Motherhood across Borders

Immigrants and Their Children in Mexico and New York

Gabrielle Oliveira

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781479897728
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Emigración e inmigración

The stories of Mexican migrant women who parent from afar, and how their transnational families stay together While we have an incredible amount of statistical information about immigrants coming in and out of the United States, we know very little about how migrant families stay together and raise their children. Beyond the numbers, what are the everyday experiences of families with members on both sides of the border? Focusing on Mexican women who migrate to New York City and leave children behind, Motherhood across Borders examines parenting from afar, as well as the ways in which separated siblings cope with different experiences across borders. Drawing on more than three years of ethnographic research, Gabrielle Oliveira offers a unique focus on the many consequences of maternal migration. Oliveira illuminates the life trajectories of separated siblings, including their divergent educational paths, and the everyday struggles that undocumented mothers go through in order to figure out how to be a good parent to all of their children, no matter where they live. Despite these efforts, the book uncovers the far-reaching effects of maternal migration that influences both the children who accompany their mothers to New York City, and those who remain in Mexico. With more mothers migrating without their children in search of jobs, opportunities, and the hope of creating a better life for their families, Motherhood across Borders is an invaluable resource for scholars, educators, and anyone with an interest in the current dynamics of U.S immigration.

 

INTERLUDE 1

Parallel Lives

As I sat in the small, bright, lime green room in the South Bronx, 20 women around me chatted in a lively way. Some of them breastfed, others drank tea, and a few just stared. This was a regular place for some of my research participants to go. It was one of hundreds of Herbalife1 offices spread out in the city. This particular one, near the “Intervale” stop on the 2/5 subway line, was run by a family of undocumented evangelical Mexican immigrants. The office space represented a “break” for many of these women. A break from their tiny apartments. A break from their routine of cleaning, cooking, and caring for the kids. A “safe place,” as one of them described that February day. Because almost every woman who went there had one or more children, all of the women “took care” of the kids. Aruna, Emilia, and Maya (participants in my research) were regulars. Sometimes they would spend four hours there and only leave after receiving a phone call from their husbands/partners.

During the winter the small office served as a warm space, and during the summer it was one of the few places in the neighborhood with a strong air conditioning system. The women engaged in a daily ritual. I ended up visiting three different Herbalife sites, in the Bronx, Queens, and Sunset Park. Virtually everywhere I recruited a participant she would ask me to go with her to “la batida” (the shake). They called the place “la batida” because the “ritual” of hanging out involved consuming the company’s products. First, “el agua” (flavored water) “because it helps the circulation,” then “el técito” (the little tea) for digestion, and finally “la batida,” which helps you lose weight. Not just any weight; baby weight. “Un consumo,” or this particular sequence of products, costs $5. Many of these women sold Herbalife products door to door, so they would get “un consumo” for free. There was also a big chart on the wall with each woman’s name (my name was eventually added to the chart) that followed each one’s daily check-in and consumption. After accruing ten stars, you receive a “free” product from Herbalife. Women there discussed everything from relationships with their partners to problems with teachers and schools to families they left in the country of origin. The liveliest discussions had to do with telling each other about their own childhoods and their relationships with their own mothers.

“Una tequilita Gabi?” Candela asked me as we sat in the garage of her home in Puebla, Mexico (Field notes, Mexico, May 4, 2012). Candela didn’t drink, but she wanted me to try the handmade tequila her son had brought her a few days before. As we sat there in chairs while I sipped tequila, more women joined us. When I met Candela in 2010, she gave me her “blessing” to do research in her town in the Mixteca poblana. Many of the caregivers of the constellations I was researching came to “hang out” at Candela’s house. Candela was known to be the “informal” mayor of the pueblo. She sold everything: flowers; regalos (gifts) for quinceañeras, weddings, and baptisms; tortillas; and all kinds of “agua” (jamaica, horchata, piña). The women who went there didn’t just sit around and chat, they bought and sold different products, gossiped, and talked about what “El Norte” (the North) had done with their sons and daughters. A nostalgic tone was predominant in their narratives. Memories of how “it used to be” when mothers could raise their children. Memories of when women had a well-defined place and role in society. As Tami, a matriarch raising grandchildren at 72, wondered,

How is it that we have become this type of society that allows and, more than that, needs mothers to leave their children and needs children to leave their mothers? It used to be that you could go to the city [Mexico City] and that was that. But in the last 10, 15, 20 years you have to cross the border to have a future.

Sitting around the coffee table fanning themselves, these women discussed politics and injustice and how corrupt the president was. At the end of every conversation, though, were stories and statements about longing for a period in time when their “families” were together. In the back of Candela’s house there were cans and bottles and packages of shakes, teas, and powder to flavor water from Herbalife. I asked Candela if she bought those things herself and she told me some of it, yes, but the more expensive products were sent by her daughter-in-law from Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Almost every house I visited in Mexico had one or more products from Herbalife that were bought in Mexico or sent from the United States.

