In Mexico, a baptismal party to remember
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From Mexico, Times bureau chief Héctor Tobar writes a dispatch from a party that his domestic employee, a single mom, threw for a her daughter -- a luxury she can ill-afford.
‘The Castañedas are not rich people. Vicente Castañeda, the sixtysomething patriarch, owns a few acres of land where he grows beans and corn. Benita, the seventh of his nine children, travels two hours to Mexico City every Monday to work in the home of an expatriate American family: mine.’
‘Benita lives in our home four nights a week. After two years of eating her meals, and too many kitchen conversations to count, my wife and I know her pretty well.’ ‘We know she makes a mole sauce that reminds you that the Aztecs considered that chocolaty dish a food of the gods. We know she is an intelligent and upbeat woman of 30. And we know she’s a single mom.’