Puerto Escondido, MEXICO. January, 2000. A beach vendor trudged up, exhausted, and sat in the shade next to me. She sighed and said, in Spanish, "I haven't sold a thing all day." She was hawking distinctive, touristy wooden key rings. I had seen the same key rings on another beach, three hours down the coast.
I said, "Who makes these key rings?"
She said, "My father."
I said, "I don't believe you. I've seen other vendors selling these rings, and to arouse sympathy they all say their father made them. That's not possible."
She said, in the same, almost bored tone, "They make them in prison. My father is in the Pochutla prison, he makes them there." Pochutla was back down the coast, in the direction we had come from. I began to understand how so many vendors, on different beaches, could tell me that Papa had made their key rings.
I said, "What did your father do? Steal? Kill?"
"He got in a fight with his brother."
"You don't go to jail for fighting. He must have killed someone."
"He didn't kill anyone, but he was caught with a gun. He would have killed my uncle."
"How many years has he been in prison?"
"Two. He gets out in one more year."
"Do you visit him often?"
"Every day. I sell these key rings on the beach, then buy food, and take the food to him in prison." Mexican prisoners have to arrange for their own food. If friends and family fail them, they beg, steal, deal, or prostitute themselves.
Still I was incredulous. "You travel nearly two hours to Pochutla every day, to give him food?"
She shook her head. "I live in Pochutla with my mother. I come here to the beach every day on the bus, sell key rings, then go back." Her four hour, round-trip commute would cost twenty-five pesos (US$ 2.50) unless she got a discount for being a student, or poor. Her starting price on the key rings was five pesos.
I said, "What does your mother do?"
"She makes tortillas, and sells them, and saves some for my father."
"Did your uncle get locked up, too, for fighting?"
"Yes. They're in the same prison, my father and uncle, they see each other every day."
I said, "What did your uncle do, that your father got so mad?"
"He stole from us."
"What did he steal?"
"A goat and a cow. They found the guy my uncle sold the animals to. That's why my uncle got six years, he refused to pay for the animals he stole. My father got only three years."
Before hearing her story I had taken this woman for about 35 years old. I said, "How old are you?"
"Nineteen. I don't have any brothers or sisters, it's just the three of us. That is, when my father is around. We live in the country and still have three cows, plus a calf, after what my uncle stole. We sell the milk."
Then in the same matter-of-fact tone she'd used throughout, she said, "Well, I've got to sell some more key rings. Bye."