We work all the time

photos by M.T. Hernandez

While in the city of Morelia, Michoacan during Easter Week I took a picture of an attractive young woman who was selling folkloric religious articles outside Morelia's Cathedral. She was standing under the bright sun, wearing a blue Superman t-shirt - holding a brightly colored umbrella.

When I asked her about taking the photo, I mentioned that if she gave me her email address I would send it to her. She replied: " I don't have an email address, we work all the time and don't do things like use computers."

A few days later in a taxi from a bus station in Mexico City to a hotel on Avenida Juarez I was speaking to the driver who was very talkative. We began a discussion on immigration, he told me he had relatives in most major U.S. cities. I told him about the movie "Under the Same Moon" (La Misma Luna), an interesting story about how a boy walked to LA to find his mother - I said maybe he could try to see it sometime. He smiled and responded: "we work seven days a week, eighteen hours a day - just to be able to survive." - he never told me he would see the movie or not, but his statement about work was another way of telling me that something like going to a movie was a luxury he didn't have.

Flying back home I thought a lot about the taxi driver and the woman at the cathedral. How different are the lives of those in the U.S. and those in Mexico. Here in America, writing on a computer or going to a movie theater are givens.

This is when I remember that 80% of Mexican citizens live below poverty level.

A Miracle for the DREAMERS: Madre Chole

Mexico City
Panteon del Tepeyac

In this old cemetery next to the Guadalupe Basilica there are many graves dating back to the early 1800s. The place is where many important people are buried.

In the middle of the cemetery is a small building/mausoleum - it looks fairly new, the only grave in the cemetery with graffiti on it- they were not drawings or gang symbols. They were notes from students asking Madre Chole for her help.

Around the time of the Cristero Rebellion (mid to late 1920s) a Capuchin nun named Sor Soledad became known as a caring and empathic teacher. After she died, a custom began where students would go to her grave and leave something of theirs that they used in the classroom - word is that many miracles have occurred - helping students that asked Madre Chole for assistance with their studies.

I saw Madre Chole's grave yesterday. It was a sort of rectangle concrete room, very small - with two photographs of her and one painting. I looked through the metal bars and saw hundreds of little strips of paper on the floor of the room. I thought of the DREAMERS, who are students and REALLY need Madre Chole's help - not so much for making good grades (they do that so well on their own), but for being able to study, graduate and work in their professions as residents and citizens of the U.S.

I thought of a few DREAMERS I know well and decided that I would be their intermediary and ask Madre Chole for help getting the DREAM ACT passed. I took out a piece of paper and wrote her a note with the names of the DREAMERS I have come to know at the University of Houston. There were so many, and our tour guide was waiting for me. So at the bottom of the paper I just wrote - For All DREAMERS - PLEASE HELP.

A couple of young people next to me asked for some paper so they could write their own notes. They smiled at me and seemed kind of embarrassed. I looked inside the little room again at the images of Madre Chole and I started getting choked up. It seemed so important to try and see if she could do something - especially since she is said to have performed miracles for students during the past 80 years. I am not necessarily a religious person. But as I told Madre Chole in the note, this is a desperate situation.

p.s. This post has no photo of Madre Chole because the cemetery administration does not allow photographs.