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A quest to find my Bolivian birth mother
PHOTO: NICK SOMERS
Every day I spend wandering through the streets of La Paz, I see scenes that are foreign to the world I grew up in. Cholitas pass by, bearing children on their back. Busses come to a full stop in mid-street to rescue straggling passengers. Some children work to ensure their family's income. Regardless of age, everyone seems to be working in this Andean city: mothers, fathers, children, grandparents, and somehow I blend into these scenes. People think I am one of them. They speak to me in their language and look confused when I can’t fully understand them. I've been here before, but I was too young to remember.
On October 1992, two police officers, who (I think) were on a night round, found me on the corner of a certain street in this city that remains unknown to me. They took me to the hospital because I had just been born and still had my umbilical cord attached to my belly. I was a Bolivian newborn facing a Bolivian world signed by economic, social, and ethnic inequalities. At the time, I couldn’t have known where my life was headed, but I bet no one would have guessed that it would take place in Europe.
I am now back in La Paz -- twenty two years later -- with the goal of finding my birth mother. The only bond I ever had with her were the nine months I spent quietly in her womb. Nine months that associate me with a person whose name I don’t know, whose face I am unable to recognize, and whose love I will probably never experience. I’ve often thought she made a brave decision by sacrificing what could have been our life together in exchange for my future.
I spent my childhood in Diepenbeek, Belgium, in a typical Flemish house three streets away from the city centre, where a loving Belgian family raised me. I remember cycling with my sister, playing outside in the garden, spending a lot of time on the swing and slide, and visiting mazes on family day trips. While I was growing up, my parents gave me the chance to dream and pursue my ambitions. I went to university and this month I obtained my Master’s degree in Sociology, which will allow me to apply for future doctoral studies. Everything seems to be moving in the right direction. But the direction I have chosen now leads me to a missing piece in my past, which is what I’m after here in Bolivia.
La Paz is my starting point. I’m sure my birth mother has been to some of the places I've visited in this city. She has probably walked past the San Francisco Church, for example, on countless occasions. So many questions come to mind when I observe this city. Whose child could I have been? Do I have relatives? What about siblings? If so, who might they be? The guy shouting in the minibus, could he be my brother? The girl dancing for loose change on the street, might she be my niece or maybe my sister? The guy casually selling salteñas on the corner, could he be my father? I don’t have a clue. I simply don’t know if my birth mother is still in the city. Maybe she moved away, or even passed away. This city is all I have. My only clue to begin completing the puzzle.
As a detective, my instinct was to begin my quest at my former orphanage, Hogar Carlos de Villegas. I spent the first 6 months of my life inside that building. The day I visited, I was hoping to gather bits of information about my background, maybe even decipher which street I was found on as a baby. I asked the social worker if I could see my records and, minutes later, her colleague entered the room with a red book and placed it on the table.
Once it was open, I became excited to see what had been written about me. Some of the children in the book had two pages of text that supposedly told their story. I had not even one. I took my camera out of my bag and asked if I could take a picture of my page in the book. But the social worker forbid me to do so, citing institutional privacy reasons. I could not understand. Perhaps for her, the piece of paper was a mere administrative detail, but for me it is a piece of my identity.
I’ve met several people who have been adopted and I know I am not alone in trying to reconstruct my personal past. I also know I am not the only one who has returned to their place of birth looking for answers and been disappointed. Sometimes the details about the past are just not there, about who I am, or should I say, who I ‘was’. The orphanage staff baptised me as Cristóbal Díaz, but Cristóbal is no more. He died in Bolivia when I was adopted and Christof Bex was born. I feel powerless. So many decisions have been made over my head. Now, as a young adult, I am able to take action.
Let me be clear, I’m not entirely sure I will succeed in finding my birth mother, but my search is only beginning. I have yet to request permission to view my records at the police station. I have yet to visit the hospital. There are so many ways I could go about this. Every adoption case is so different, but, I’ve learned, there are certain similarities in what motivates mothers to relinquish a child.
