Olivia: Boxcar-Camp Girl & Visionary of La Hispanidad

By Alejandro Benavides Ph.D.

Olivia was born in Mexico where she lived with her family until 1927. She then immigrated to a Mexican boxcar camp in Aurora Illinois, where the Hispanic population was gradually rising.

Olivia’s life is interwoven with stories of other people from Mexico who settled in Aurora, along with the stories of Mexican Americans who come later. Despite their growing community, they still must deal with racism and cross-cultural conflicts.

Olivia begins a transformation after experiencing visions. With the aid of her Mexican religious resilience, spiritual shaman experience, and education, Olivia’s vision crystalizes as la Hispanidad: a community that embraces the Spanish language and its diverse Hispanic cultures. A vision of her former railroad city transforms into a revenue-generating Hispanic tourist attraction known as Aurora: The City of La Hispanidad. Follow Olivia as she experiences life and death, love and hate, but learns to never abandon a dream.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Feb 22, 2024
• ISBN: 9798765249161

Alejandro Benavides Ph.D.

Born in southern Texas, Alejandro Benavides migrated to Aurora, Illinois in 1950. After four years in the Air Force, he began his quest for higher education. Alejandro earned an AA in sociology, a BS in special education, and a master’s in education and was awarded a PhD in Education Leadership.

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Olivia

Boxcar-Camp Girl & Visionary of La Hispanidad

Alejandro Benavides Ph.D.

Copyright © 2024 Alejandro Benavides Ph.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

ISBN: 979-8-7652-4917-8 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-7652-4916-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024901939

Balboa Press rev. date: 02/20/2024

Dream Big and

Never Stop Dreaming

Dedicated to my late wife, Anne Garcia Benavides,

a woman with a Cuban soul and Mexican heart

and

Students at the Anne Garcia Benavides

STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art,

and Mathematics) Academy in Aurora, Illinois.

Where the sun is always shining.

The first public school in Illinois named after a Hispanic woman

in 2014 and named after a Hispanic outside of Chicago.

The story is a work fiction. Names, characters, and personal incidents in the story are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Not so the historical events and drawing of the CB&Q’s El Campo by Ralph Cruz who lived at the boxcar camp. A copy of the drawing was donated to the author by Manuel Manny Nila, who was born at the Eola boxcar camp. Any resemblance to actual personal events or persons, living or dead, is relatively coincidental.

Contents

Chapter 1 From Mexico to the Boxcar Camp

Chapter 2 Life at the Boxcar Camp

Chapter 3 Life after the Boxcar Camp

Chapter 4 A New Hispanic Era

Chapter 5 Life–Changing Experience

Chapter 6 Next Life Chapter

Chapter 7 The Emerging Hispanic Big Bang

Chapter 8 The Vision

One

From Mexico to the Boxcar Camp

The gentle summer rain ended just before a massive black steam locomotive slowly crawled along the railroad tracks to its destination. A drawn-out roll of thunder from the eastern sky signaled the rain had passed. There was a cool, humid smell at the railroad switchyard and metal reclamation yard operated by the Chicago Burlington & Quincy Railroad, called the CB&Q or often just the Q. Rain was a refreshing change from the smell of stagnant toxic air that hovered over the large railyard. Workers from Mexico and their families lived there in a boxcar camp on the eastern outskirts of Aurora, Illinois, located about forty miles west of Chicago, Illinois.

When Olivia arrived in 1927, there were between one hundred and 125 people living at the boxcar camp surrounded by rail- and scrapyards, manufacturing facilities, and farm fields on the east and north sides. About three hundred more people from Mexico resided on Aurora’s east side. The emigration from Mexico to Aurora began during the Mexican Revolution, which started in 1910 and lasted until 1920. In 1920 Aurora’s population totaled almost 36,400 residents.

Shortly before sunrise Olivia awoke to the noise of the steam locomotive chugging along the tracks behind the boxcar home where her family lived. She hadn’t gotten used to the never-ending clackety-clank of trains and boxcars in the railyard. Olivia sat up and stretched; she was usually the first person to get out of bed.

