother left a year after.
They live in Morello, Mexico. My mom and my dad grew up over there, they didn't born in there, but they grew all their life in there, and it's a nice place, nice weather, never hot, never cold, and they build their house there.
My dad was kind of depressed because he find out that being a forty-year-old man, and they saved a little bit of money but the money over there go fast, and when they end up with they almost have that their savings is gone, and when my dad start working, and he find out that the money over there is nothing, it goes very fast, and there's less jobs, less work, and he has to work the double to live at least half of what we're living here.
And she was there almost two years with my dad, and then my sister and my brother.
That was a very big impact - not only for me, for my kids, especially for my daughter. She has 6 years old her grandma was everything for her.
Our family were all together, and everybody leave and our family break a little bit, and it was lonely.
missing
I get pregnant with my daughter and I told my mom that I was gonna to get married. And she always had the illusion to see me in a wedding dress, because I always was the troublemaker, you know, the troublemaker, always, you always want to seem them being on a good path, and that was her illusion.
So I told her, she was coming to help me with my wedding, with my daughter and everything, but she didn't have no papers to come and she come the illegal way.
I told her, "don't do it, stay there, let's save more money and you and my dad come together."
And she decided that she wanna come, and she wanna come, and everybody told her, "don't do it," and it was something she wanted to do it so badly so she didn't even tell us when she was coming, she just - she called me and she told me, "oh, I'm on my way," and I told her, "don't do it," but she didn't listen. The last text message that she sent me was July 30 and she told me that she was on her way to USA, that she was in a hotel waiting to be crossed, and that was the last thing I know about her.
She told me that she was going to Nogales, Mexico, and then she was going to cross to Arizona and last time I talked to the person who was supposedly bringing my mom here, they told me that they were crossing to a town called Rio Rico and they got lost in there and they don't know what happened in there.
My mother came with a neighbor, it was another girl, her name I think was Laura Elisabeth, and she was a girl, 21 years old. They came together, helping each other. They came together and they're both missing. Her parents are looking for her too. She left in Mexico, I'm not sure, it was a 2 years old kid, she came here to meet with her dad.
That family's living the same thing that my parents did for me, that they came first and then they wanna bring their kids, the same thing with that family. The father came first, than he want to get the daughter, and the daughter probably was going to get her son later.
And her dad is looking for her too, desperate too, 'cause they don't know nothing about them. They have the same information.
They went to Nogales, Arizona to look for her too - they didn't find nothing. From Mexico side, my father went to look for my mother and from the United States side, their parents went to look for her.
a daughter's questions
So I contact a lot of people and nobody can help me find her.
She sent me a text message saying that she was already arrived in Nogales, that she was waiting to be crossed and after that, I didn't hear nothing about her.
So it passed a week and I was wondering where she was and I call the person that was bringing my mother here.
It was a guy that my parents make the deal with him, they don't even know him, they just - somebody gave them the number and told them that they help passing people to the States, so they don't know who is he or where he live, nothing like that - that's the worst part, that we only have the phone number and that's it.
First he says he didn't know where she was; then he told me to wait, then passed two weeks, three weeks, and it was too much and I didn't know where she was. First he told me that immigration probably caught them and had them with them and that's why he didn't know nothing bout them, then he told me that last time they see my mother was crossing the border from Nogales to Nogales Arizona in a town called Rio Rico, and then immigration runs, and everybody separate and everybody run, and then that was the last time they see my mother, they never see my mother again. So that's the only information that he give me.
Once it was already a month that I didn't know nothing about my mom, i call immigration and they look for her if they have her in there, 'cause my mom already have a record and she has a permit of work, so her whole information is there, so I call them and I ask about her and they sent me to different places, and I call them and call them, and all of them told me that they don't have no record of my mother in there.
And then I contact my - the Mexican embassy, and they told me that they were going to help me but they don't have no record of anybody by that name.
I called Human Resources in Arizona because that was where she was supposed to cross and they look for her, and immigration to, they look for her in the mortgage - how you call it - the morgue and they look for her everywhere and they couldn't, they didn't find nothing. Then I call some organization that they help find people that they die in the desert, and I call them, and they don't find no womans, they only find two guys, they don't find a woman.
