My mom, María de Jesús Alcaraz de López (or “Chuy,” as most of the Alcaraz family called her) was born in 1929 in Villa Union, Mexico, in the fertile Sinaloa land outside of Mazatlán.
She grew up as the youngest sister of five: Maria Luisa, Cany, Juanita and Esther. Their father, Inocencio, a ranchero, died young and left his widow Cirila and the five girls to farm their land.
My mom once described her father as having blue eyes and an extremely bald head. She told me about how he once had severely whipped a man who had injured her with his horse. Oh, the idyllic ranchero lifestyle….