Josefa moves back to her home village

Mexico Child Link is comitted to the reintegration of young people in the community when this is a viable option. Josefa Garcia has been living in Coyay since March 2004.

Puebla Mexico map On August 13th 2004, four of us made the trek to Coyay to offer support to Josefa. She spent over nine years in the project and has recently returned home. Coyay is a Totonac Indian village in Puebla's Sierra Norte, one of the most inaccessible and poorest parts of Mexico. Many people there speak little or no Spanish. Although it is only 150 miles away, Coyay is a seven hour drive from Atlixco. Angélica López and I left Atlixco at 4.00 am and we picked up Maribel and Analuisa, two other staff from our partner organization Fundación Trébol, at 5.00 am in Puebla. The early start was necessary as we were embarking on a 14 hour round trip. Our route took us through Apizaco, Tlaxco, Chignahuapan, Zacatlán and Huetotola before the final 90 minute slide down a steeply descending mud and gravel road, with vertical falls into the valley below. The road had seriously deteriorated in this year's rains, and the eroded hillsides were pocked with the rust-red fans of recent earthslides. In 1998, over 500 people were killed by flooding and mudslides in this region when it was devastated by Hurricane Mitch. We gave a lift to five barefoot and malnourished children, who flagged us down and piled into the back of the pick up with their machetes and water bottles. We dropped them off ten minutes later at a half-constructed house where they disappeared into the vegetation. Rounding a bend, I caught my first glimpse of Coyay. Angelica stopped the pick-up and pointed out the location of Josefa's house; its felt roof barely visible on the edge of the village, hidden among the sugar cane, banana trees and thick vegetation. Even from a distance, it was obvious that this was a place of extreme poverty, where Government officials rarely ventured outside of election times. Twenty minutes later, we were pulling up in front of the Spanish Colonial church.

We made our way down moss-covered steps, and as we neared Josefa's house she came running out to greet us. Josefa lives with her partner Luis in a house which is also occupied by Luis's two sisters and his mother. The elder sister has a baby less than 2 months old. We were only able to spend 90 minutes with Josefa due to the pressure of the return journey which lay ahead of us. We were taken aback to find that Josefa was speaking mainly in Totonac. She seemed to have the fluency and confidence of a native speaker, and was obviously returning to her indigenous roots. In the nine years she was in our project she never had the opportunity to use the language of her village; it had remained dormant until she was reunited with her own people. For many years we had suspected her indigenous roots, as she was prone to make the kind of gender and grammatical mistakes of someone who does not have Spanish as a first language. An Aunt of hers appeared at the house half an hour later, and was able to tell us that Josefa spent her early years with her paternal grandmother who spoke no Spanish.

There were other surprises as well. She produced an original baptismal certificate, which showed us that her birthday was on July 23rd rather than the date in March which we had celebrated for nine years. She was twenty four not twenty two. When abandoned children come into the care of social services in Mexico, the authorities generally make little or no effort to verify the details of the child in their charge. An official will take a guess at the child's age and birth date. Most abandoned children are undersized and undernourished which leads to an underestimate of their true age. The project received two new children in July 2004, Mario and Israel, and their ages and birth dates have also been estimated.
We also learned that Josefa is the owner of a couple of acres of coffee plantation, which had been looked after by an uncle in her absence.

We gave Josefa, the clothes and provisions we had brought for her and said our goodbyes at 1.30 pm, before setting off on the tiring return journey to Atlixco. We will not be making another visit until the end of the rainy season when the roads improve.

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Josefa and Luis had a baby boy in March 2005. During April, two of the staff from Fundación Trébol made the 7 hour trip to Coyay in the pick-up truck to bring her cartons of long life milk, basic provisions and baby clothes. Both mother and baby are doing well. Josefa reported recently that her baby was “grande y gordito” big and fat.

Karina, AnaLuisa and Angélica visited Josefa in July 2007. She has moved into a new house which was constructed with building materials supplied by a local government agency

Josefa and her partner Luis outside the house. Luis's younger sister stands in the doorway.

The village of Coyay showing the location of Josefa's house

An Aunt of Josefa's in front of her house.

Josefa, Luis, and Luis's younger sister inside the house. Luis's older sister is in the doorway.

The new baby

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