Rosa's story

I had the privilege of spending a Saturday afternoon with an amazing woman, Rosa (name has been changed), and her two children. We met to discuss the work that she does with a women’s rights group that operates in various indigenous communities in the area. We met each other in a center plaza in San Cristóbal and found a bench to sit and talk. I shared with her a little bit about the work I’m doing here, and she told me about her duties as a health promoter.

To Rosa, working with people in indigenous communities is something she has always felt compelled to do. She has always been involved with women in the communities where she has lived, working with them and trying to help them. When explaining her motivations, she repeatedly said “As an indigenous woman…” and then would go on to speak about her perspective. Her identity as an indigenous woman was clearly an important motivator for her work.

Rosa also told me about how she came to San Cristóbal. Her family was too poor for her to go to school, so she had to go to work. To find work, she moved from her home village about three hours away, to the city of San Cristóbal. I think she was a young teen at the time. While living here in San Cristóbal, Rosa met her husband. They are still together, however currently her husband is away working. He has to migrate to other places, Rosa says, because there is no work for him here. About one year ago, they were able to purchase a little bit of land and are building a house on it. This could be an important step towards getting them out of a vicious cycle of poverty (that can come from renting), however they still don’t have a roof for the house. So currently Rosa and her husband are working to save the money to buy their roof, and that’s why he’s away working. He’s still in southern Mexico currently, but he’s thinking about going to Tijuana to get better work.

Might Rosa’s husband try to cross to the U.S.? Rosa’s pretty sure that he won’t. He went there once to work in the past, but now, Rosa says, it’s just too dangerous and financially risky to make the crossing. She told me about how people die crossing the desert, about the various abuses migrants endure. She told me about how a person from Chiapas needs to spend 25,000 pesos (~2,500 dollars, often gathered and borrowed from family and friends) to make the trip and pay the coyote (guide) to cross the border, and often they just end up getting sent back and losing the money. In short, she is fully aware of the situation on the “frontera norte.” Rosa does have two cousins who are currently working in the U.S. and she says that they’ve been trying to get her husband to make the crossing once again. From the way she spoke about it, it seemed like she really didn’t want him to go. Still, Rosa maintained that she doesn’t think he’ll try because it’s too dangerous. So I hope, for her sake, that she is right.

Like I said from the start, Rosa is an incredible woman – strong, compassionate, motivated. She has worked all her life to support her fellow indigenous women and to work for social change. Now she would like to have a good, strong roof for her house. It seems strange that, given the way our global economy is structured, the way for her to achieve that is to live without her husband at home and with the fear that he might attempt a potentially lethal border crossing.