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San Antonio Express-News
10 de mayo de 1998
©1998: Suzanne Cane y Olvera

QUEEN FOR JUST A DAY

Here we are, once again anticipating Mother's Day. Get ready to pick out that card, look for a present, send those flowers - and, if you're in another city, make that long-distance call. Luckily, Mother's Day always falls on Sunday, so it doesn't represent any major scheduling problem.

That is not necessarily true in Mexico, where Mother's Day is always May 10th, even when it falls in the middle of the work week. But don't let that give you the impression that Mom is any less important south of the border. In fact, May 10th is one of the biggest days of the year. Some companies close for the day; others give the mothers on their payroll the day off. The price of flowers soars, and restaurants are reserved to the last table. It is on May 10th that one can see the sacrosanct figure that Mother is. Many a murder has been committed because someone made the mistake of saying something ugly about someone else's mother!

You can see it even in people's names, which legally include Mom's maiden name.

In the United States, when Suzie Smith marries Bobby Jones, she becomes Suzie Jones, and the identity with which she was born disappears. Her children are Melissa Jones and Billy Jones, and they may not even know that their mom had once been Miss Smith. True, there are some American feminists who give their children the hyphenated names of both parents, but that seldom happens.

In Mexico, no feminist movement is required for a married woman to be able to retain her maiden name after marriage. Indeed, she may use her maiden name in all kinds of situations without any problem, and, in some, she is actually required to do so. It is her maiden name which determines her income tax code number, and that never changes, no matter how many times she may marry. It is, by the way, extremely convenient. When the Mexican woman marries - or divorces - she does not have to go through all the red tape of document-changing that American women do. Her name is her name: Maria Sanchez Lopez. Sanchez is her father's last name, Lopez, her mother's.

With marriage, when she takes on her husband's name, it replaces her mother's maiden name, but only her mother's. (After all, people's names can be just so long.) Thus, when she marries Juan Perez, she drops the Lopez of her mother and adds the Perez of her new husband, to become Maria Sanchez de Perez. Her identity remains intact. She is still Maria Sanchez.

It is, indeed, the feminist dream except for one drawback: That de means of, and it is often taken quite literally, just like the car of Perez or the old shoe of Perez.
And there are other things, too:

One has to wonder why this sacred figure gets such a bad rap linguistically. When things are good, one may exclaim, "¡Qué padre!" but, when they are a mess, they are a desmadre. When things go badly, one might say that he is en la madre. A mean, nasty person will often be referred to as the hijo de su madre. Octavio Paz had a lot to say on the subject in The Labyrinth of Solitude in the 1950's. In terms of language, nothing has changed.

Another conflict arises over the mother who is not one's own. Mom may be a goddess to her children, but that does not mean that their father necessarily shares the view. This takes a painful toll on marital relationships.

While marital infidelity in the United States has risen to rates that no one would have imagined when I was growing up, in Mexico, womanizing is recognized as a national pastime. "Social Friday" is a long-standing custom in Mexico, and men are often seen spending it with women who are obviously not their wives. Not good for Mexican womanhood, indeed.

Some things have changed over the years. Just as in the United States, with greater educational and employment opportunities for women. Mom does not need a spouse as desperately as she used to, and the divorce rate has risen drastically. Unfortunately, however, many a divorced woman cannot support her family adequately on her own, and it is not uncommon to see her living with her children and her own mother, who is often also alone, in the same house. Thus, many Mexican families are matriarchies in which the only men present are children - children who live as if they had two mothers. Perhaps, that is why the mother is so significant in the Mexican mind.

My own children tell me that the up-and-coming generation is developing a new awareness of relationships and their own role and responsibility in them. We certainly hope so, but it is still too early to tell.

In the meanwhile, no matter what the past may have been or what the future may bring, on May 10th, Mexican mothers know that the country will come to a standstill in their honor.