In almost parallel lives, mothers and daughters sit in completely different physical places. They are indeed divided by a physical, spatial border. However, they share many characteristics and talk about each other. In my quest for understanding the relationship between mothers and children left-behind, I was surprised by a “child-mother” bond that did not include the small children I was researching: the intergenerational relationship between mothers and their own mothers, who were often raising some of their grandchildren in the mother’s absence. Out of the 20 care constellations I followed in my research, 17 had a maternal grandmother as primary caregiver of children left-behind. I found that maternal grandmothers’ relationships with their own daughters shaped and influenced concepts related to motherhood and care.

1

Ideals and Practices of Transnational Motherhood and Care

Gemma’s Story: “Yo la Dejé, Pero no la Abandoné.”

I did not abandon Daniela, I left her. Abandoning means that you forgot about the person, that the person doesn’t exist in your life, that you cut her out. To leave someone doesn’t change how much you take care and love her and the fact that I am her mother.

Gemma had been living in New York for 13 years. Prior to coming to the United States, Gemma, who is from the small pueblo of Tlacuales in Puebla, “se juntó” (got together) with a man named Elías. They had a baby, Daniela, who was 14 years of age when I met her. Gemma was pursuing a career in nursing when she got pregnant with Daniela. She was the only person in her family who went to high school, completed high school, and went on to professional school. Her mother and father did not know how to read and write, but that did not stop Gemma from doing well in school. Her father Rubén has American citizenship because he was in the United States prior to the 1986 Act,1 which granted amnesty and citizenship for millions of immigrants in the country. Rubén was able to extend his citizenship to his wife and three sons, but not his daughter Gemma. Regarding gaining and sharing citizenship, Rubén told me, “Women should stay and the men should go [to the U.S.].”

When Daniela was two months old, the relationship between Gemma and Daniela’s father, Elias, became difficult. He would go home intoxicated and sometimes even bring female company. He was known to be a “ladies’ man.” Gemma described the situation, “He would never bring home diapers or baby food. The man did not take care of me or my daughter … he was always intoxicated and he had many girlfriends. I was in love with him, but I take my children over a man any day.”

Gemma moved into her parents’ house, “leaving” Elias. In phone conversations, her father, Rubén, would refer to her as a dejada, which in this context meant two things: first, even though she was the one who left, the husband is ultimately the only one who can dejar (leave) his wife, thus she is the left one or dejada; second, her father used dejada to insult her and insinuate that she could not give good advice or “be a good mother” to her own children because she was a dejada. For Rubén, Gemma was socially marked as a woman who could not maintain a family.

Shortly after moving back into her parents’ house, another man, Alejandro, began courting Gemma. Alejandro was Gemma’s boyfriend during high school; they dated briefly when they were teenagers and he left for the United States to work before finishing high school. A few years later he came back on a break and found out that Gemma was newly single. Alejandro’s parents disapproved of the relationship, as he told me, “She was a separated woman with a baby that was not mine … where we come from that’s not good for the woman. My mother did not want me to be with her and Gemma’s parents also thought it was too soon.” It was then that Alejandro told Gemma that he wanted her to go to the United States with him. Gemma’s first answer was no because of Daniela. But Alejandro promised on “the Virgin of Guadalupe” that they would go back to Puebla to get Daniela when she was a little older. Gemma explained her rationale for making the decision to migrate:

You come into this world as a woman, because Diosito (God) wants … you have to have a family, because you were created for that, and when you do, things go wrong and the family falls apart [referring to Elias].… The only way, maybe I shouldn’t say the only way, but the way that I thought to be the most effective to try to give Daniela a better future with a stable family was going with Alejandro to the United States. He was good to me, he promised me we were going to come back for her. And Alejandro said [as they planned their trip], “the baby is going to cry the entire way in the desert and the police will hear us and arrest us.” I did not want to take a chance.

While Rubén was against his daughter’s departure, her mother Emma told me, “a woman needs to be where her husband is. If she had stayed in Puebla no one would have married her. My daughter needed to be happy and have a chance in life … I told her I would keep Daniela, it’s the sacrifices you make for your children.” Emma provided two explanations for the migration rationale: for one’s husband, and for one’s children. She explained to me that in order for children to have a stable life, both emotionally and financially, their parents must be together even if they are far away. Alejandro was not Daniela’s father, but even so Emma saw her daughter having a husband and being together as critical to Gemma becoming a good role model for Daniela.

Gemma described leaving Daniela for the first time as heartbreaking. Gemma was still breast-feeding and she felt very connected to her baby. “How is it that we find ourselves in the situation of leaving our own children behind? And for what?” Gemma told me as she put her hands on her cheeks.

Gemma and Alejandro did go back to Puebla three years later, but to Gemma’s despair it was too late: “Daniela was three when I returned and she did not recognize me. The pain I suffered there and then was so much bigger than when I left her three years before. She only wanted to be with her grandmother and she cried when I held her.” Six months later Gemma and Alejandro again left for the United States and this time Gemma did not know if she would or should go back for Daniela. Emma, Gemma’s mother, never tried to take over the role of mother; quite the contrary. Emma made sure to remind Daniela every day that her mother migrated so she could actually take care of Daniela and ensure that she could “be whatever she wanted to be.” Daniela recounted the story of when her mother left her when she was three years old with a nervous laugh.

