Discarded Pages: Araceli Cab Cumí, Maya Poet and Politician

6: Endings?

CHAPTER SIX Endings? I am grateful for this life, the reality of its lessons. —Araceli Cab Cumí, July 2000  Retirement At seventy-five Araceli may appear to have closed down her political career and be settling into retirement. In June 2002 Araceli’s husband, Pablo, died after a long, debilitating illness that, although undiagnosed, resembled the slow fading of the mind characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease. For the two years preceding his death Pablo was too ill to continue to farm his milpa. His dry goods stall in the Maxcanú market had closed several years ago for lack of business. While Pablo was ill, Araceli was absorbed in taking care of her husband. Now Araceli faces widowhood and retirement concerned about a future with diminishing financial resources. In 995 she wrote the following letter requesting a state pension to the governor of Yucatán, Federico Granja Ricalde of the PRI, whom she knew from her days in the Yucatecan Congress. With this letter Araceli submitted a file of documents verifying her many years of public service. She presented her letter and document file to the governor’s secretary, a man who had previously helped Araceli with the formal application process in setting up her NGO.2 The tone of Araceli’s letter reads as polite and properly 227 chapter six 228 formal in Spanish, although in English it may seem somewhat subservient or stilted. Once again someone else typed her letter so Araceli’s name is misspelled as “Aracely.” Letter Requesting a Pension Aracely A. De J. Cab Cumí Calle 25 No. 9 Maxcanu, Yucatan, Mexico March 8, 995 [C.] Engineer Federico Granja Ricalde3 Constitutional State Governor Government Palace, Merida, Yucatan, Mexico Attached to this letter, with total respect, I send you copies of documents that verify my résumé in the activities that my human capacity has permitted me to realize—a social and political struggle in my native state at the levels where I received the honor of being invited, to collaborate or express ideas or judgments of the circumstances that have happened in my life. Confiding in your human and political capacity, in this statement of motives, I solicit your intervention in my petition requesting that I be granted a life pension. My petition is sustained by the work that I have done, that supports the merit of this request.4 I am not a professional nor do I have social security, nor do I have any other kind of aid. My situation is that I need economic aid to survive and to attend to the necessities of my routine labors. I work my land with all the strength that my health allows me. Hoping from you your spirit of solidarity, help, and comradeship in order to consider [my request], I remain at your behest in Calle 25, No. 9 in Maxcanu, Yucatan, Mexico. Aracely A. de J. Cab Cumí original page on page 244 A year after sending the letter, as Governor Granja Ricalde’s term of office was ending, Araceli was notified to come retrieve her documents. Included in her documents was a card denying her request for a pension. Endings? 229 Through the intervention of her longtime friend and political ally, Blanca Estrada, Araceli did receive a one-time payment of 500 pesos (US50) from the state government.5 Araceli concluded that a political enemy might have convinced the governor to deny her a pension. Disappointingly, the governor’s secretary claimed no influence with the governor on her behalf despite his helpfulness to Araceli previously. Araceli’s subsequent request in 997 to the incoming governor of Yucatán, Victor Cervera Pacheco of the PRI, received no answer. She has made no further requests for a pension from the state government. Since her husband Don Pablo had worked for a time as an agricultural laborer in the United States under the Bracero Program, Araceli is attempting to obtain the funds due her from her husband’s pension.6 Since Pablo often used variations of his name on official forms, Araceli’s case to claim his pension has become more complicated. No doubt Don Pablo did not realize that such a detail as a name would complicate his wife’s receiving the monies due her from his pension. Making Peace, Coming to Terms Araceli in the following poem and essay writes about coming to terms with a lifetime...