The Children of Sanchez by Oscar Lewis

much perseverance and saving he liftedhis head again. He began to learn to reckon, to add figures for his accounts and, all by himself, he even learned to read a little. Much later he opened a really big store with a lot of goods, in the village of Huachinango.
    I follow my father’s example and keep little notes of what I spend. I write down the birthdays of my children, the numbers of my lottery tickets, and what I spend on the pigs and what I earn from their sale.
    My father told me very little about himself and his family. All I know about him is that I knew his mother, my grandmother, and a man who was my father’s half-brother. We didn’t know his father. I never knew my mother’s side of the family because my father didn’t get along with them.
    My father had no one to help him. You know how it is, in some families they don’t get along well with one another, like, for example, my daughter Consuelo and her brothers. Some little disagreement comes between them and each one goes his own way. And that’s how it was with my father and his people. They lived apart.
    In my own family we were more united, but my brothers grew up and left home, each one going his separate way. Because I was the youngest, I stayed at home. My oldest brother joined the army and was killed in an accident. His rifle went off and he killed himself. Then there was Mauricio, the next oldest, he had that store in Huachinango, the second store, because the first one closed up when the Revolution came. My brother Mauricio was in the second store when four men came to rob it. He grabbed one of them and disarmed him. But another one struck my brother from behind and killed him. He died quickly, his belly was ripped open. That’s two. Another one was my sister Eutakia. She died over there in Huachinango, when she was still young, about twenty years old. Then there was a brother of mine, Leopoldo, who died here in Mexico City in the General Hospital. So out of the five brothers and sisters—there were six, except one died very young; I was a twin—so there were five of us, and of these five I’m the only one left in the family.
    My father was not a loving or affectionate man. Naturally, like the majority of heads of families, he was very economical. He never noticed exactly when I needed something, and in the provinces there wasn’t much to spend money on. There were no theatres, no movies, no football, no anything. Now life is fuller but at that time there was nothing. So every Sunday my father gave us only a few
centavos
to spend.There are all kinds in this world and not all fathers spoil their children. My father believed that too much attention to a child would ruin him. I believe that too. If one spoils a child, he won’t grow and develop and become independent. He will be fearful.
    My mother was born in a small town, I barely remember the name of it. She was a person who didn’t talk much and because I was the youngest, she never told me anything. My mother was a quiet person, a woman with a great heart and she gave me much affection. My father was harder, stricter, more energetic. My mother was a decent and upright woman, conscientious about everything, including her married life. But my parents had their quarrels because my father had another woman and my mother was jealous.
    I was about seven years old when my parents separated. The Revolutionaries had already sacked the store … the business was finished, the family was finished, our home was broken up, and naturally, I went with my mother and with my brother, who worked as a
peón
on a sugar
hacienda
. I, too, worked in the fields. Two years later my mother got sick and my father came on a
burro
to see us. We were living in a very poor little house. It had a roof only on one side of it; the other side was uncovered. We borrowed corn because we really had nothing to eat. We were very, very poor! There were no medicines of any kind for my mother, no doctors, no anything, and she