“One of the people who most influenced my life was my first-grade teacher. Many times, we don’t remember the lessons, but we do remember how we were treated.”
It was a phone call she never wanted even to imagine. But there she was, listening to a voice telling her that she would never see her two children again, and no one would tell her where they were or how to reach them.
“It was the worst part of a story that was torture. I never anticipated the warning signs, I was blind, I kept on with the relationship with the father of my children for many years, a meaningless relationship, but now, the worst had happened,” says María del Refugio Reynozo, with a ‘Z’ due to an error in the civil registry.
María is referring to the abduction of her two children by her ex-husband— a girl and a boy. Without informing her, he took them from Jalisco, Mexico, to San Bernardino, California.
The mother only had one goal: to get them back, by any means necessary.
María was neither a U.S. citizen nor a resident. She traveled to the country to visit family, but that was it. The fight to bring her children back to Mexico was not an issue between her and their father, from whom she was separated, but between two countries. The children had American citizenship.
Her story is one of many that countless women in Latin American countries experience. As María started to explore ways to resolve her problem, she realized she was just another woman suffering from “violencia vicaria.”
Vicarious violence is a form of violence directed at a woman’s children, maternal grandparents, siblings, or other family members and emotional circles, to hurt, affect, or cause psychological trauma to the woman herself, exactly what María was going through.
“I didn’t know what that was; I learned about it when I was looking for support networks. That person (she refuses to say ex-husband or use the word ‘man’) started doing this to me when we separated. He started telling my children that I was hurting him, that I was bad, that I was with other people, and who knows what else. What he did was damage that my children and I are still recovering from,” María says.
María was always restless, even as a child. She was fascinated by art, words, and stories. She grew up in a small town in Jalisco, with her grandmother, who enchanted her by telling her tales. She liked school and education.
Even as a child, María had a pedagogical aptitude. She would play with her cousins, with other children, and… she would take on the role of the teacher.
“One of the people who most influenced my life was my first-grade teacher. Many times, we don’t remember the lessons, but we do remember how we were treated. That teacher taught me a lot, and without a doubt, she is one of the reasons I became a teacher,” she says.
Even as a child, María had a pedagogical aptitude. She would play with her cousins, with other children, and… she would take on the role of the teacher.
“I would sit them on a little bench and play at teaching them lessons,” she says. This led her to pursue a career in education, which soon took her first to work at a government agency supporting disadvantaged communities and later into the educational system as a full-time teacher.
One day, she went to a party in San Cristóbal, Jalisco, the town where she had grown up. There, she met someone who lived in California but came back and forth sporadically. They socialized and formed a friendship. Later, her ex husband returned to California and shortly afterward invited María to visit for a quinceañera party.
“That’s when the warning signs started to appear, which I ignored. He didn’t have a fixed residence, lived with his siblings in different places, and didn’t have a steady job. But I thought I was in love, and everything else happened quickly,” María recalls.
“We were officially a couple; I would go back, and he would visit me. Then my daughter was born, and after her, my son. Both were born in California. I wanted them to have dual nationality. But soon after they were born, we returned to Jalisco,” she adds.
It didn’t take long for José to decide to live full-time in Mexico to be closer to his children. On the other hand, he benefited from U.S. tax resources that paid him for each child. María worked and had a house.
“The relationship slowly deteriorated. He didn’t work; he decided, according to him, that he would only take care of our children. I caught him with messages from another woman, and he accused me of having affairs with other teachers, which was a lie. That’s how the marriage fell apart until one day he hit me, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I asked him to leave the house,” María recalls.
The children spent weekends with him and the rest of the days with María, until one day they disappeared. María began her custody fight.
“I couldn’t sleep; I went from one government dependency to another. I went to the American consulate. Everyone kept asking me what was happening, what he had done to me. I would look at them surprised and say, ‘he took my children,’” she says.
After starting the process at Mexico’s Secretariat of Foreign Affairs (SRE) to begin procedures with U.S. authorities, she received a document from San Bernardino. her ex husband was suing her, requesting full custody of their children, child support for himself and them, and accusing her of indecent conduct.
Unknowingly, that accusation was what allowed María to regain custody of her children.
“In the first hearing, I was present via videoconference, because my visa wasn’t up to date. In a second hearing, with my visa in hand, I traveled to San Bernardino. My family hired a lawyer, and we went before the judge. The problem was resolved very quickly and simply, to my surprise. The judge asked, ‘The first thing I want to know is, how did these children get to this country?’ the lawyer represented the father responded, ‘with their father.’ The judge asked, ‘Did you know? Did you give permission?’ I said I didn’t know, nor did I give permission. Then, in a very decisive manner, the judge said, ‘From now on, these children return to their mother, case closed,’” says María.
After the hearing, a patrol car and a helicopter escorted them to pick up their children. Only a few months had passed. They already showed the consequences of the ordeal. They were cold, distant.
They said they didn’t want to return with her, that their father would go to prison. Their mother hugged them, insisting everything would be okay.
“We traveled to Salinas (California) all night, to a relative’s house. We had to wait for my children’s passports to be delivered. In Salinas, everything was joyful, my relatives joked, saying, ‘We didn’t know Camelia La Texana had arrived, and look, the Mexican woman came back to the U.S. for her children, and the police, with helicopters, escorted her to pick them up,’” she recalls, laughing with her family.
María is still facing another lawsuit, this one in Mexico. She has finalized her divorce and is now focused on dealing with the emotional scars of the incident.
“I want to tell women that everything is possible. We cannot give up. We have to open our eyes to see and act at the first signs of violence. For those of us who are victims—women, children, and families—there are scars that we carry with us for the rest of our lives,” she concludes.
“I had to make changes, help in the community, dependence fosters abuse”
Write a Reply or Comment
You should Sign In or Sign Up account to post comment.