So I contact a lot of people and nobody can help me find her. They only told us to wait and wait and wait… and next Monday's gonna be a year, waiting, on what's going on, and nothing happened - nothing happened, and it's already a year waiting.
the husband's search
My dad is so desperate to find her that he already went to the people that do magic and all that supposedly.
And I told him, "don't go," because they only play with him. It's very rare to find good people that they really do that. So he went to all these people and they just play with him and ask for money and all that, and he's so desperate and sad and hurt that he cannot find her.
He even went to Nogales in Mexico, he went to supposedly the hotel that she stayed in there when she arrived in Nogales. He went to all the crosses points that they do, he went to the police, he went to a group that helps finding people that they're missing that they're trying to cross the border, he went to a lot of places, and he couldn't find my mother either.
And he's so... my dad... they are... 31 years with my mother, and they just recently got married 3 years ago by the church, and my dad is very, very hurt about what's going on.
He and my sister, I think that they are the people that are more hurt by what's happening than anybody.
maria
Where I used to live everything was green and my grandma has big trees of fruit and they had some hammocks, how you call it?, where you lay down and sleep in there, and there's a beautiful river passed through there.
My mom convinced me to come here and I saw it was New York, and it was night time, and it time the garbage passed. And I saw all these big buildings, and all the garbage outside and I didn't see no trees, no plants, no nothing - I was so disappointed, of where I came from. But then I get used to it and the years pass by.
I came when I was 10, I went to 5th grade. I went to 5th grade. It was hard because in that time, 20 years ago, they don't have English, ESL classes. So my teacher he only speak English, I don't understand what he was saying, all my classmates were English speaking only. I remember I had 3 friends that speak a little Spanish, so they help me a little bit.
I used to pay the neighbor to help me do my homework, because I didn't understand - he speak English and Spanish - and I used to pay him so he can help me to translate some words and stuff like that. When I went to the middle school, it was harder. I didn't like it 'cause everything was harder and my English was not good and I didn't understand what was - everything about it, I didn't have a lot of help like English help or something like that, everything was in English.
And I think I get so disappointed of everything because it's hard when you don't have the help from your parents 'cause they don't know the language. And your parents, they came here to work and make money… so they don't really got the time to sit down and help you with your homework, and they have this saying, that "if you don't wanna study, go to work," so that was the same thing with my parents, so I didn't want to study, go to work, so I left school in 9th grade.
But I didn't stop - I keep taking courses, and keep doing things, and I keep learning because I wanna be - I wanna have the knowledge for my kids to help them, 'cause they're gonna need my help. And if I don't speak English same as my parents, and I don't know, the same as my parents, my kids are going to be ending as me. So I want my kids to be better than me, have more stuff than me. So that's why I keep fighting for it. yes. yes, and if study and keep working is what is going to take, I'm gonna do it, and even being far, far away from my family, I'm still gonna keep doing it.
I'm teaching my kids to be good kids, to be good citizens and to help whoever ask for help, no matter who or what, what color, what person, what age, they always has to help people
living in the dark
People says they don't want to give us papers, that we do bad things. I don't have a criminal record, my husband don't have a criminal record, my parents don't have a criminal record, my brother don't have a criminal record, and we still cannot get it.
I'm part of a member board in community help, and they were like, "we can help you, let's write letters and stuff," but they don't hear nothing, they don't hear. I'm a board of a church member, and it don't help me either.
It's very bad living like this, and you go to any place and they ask for social security, and you don't have none. they don't wanna assist you there, 'cause you don't have a social security. And they say, "why you don't have a social security, you speak English very good, you have 20 years in this country?" I'm like, "I don't put the rules - if I put the rules, it would be different." So it's hard.
We're not criminals, we're working persons and they're a lot of people like me that came when they were 10, 9 years old and now they left us in the dark because we cannot do nothing now. We work, we have our kids, we pay our taxes, and now we're suffering, being nobody, and we don't wanna live from the government, we don't wanna live from welfare - we just wanna work and we want our kids to study. And we don't ask nothing to the government, whatever we have, we have it because we work and we work hard - and if we have to work 12 hours to have some money, we do - we don't cry 'cause we don't wanna work, we work whatever hours they ask to work to have some money in our pocket.
