The Guadalajara Reporter

‘She put out the fire!’ Campo family deals with a threat of drug and child abuse with calmness, stern resolution

Jose Maria (“Chema”) Flores, a dark, crease-faced campesino of 57, was having family problems. He and his wife, Lupe, have eight children. One of their older sons, Jose, had gone off some time ago to dabble in crack and marry a woman also drawn to drugs.

Five years ago, police had visited the Flores home, and told Chema to come to the Ministerio Publico (MP — district attorney’s office) and bring his wife. Such biddings, especially in rural Mexico, prompt anxiety. Chema hated such meetings because they invariably meant documents. He had begun working when he was six, received a single spotty year of poor education, and does not read.

But this summons turned out to be saddening, rather that threatening. Jose, and his wife, had been arrested for beating their three-year-old child, Fortino — “Tinito” — and for possessing a gunny sack of drugs. The child had abrasions and bruises on his face and body. After meetings with a MP lawyer, Chema and Lupe were given custody of Tinito. The boy’s parents were jailed briefly. Today, eight-year-old Tinito is the top student in his third-grade class, and a member of the local junior ballet folklorico, which has performed in several Jalisco towns. Not long ago, the boy quietly offered to teach his unschooled abuelo (grandfather) to read if Chema would put a light fixture above the corner where he slept. He wanted to read before going to sleep. He was working on a child’s set of encyclopedias a friend of Chema’s had given him.

Now, the boy’s parents were trying to get him back. They came to Chema’s door, shouting angrily about this. Lupe, who took Tinito on the bus to school every morning and picked him in the afternoon, had chased her daughter-in-law away from loitering around the school, trying to take the boy away. She mentioned this his teacher and to the school’s directora.

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