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Early morning shift – PublicoGT

Ilka Oliva Corado

Cut the avocado in half and take the tortillas that you packed in aluminum foil out of the bag, take the lid off the plastic container that remains in your lunch box, there you have fried beans and three boiled eggs. Wrapped in a napkin a handful of salt and a jalapeño pepper. He has coffee in the thermos. It’s time to eat.

Calandria Guadalupe, began working making clay comales at the age of five, in the community of Santa María Magdalena Tiltepequec, Santos Reyes Nopala, Oaxaca, Mexico, the fifth of twelve siblings, from a family of artisans who They dedicate themselves to making clay pots and griddles that they go out to sell in the market.

Between crafts and the corn harvest, his family stayed afloat, until kitchen utensils made of Teflon began to arrive, carried by street vendors who crossed the Usumacinta River with their baskets. They said that they made them in Central America with the scrap that they transported from Mexico to Costa Rica in containers.

Little by little, the Teflon utensils made in Nicaragua were flooding Central America and soon they were already in Mexico. In the community where the Calandria Guadalupe family lives, it was also an impact, how easily they heated up, they did not break and the food did not it stuck This is how, little by little, the stores filled with Teflon kitchen utensils and the artisans who worked with clay had to go to other towns further and further away to try to sell their product.

Until one day, no store was found without Teflon utensils. Forced emigration became part of the new reality of the towns dedicated to crafts. His family tried to get ahead selling food and atoles, but the profit was too little to feed twelve children, first his father emigrated, then his two older brothers and the family that was always so close separated forever when two sisters also left. they were soaked and suffocated to death in the container of a trailer that was transporting undocumented immigrants.

His two brothers got married and the money from the remittances went down with his father only sending. That is why Calandria Guadalupe emigrated, to support her father and for her little brothers to finish school. She just arrived two days ago, she is thirteen years old, she should be in school, but she came to work, not to study, she told her cousins ​​that she went to meet her with her father when the coyote delivered her. Sleeping in an apartment with eight other people is not unusual. In her house in Oaxaca, six siblings slept in each bed, made of boards and had mats instead of mattresses.

They got her a job at night, although a friend of her cousins ​​told her that in three days she will get her another day washing dishes, so she has two and can send remittances soon.

It’s one in the morning, lunchtime, she’s been up packing cereal boxes since seven at night, her shift ends at seven in the morning. Calandria Guadalupe washes her hands and takes her lunch box along with her thermos to the dining room, she is amazed to observe dozens of girls probably the same age as hers and others younger. She cuts the avocado, an avocado that she has neither the size nor the taste of the avocados that she ate from the tree in her house, it is tasteless, like tortillas, beans and coffee.

Fuente www.cronicasdeunainquilina.com


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