And we pay taxes, we pay everything, we don't get the benefits as United States, because we don't have no papers, so people say that we live from the benefits, but what benefits?
mixed emotions
And sometimes my husband gets very upset because his mom is very sick. His mom is already old and sick and he cannot go see her and he has 15 years that he don't see his mom.
He gets tired too, because he always like to study and he always wanna do things, and he can't, because the same situation. He love being a mechanic, and his passion was always to be a mechanic, but then the years passing and passing and he's like, "I'm getting old and nowhere and I'm never gonna do nothing."
In New York he was a taxi driver, and he do landscaping here. It's a big change for him, from being a taxi driver to be in the sun all day - it's very, very bad for him.
And sometimes my husband says, "let's go to Mexico, let's throw everything to the garbage and let's go back to Mexico," and I tell him, "why should we go? my kids were born here, my son wanna do something in life, and we take him over there, it's gonna be hard for him." It's hard here to study, imagine in Mexico, just imagine that it's gonna be worse. So that's why I don't wanna leave, because of my kids.
If we go to Mexico, there's no way we gonna put all the money together so my son can go to a medicine school, and that's what he wants to do, a medicine school. If my son stay in school here - and he's a very good kid, he has honors, he got good grades, and they told him that if he keep doing the same thing that he's doing, they can help him pay the school. I will feel very proud. I will feel that all the sacrifice that I'm doing is going to be rewarded.
I talk to my dad every two weeks, every week, and my sister, my brother, and my mother in law, my brothers in law, we talk to them. And it's hard when we talk to them - like this weekend I have my daughter's birthday and I tell my dad, "come to my daughter's birthday," I tell him, "come to my daughter's birthday," and he says, "oh, I'll be there" - joking, because it's far, far away for them to come here. And when you have a birthday or something, you feel lonely because you want your family to be with you.
No matter how good is the party or how good is everything, you know you're missing something.
And I didn't know how lucky I was when my parents were here until they left, I didn't know how lucky I was having my mother and my father and my sister and my brother all together as a family until my mom and my dad decided to leave to Mexico. And now I cannot see them, I cannot hug them.
today
It's hard. It's hard because… you don't know to cry of her death or cry because you don't know nothing about her or be happy because probably she's alive or… you gonna eat something, and you don't know if she's already ate something, you're happy and you don't know if she's happy… it's a lot of emotions together, because I think the worst that happen to a person is missing someone that you love and living with not knowing where is that person at, and having that faith that one day she's gonna appear… and that's the worst. Because if your mother die, you… in your heart, you know that she is dead and you pray for her and everything, but you know that she is dead.
But in my situation, I don't know if she's dead, she's alive - so many things that they talk about, that they say that they have people working like slaves, that they use their body and sell it, so many things I heard everywhere, and I'm always thinking, where is she, where is she, and it's very hard. I only want to - if she's dead, I only want to know where she's dead so I can cry (over) her body. I think that's the hard part of living with this situation.
Whatever information they have for me, no matter what it is, just I want to know - where is she?
Hundred of people that disappear and they don't know nothing about them, and they always thinking, "where are they, where are they?" Probably they're dead in the desert, probably they're… I don't know, I don't know.
We stopped talking about it because of the health of my kids, and I want - I keep everything for myself 'cause I don't want them to see me sad all the time 'cause now I'm living for my kids right now and I want them to be happy and not grow up with the depressed I have and being ok and I try to not talk about it.
And this affect me a lot and the only way I take that out is when I go to sleep I talk to my husband and he talk to me and he give me a little bit of, how you call it, energy, and says "ok, don't worry, everything is fine" and stuff like that. And there're days that I cannot handle it so he's like, "whenever you feel that you cannot handle it, call me" and we talk and yeah, he help me a lot in that part, in that he always told me to talk to him whatever I feel.
And sometimes I feel guilty, because she came for me here - she came to see me. She came for my wedding, she came to help me. And a lot of people told me to don't get married anymore, 'cause she was not here. And I told them that that was the illusion of my mother, to see me with a white dress, I was gonna do it, no matter what, no matter if my wedding was not what I was expecting, to be the happy ceremony that I always expect - but it was the wedding that my mom always want, for me.
