Author: Pablo Hernández Encino

I was born on October 17, 1943, in a village called Petalcingo, in Chiapas, Mexico. The sun advanced slowly toward the horizon and those who were pulling the cart the sun was riding on were already very tired because it was already 5 in the afternoon of that day. I cannot remember what day of the week it was, but I know it was on a weekend and I was born at that time. My people thought that every sunset the sun was transported to the ocean in a cart and that every night it burned all the water, leaving not a single drop of it. That is what they used to say. I am the son of Diego Hernandez Lopez and Anita Encino Cruz, both of them deceased. My mother came from the antique coffee plantation El Jolpabuchil, and my father was from Petalcingo. We are nine brothers and it was my turn to become this wandering guy for no special reason. I never shared my toys with other boys because I never had any. In order to play, I had to make the toys myself. My parents were so poor that they could never buy me a pair of shoes when my feet needed them. Now that I have grown up far from the ground I was born at, I miss more that land of the TKAJOLES. Although only an imitation remains of that church where I was baptized, I miss it. The farther I am from my village, from my people and their posol, the more I miss it. My heart has remained buried among the milpa, exactly where my little morral was left hanging with my posol, my machete and my old little palm hat.