The inside of the boxcar felt damp from the overnight rain. The family slept in an area about a third the size of the boxcar, partitioned with bedsheets hanging from the ceiling. Olivia, her older brothers Beto and Chuy, and her younger sister Lupita slept on foldable canvas cots on one side of the sleeping area. Her parents slept on a bed in a smaller adjoining area behind another partition. Similar to most other immigrants from Mexico living in Aurora at the time, Olivia’s family were mestizos, a subgroup within Mexico’s diverse population who shared a mixture of indigenous and Spanish ancestry.

As sunrays gradually penetrated the boxcar’s interior, Olivia washed up and dressed. She was named Olivia because of her olive complexion with golden undertones. Her hair was as black and shiny as that of a raven and woven into two long braids with silk ribbons tied on the ends. Her mouth was shaped in such a way that she always seemed to have a charming smile. Many individuals were immediately captivated by Olivia’s eyes and often said her eyes were the rarest shade of green they’d ever seen. Women at the camp who admired her eyes used the palms of their hands to cover Olivia’s eyes. This was to prevent the possibility of casting mal de ojo, the supernatural belief in an evil-eye curse caused by an unintentional look or malevolent glare that transferred negative energy to an unsuspecting person.

Olivia tended to her morning chores, which began with the task of emptying the stinky urine bucket used by the family during the night. As she stepped outdoors, she was greeted by the cooing of mourning doves. She enjoyed listening to the various birdcalls coming from the woods along Indian Creek on the south edge of the boxcar camp. The outdoor toilets were located across a narrow cinder road between the boxcars and a sliding rail. Reaching the toilet with a urine bucket in hand was a task. After emptying the bucket, she rinsed it under the hand water pump located between the road and sliding rail.

Suddenly, Olivia was startled by the clanging of a bell. She turned and was temporarily blinded by a bright headlamp mounted on the front of a locomotive headed in her direction. She smiled and waved to the engineer as the iron monster slowly chugged past the long row of boxcar homes. Grayish smoke bellowed from its funnel-shaped stack leaving a strong aroma of coal and oil.

After returning to the boxcar and cleaning up, she sat awhile and wondered about her parental ancestors because her father, Ernesto, knew nothing about his biological father. His mother had died while giving birth to him, and he was immediately taken to the Domenico de la Natividad convent located seven hundred miles away in the state of Morelos’s Tepoztlán Valley south of Mexico City. The convent abbess directed a peasant family at the convent to care for Ernesto until the age of sixteen. The peasants were only told about his parental surname, de Benavidez. He was given the baptismal first name by the peasant couple, who considered him a temporary responsibility and treated him as such.

Peasants living at the Domenico de la Natividad convent cared for livestock, maintained a large vineyard, made cheese and wine, and grew crops on vast tracts of land owned by the convent.

At age sixteen, the peasant unceremoniously informed Ernesto that he was no longer responsible for his care. There were five other mouths to feed. Ernesto had earned the abbess’s respect as a hard worker, and he was asked to continue caring for the convent’s goat herd. The goats produced the richest milk and the most aromatic cheese, marketed in the region as queso bendito, blessed cheese. He was allowed to live in one of the convent’s adobe huts on a small parcel of land several miles away. Ernesto grew a few staple crops, raised chickens and pigs, and cared for a horse mule named Relámpago that never lived up to his name, Lightning. Relámpago pulled a milk wagon to the convent and a plow in the fields. During the Christmas season Ernesto slaughtered several pigs and sold the meat, which was in high demand during the holidays.

The goat herd consumed much of Ernesto’s time; sleep was the only rest he got. Goats grazed in the lush valley and rocky slopes of the nearby Tepozteco mountain range. They cleared overgrown thorny mesquite shrubs that surrounded an ancient temple dedicated to Tepoztēcatl, the Aztec god of pulque, an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented sap of agave, also known as maguey, plants.

Despite the years that had passed since Ernesto herded goats, he was still afraid of the dark. He told Olivia that he had slept outdoors on a bedroll made of dried petate plant fibers. Poisonous scorpions, snakes, and spiders were a constant threat, as were wolves howling throughout the night. He was entertained by gazing at the night sky in awe of the countless stars and was delighted by the sighting of an occasional shooting star. He was told that such a rare sight was an omen of promise and good fortune. He was to make a wish for good luck. But after several years of shooting-star sightings without a change of his fate in life, he concluded it was only a superstition. The isolation and lack of a family bond created an emotional scar he carried all his life.

