When the roosters begin to crow just before dawn, Remedios is already up, dressed, breakfasted and hurrying to catch the six o’clock bus. Classes begin at 7 a.m. and her home at Rancho La Esperanza is an hour from San Miguel. At 10 a.m., her law classes at the Universidad de León on the Plaza Cívica over, “Reme” rushes off to her job with Licenciado Manuel Rosas at his law office on the Ancha de San Antonio. Finally, at three in the afternoon she can have a few moments to herself before catching another bus home where she will spend the evening studying.

by Jerry Davis

A bright and serious student, Remi—full name Maria Remedios Hernández Mancilla—has a perfect 10 average. Now in her fifth and final year, she will be a lawyer herself in June, 2009. Her father works as a mason and her mother as a domestic; both of them are proud that their daughter will become a professional, that she has made the leap from a rural environment offering little opportunity or stimulus to the city where a whole new life will unfold before her.

Luck and fate have both helped. Because of her good grades throughout Preparatoria (high school), Remedios caught the attention of teachers and school administrators who had enjoyed previous success referring their brightest students to the Jóvenes Adelante scholarship program. They encouraged Remedios to apply for help with university expenses. A “shoo-in” candidate with a perfect score in Preparatoria, Remedios is now one of 56 university scholars sponsored by a Jóvenes Adelante grant. She says that the $1000US annual scholarship, plus her $300 pesos a week salary (about $24US), make it possible for her to stay in school. She is the oldest of five girls, and her parents could not pay for her education themselves without depriving her siblings.

After tuition, books are the biggest expense, but the public library is her survival tool. There, Remedios has access to the internet and information she couldn’t afford to acquire on her own. A lover of the law, she has no time or inclination for boyfriends or parties. Her little spare time is often spent in volunteer work. She became interested in helping poor people, who are often ignorant of the law, after an experience her own family and neighbors had in challenging a local land owner’s right to restrict their access to their homes. Based on that experience, she started a student “legal aid society” to provide free legal advice to poor people, and organized classmates and professors at her law school to give guidance to needy people without charge. Remedios also volunteers with Va por San Miguel, where her expertise is useful in their struggle to make San Miguel’s government more responsive and transparent.

Although there are few moments in Remi's busy life for relaxation, one of her favorite pastimes is reading and reciting poetry. Rubén Darío, Gabriel Marquez Espinosa and Armado Nervo are among her favorites. Competitive, she likes to recite in public and has won prizes for her declamations. Once a contestant in a cooking contest at her university, she won first place for her guajalote (turkey) en adobo, arroz and ensalada.

Remi Goes to Canada

Another of Remi’s goals is to learn English as an important asset to her legal career. To that end, on Saturday mornings she makes time for English lessons with Ann Riley, a volunteer tutor with Jóvenes Adelante. Last year, her mentor Gene Randall sent her for a three-week course at a language school in Canada’s Vancouver, British Columbia. There, mingling with Japanese, Arab, Argentinean and Brazilian students, she quickly discovered that other countries prepare their English students better than Mexico does. But characteristic hard work quickly placed Remi in the forefront. Within a few days, she was promoted from a basic class, 3B, to a higher level, 4A. The course, six hours daily plus plenty of homework, neglected conversation to focus on verbs and adverbs, comparisons and linguistics.

Perhaps it is difficult for us to imagine the degree of culture shock experienced by a young person who has lived in a tiny Mexican hamlet all of her life. Here is a short list of discoveries: elevators; escalators; Scotsmen in kilts; Arab women in veils; Jews wearing skullcaps; the ocean; the beluga whale show at the aquarium; three weeks of cloudy skies and rain; giant trees; lakes everywhere; and dinner in a Brazilian restaurant where she sampled venison, duck, and even ostrich for the first time. Of course, Vancouver has its towering buildings, and Robson Street its cosmopolitan shops, but for Remi the best part was Canada Place where she saw cruise ships sailing off to Alaska. Fascinated, she could not tear herself away from the thrilling vistas of passengers climbing aboard enormous ocean liners which, one by one, majestically embarked on the voyage through the inside passage, north to Alaska.

The home where she stayed had a “no shoes inside” rule, as did other homes she visited. People ate at strange hours and Remi was always hungry between 2 and 3 in the afternoon, her normal dinner hour. “The citizens are very law-abiding, stopping for red lights instead of trying to run them. There are even traffic lights for pedestrians, and people wait for them to turn green before they cross, unlike us Mexicans,” she marveled. The consumption of coffee amazed her, as did the chilly weather and the spectacle of beds of tulips in full bloom. One afternoon a fire in the school led to its evacuation. “The students didn’t scream and become hysterical like we would have done here,” she said, “but quietly marched out onto the street and waited while the firemen efficiently put out the fire.”

Her visit to the Supreme Court was mind-boggling, especially seeing the library with its mountains of books, many computers and space for lawyers to work and do research. She saw court in session with witnesses testifying in open court, unlike the Mexican system where evidence is presented to a judge in a written affidavit and there is no jury.

Her mother, Lola, says that Remi now seems to write in English with more ease and confidence. When asked if she saw any changes in her daughter, Lola replied, “Not really, except that she is like a single minded burro looking straight ahead and concentrating harder than ever on her studies to the exclusion of everything and everyone else.”

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