I didn’t want to go with her, it was really my fault; I just didn’t know who she was anymore. The person that takes care [emphasis added] of me: feeds me, bathes me, changes me, washes my clothes, braids my hair, and takes me to the doctor is my mamá Emma and not Gemma. The way Gemma takes care of me is by sending me money, gifts, and giving me advice. But I know she is busy with my little brother and little sister.

Daniela had a challenging relationship with her grandfather, Rubén. Even though he spent six months of the year in Texas, whenever he was home it was a nightmare for Daniela. Rubén was reportedly an alcoholic and would often get physically abusive with his wife Emma. He got especially angry with Emma when she would, according to him, “treat Daniela like a baby and let her get away with everything.” Whenever I was at their house in Puebla, Rubén was intoxicated. Daniela asked me to stay longer because, in her words, “you being here will make him well-behaved, he will be scared of hitting my mamá because he knows you are a maestra that lives in the U.S. so you would call the police.” Daniela was extremely concerned for her grandmother’s safety. At some point during my stay with them, Rubén yelled at Emma, who had just burnt a tortilla, and told her she was “worth nothing” and that he was better off being in the United States. Daniela immediately responded to him, “you are a drunk, and I am tired of you. I can’t believe I have to live here with you.… The only reason I stay in this house is because of my mamá.”

Emma, on the other hand, assured me that Rubén was not being abusive lately and explained to me,

He is ill, he has been drinking since he was 11 years old. It’s not his fault. Daniela is stubborn and she is a teenager. He gets angry because when Daniela was younger she was very depressed, I sent her to the psychologist and all … up until she was 11 years old she didn’t shower by herself, she didn’t make her own food, she didn’t help me at all. But then I told her that she needed to be good, otherwise her mother Gemma would not be proud of her … she needed to be a good daughter if she wanted to have a good mother.

In the United States, Gemma settled in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park and had two children with Alejandro, Yazmin (age 11) and Alejandro Jr. (age 10). In Gemma’s words, “The Virgin was giving me a second chance to be a good mother, to take care of my children.” Alejandro Jr. was born with a cleft palate, a severe skin disease, and asthma. He went through multiple surgeries and Gemma dedicated herself entirely to him for the first five years of his life. Her daughter Yazmin also helped her take care of Alejandro Jr. At a time when Yazmin and Alejandro Jr. were in school every day from eight in the morning until two in the afternoon. Yazmin was an excellent student and involved in extracurricular activities such as cheerleading. Alejandro Jr. was one year behind in school, due to his multiple surgeries. He almost failed third grade. He had difficulty reading and writing, but he was an outstanding soccer player. Gemma worked as a caregiver of elderly people. Alejandro worked six days a week at a mechanic shop, where he was the manager. He earned between $1,500 and $2,000 a month. Gemma worked three times a week and made between $200–$300 weekly. They lived on the ground floor of an old brownstone building in a two-bedroom apartment.

Gemma was very active in school-related activities and encouraged Yazmin and Alejandro Jr. to participate in groups, teams, and tournaments. Through government assistance, Gemma secured a tutor who went to her house three times a week to work with Yazmin and Alejandro Jr. The tutor, Paula, was Peruvian and therefore able to alternate between Spanish and English. Gemma spoke very little English and her children spoke very little Spanish in the house. “No te entiendo!” (I don’t understand you) was Gemma’s constant reply to her children. On many occasions Yazmin and Alejandro Jr. talked to each other in English; I often heard them saying, “I don’t know how to say this in Spanish, it’s not my fault.” When she called Mexico, Gemma was able to speak more freely in Spanish with her daughter Daniela on the phone and for longer periods of time, whereas Alejandro Jr. and Yazmin would quickly disengage and not pay attention.

Gemma never told Yazmin and Alejandro Jr. that Daniela was their half-sister; they assumed Daniela was the daughter of both of their parents. When I showed Yazmin a picture of Daniela, she commented, “She doesn’t look like she is my sister … there is something wrong.”

Gemma’s story elucidates the impact of gendered ideology of motherhood on Gemma, Emma, and Daniela, and foreshadows patterns that will also emerge in the stories of the other women participants in this research. Gender ideology influenced how women reflected and narrated leaving their children, leaving their mothers, and leaving or accompanying their husbands or partners. Once settled in New York, the gender ideology of motherhood was adapted and molded such that women could “mother” children here and there. However, the tension between mothers in New York and grandmothers in Mexico remained as both sides tried to sort through “perceived” identities of being a mother, woman, and wife as they shared and negotiated care.

Second, within the transnational, fluid context of migration, it is easy to think that the idea of family is radically transformed. Both Gemma and Emma made sure to tell the children about the value of kinship. Emma reminded Daniela of who, in her words, her “real mother” was and insisted that Daniela held on to that idea. Gemma hid the truth from her two children in the New York City in order to maintain the idea of “one” family where all children belonged to the same father, even if physical borders divided them. Gemma wanted her children to see Daniela as their sister, not their half-sister. Gemma worried that if her children knew the truth they could potentially reject Daniela and not see her as family. In addition, the history between Gemma and Daniela’s father was somewhat shameful for Gemma and her family, and she preferr...