Patricia Preciado Martin - Songs My Mother Sang to Me: An Oral History of Mexican American Women

Eloisa and Cirilo Leon, paternal grandparents of Livia, ca. 1885.

My grandmother and grandfather celebrated their saints days. My grandmothers saints day was el da de San Pedro y San Pablo, June 29. My grandfathers saints day, San Cirilo, is July 9. Those days were almost like Christmas to us. Our only regret was that they were so close together. Those were days that we would spend with grandparents todo el da de celebrar. It was a big family gathering and as many as could would come. They had three sons: Francisco, my father, and Antonio, who was well known for his business, Baffert and Len. They had a daughter, Eloisa Ward, who lived in Willcox. My cousins were there. I remember the piata. Theyd play guitars and sing, and all the children would run around and play and get into scrapes. My grandmother always had goodies for us. Shed bake and cook. She made biscochuelos (anise cookies), empanadas(turnovers), and she baked her own bread. Calabacitas con queso (squash with cheese),caldo de queso (potato soup with cheese), casuela (beef jerky soup)those were herspecialties and they were good! Shed make us machaca (dried beef), and she driedthe meat herself.

My mothers family had a very different history. My mothers name was Antonia Galz. When she was born, her mother died, and my Great-grandmother Aastasia Coronadowe called her La Nana Tacharaised her. She also helped to raise us many years later. That was the only mother my mother ever knew. My great-grandmother was from the area of Sahuripa, Sonora, and she was married to Francisco Coronado, who was a farmer. When Francisco diedhe was already elderlymy mother was about eleven or twelve. They had very little. My greatgrandmother was able to make a living because she was a partera (midwife). She took care of women in childbirth, and they paid herwith frijol and maiz. She had a comadre (godmother) who kept writing and telling her to come to Tucson, that there was no future for her there in Mexico. So finally she did, about 1900, when my mother was thirteen years old. Even at that young age, my mother got a job as a babysitter for the Drachman familyMoses Drachman. She helped to raise Oliver and Rosemary Drachman. My mother was also very good with the needle, and she made clothes for the children. Mrs. Drachmanshe was a very conscientious womanrealized my mothers potential and thought that she should be doing something besides babysitting. Mrs. Drachman had a friend by the name of Mrs. Cordis, who had a dressmaking shop where the old Levys used to be on Pennington and Scott. Mrs. Cordis employed several girls to make beautiful clotheseven gownsfor the well-to-do women in Tucson. Mrs. Drachman got my mother a job there. She was sixteen when she became a seamstress, and thats how she supported herself and helped take care of my great-grandmother.

The barrio my mother and greatgrandmother lived in was on North 5th Avenue; it was still a very Mexican barrio at the time. My great-grandmother continued to practice her midwifery. Doa Aastasia, me vas a atender? Pues s, si me llames. (Doa Aastasia, will you attend me? Of course, if you call me.) She was busy because the Mexican women had large families. My mother and great-grandmother were completely independent; they had their own little apartment on North 5th Avenue. My mother worked as a seamstress for ten years, until the time she got married. She made all her own patterns and taught herself by cutting and sewing. After she got married and had a family, she sewed for us all the time, including our wedding dresses and the wedding dresses of some of her granddaughters.

Antonia Galz, Livia's mother, worked as a seamstress for ten years before she married.She made the dress and hat she is wearing in this 1905 photograph.

It was in that barrio that my mother first met the Len family. She knew Francisco Len first, and then she met my father. My parents were married in 1911, and they had nine children. Two died when they were little and so they raised seven of us: Solano, myself, Louis, Melania, the twinsErmela and Eloisaand Manuel. We were all born in Rillito, and my great-grandmother attended my mother at all our births.

When they were married, my father homesteaded at Rillito he was given 360 acres over there. Forty of it was supposed to be for farmland, and the rest for grazing. There were good years at the beginning; there was plenty of water. My father bought water that came through the acequias he was entitled to so much. Then Cortaro Farms bought out all that area and came in with their huge pumps and depleted our water supply. We were located just east of them, east of the railroad tracks. The ditches began to dry up and with time se emparejaron (were leveled and filled with dust). I was about twelve, and I remember asking my mother, Por qu no vamos a tener maiz este ao? Porque no hay agua, me deca. (Why arent we going to have corn this year? Because there is no water, shed answer.)