para la tita, que en paz descanse
isabel "chavela" tovar romero 5 de noviembre 1927 - 30 de julio 2009
in early july i asked la tita to tell me the story of how her family came to live in tijuana.
before she was born her parents had moved from the interior of mexico to los angeles. in the 1930s, when she was a small child, the u.s. government started a(nother) massive anti-immigrant campaign against mexican immigrants. armed immigration authorities invaded people's homes, raided their neighborhoods, jailed and deported them, displacing 2 million people by the time they were done. my grandmother's entire neighborhood, along with countless others, were emptied. her family heard the migra was coming, that they were snatching people up just a couple barrios over, and they fled in fear. they settled with hundreds of other families in an emergency settlement in tijuana. tita's mother had asthma; she became sick in all that chaos and died that following year.
i recorded our conversation on my cell phone, and i'm so grateful to have her voice still with me now. eventually i'd like to do something with this audio. like learn to make dibujos animados and illustrate or animate it. or maybe i'll make friends with someone at the design school at the uba or unam who can do that for me ;) for now here is about 45 seconds where i'm asking about her father's name. i had never heard of that name before and she was making me laugh...
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