So I guess the first thing I need to explain is why I am called, Madrina. It is Spanish for godmother and when I first came to Juchitan in 1993 I did volunteer service at a small children’s home. When I got there they were lacking in many things, especially diapers for the five infants who were under a year old, and the five two-year-olds. They were using only old t-shirts as diapers, so with funds raised at my church and its school I went out and bought material to make diapers and one of the women who volunteered at the home helped me sew them into diapers.
For seven years I traveled down to visit the children and each time took underwear for the kids and bought diapers for the babies. In traditional Mexican celebrations, the families spread their costs over time by asking friends and family to be sponsors or godparents of certain items for the party or celebration. Everything including the cake, the rings, the crown for the quinceanera, souvenirs of the event, flowers, and much more. They are called padrinos, or the feminine, marinas, the gift is then reciprocated when that persona has a celebration. So I was jokingly called the Madrina of Diapers.
When I moved down to live at work at the children’s home in 2000 the staff looked for a good title or name for the kids to call me. Here people are very formal and usually use a title, degree mister, missus, etc. Tia (auntie) is common but it was more used for older women you don’t know or family. I was not a señora or doña (married woman), and using maestra (my level of education) seemed impersonal, so in the end we settled on Madrina. Over the next five years, I lived up to the title by becoming godmother to 28 of the children. To this day the name has stuck, even with people who did not know me from the children’s. It is very funny to have the coordinator of the colonia where I have a house call me Madrina because he is a good ten years older than I.
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