The Guadalajara Reporter

Tough three-year old becomes a tough ‘watcher’/‘listener,’ traits guarding her from a hard past, a challenging present

Once the chill winds of November died down, 16-year-old Concha Rosales – like all campo females – shed her huaraches to go barefoot.  Concha used her home-made huaraches only when she strapped on spurs to go into the cerro aboard a dun-colored gelding, tending to livestock or fixing fence – something few Mexican women did at that time.

It was a foreshortened downhill glance at Concha running toward the pig-pen with two buckets that made me recall seeing her as an unknown four-year-old racing barefoot down a cobbled pueblo street to catch up with her foster family.  Though I was acquainted with her family, I didn’t know her then.  Most of her foster siblings called her “mija” (“my child”).  

It was the early 1960s, and I was a friend of Concha’s foster parents, Chema and Lupe Rosales, in a Mexico where there were few vehicles in the countryside.  But everyone, even the poorest, had a burro.  Those who could afford them used horses for transportation and hauling freight.  At the moment of my recall glance, I was cutting branches off a mesquite tree that February winds were smashing into the Rosales’ tile roof.  That four-year-old child had tripped; she wasn’t used to cobbled streets.  Her mother called, “Mija, pensar antes hacer” (“Think before you act”).   Concha had skinned knees and looked ready to cry.  But didn’t. Unusual. Most kids that young wanted as much sympathy as they could get. 

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