Maita | POY Latam

Remembering hurts me, and what could it be that I remember details from when I was a child? But now that I’m an adult, I can’t remember things,” Maita tells me every time I ask her about her past. She married Marcelino, my maternal grandfather, when she was 12 years old. She fled her home full of violence and abandonment without knowing that she would also suffer the consequences of machismo and alcoholism. “I didn’t know how much I would suffer at your grandfather’s side.

Your grandfather all the time fighting, jealous, I couldn’t leave the house because he said I was going to look for another man, I was very afraid of him every time he started drinking. His alcoholism never let him be happy. I would ask myself “God, when is this going to end?”, I would cry with anger and that was every day because he drank every day.

He said, “it is my house and I am in charge”, I was not afraid that he would hit me, I was afraid because I said, if he wants to hit me, my children are going to get involved or they are going to see. When he died I asked God to let me dream about it and when I dreamt it, what do you think? I dreamt him with the machete in his hand, he was walking around with the machete, and in the dream I said ‘oh no God, not again?

When I was little we had to walk a whole day to get to where we were going, at that time there was news that a tiger had escaped from the circus, we were walking along the road in the middle of the tall bushes and we heard a noise, then we stayed still, we thought “oh the tiger is going to eat us!”, and we kept walking, turning everywhere, we were afraid that it would appear and attack us.

Sometimes I do remember and I say to myself, “My God, why was that man like that? Where am I going to find that answer?

The world never closed in on me, having 6 children, I never gave up, never.” Maita watched over the upbringing of six children, all in the midst of poverty and deprivation, besides Maita does not read or write, she is illiterate.

Recently widowed, with six children, grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren, Maita is the pillar of a family that has lived closely the roots of an ejido located in Alamo, Veracruz, Mexico.

I never had a space to rest or rest, all the time taking care of my children, going from one place to another. how many things I have not lived and here I am still!” I am a silent witness of a hidden story, Maita who will tell your story when you are gone?

He broke his own picture, he arrived drunk and as it was not hanging where he wanted, he said: “Oh, so they don’t want to see me anymore?”, then he took it down and started jumping on it and broke the glass that covered it. I did say that I was annoyed with him, but not with my children, never.

I ask Maita, are you happy? “Now I am, and do you know why I am happy? Because I have my children, I have my grandchildren, I have my great-grandchildren and what more can I ask for? That is my happiness, the greatest of all, now I am happy because God gave me the joy of having so much family and because I feel that you all love me.”

Maita married against her will at the age of 12, she hoped to escape from a violent home that relegated her to abandonment and poverty. Maita had no childhood, the little she lived was to raise her siblings who, like her, suffered the abandonment of their mother. Maita watched over the upbringing of six children, all in the midst of poverty and deprivation, in addition Maita does not read or write, she is illiterate.

This photographic project is a tribute to María Baronesa Gallegos Torres “Maita”, my maternal grandmother. She is 70 years old and, like many women, suffered male violence at home. Recently widowed, with six children, fifteen grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren, Maita is the pillar of a family that has lived closely the roots of an ejido located in Alamo, Veracruz, Mexico.

It is a gift from my photographic vision to all the effort and love that she has dedicated to the family throughout her life, it is to reconnect with my family past and delve into the documentation of a life dedicated to the Mexican home despite all the difficulties that the heteropatriarchal system has imposed over the years.