Claudia D. Hernandez and Today's Revolutionary Women of Color

The River Never Happened to Us (ii.)
By Claudia D. Hernandez

We walked more than a thousand miles to get to the other side of
the Rio Bravo, guided by the Coyote’s howl. We didn’t bathe in the
                                                                                                                     river.

Instead, we floated like thin paper boats, tanned by the sun.
I don’t remember caressing the surface of any pumice
                                                                                                                    rock.

I stuck my fingers between cottonwood crevices, their
trunks rooted on opposite sides of the river. We were
                                                                                                                   bound

to eat desert wind; I was ten. When we reached the other
side, we hid behind bushes; quietly, we sank slowly in the
                                                                                                                   mud.

When the Coyotes signaled, we walked, no, we ran and our knees
shed broken pieces of mud. No one drowned in the river; no one had

                                                                                                                   to be

resuscitated from the mud. Yet we continued to trickle

shards of mud, as if the river had never happened to us.

The Author

Claudia D. Hernandez was born and raised in Guatemala. There, she learned to appreciate her own energy, “when she realized her hands couldn’t keep still. Tactic’s rich environment nurtured a creative soul, with its colorful landscape and the cadence of her people’s song.

“I come from a small town in Guatemala where it rains almost every day; we call this constant rain el chipi chipi. Tactic, with its emerald mountains emanating the fresh aroma of pine trees, is my hometown. As the sun goes down, a dense fog envelops the town. At the break of dawn, mi gente walk the streets ready to sell or to buy produce in the mercado.”

(Claudia D. Hernandez. “A Latina/Chapina Artist Speaks Through Poetry and Photograph.” Chicana/Latina Studies. Fall 2013.)

Seven-year-old Claudia woke up one day to find her mother gone, having left for the United States to flee domestic abuse and pursue economic prosperity. Claudia and her two older sisters – Consuelo and Sindy – were taken in by their great aunt and their grandmother, their father no longer in the picture.

Claudia describes those three years as “a difficult adjustment – and one where she experienced sexual abuse by a family member.”

Hernandez explains her predicament …

“Mothers aren’t always the ones who give birth to us. In my mother’s case, Tía Soila raised her when my grandmother abandoned her at the age of 6. My mother suffers from abandonment issues and how she has trouble forgiving her mother. 

"My grandmother, herself, had her own issues with her own mother, [who made] her babysit her baby brother at a young age. 

"Me, feeling abandoned when my mother had to flee to the U.S. from my abusive father. All these emotions bottled up making us break our mother-daughter bond. But at the end we all search for forgiveness, for closure, for love.”

Three years later, Claudia's mother returned for her daughters, and the family began the month-long journey to El Norte. She employed a series of “coyotes” to ferry the family from place to place until they reached their destination. Claudia crossed the Rio Bravo/Rio Grande with her mother and two older sisters when she was ten years old. They finally settled in Los Angeles where their tremendous struggle to assimilate into a new life and culture began.

Claudia encountered incredible problems assimilating: she didn't speak English, and her Spanish stuck out as “weird” in their primarily Mexican neighborhood. When her family returned to Guatemala years later, she was startled to find she no longer belonged there either.

The complication of her life itself left Hernandez searching for answers ...

“I admire my mother’s valor for leaving my abusive father behind. She had to sacrifice her three daughters by leaving us behind, but like Tía Soila says, 'Your mother has a backbone like no other woman.' She came back for the three of us three years later to set off on a journey that would forever change our lives …

“Motherhood is difficult and no one teaches you how to be a mother especially when you’re seventeen years old. This was exactly the case with both my mother and grandma – young mothers at the age of seventeen. This is part of knitting the fog. It’s complicated.”

Hernandez's Knitting the Fog is the complex self-portrait of a young Chapina girl. Her writing depicts the plight of immigrants who contend with such obstacles as assimilation, racism, and self-hate. She also emphasizes the beauty of America Latina’s heritage, language, and customs.

Claudia Hernandez holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She is now a photographer, a poet, and a bilingual educator in the Los Angeles area. She writes short stories, children’s stories, and poetry in Spanish, English, and sometimes she weaves in Poqomchiʼ, an indigenous language of her Mayan heritage. Her writing subtlety focuses on social issues that deal with poverty, immigration, gender issues, language, and race.

Hernandez's poems have appeared recently in Texas Poetry Calendar, Third Woman Press, The Acentos Review, Mom Egg Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is the founder of the ongoing project Today's Revolutionary Women of Color.

Claudia says ...

“I wanted to be the one who told the story about the thousands of Central Americans who migrate north searching for a better life, looking for a better opportunity for their families and children. I wanted to give a voice to those who don’t have a platform to share their stories of resilience. I think it’s important to have a female Central American voice that can share her story – a critical story that captures the hardships of immigrants when they arrive to the U.S.”