Within several years Ernesto became self-sufficient, while increasing the size of herd and milk production. He led a relatively solitary life and established a routine of caring for goats, milking them, delivering milk to the convent, and tending to his crops and farm animals. He attended Sunday Mass at the convent without fail.

Ernesto looked forward to the annual carnival, which was the highlight of the year in the nearby village of Tepoztlán. Festivities lasted from February until the start of Lent. People wore elegant costumes and danced, there were music and fireworks, and confetti blanketed the ground. An elderly peasant told Ernesto that many years ago the indigenous people in Tepoztlán were angered by the Spanish ruling class, who excluded them from carnival festivities. They began wearing costumes to the carnival that ridiculed Spaniards. The event’s highlight were dancers known as chinelos, who wore flowing tunic-shaped robes, elaborate masks with upturned beaks, large flamboyant plumed hats, and long gloves.

During the carnival festivities Ernesto met and danced with his future wife, Angelica, while her parents watched close by. By the time the carnival ended, Angelica’s father granted Ernesto permission to court his daughter at their home. After all, he was a respectable man with a homestead and livestock. Ernesto started accompanying Angelica and her family to Sunday Mass and then spent the afternoon at their home. Angelica’s grandmother kept a vigilant eye on the couple, as was the custom.

Angelica and Ernesto married a year later and lived at his homestead. He was twenty years of age; she was sixteen. Angelica’s parents approved of the marriage, though they were disappointed that she didn’t become a nun. But their disappointment quickly vanished when Angelica gave birth to their first grandchild, a boy who was named Jorge, after her father. Angelica’s mother tailored and mended the nuns’ habits, along with making garments for the local people, and taught Angelica to become a seamstress.

During the Mexican Revolution, those living at the Domenico de la Natividad convent were protected from the war. The convent abbess was from an influential Spanish family with strong ties to the Vatican. At the time she was more powerful than most local officials. Neither soldiers from Mexico’s Federal Army, known as federales, nor rebels dared enter the convent. But people like Ernesto and Angelica, along with their three sons and Olivia, who lived outside the convent walls, were in constant fear. On one occasion federales rode into the village and killed individuals who were suspected of collaborating with the Liberation Army of the South led by General Emiliano Zapata. Several teenaged boys, including Ernesto’s son Jorge, were abducted by federales and forced to join the army. After being informed of the abduction, Ernesto promptly hid his other two sons, Beto and Chuy in a horse-drawn wagon filled with broomcorn and then transported them to the safety of the convent. He arranged for his sons to live and work there until the war ended.

Olivia’s mother prayed daily to Mexico’s patron saint, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, Our Lady of Guadalupe, also known as the Virgen de Guadalupe, for Jorge’s safe return home. Her prayers were never answered. As the war intensified and spread throughout Mexico, several people in the village and the convent fled to the United States. With their parents’ blessing, Beto and Chuy headed to Illinois with a friend whose uncle lived in Aurora.

After the Mexican Revolution ended, Mexico’s government began enforcing secularist and anticlerical articles which were adopted in its 1917 Constitution that established restrictions on the Catholic Church’s powers and influence. Catholicism was banned from Mexico’s public educational system and the government passed anticlerical criminal laws, which fined priests who criticized the government and imposed imprisonment for violators. The number of priests allowed in each region was strictly regulated, and the wearing of religious vestments was restricted. Tensions erupted between Mexico’s President Calles and Catholic rebels known as Cristeros. Many were peasants whose lives were interwoven with the Catholic Church and opposed to the government’s anti-Catholic policies. Long live Christ the King. Long live the Virgin Guadalupe was their mantra.

At the time, Olivia knew little of the bloody Cristero War that followed. The religious conflict started when hundreds of armed Cristeros barricaded themselves in a church and engaged federales in a bloody fight for religious freedom. Eighteen people died, and forty were wounded. On the following day federales attacked another church and shot two priests. The conflict escalated into violent uprisings in central and western Mexico. Peasants who partook in the government’s agrarian reforms, which were implemented after the Mexican Revolution, joined the federales.

