A few days after the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City,
while I was among the boxes of basic goods and foods
from all over the world,
and while we were preparing these bags with provisions
that would later be given out,
I chose to emigrate.
I didn't require a lot:
A place to hide from bad luck
out of my daughters' reach.
I thought of migration as a solution
not a problem.
6 years went by before I could leave
this much loved but terrible city
the Federal District, Mexico City.
It wasn't terrible just for the tremors, well by then,
it was already the worst place for assault,
for car theft,
express kidnapping made it's debut
and I needed to escape.
Leaving meant leaving this all behind,
but also leaving everything.
When we arrived in Cancun,
my husband's family,
a beautiful family, happy, supportive,
offered us a house
in the neighbourhood Vicente Lombardo Toledano
and we settled in there.
I don't remember why but, now that I think back,
I feel like it rained all the time.
My Mexico City daughters and I
felt like we were in the tropics and we went out
to play in the puddles and gather up the turkeys
until we realised
that the rain water was mixing
with sewage water.
I sold shawls in the hotel district.
When I saw the sewing machine,
this beautiful thing my elderly mother had given to me with her furniture,
it came out in the move,
as I thought it would be great as decoration
in my new house in Cancun.
I went from civil engineer to seamstress.
A little after that,
they needed a maths teacher
and well, there I was,
a little bit closer to what I knew how to do
and not just to what I had learned
but what my father had taught me,
because he had always been a maths teacher.
Shortly after that they needed a construction teacher
and, of course there I came even closer
to my profession.
So I quit drawing out shawls in material
to sit down once again to drawing out on the drafting table.
The friendships that we were building during this period told us invariably,
"No, Cancun no longer has the sea of opportunities,
that came before the hurricane."
Those were opportunities!
I thought to myself, "No, of course not,
the opportunities are here,
here we will build opportunities."
I realised that the word emigrant applies to anything that arrived after me
and that the characteristics of this condition
to which I belong,
are resistance, persistence.
I didn't come to hurt anyone.
Already being in the academic field
knowing a bit of maths,
statistics and being in the middle,
I was offered to form an association --
the Social and Domestic Violence Association --
from the ground up.
This didn't exist in the country,
and a little later on,
coordinate the local Urban Association.
This allowed me to sort of integrate
two parts of my life,
one was theoretical work, the academic work,
research, numbers,
big databases,
and the other that I didn't want to give up,
was my ability, my longing,
to meet people.
Not just to see their faces,
but to offer my own.
And being in this place,
already allowed me to integrate
what is my true calling.
That has allowed me to get to know people
there's lot of figures too, but also meet people.
For example, Eliza.
Eliza comes from Las Margaritas, Chiapas,
she has two sons.
Her dream, what she calls happiness
is for them to go to primary school,
all clean, well groomed, well fed,
doing homework, following the rules;
this for her is happiness.
She won't let them be like her.
Eliza told me how when she was younger
she received an average of three men a night
and now that she is older,
the average has risen to six.
She is scared because
she thinks she has HIV.
When I ask her if she has sat and thought
about the possible transmission to all these men
and them in turn to all their other partners,
she turned to me quickly and said
that she was also worried about her sons
and due to her possible absence,
she has to worry for a whole army.
She didn't come to hurt anyone.
And in this way, she is like Geovanna, who tells me off when I say
"Hey, Yoana,"... she says, "Geovanna."
Geovanna decided to get pregnant
when she was 14 years old.
It was the only way she could leave the house of her biological father
who abused her
and what hurt her most, was her mother's silence.
As she had raised her three younger brothers
it didn't seem like a big deal to her
make her own and raise it.
She knew that she needed a man, as she
needed someone to provide for her
and give her a house.
She didn't finish school,
she assumed nobody would give her a job.
She has two sons and a daughter,
each of them is a failed attempt
at keeping a man.
This is why she came to Tabasco,
because she has faith
in what she will find there,
that they will register them,
they will say her name, as she says it,
they will give her a house,
they will give her something to eat and so, she will be
very happy here in Cancun.
She has no idea that
that could hurt anyone.
Being in the Association, seeing these stories
analyzing the figures.
Finding myself, not with statistics,
of point zero, zero, zero but with people,
has allowed me, in any case,
to make like a map,
like a representation of the city.
What is there in the city?
What opportunities does the city offer to these women?
What decisions can they take?
Because I have real trouble thinking
that they made these decisions
faced with a wide range of possibilities.
But what possibilities does the city really offer?
The people that can't be of use to a city's services are unreported.
The sons of Geovanna are unregistered,
they have no medical card, they can't be vaccinated
they can't go to school,
they have no identity, they are unreported.
These people that have no drinking water at home,
these entire neighbourhoods that
have to turn off the light, so that on nights
with this heat, they can have a tiny fan,
are unreported in the public services.
To enter the city,
to become part of the city,
to get to know how the city moves,
what there is, what there is not, how to get,
how to make use of such services, and know where each thing is,
a support network is needed.
I had my family, but it's not like that for everyone.
A support network tells you where everything in the city is.
It also gives you signs of hope.
A support network gives you a sense of security
so that you don't fall down,
but if you do fall, the hit will not be fatal.
Who does this here in Cancun?
Well, there is an organisation called Huellas de Pan,
which gives food to girls and boys whose parents can't afford to.
And not just children,
if an adult today, like many,
like many times, wakes up with nothing to eat
they can go to Huellas de Pan, where they will find a delicious meal.
The organisation Hands for Support and Life
is defined as --
they say that each step they take,
they find an abandoned youngster
and then they lead them to comfort spaces,
like helping them to complete high school,
become part of a team,
walk away from addictions.
These organisations
set signs, teach,
like the Cancun Choir,
Plant for the Planet,
and many other organisations and programs,
such as Communitary Bond from the Caribbean University
that not only cares for today's urgent need
to have food to eat,
but also the urgent need
to play an instrument,
to learn how to read to express ideas,
how to write to express ideas,
to express themselves with their bodies.
Yes, what we do at the Observatory
is to decode figures, analyze large databases,
make representations of the city.
Who does what? Who needs what?
Where is which service?
How do phenomena move around the city?
But when I see those representations
I feel part of them,
I feel I'm an actor in that representation
but to do it, to truly act out
I have discovered I must re-found myself,
I need to re-found my relationships.
How do you achieve this?
I take the subsidiarity principle or the first Christians.
The principle of subsidiarity states
that everything one could do on their own,
with their own strength
must not be transferred to another sphere.
The principle of subsidiarity,
help me to remember them, evoke them,
was created by the Christians
from the catacombs, chased,
poor, unattached families, impoverished,
they had their leader cruelly killed
and what they did was take action
within that small space they could,
within the small space remaining
and they took action to solve the problems they were facing,
what needed to be done in that moment.
They had to do it because letting others do it
would have been suicidal.
And it was working together
with what they had, that is,
with willingness, with intelligence, with their heart,
that they re-founded themselves.
This is migrating to me.
It is leaving behind all you know,
carrying out a re-founding process
using your compassion,
the ability to feel with others.
"I am an immigrant, and wish to continue being one.
Let's not leave that immigrant category,
because the strength,
the insistence
the ability to persevere,
the physical endurance, the emotional strength,
the mental strength are the tools
that make way to hope
for others,
for us
(Applause)