Federico Reyes Heroles
We know that my great-grandfather arrived at the end of the 19th century from a village called Vinaròs. Today, it is famous for its beaches and its food. But Vicente Heroles, illiterate, left Spain because of poverty, seeking new horizons. He was accompanied by a woman about whom we know almost nothing. Her surname was Lombera. After several setbacks, they ended up in Tuxpan, Veracruz. There, driven by hunger, he decided he could offer a barge service to regularly unload products arriving from Europe, which often remained on the ships because Tuxpan, another small town at the time, lacked a dock. Everyone was losing out. Regularity was his offer: the merchandise would be brought ashore despite bad weather and risks. The correspondence would leave from Tuxpan. He succeeded in his venture and ended his life, leaving a small fortune to his three daughters. His signature was always an X.
He was followed by another Spanish immigrant, Jesús Reyes, also illiterate or almost so. He arrived in the midst of the Revolution and devoted himself to trade. He was a distributor for Cervecería Modelo, married Juana Heroles, and buried the misery from which he had also fled. From them was born my father, who in his early years was called the Espantamuertos (Dead Man’s Fright) because of the number of previous siblings who had been lost. They cured him of rheumatism by locking him in a cage with bees, which stung him. He never complained about it. That child, Jesús Reyes Heroles, born in 1921, whose home had no books, left Tuxpan to find a secondary school. He went to Tampico, where he found one. A good student and obsessive reader, he had to migrate again to San Luis Potosí in search of a high school. There, once again, he would live in a guest house that, if I remember correctly, belonged to the Calvillo or Nava family. Two years later, he moved to the capital.
He entered law school, living in a horrible place and eating breakfast in Chinatown. There he met those who would become his lifelong friends: Jorge Castañeda Álvarez de la Rosa, Alfonso Noriega, El Chato, Antonio Martínez Báez, a distinguished professor at the faculty, and many others, such as Santiago Oñate.
Determined to move forward, he obtained a scholarship in Buenos Aires and embarked on his postgraduate studies. They bid him farewell as if he were going on an intergalactic journey, with little hope of returning. He crossed the Andes with an oxygen tank. On my partner’s side of the family, it was the same story. One was a specialist in the wool industry, “stamen,” who was very successful. No family fortune. The other was a pharmacist who found a job for life on his first foray into Mexico City. They say he opened the window of his hotel in downtown Mexico City in the middle of December and said, “If this is what winter is like here, this is where I belong.”
On my mother’s side, it was the same. Federico González Garza earned his law degree while working as a telegraph operator. Very close to Madero, in fact, he drafted many of the basic documents, but he had to leave the country with the coup. He studied Anglo-Saxon law, and my grandmother washed other people’s clothes. He was admitted to the New York Bar and practiced law in the United States. He never lost his knack: “Say, ma’am, I’ll meet you at the Cine Chapultepec portico at 5 p.m.,” and he would hang up, much to the despair of my mother, who was on the other end of the line.
She would earn her degree in International Relations at the Universidad Femenina. She was the first female student and would become vice-consul in New York. I look back, and what I see is a word that is now buried: mobility. That fantastic possibility of achieving not only more income, but also the lifestyle a person desires.
In the past, it existed—the possibility of broadening one’s life spectrum through education and economic growth. For the seventh year in a row, GDP will be lower than what Mexico can and needs to achieve. “Half of Mexicans who are born poor will die poor…” Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias. Dropout rates are incredibly high. Only 28 out of every 100 children who enter primary school will go on to higher education.
Goodbye social mobility, goodbye.
Another Mexico.
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