FOR PAPÁ SALVADOR

FOR PAPA SALVADOR

By Jacqueline Ramirez

For Papá Salvador, who lived to be 96 and passed surrounded by family on September 3rd, 2022.

Last December, I traveled to the small Mexican pueblo my parents were born and raised in: El Sabino, Guanajuato, the kind of place where everyone knows everyone. Even after three years away due to the pandemic, people recognized my mother’s face on my own and stopped to say hello everywhere I went. It felt wonderful to be back.

I lived those three weeks in El Sabino to the fullest. I traveled to the city of Guanajuato for the first time, traveled to neighboring towns purely for their unique foods, and created unforgettable memories with my cousins in the seasonal town feria. Still, my fondest memory from my trip was a conversation I had with my 95-year-old grandfather, Salvador, who spoke so dearly and lovingly of my grandmother, María.

“...people recognized my mother’s face on my own and stopped to say hello everywhere I went.”

My grandfather shared an anecdote with me about my grandmother’s appreciation for firearms. As a city girl raised in a country that makes me tense up at the words “gun” or “firearm,” I was caught off guard. My grandfather explained that her favorite thing to do every New Year’s Eve, every birthday, and every Dia de la independencia, was to shoot a full cartucho into the sky. When I asked why, he shared, “men boast about their firearms and how great they would have been in the Revolution. Mi señora, en paz descanse, said she would have fought in it too if she had been old enough.”

The image of my fearless grandmother fighting side-by-side with men stayed with me. Although I could not understand her attraction to firearms, I had a more meaningful realization. It’s not that she wanted to fight in a war, not exactly. More than anything, she wanted the opportunity to prove that a woman is just as good as a man.

“Mi señora, en paz descanse, said she would have fought in it too if she had been old enough.”

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