Catholics staged an economic boycott against the government, and teaching stopped in Catholic schools. The Mexican government retaliated with aggressive enforcement of anticlerical laws and military action against Cristeros and defiant priests. The Domenico de la Natividad convent was no longer a safe haven and became a target for federales, as did other Catholic parishes that resisted the government’s restrictions. Rebellious priests and Cristeros were publicly shot and hanged throughout Mexico.

As the war escalated, Ernesto and his family fled Mexico in early 1927 and joined Beto and Chuy in Aurora. The brothers arranged free railroad passage for the family and a place to live, along with a job at the scrapyard for their father. While on the train in Mexico headed to the States, Olivia saw numerous lifeless bodies hanging from telegraph poles along the tracks. Vultures and crows fought to pick apart the rotting corpses. It was an awful sight, and she never forgot the images. The religious war ended two years later after the government made some concessions and the Church withdrew their support for Cristero rebels.

It had been a month since Olivia arrived at the boxcar camp; she was eleven years old. After completing the morning chores, she helped prepare breakfast and lunches for her father and brothers; the men ate first. After they left for work, she cleared the table so the women could eat. Afterward, she washed the dishes and put them away in a makeshift cabinet made from several wooden crates tied and stacked together.

Once the chores were completed, Olivia sat at the table where she learned new English words from the dictionary given to her by Sister Lucrecia, a nun from a wealthy family who studied in the United States before returning to Mexico. Sister Lucrecia taught Olivia to speak, read, and write English and told her parents their daughter was a gifted student and excellent at asking questions to better understand information. Sister Lucrecia touted Olivia’s ability to memorize and internalize verses from the Bible. Your daughter Olivia is blessed by the hand of God, she told her parents

Olivia mastered academic subjects several grades higher than her classmates. She displayed a high level of emotional sensitivity for such a young age, along with a mature sense of humor and keen powers of observation. Sister Lucrecia also gave Olivia an English-language Bible—telling her, For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth comes knowledge—and said the Bible contained much history along with guidance for situations that arise in people’s lives. Sister Lucrecia instructed Olivia to go home, pray the Rosary three times, close her eyes, and open the Bible to any page. Then, making the sign of the cross with her eyes still closed, she should place a finger on any verse. She told Olivia the verse she pointed to would guide her life. When Olivia got home, she did as Sister Lucrecia instructed, opened her eyes, and read the verse she selected: In everything, do to others what you would have them do unto you.

Sister Lucrecia also gave Olivia a Mexican history book and told her, Never forget your history. The past is who you are. It is your identity. Olivia enjoyed learning about the Olmec, an early Mesoamerican indigenous people who occupied the southern lowlands of the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco. She was intrigued by the Mayan people who inhabited the Yucatan Peninsula as well as the Aztecs in central Mexico. Olivia remembered the Mexican hero, Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, and his Grito de Dolores war cry for independence from Spain that erupted into the Mexican War of Independence in 1810. Mexico became independent from Spain in 1821.

Olivia decided to put the dictionary away as the boxcar’s interior was getting warmer from the summer sun. There weren’t any trees in the railyard to provide shade, and trees along Indian Creek only served to block hot southern winds. By the afternoon, railroad tracks were often hot to the touch. She asked Lupita to accompany her to dispose of the garbage bag at the camp’s trash bin near the outdoor toilets. The bin was emptied twice a month, so during the summer the smelly uncovered trash bin was swarming with flies, maggots, and rats. After returning from disposing of the garbage, Olivia washed her hands and gave her mother a kiss before running out the door saying she was going to take Lupita for a walk. May God bless you, my daughters, replied her mother, as she always did.

From the time Olivia arrived at the boxcar camp, she observed the social dynamics, which were very different than her Mexican village. At the camp she noticed the young children only spoke Spanish. Some older kids spoke Spanish and English, while others only spoke English; each formed their respective social groups. She wondered whether the kids who only spoke English communicated much with their Spanish-speaking parents, especially those with mothers whose English was limited. Men had more interactions with English-speaking people; consequently, they spoke more English than women. At the time it was commonly believed women at the camp had no need to learn English because everyone spoke Spanish, and women rarely went to town. Whenever they did, their husbands did all the talking.

