Georgina Hernández, a health promoter at East Los Angeles Women’s Center, helps women who are victims of sexual abuse. (Photo_Georgina Hernández)
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Georgina Hernández asks her 12-year-old daughter.
“I may not be as ‘chingona’ as you, but I want to be ‘chingona’ like you, just without suffering the abuse you suffered.”
Georgina Hernández, a health promoter at East Los Angeles Women’s Center, helps women who are victims of sexual abuse.
“I have helped many women, and that fills me with pride,” says this woman born in Puebla, Mexico.
Georgina speaks not from theory but from her own experience.
“My dad treated us very badly; my siblings and I had to hide under the bed. We feared his violence; from there, we heard the violent fights my mother had with him. He was an absent father, a truck driver who would come, impregnate my mom, and leave,” says the woman who answers the crisis hotline.
But that wasn’t all; at the age of nine, she had to start working. Her mother prepared two buckets of donuts for her to sell.
“They stole my dreams. I wanted to work and help my siblings study. I had a good heart, but I felt a great anger. They not only stole my dreams but also my childhood and adolescence,” she adds. Photo_Georgina Hernández)
“I remember, at nine years old, pulling the buckets through the city. I couldn’t carry them,” she says.
But she also had to take care of her nine siblings. As the oldest, her mother made her responsible for their care when she went to work all day.
“I always wanted a doll, but there was no money; they couldn’t buy it for me. My siblings became that for me; I played with them as if they were my dolls. I was only nine; I remember climbing trees with my little brother, only a few months old,” she adds.
Her mother fled from Puebla to the state of Veracruz, escaping her husband and the violence, but her father arrived shortly afterward with the same dynamic.
“It made me very angry; I would call him, and I would tell him to leave. He would only stay a few days, impregnate her, and then leave,” she adds.
At the age of ten, to help her mother, she started cleaning houses.
Her most terrible experience came at the age of 13 when a man, known as El Tiburón, kidnapped and sexually abused her for many months, keeping her locked outside the city.
“My parents thought I had gone with a boyfriend when, in reality, this guy, a relative’s acquaintance, took me with deceit. He said he would give me food for the family and then kidnapped me, beat me, and left me pregnant with my first child,” she adds.
Georgina’s story is terrible and is one of many experienced by Latina women in California.
“Women call me on the hotline, and I try to help them. I clean four buildings at the moment, and if I can, I give them work to help themselves,” she adds. (Photo_Georgina Hernández)
An uncle rescued her from the situation with El Tiburón. But her parents rejected her when she arrived pregnant.
“They stole my dreams. I wanted to work and help my siblings study. I had a good heart, but I felt a great anger. They not only stole my dreams but also my childhood and adolescence,” she adds.
“At 16, I started working in a maquiladora. The salary was low, but it was a lot of money for me.”
“I gave the money to my mother to contribute to the care of my siblings and my son. I felt happy; I learned to make pants, put buttons. I treated my siblings like my children; I tried to give them everything. I didn’t receive hugs or any love from my mother,” she says.
Georgina has always been a woman ‘chingona’ as her daughter says.
“My first son never lacked anything; I always bought him disposable diapers. They called me ‘La Chinita,’ they said I was very pretty,” she adds.
At 19, she married the father of five of her children; she currently has ten.
“I changed jobs; I was already a vote promoter, earning more money than him. He also abused me, beat me. But I was able to fulfill my dream, build my own house, a big one. After divorcing, my ex-husband took everything from me; he made me sign a document and kept the house and my children,” she says.
Georgina went into crisis; she wanted to commit suicide, entered the hospital, and had to be guarded by a police officer. One day, while in a coma, her ex-husband entered and tried to continue beating her.
A cousin saved her, helped her get out of that situation. At the age of 32, he convinced her to migrate to California, still affected by her hospital stay; she crossed the border with great effort.
The next day, to pay her debts, she started working in maquiladoras and then in cleaning jobs, at a cinema and a hotel, where she again suffered abuse, with the indifference of her employers and authorities.
“I felt frustrated; they were stealing my dreams again,” she says.
Until she said, “Basta!,” she joined some organizations, and now she is part of the East Los Angeles Women’s Center.
“I have helped others heal; it’s time to stop this abuse. Now my dream is to build a little house, even if it’s small, to continue helping victims of domestic violence and eventually have my own cleaning business. Each person owns their body; they should decide when and how,” she says.
And yes, Georgina is ‘una mujer chingona’, and this time they will not steal her dream.
“I had to make changes, help in the community, dependence fosters abuse”
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