Remembering las cartoneras.(Essay)

DURING THE LAST YEAR of the twentieth century, it seemed that people everywhere were making plans to travel to a place that was meaningful to them--a place that would ground them on the planet, heighten their sense of being, make them feel alive--and ever so glad to be alive, witnessing the ushering-in of the third millennium. Where people went to see out the old century depended on their philosophical view on life, their imagination, and their checkbooks--from camping at the Galapagos (before it possibly went condo) to searching the birthplace of ancestors in Galicia or Dublin. The cold war was over and it was before 9/11, of course. Throughout the '90s, the country had been riding a wave of economic prosperity and peacetime. It seemed the nation had nothing but more of the same to look forward to in the new century.

My tia Flora--the mother of five, grandmother of eighteen, and great-grandma to nine, who had not taken a vacation in over twenty years and had not even so much as flown on a plane before--was no exception. At the start of the new century, she booked a couple of tickets without discussing her plan with anyone (except with her late husband and my mother and father who were her confidantes in heaven now, she said), grabbed her young grandson (the one who lived nearby, in the apartment above hers, in fact), and using the stocky seven-year-old in lieu of a walker, forced her arthritic legs to board a direct flight to Mexico City--El De Efe.

Tia Flora--my mother's only sister--left Mexico City, her birthplace, at seventeen. She had taken the same route as my mother before her, that is, stopping for a short time in Nuevo Laredo where their grandparents had moved to, until my mother sent for her to come to Chicago. She then went up north as a new bride, with Tex-Mex husband and small children in tow, and stayed for life. Chicago to her was idyllic. It became her "Paris," she came to say as the years passed--with its pristine Grant Park and colorful Buckingham Fountain, Magnificent Mile (where a woman with little means could still window shop even if she couldn't go in to buy), its lively summer street fairs and snowy winters.

Her new husband took a job in a factory, and once all the children started school, she applied for work as a seamstress in a small upholstery company. "I'd never used a sewing machine before in my life," she told me back then, "but when the owner asked if I could handle it, I said yes, of course. He never regretted hiring me and I never let him down. I loved all the years I worked there. I loved my fellow seamstresses, even the cheapminded owner!" My aunt did not use the word "love." She said "encantada," which in English means enchanted and which could not have been what she felt working eight hours a day, the same foot pushing an industrial Singer pedal, fingers pricked to the point of numbness, and wrists stiffening as the years wore on, earnestly working toward each hour's quota.

It was my tia Flora who was enchanted.

True, her whole life was devoid of privilege--she had scarcely known her mother who died when she was a small child. Her father eked out a living by selling used books on the street; providing for his children was impossible. She spent her adolescence as a live-in servant in Mexico City.

Yet there was something about her, as perfume commercials suggest about a woman with an alluring scent, that emitted a touch of class, style, a dash of crimson across an otherwise gray palette. Not glamour, fancy jewelry, or extravagant parties--but taste. It was in the details, as I noticed even as a child when I'd spend New Year's Eve with her and her children. (Where her husband was--where my own parents were, for that matter--I never really knew. Certainly not together but most likely off to a party or dance, celebrating with his or her own friends.)