A Town That Runs on Womanpower

DOCE DE DICIEMBRE, Mexico — This is where the boys aren’t.

The people hauling firewood from the pine-covered hills that sweep down into this village, the farmers cultivating subsistence plots outside town, the shoppers in the only tiny store, the neighbors chatting on their stoops--all are women.

Well, women, children and a few old men. All working-age men are gone. They are in the United States.

Following a tradition that townsfolk say began in the 1940s, the men of Doce de Diciembre (which means December 12, feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe) and surrounding villages all head off to the United States as soon as they are old enough to make the trip to El Norte and start working.

“You live better there,” said Pedro Escamilla, 60, who spent 15 years working as a farmhand, gardener and construction worker in Colorado, Wisconsin and Illinois.

Like most, when it came time for him to retire, he headed home. He used his savings to buy a little store in the nearby town of Tejupilco, which earns him enough to live on.

But Escamilla is bored, and he blames the very problem he helped create: Few people are left in Doce de Diciembre, which is about 75 miles southwest of Mexico City.

“The only ones left here are us old people and mothers who end up raising their kids alone and taking care of dozens of abandoned neighbors’ houses,” he said. “Today, young women don’t even stay in town, because if they want to look for a boy, there aren’t any.”

Residents say the migration pattern began during World War II, when Mexican soldiers came to round up people and transported them north to help with the U.S. labor shortage.

When the war ended, residents had gotten into the habit of working in the United States, and they never stopped.

The trend has been good to Doce de Diciembre. The houses here are luxurious by the standards of these parts, made of cement and brick, built with money sent home from the United States. Although people live simply, almost all have money tucked away for a rainy day.

But there is little to do. Most of the people who live in the village are simply waiting. Waiting for a chance to head north, or for a relative to come back, or for a child to grow up and leave.

Elvira Gorostieta sat on her porch gossiping with a few friends. She said she spends most of her time waiting for phone calls from her five children in the United States.

“I miss my children,” she said. “But I have to be strong. At least they call and tell me they’re happy.”

She cares for her other five children, who are too young to make the trip. But she knows they’ll go soon.

“Here, the only work is as a seamstress or farmhand--and those don’t even provide steady work,” she said. “There are no good jobs, and no good pay.”

The mayor of the municipality, Roberto Benitez Perez, acknowledged there is little work in the area, but said there isn’t necessarily much need for it.

“We all know perfectly well that the population of this place goes illegally to work in America, and the dollars they bring back help the families--and the municipality--to achieve progress,” he said.

But the situation is still tough on the residents of Doce de Diciembre. Cecilia Chamorro said she couldn’t bear missing her two eldest daughters, who wash dishes in the United States.

“I know they’re OK, and it’s good that they have work,” she said. “I just pray that they don’t marry [an American].”