Ilse Blanquet
M A R I O
Mexico City, 2012
When I was in college, I used to drive the same route every day. On my way, I observed a young and skinny man who worked in a big avenue cleaning car windshields. He wore the same ripped clothes: a brown cap, an old brown t-shirt and black pants. After some weeks, I noticed he recognized my car and approached to ask me if he could clean my windshield while I waited for the green light. As time went by, I began to ask him about his day and make small talks about how he was doing. One day all of a sudden, he introduced himself in one of the afternoons I was running late for school: “Nice to meet you, my name is Mario”. We shook our hands and became strangers who happened to meet every day to say hi in the same circumstances and in the same place.
The day I spoke with him, his sight was lost on the floor like if recalling the past was a big challenge. Mario worked in the streets of Mexico alongside his brother Ismael, his sister Nancy and his brother-in-law, "Chifo". He was born in Mexico City and as he reminisced, childhood was “sort of good” but also very tough. His mother moved to a small room when her husband left her alone with their three kids. Mario is the youngest of his siblings and as he got older, he felt compelled to work to help his family. He doesn't have any memories about his father, in fact; he never heard anything about him again since he took off when Mario was only 3 years old: "I don't like to look back in my life, it helps me to not regret or to feel bad about what I have lived. I just like to look onwards. My life was a little hard for me and my brother and my sister, but we still have each other and that is all that matters".
He didn't have any hard feelings or bad blood towards the absence of his father and his mother addictions. When he was a kid, Mario witnessed how his mother consumed drugs and had to deal with her alcoholism. Despite she would mistreat and beat him, he was very vocal about his hope to help her in some way. His mother used to move in and move out from the house where the whole family lived: “My mother has been in many relationships and sometimes leave with men and when things don’t work out for her, she comes back to us. Our relation is distant, cold but I still love her. She is my mother after all”.
Since her mother used to abandon Mario and his siblings, all of them were hustled to work to survive. His sister, Nancy got pregnant when she was 16 years old, so she dropped school to get married and to work along her husband “Chifo”. His brother Ismael, never liked the idea of attending classes and studying hence, he quickly quit his education and started working with his brother-in-law in the streets. Against the odds, Mario still wanted to finish high-school one day so he could become a great lawyer: "For now that is such a dream, I have to earn money to help my sister and her two girls. Her husband, my brother and me, we work hard to get enough money to eat, to pay the rent and to help my nieces. I want to go back to school sooner, I'm very good with numbers, although I didn't have any fondness for homeworks. Now I dream of a better life and a better future. I would love to be a lawyer and be in service of the people who are not able to defend themselves. I don't want to do this for the rest of my days. I want to get married and have children one day. I don't want them to suffer as much as I did”.
He was quiet, shy and unassuming but he was very polite when he approached to the people in the cars. He always greeted and thank them even when some drivers were rude or didn’t pay a dime after he cleaned his windshields. His work demanded him to be under the sun and to carry on despite the weather for many hours. Usually, his labor shift began at 10 am and finished between 6 and 7 pm. The boulevard where he worked with his brother and his brother in-law was far off from his home. Just to get to their workplace they had to take 2 buses which meant a journey of 2 hours of commute and then, 2 more hours and a half to get back home because of the city traffic. The whole family had lunch in the street, usually a couple of tortillas and a roast chicken or tacos and a coke were the main meal. Nancy and “Chifo” worked and the same time looked after their two little kids who wandered around with them. They all were very close to each other and Ismael and Mario also took care of the little girls.
When it came about the environment where he used to be surrounded, Mario acknowledged how hard it was to stay away from vices: "It's very easy lose yourself when you work in the streets, sometimes other windshield washers come as gangs and offer us drugs, weed and more stuff. My brother and my brother in-law smoke tobacco but for me none of that is attractive. I have seen the effects with my mother, and I don't want to repeat those mistakes and those self-destructive patterns". Not only his siblings but also his friends agreed that Mario was very mature and such a protective figure in the family. Nancy and Ismael told me: “Mario can be very dull; he doesn’t party, and he definitely stays away from trouble, but he is such a good brother for us. He always helped our family, his nieces and even our mother who doesn’t deserve it”. One of the many things both, Ismael and Nancy, admire from Mario is his ability to keep himself on the right track and being almost incorruptible no matter the circumstances.
Months after Mario and I spoke, I kept stopping by to say hi to everyone. One afternoon I brought sandwiches and soft drinks to share lunch. Following Christmas holidays and New Year’s Eve, Mario and his family were not longer there. Time after, one of his friends remembered me and told me the news when I asked about Mario and everyone: "Some time ago, Mario surprised everyone and said he enrolled to an adult high-school during the evenings while he applied to be a security staff in a private enterprise. He quit this when Nancy found out she was pregnant again. One day he told his brother and his sister he was going to be security staff and that he wanted to start high school in a public school. We haven't seen him for a while. Ismael, his brother and his brother in-law still come to work but I don't get to see them that often around here". That was the last thing I knew about Mario and his family who were very kind to me. Nine years after I got the chance to meet him, I'm hoping he is doing fine wherever he is. I would like to think that he continued with his studies and that he managed to help people in some way as he wanted to.