According to Lizeth Villanueva, the social worker from my former orphanage, a relinquished child represents some of the larger problems in society. Rosmery Cordón, the principal of another orphanage, Hogar de Niñas Obrajes, told me that children usually end up in an orphanage due to a family’s lack of economic resources, which tends to go hand in hand with more serious issues such as alcoholism, neglect, abuse and so on. All of this might seem obvious, but it was comforting to confirm what I’ve read in the literature.
I suspect that gathering information about other birth mothers might lead me closer to my own. Who knows? It’s worth a shot. Over the next several months, I will do whatever is within my reach to exhaust every possibility. If I ever find her, if that day ever comes, then I can thank her with all my heart for the life she once gave me.
Dearest Bolivian mom and dad, I would like to know you. Hopefully we can meet soon. In the meantime, though, I will do everything I can to get closer to you.
Let the Queues Begin
The schoolyard is crowded and hums like a beehive. Hundreds of voices rise over one another, making it impossible to single one out of the chaos. This is the kind of bedlam we are used to at a school, but today is different. It's not children who are filling up the yard, stairs, hallways and rooms, but parents. Once a year on enrolment day, it's their turn to populate this space—waiting in endless lines, and sometimes even camping out overnight—to assure their child a spot in the best school, or the school closest to their home.
‘The school is close by, the teaching is good, the teachers are gentle and engage themselves with our children’, Fidelia says.
Each school has its own system to enroll students, either one grade at a time or alphabetically by last name to limit chaos just the tiniest bit. Either way, tremendous lines are to be expected. All parents have one day, depending on the grade or name, when they can secure a place for their child. It is not hard to see why some may dread this day. Waiting hours in a crushed mass, packed like sardines on a staircase, not knowing how much longer it might take is hardly anybody’s perfect way to spend a day. Add warm temperatures to that unpleasant mix, with a little food and drink stand in some corner as the only defence against boredom and discomfort, and it’s a recipe for an awful experience. But it is necessary, and certainly a sacrifice parents are willing to make for their children’s future—even if it means waiting after sundown. Knowing that you’re securing a good future for your child is perhaps the only motivation needed to get through those days.
‘The truth is, I don’t mind that much’, says María as she waits to register her child for preschool. ‘Because if it's for my child, then I have to make the sacrifice. I’ve told myself that the education of my children is more important than having to wait in a line, rain or shine.’
On the other side of town, far away from the chaotic center of Sopocachi, at a private school rather than one of the many public schools, however, there is no chaos and there are no endless queues to be seen anywhere between the luxurious houses. Here the parents don’t have to get up before dawn just to be the first in line, let alone sleep in front of the school for many nights. Inside we find the same calmness. The clean hallways and rooms filled with trophies and pictures of graduated classes have only a few people in them. And the buzz of activity is limited to a couple of workers and parents having a chat with their coffee, talking about the approaching new school year. Those who can afford to send children to private school spend but a few hours, maybe even less, to register. Enter the building, choose from one of the empty seats, fill out the form, hand it over—and that’s pretty much it. Maybe stick around for a relaxing little chat with some of the other parents with a drink if you have some time left. It’s the luxury money can buy.
The new school year started on February 2nd and parents can now enjoy a well-deserved rest, knowing that it will be at least another year before the melee starts again.
PHOTO: NICK SOMERS
It is 11AM on a Monday morning and twelve young children wielding plastic cars and picture books totter about in the brightly coloured basement of the Virgen de Los Deseos. An array of animal cushions line the back wall and an overflowing ballpit captivates the young audience. It is the new year inscription day at the daycare and several mothers wait in the passage to collect their children from the first of the morning sessions.
‘I chose this daycare especially because it is run by professional psychologists who help the children develop’, explains one of these waiting mothers who enrolled her daughter the year before. ‘They make them feel comfortable so the children don’t want to escape and there are always educational projects and activities going on to keep them interested.’ The proof lies behind the swinging doors. Bearing an enormous grin and still clutching a bright blue ball, her daughter bursts through into the passageway to greet her mother.
