Jennifer M. Derby and Dr. Douglas Weatherford, Spanish and Portuguese

The Office of Research and Creative Activities funded research into the history of my family and their experiences as Mexican-Americans. I was able to investigate what life in Mexico was like for my great-grandparents and their children. Through investigating the manner in which they lived, I was able to understand the reasons for their exodus to the United States. They fled from Mexico to the United States in 1927 while the Cristero Revolt raged in their small city. I was able to discover how this revolt affected their lives in Mexico, how their journey to the United States was accomplished, and what life was like for a new Mexican immigrant to the States in the late 1920s.

Through the research I accomplished, I discovered many little known, yet salient details about the Lara family’s flight to California. The few sketchy details we knew about this period of time in our family’s history can be summarized in the following three sentences: Life was violent and poverty widespread in their part of Mexico. Somehow, they boarded a train headed for the border and arrived in the United States. One of my grandfather’s sisters died during this familial upheaval.

However, through this investigation, the skeleton outline of their exodus was greatly fleshed out. It was discovered that my great-grandmother, Ricarda Guardado Lara, left Mexico alone with her three children. My great-grandfather, Leandro Lara, and my grandfather, Jesus Lara, had been in and out of the United States since the early 1900s. In 1927 they were working and living in the Los Angeles area and it was impossible to travel to the interior of Mexico because of the violence and instability. Ricarda lived in San Francisco del Rincon with her children at the time of the revolt. It was previously believed that she had been living in the town of Lagos de Moreno when the revolt broke out.

San Francisco del Rincon was infested with the “soldiers of Christ” or Cristeros, and their opposition from the central government, los Federales. Money sent from Leandro in Los Angeles to Ricarda was intercepted and stolen by the federal soldiers who were in control of all government services. During this time, one of my great-aunts, Rita, died of malnutrition while still an infant due to the lack of available food. Doors had to be left open during the day and the wandering soldiers would liberally help themselves to food and other household items. Mothers would obtain food on the black market from smaller villages surrounding the town. They would buy the food in the wee hours of morning- 200 or 3:00 am-and then prepare it as soon as they arrived home. My great-aunt, Lucy Lara Warner remembers being woken up in the middle of the night by her mother so that she could eat this food; food that could not be taken by the roving soldiers during the day.

Raping and kidnapping of young girls became a commonplace activity among the soldiers in San Francisco del Rincon. My great-aunt, Petra, was twelve years old, and fear for her well being is what finally motivated my great-grandmother to leave. The trains were compounded by the government soldiers in San Francisco, so Ricarda and her three children walked to the nearest town with a working train system, Lagos de Moreno, which was forty miles away. She sold her jewelry and other valuables to buy the train tickets from Lagos de Moreno to Ciudad Juarez. Federales rode on the tops of the trains to shoot at any Cristeros that might try to jeopardize the transportation system. Soldiers had to be bribed to let people off of the train to buy food and water on this journey which spanned several days. Once they arrived at the border, Leandro and Jesus met them with a car. After crossing the border in Texas, it took them two weeks to drive to California in the preinterstate- highway era of 1927. Grateful to have been among the few who were able to leave, they continued their life, reunited as a family, in east Los Angeles.

A motherload of information was unearthed during my research. The above findings represent a portion of the pertinent information which I received. The focus of my project is narrow, but much other important information that I discovered and am still discovering will be incorporated into the small history of the Lara family which is currently in progress.

I conducted oral history interviews with relatives living in both Southern California and Mexico. A transcription of these tapes and synthesis of pertinent information is in progress. I will continue to do background research on the Cristero Revolt and do followup interviews with key relatives in Los Angeles.

I optimistically believed that my older aunts, the two that fled Mexico, would be eager to share experiences with me about the turbulent years of their lives. However, one obstacle was that they did not like to remember nor talk about those years filled with sadness and violence. Another unexpected obstacle was family politics: my relatives are lovely, loud, opinionated, and passionate people. Certain family members fall in and out of favor periodically. I had to remember who I could mention in front of whom, what subjects to avoid, and what past incidents I could not ask them to recall. As it turned out, my aunt Lucy who is my most rich source of information, would not meet with me until after my trip to Mexico when my mother (her favorite) would be able to accompany me. Her interview would have allowed me to gather more pertinent information while in Mexico.

Also, due to the extended period of time that I had not seen many of my relatives and the nonexistent contact I previously had with my relatives living in Mexico, ofttimes it was hard to get to the business at hand. Exuberant greeting, catching up, and the eating of copious amounts of Mexican food were necessary activities before I could turn the conversation to my project and their interviews. The wide variety of information I have received from my relatives concerning family genealogy, my mother’s nuclear family, railroad work (my grandfather’s and uncle’s professions), Mexican food, the Catholic church, general Mexican history, and the cultures of Mexico has made the job of sifting through and organizing a much bigger one than expected.

I have learned how to do effective oral history interviews in addition to learning about the hardships and successes of immigrant families. I have greatly expanded my knowledge about the Mexican Revolution and the Cristero Revolt and the role of everyday citizens in these conflicts. Due to the interest generated by the interviews conducted, many of my relatives are now helping to compile information about our family. A spark of interest and pride in our family’s past has been incited, and relatives are now talking and sharing important information that before would have been considered uninteresting or inconsequential. I have compiled family stories and anecdotes that have not been shared for decades. The line linking Lara relatives on both sides of the border has been restored. Genealogy has been furthered by several generations. I am still working on a small history of the Lara family which will be distributed throughout our family and I will donate a copy to the BYU genealogical library.