Domestic Violence Changed Carmen’s Life

At the age of 56, Carmen Carrera does not regret having left her abusive husband, or Morelos, her hometown in Zacatecas, Mexico. On the contrary, “migrating is the best thing that has happened to me,” she says. The only wound that she suffers from persists in her heart: her son returned to his hometown and was killed by the Zetas [Mexican drug cartel].

The tragedy happened exactly 27 years after her ex-husband broke her two ribs and dragged her by her hair throughout the street in an attempt to get her to go back home; and almost three decades after her mother and prosecutors advised her to stay with him: “if he’s jealous it’s because he loves you.”

But Carmen was willing to take no more. She took her three children, aged 2, 4, and 5, and moved to Mexicali, Baja California, to start from scratch, without any kind of support.

“There were no government programs that helped immigrant women who were victims of domestic violence.”

Immigrant women with this kind of profile make up one of the most vulnerable groups of the population, mainly because their families do not regularly support the idea of them leaving their husband; they must resolve their children’s economic expenses; they do not have documents because they left their homes unexpectedly; and they suffer from constantly being chased by a violent man.

One night, Carmen’s ex husband went to her home in Mexicali and took the eldest of her children —who had just turned 8— and went back to Morelos while she worked as a seamstress in a small room that barely fit her family.

“I later got a scholarship and studied to become a fashion designer and activist,” she says to La Opinion shortly after receiving an award for the best video at the “Migrant Woman, Tell Me Your Story” contest, with a piece that she titled: “Killing Each Other Cannot Be The Solution.”

Francisco Javier Venegas, Carmen’s first-born, stayed with his father after he took him from Mexicali and until he married an American citizen from Zacatecas. They moved to Dallas, Texas.

There he became a resident. He used to come back to Morelos from time to time to help during the harvest season, as he did in 2010. That year he was killed by armed criminals that had raided his hometown in five pick-up trucks in order to take his cousin’s house hostage. “In Mexico they tell you: ‘I like your house, get out.’ If you don’t do it, they kill to you.”

Francisco ended up in the sidewalk, disfigured. Carmen knew it because they used a small piece of brain left to test it for DNA; the rest of the body disappeared.

Carmen saddens, but then she remembers that she is a survivor and this sole fact raises her spirit: “Now I am going to fight for my two granddaughters that my son left behind and for more women than need me.”