In rural Mexico, the poorest families dig holes in their cornfields. They hide in places that look like supermarkets or grocery stores on the outside, but that are really hiding places with false façades in the basements of convents, where women live with their children and have not seen daylight for years and in privately-owned hotels that are rented by the government - a surreal, Third World concept of a Witness Protection Program. I interviewed the girlfriends, wives and daughters of drug traffickers and quickly came to realize that Mexico is a warren of hidden women. This was a logical step for me after having written the novel A True Story Based on Lies, which is about the mistreatment of servants in Mexico. I have spent over ten years listening to women affected by Mexico’s violence as I was interested in writing about women in Mexico’s drug culture. Some women never return home from their work place, a party or from walking to the corner. In Mexico today women are stolen off the street or taken from their houses at gunpoint. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Despite the odds against her, this spirited heroine’s resilience and resolve bring hope to otherwise heartbreaking conditions.Īn illuminating and affecting portrait of women in rural Mexico, and a stunning exploration of the hidden consequences of an unjust war, PRAYERS FOR THE STOLEN is an unforgettable story of friendship, family, and determination. But when a local murder tied to the cartel implicates a friend, Ladydi’s future takes a dark turn. When Ladydi is offered work as a nanny for a wealthy family in Acapulco, she seizes the chance, and finds her first taste of love with a young caretaker there.
While her mother waits in vain for her husband’s return, Ladydi and her friends dream of a future that holds more promise than mere survival, finding humor, solidarity and fun in the face of so much tragedy. And when the black SUVs roll through town, Ladydi and her friends burrow into holes in their backyards like animals, tucked safely out of sight. In Guerrero the drug lords are kings, and mothers disguise their daughters as sons, or when that fails they “make them ugly” – cropping their hair, blackening their teeth- anything to protect them from the rapacious grasp of the cartels. School is held sporadically, when a volunteer can be coerced away from the big city for a semester.
Here in the shadow of the drug war, bodies turn up on the outskirts of the village to be taken back to the earth by scorpions and snakes. In the mountains of Guerrero, Mexico, women must fend for themselves, as their men have left to seek opportunities elsewhere. She was born into a world where being a girl is a dangerous thing. Ladydi Garcia Martínez is fierce, funny and smart. A haunting story of love and survival that introduces an unforgettable literary heroine
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