Yet walking down Avenue 20 de Octubre, it’s difficult to imagine the gaudy red exterior of Virgen de Los Deseos as a daycare centre. Blackened window panes, a blood red pair of painted lips and a twisted mural of a crouching woman, give an air of seductive mystery to the place, until you cross its threshold into the quaint tea room within.
Both the tea room and the daycare are run by Mujeres Creando, an anarcha-feminist group that seeks to expose entrenched gender prejudices in Bolivia. They do this mainly through protests, street art and broadcast media, and their message is clear: women are entitled to equal opportunity, opinion and sexuality. Whilst exercising these basic rights can be difficult in a patriarchal society, the organisation has put forth a set of initiatives that are proving to be revolutionary.
The pink house, though small, is vital to this operation. To some, it is a tearoom serving hot api and home-baked pastel; to others, a bed for the night when horrors at home become too much to bear. But the basement has even more to offer. A sign outside announces the return of the pink house’s third initiative, Mi Mama Trabaja, a feminist daycare service that promises mothers the chance to ‘reignite their dreams and desires in the everyday struggle for happiness’.
A key member of Mujeres Creando, Rosario Adrian has been running the daycare since 2007. Her aim was to swiftly launch a scheme designed to salvage the careers and ambitions of women otherwise occupied in a round the clock daycare of their own. According to Rosario, the generalized vision of women as experts only in childcare and comercio informal is only a patriarchal imagining of ‘an overwhelmingly empty motherhood’. Since Rosario recognises that the generic ‘family nucleus’ is often just the mother, she designed a program that ‘allows women not just to work, but to grow, to gain some autonomy, to do things, including helping other women’ she explains.
The daycare is a self-sufficient scheme, independent of government funding and with independent women at its core. Painted ceiling to floor in colourful murals, it is less a parking lot for children than a fully-equipped activity centre that promises educational, emotional and physical support for all those who enroll. ‘It is a place where children can go to find respect and affection’ says Rosario, ‘sometimes they fight amongst themselves but they have to learn how to deal with these situations’.
Part of what makes Mi Mama Trabaja special is that the daycare operates as ‘Un servicio social’, where the mothers are seen as ‘mujeres solidarias’, who bring tea and cake to workshops, provide emotional support for each other and, at times, assist one another financially when ends don’t meet. Alongside the center’s daily activities, the staff encourages responsible parenthood by setting up workshops for mothers and fathers involved.
As the name of the organization suggests, Mujeres Creando injects creativity into all of its initiatives, including the daycare. The educational materials they use are clever and original. Here, racial, social and sexual prejudices are brought up daily only to be broken down, as children are educated about the realities of the adult world and other topics usually delayed until later in the school curriculum. Turning the pages of one the books used at the center, Barbara Cole’s ‘Mamá puso un huevo’, I was struck by its frank illustration of sex, the playful illustrations of ‘Mamá’ and ‘Papá’ unphased by this social taboo. 'Sex and sexual relationships are important to an early understanding of our own bodies', says Rosario, ‘protecting children from what is natural is only a detriment to their teenage years.’
The cost of the service is marginally higher than that of state-sponsored daycares, but cheaper than private alternatives. The only difference, Rosario says, is that what they have to offer is priceless. Working morning, day and night, each staff member is professionally trained, well-equipped with pedagogical tools, and many are accredited psychologists. Their aim is to instill in children a basic understanding of social issues “by dismissing violence, and deconstructing the cultural prejudices that exist on the television and in society in general’. Since children at the daycare are aged between two and five and at an impressionable stage of their development, this early education is intended to help change their attitudes as adults in the future.
The team is small, but their ambition is great. Now in its ninth year, Mi Mama Trabaja remains true to its initial purpose: supporting vulnerable women, readdressing maternity and developing the educational potential of generations to come. It is, as Rosario concludes, ‘A safe place, a warm place, a place of education’.
PHOTO: NICK SOMERS
