The incredible story of Lidia Jesús y Toti
by Federico Borobio.
We arrived in Santa Ana del Valle, Oaxaca, in the middle of siesta time. Almost like a stereotype, a skinny dog crossing the deserted central plaza, a woman half-opening the door of her house and peeking outside. Her face, the blue apron and the door in the same color immediately triggered my photographic alerts and I approached her. We began to talk immediately. Behind her we could see an old wooden loom and adobe walls. As soon as I asked her about it, she invited us in. In fact, she insisted that we do so and get to know the century-old house. I was accompanied by Ray, the 87-year-old street photographer I met in Oaxaca, and his good friend Carlos, who usually acted as the guide. So it was that we spent the afternoon with Lidia García and her dog Toti, a scrawny, lazy Great Dane who loved to be petted as much as he loved to sprawl in the fresh dirt yard.
On my side, I interspersed questions about her life and shooting with my little Lumix, while she continued talking quite naturally. She mentioned that she was in fact used to the cameras, as she had participated in several commercials and even in a movie, called Los Angeles. We were all dumbfounded: the charming Toltec weaver from this town with 2000 inhabitants, on film sets, was not in our plans. But this was just the first surprise, an introduction to the incredible story that was to come.
Lidia told us that her role was as the mother of a teenager leaving his small town in Mexico to seek for luck in the United States and help his family. We noticed that she slowly began to break down. Sadness came over her, eyes reddened, tears flowed. I lowered my camera. She took some time, pulled herself together, and began to explain to us the reason for the emotion she could not contain: the story of the film and her personal story were incredibly similar. Her own son, Jesús, had left as a young boy for the United States many years before, and she never heard from him again. Nothing, no contact, Lidia did not even know if he was alive. But it did not end there. No.
In fact, during the making of the film she was overcome with grief, which prompted the director to come over to see what was going on, and Lidia told him. Damian John Harper, born in Boulder, Colorado, was 36 years old at the time. Possibly the same age as Jesús. Moved, he promised Lidia that he would find her son. As you can imagine, by this point in the story, we were completely stunned and expectant of the ending. And the ending happened at the premiere of the movie: that day Jesús appeared and was reunited with his mother after years without any contact. Movie ending (worth the expression, of course). Ray, Carlos and I breathed a sigh of relief, incredulous, happy, smiling. Toti sensed the change in the atmosphere and saw the opportunity. He stood up on his long, gangly legs and joined the scene by promenading his head under Ray's big rough hands.