After returning from her walk with Lupita, Olivia headed to meet her best friend, Esmeralda. Her name meant emerald in Spanish. Esmeralda had a fair complexion and light blond hair, unlike Olivia’s distinct mestizo features. Esmeralda’s great-great-grandfather fought in the French army against Mexican troops at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. The battle ended with a victory by Mexican troops, which slowed the French military’s advancement. He deserted and joined the Mexican army, and after the war he purchased farmland and married a Mexican woman. Eventually Esmeralda’s father, Sebastian, inherited the land, where he grew almonds and oranges and raised livestock.

During the Mexican Revolution the government seized his property and livestock. Sebastian moved his family to the state of Morelos controlled by Zapata’s army. Angered that his property and livestock were stolen by the government, Sebastian and his wife became Zapatistas and fought for the rights of small farmers. Esmeralda’s uncle Ramón and his wife took care of Esmeralda and her two older brothers. The family was devastated after Sebastian was killed at the Battle of Cuautla, and shortly thereafter, Esmeralda’s mother met the same fate in another battle.

Fearing for their safety, Ramón and his family along with Esmeralda and her siblings fled to Aurora with help from Ramón’s father-in-law, who lived at the boxcar camp. They moved into the camp, and Ramón became a traquero, a trackman working on a small railroad track maintenance section gang. Living at the camp was a difficult change for a man who had once owned land and livestock, and had people working for him. Ramón now worked outdoors, maintaining railroad tracks regardless of the weather, but he did whatever was needed to care for his family.

Olivia and Esmeralda held hands as they walked toward their friend Manuela’s boxcar when they spotted her. Manuela’s family were indigenous Zapotec people from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. Indigenous people were called indios, the Spanish word for Indians. There were 68 indigenous groups in Mexico comprised of 364 linguistic variants; the Zapotec were the third largest indigenous group. Manuela’s ancestors, known as the Cloud People, constructed beautiful cities with magnificent plazas; ball courts where men competed to put a rubber ball through a hoop placed high on a wall while using any part of the body except their hands; and palaces located on high elevations in order to be closer to their gods. The Zapotec studied astronomy, created a written language and calendar, and used mathematics. Benito Juarez, former Mexican president and national hero, was a Zapotec. Manuela’s family’s physical features were similar to Juarez: short stature, dark complexion, high cheekbones, thick straight black hair, and dark brown eyes.

The girls walked hand and hand, swinging their arms in unison as they headed toward the wooden building that functioned as the chapel and community center. The women at the camp had joined forces to pressure their husbands for a building where they could worship and socialize. The Catholic churches in town were far from the camp, and none had Spanish-speaking priests. Many folks at the camp felt uncomfortable at church being with americanos who were perceived as being condescending.

Esmeralda shared her experience when she had first attended Mass at a local Catholic church. They never smiled and only gave us mean stares; even their children gave us dirty looks. I don’t know why americanos are so unfriendly. Esmeralda said she never forgot her uncle’s and aunt’s humiliation at church on that day. Once Father Santiago began conducting Sunday Spanish Mass and hearing confessions at the boxcar camp chapel, people walked from Aurora to worship and socialize at the camp with relatives and friends. Father Santiago was dispatched out of Mexico by the Catholic Church for his safety at the start of the Cristero War. He served as chaplain at a hospital in Aurora and lived in town with his aunt.

Once the girls arrived at the chapel-community center, they sat on the edge of the wooden decking and started chatting as Rafael de la Cruz, known as Rafa, pulling a wagon, approached and greeted them. Though the girls were permitted to say hello and have a conversation with Rafa because their parents were friends, it was the custom for the boy to initiate the greeting. When Olivia asked where he got the wagon, Rafa proudly responded, I made it from tricycle tires and other parts I found at the junkyard where my father and I go to look for things we can use to make or fix things. You would be surprised what Americans throw away. Rafa lived with his parents, younger brother Francisco, known as Frankie, and two sisters.

The girls thought that Rafa, who was sixteen years old, was the nicest boy in the camp, but he didn’t socialize much with the other boys. His family were mestizos. He had been selected as one of the two altar boys at the chapel by Father Santiago. The altar boys carried the cross and the processional candles, held the book for the priest celebrant, carried the incense and censer, presented the bread, wine, and water to the priest, and washed his hands. Olivia didn’t believe it was fair that girls couldn’t serve as altar girls. Gasper, a black Mexican at the camp, wanted to serve as an altar boy as a way of being accepted, but Father Santiago only chose mestizos.

