From a very young age I was sure that I wanted to seek more opportunities than those that my parents had. I did not want to end up as a construction worker or as a seamstress. My parents worked too hard during their long workdays for me to end up following in their footsteps.
My parents dreamed of their children attending university and becoming professionals. I was always fixated on helping my parents’ dreams come true. My parents did their best to help me accomplish their dreams. They worked hard to provide money for textbooks and transportation to school. Even when they were running low on money, they offered me opportunities to work to buy myself whatever I needed. I recall helping my father on several projects in which he was involved. He would try his best to pay me for this small amount of labor.
Growing up, I remember spending time drawing. Soon, this became a hobby that I was good at. During the time in which I was beginning to think about university and career paths, the National Autonomous University of Mexico offered two careers that were founded on drawing and design: architecture and industrial engineering. At the time I was confident in my abilities so I decided to sign up for the latter.
During my adolescence I remember growing up very rapidly. My dream to attend the National Autonomous of Mexico was juxtaposed to the poverty and ignorance that was prevalent in the community around me. Many families lived similarly – in small houses that were composed of tiny apartments that did not have enough room to accommodate large families. Because of this limited space, most of the kids and adolescents in the community spent their time in the street. Most of us were very social and hung out with a range of people. Unfortunately this interaction was not always positive. The younger kids began to pick up various vices from the older kids including alcohol, drugs, and violence. This youth culture appeared to be very “fun” and certainly, “accessible”. It was not before long that I began to be lured in. Of course, I cannot blame it all on the streets alone, even within my the safety of my own family there were vices I had to face. Despite being surrounded by these vices, soon enough, I transitioned from being a very focused student to being a very curious adolescent who just wanted to have fun.
Through my experiences in the community that I lived, I learned that poverty and vices go hand in hand. When you are hungry and do not have anywhere to live in, you begin to develop very fast in order to attempt to escape your limitations. Although I was angry, I could not blame my father for picking up alcohol as a vice, I knew that it was hard for him to have so many problems to deal with. Logically, his problems stemmed from both personal and structural influences. However, I really do believe that poverty was the biggest problem. Poverty allowed alcoholism, drugs, and violence to fester. Our community also lacked access to educational opportunities. Thankfully for us, my mother recognized this problem and immediately acted on it. When my mother began working outside the home, a whole new world of opportunities opened and we were able to go to school. We were fortunate to have our parents’ full support in our educational pursuits.
In many ways I feel like my parents were integrated within this cycle of poverty. My parents began to live together at a very early age. My mother was sixteen when she ran away with my father. My father was only one or two years older than my mother, and soon enough he got her pregnant; they were both so young. Unfortunately for them, they created such a large family. Although this way of life appears to be joyous and fun, it was quite the opposite. My parents constantly worried about not having a place to live, a place where to eat, a place in where they could raise one, two, three, four, nine children. I feel like their situation speaks to that of the cycles of poverty. My parents taught me that in such a rough place like Mexico City, you have to constantly be fighting and resisting these vices and bad influences in order to survive. It is difficult to overcome these obstacles.
NEXT SECTION – The Mexican Economic Crisis: Student Movements & the Earthquake of 1985