When I was born in February, 1942, the Second World War was facing a very special moment. Pearl Harbor attack had happened just two months before. The Soviet Union was going to defeat Germany at Stalingrad three months later, marking the turning point of the war in Eastern Europe. In June, 1944, American and Allied […]

Some years later, one morning when Mr. Barceto went to open his religious store, he found a truck parked right in front of the store. In the back, the truck had a very tall wooden box that looked like a shipping container but with an open roof. He thought he heard chickens clucking, coming from […]

The only contact that I had with poverty did not go into my mind as such. Since I was a baby, my parents took me everywhere with them. They traveled by train and by bus. They owned a car much before I was born, but they had a bad accident and my father, being the […]

During the month of September, my mother also prayed the “Month of Mary” kneeling down in front of the image of the virgin of miracles. She also had a smaller image of the virgin of Lourdes in honor of my miraculous birthday. I do not remember going to mass with my parents on Sundays. What […]

I realize now that my studies greatly influenced what I believed. As a child I was taught to pray before going to sleep. “Guardian Angel, sweet companion do not let me alone during the night or during the day. Amen.” Also, the nuns had mass every day before starting classes. We recited the beatitudes and […]

One of the first things I remember is sitting in my play pen and seeing rays of sun coming through the tall windows toward me. I was less than a year old but this was engraved on my mind. I could see the golden grains of fine dust on those rays. I knew inside me […]

I was born after my parents had been married for eleven years. My mother spontaneously aborted two babies before me. The doctors said it was “acetonemia”. From what she and my father told me, I think she was really scared to have a baby. Her doctor, in agreement with my father, who was a maxillofacial […]

First thing I learned at journalism school is that the mission is objectivity. Find the news and research and report all the angles of the facts. Never give your opinion. Make impartial judgments. Never let your emotions or opinions or prejudices show in what you write. Inform in a neutral and fair fashion. Be impartial, […]

Two years after Filomena’s daughter, Clarita, disappeared, she returned on the 3:00 pm bus from San Fernando. She knocked gently at her mother’s door with her elbow so she would not wake up the dark-skinned child sleeping in her arms. Filomena was in Heaven. She could raise another girl. Three weeks later Filomena went to […]

Clarita was a real good mother. She had named her baby Dolores because of the pains she had during delivery at the emergency room in Carrascal. That’s where she ended up living after her dark-skinned lover told her that he was trying to get a divorce, and they could not live together till he got […]