Rafa’s father, Valentin, fought in the Mexican Revolution against the federales. He dynamited railroad tracks, which carried federales and supplies throughout Mexico, and repaired rebels’ rifles. Rebels often had to fabricate parts because they didn’t have money to buy new ones. Regardless of whether rebels served with Zapata in the south or Pancho Villa in the north, they resorted to using any weapon available against federales armed with modern German rifles and machine guns and plenty of ammo. By contrast, rebels used a gamut of firearms, ranging from black-powder muzzleloaders and single-shot rifles to more modern lever-action rifles and an occasional captured machine gun or cannon. Unlike the federales, rebels didn’t have a government to supply them with ammunition, weapons, uniforms, boots, or food.

With no future in a country ravaged by civil war, social unrest, inequality, and an economy that heavily favored the upper class, Valentin uprooted his family and left Mexico to start a new life in the United States. There were jobs for men with mechanical skills like his. He immigrated to Aurora and worked at the CB&Q scrapyard; the family lived at the camp. Within a year he began working at the machine shop. Valentin was the only Mexican man at the shop; the rest were European immigrants.

After Rafa continued on his way, the girls spotted Delores Morales carrying a bucket in each hand walking toward the water pump across from her boxcar. Delores, who was about eighteen years old, didn’t say much and always appeared melancholy. Olivia overheard her mother say that during the Mexican Revolution, Delores’s family and grandmother immigrated to southern Texas where Delores’s parents worked as farm laborers. She learned English while in Texas. After her mother died, Delores quit school and inherited the household responsibilities, including caring for the ailing grandmother. Her three older brothers made it more difficult because, as was the Mexican custom, men didn’t do women’s work.

After several years the family left Texas and came to Aurora. The family moved into the boxcar camp, and the men were hired at the scrapyard. Delores’s grandmother was rarely seen outdoors, but when spotted, she always wore a long black dress and black scarf over her head, the usual attire for widows in Mexico. The thin, frail grandmother walked in a hunchback posture, slowly shuffling one foot in front of the other; as a result, it was difficult to see her face.

Beautiful songs were often heard coming from Delores’s boxcar’s open windows. As a young girl in Mexico, she played the organ at church and sang. Her songs were often sorrowful. La Paloma was the song most often heard, and Olivia wondered whether the song reminded Delores of her mother’s untimely death and going to heaven in an image of a white dove.

The girls sprang up and ran to greet Delores. They said hello as she pumped water into a bucket. When asked how she was doing, Delores snapped back, I have to wash the men’s clothes every other day, and today is one of those days. When Esmeralda inquired how her grandmother was doing, Delores rudely responded, I don’t have time to talk about my grandmother. I have too much work. It’s hot outside and hotter in the boxcar. Tomorrow, I have to wash my grandmother’s and my clothes. The next day I start over. I don’t have time to talk to you! Delores picked up the water buckets and headed toward her boxcar. Just then the noon whistle blew at the Western Wheeled Scraper factory across the street signaling it was lunchtime. The girls agreed to meet again after lunch.

On her way home, Olivia encountered Ambrosia Castro, whose family were indigenous Yaqui people from the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora, bordering the States. Ambrosia’s family originally lived in a pueblo by the mouth of the Yaqui River. Similar to most of Mexico’s other indigenous people, the Yaqui were forced into subservience by the Spanish after they invaded and conquered present-day Mexico. After Mexico won its independence from Spain, foreign investors were allowed to exploit the rich natural resources on the Yaquis’ ancestral land, causing much unrest in the region. Tensions escalated when the Mexican government began taxing Yaqui land while foreign companies, which weren’t subject to restrictive Mexican laws, received special privileges.

In the 1820s, Yaqui leader Juan Banderas unified his people and began a battle that lasted six years against the Mexican government and temporarily forced non-Yaqui Mexican settlers out of the territory. During the early 1880s many Yaquis abandoned their ancestral lands and fled to the US state of Arizona to avoid persecution from the Mexican government.

As the presence of Mexican government troops increased near the US border, numerous Yaquis were forced to either form small guerilla groups in the mountains or go into hiding as laborers on ranches and in mines. Some Yaquis were forced to work on henequen plantations, where rope was made from the plants’ fibers. Yaqui men often worked on the Mexican national railroad that was being constructed. In 1896 there was another Yaqui uprising in the Mexican state of Sonora and US state of Arizona. In the early 1900s the governor of Sonora implemented a Yaqui deportation policy. Yaquis didn’t recognize the US-Mexican border and freely crossed back and forth.

