Elena Perales

My mother was born in Mexico City on December 1, 1913, where her parents had fled after the hacienda that her father was managing was sacked and burned by Zapatistas.

When my mother was born the Mexican Revolution was degenerating into factional fighting; President Madero who had come to power in the 1910 revolution had been assassinated in February the year my mother was born. She grew up in different districts of Mexico City as the Mexican Revolution raged throughout Mexico and as her father struggled to recover from the loss of the hacienda. Eventually, with the help of his family grandfather began a successful business and semblance of stability was established in her family. In 1924 the Mexican government fell into the hands of Plutarco Calles and in his zeal to suppress the Roman Catholic Church by enforcing anticlerical elements of the Mexican Constitution President Calles triggered the Christero Rebellion in 1926. It was during this period that my mother’s parents provided sanctuary to several nuns in their house; among them my grandmother’s sister. When my sister and I were young my mother used to tell us how their parents use to divide the family up and by different routes, using multiple transportation means, travel secretly to private houses; meeting with other families to attend mass. Eventually, grandfather came under suspicion and was denounced. Thankfully, my grandfather’s lawyer was alerted of the threat and helped him obtained U. S. passports to flee to the United States. My mother’s family arrived in San Antonio, Texas in April 1928.

My mother was 15 years old when here family arrived here in San Antonio. The Great Depression began while my mother’s family was still struggling to establish themselves here in San Antonio,; and as a consequence, my mother dropped out of high school to join here older brothers and sisters in supporting their family.

In 1934, with President Calles out of office in Mexico, my grandfather’s lawyer advised him that it was safe for him to return to Mexico so that they could make his case in a court of law to clear his name. Intending to send for his family after the legal issues were resolved my mother’s father returned to Mexico City in April 1934 but regretfully he died on May 3, 1934 not long after his arrival. Because of his untimely death my grandmother kept her family here in San Antonio rather than return to Mexico to uncertain prospects.

My mother met my father at a party to which he had been invited by one of my mother’s older sisters and it was the beginning of a romance that led to their marriage on August 13, 1938 at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church on El Paso Street here in San Antonio. Both my sister and I were born here in San Antonio. The end of the war in Europe in 1945 allowed by father to move us to Dallas where employment opportunities were more promising. I took many years of hard work; my mother working as a seamstress and dad progressing in jobs before finally finding stable employment with a publishing company, before they began to experience an improved standard of living. As a child shortly after arriving in Dallas I remember how happy my mother was on day when she came home from work with the new that she had been given a pay raise; an increase of five cents per h or. Mother and father lived frugally; committing themselves to our future and they saved a portion of their incomes every week. Mom told me that they saved five dollars per pay check. In this way they eventually were able to qualify for a home loan and make the down payment on a modest house in 1953.

When we first arrived in Dallas in 1945 my father found us housing near Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church and it was there that my mother came to join the Guadalupana Society. And even though we moved multiple times in those early years in Dallas we remained parishioners at Our Lady of Guadalupe and mother remained active in the society until well after I had graduated from the university and had entered the Army.

My mother was eternally grateful that in 1988 she and my father celebrated the 50th wedding anniversary with a mass and a renewal of their marriage vows in the same church where they had been married fifty years earlier; my sister and I both attending. We lost our dad in June of 1995 who prompted my mother to decide to return to San Antonio so that our family could be closer; by than I had retired from the Army and was living here in San Antonio and additionally two of her bother were living here.

If there is one thing that would define my mother it would be that she lived here life in the Roman Catholic faith; a faith that pervaded her life and had its roots in her family’s struggles in Mexico.