The deportation of Yaqui people stopped when the Mexican Revolution began. During the Mexican Revolution Yaquis formed militias and fought against federales attempting to encroach on their traditional homeland, which they called Hiakim. In 1927, the Battle of Cerro del Gallo was the Yaquis’ last skirmish. The newly formed Mexican Air Force bombed and gassed Yaqui positions in the mountains; over four hundred Yaquis were captured. After their defeat, the Mexican army established garrisons in Yaqui territory.

In the early 1910s Ambrosia’s father, Ambrosio, worked as a laborer for the Mexican railroad laying track in rugged mountainous terrain. At the time several small Yaqui guerilla bands conducted hit–and–run ambushes on anyone who encroached on their land and killed Yaqui. Railroad jobs were plentiful in the US and free passage convinced Ambrosio to leave Mexico. He wanted a good education for his children and better treatment for the family. The family immigrated to Aurora, where he was hired as a traquero, and his son worked at the scrapyard.

Residents at the boxcar camp had little social contact with Ambrosia’s family. Not so Olivia; she enjoyed visiting Ambrosia and loved listening to her mother, Yomumuli, talk about Yaqui culture, myths, and legends. She informed Olivia about the sacred Deer Dance: "The dance is to offer thanks and ask for forgiveness in having to hunt the deer. The music and dance create a bridge from the natural world of the people to the enchanted world of our Yaqui ancestor, Surem. Music unites people, animals, and even rocks, all the beings of Yaqui life, into one community that extends back to the Surem. Our women prepared food for everyone and led in singing and praying."

Yomumuli described how the dance was performed by a man wearing a headdress with a deer head strapped on top of his head. The deer dancer imitated the movements of a whitetail deer while rattling a dried gourd in each hand and wearing bracelets strung with dried rattlesnake rattles on both ankles. The Deer Dance was an elaborate event with numerous participants’ ceremonial titles and musical instruments: Maso Bwikame were the deer singers, the apaleo played the harp, the laveleo played the violin, and the tampelco played the drum and flute. Other instruments included hirukiam, rasping sticks, which represented the breathing of a deer. Another was a water drum that consisted of half a dried gourd filled with water. A dried corn husk was rubbed on the gourd. The sound was amplified as the gourd functioned as a natural speaker.

Yomumuli believed it was important for Ambrosia to learn the traditional Yaqui ways, which had been passed on by their ancestors. Ambrosia helped her mother gather willow branches in the woods and used them to weave baskets, which were sold at the camp. Olivia learned to weave willow baskets, including a short, round basket with a cover that was ideal for keeping freshly made tortillas warm.

One day while on the way to meet Esmeralda and Manuela, Olivia was startled by several loud honks and knew it had to be Modesto Beckett, who loved showing off his truck. Olivia’s brothers were friends with Modesto and overheard bits of information about him from their conversations. Modesto dropped out of school, as did several of his friends at the camp. Before Modesto and his friends quit school, they were often absent throughout the spring, harvesting crops at nearby farms. Modesto’s 1920 black Ford truck was outfitted with brightly colored wooden boards on both sides of the cargo bed where he transported workers back and forth to the farms. He was motivated to earn money and open an auto repair garage.

Modesto’s great-great-grandfather John Beckett emigrated from Ireland to New York City in the mid-1840s due to the deadly disease that destroyed Ireland’s potato crops during four successive years. The catastrophic loss caused severe hunger due to a famine and left him no alternative but to leave. About a million people died, and another million left Ireland. In the United States at the time, Irish immigrants were perceived by many Protestants as dirty low-life Catholic drunkards who were constantly being hauled away by the police.

John’s older brother had left Ireland several years earlier and encouraged him to come to Mexico, where the Irish were treated much better than in the United States. Nationalist Americans harbored strong xenophobic attitudes toward immigrants at the time. With dim prospects and after treatment as an inferior Irish immigrant in New York City, John traveled to Mexico in 1846 during the Mexican-American War. He joined his brother in an Irish military unit called