Baby Formula

Although the Lazaro-Avina house doesn't have drywall or carpet -- the walls, floors and ceilings are made of the same concrete with which the exterior is built -- it has many of the accoutrements of a modern American home: a CD player and speakers, a gas stove, a big refrigerator, a ceiling fan and a television set. Every morning the kids watch old American cartoons dubbed in Spanish: Garfield, Scooby Doo, Pink Panther and Roadrunner. One evening the movie channel runs a series of Arnold Schwarzenegger films.

The home doesn't have a telephone, however, so when family members need to make calls, they either go to a store down the street that charges people for the use of its telephone or they travel to Maria Guadalupe's sister's house in San Francisco del Rincón. The nearby city is where Mexico's new president and former Guanajuato governor, Vicente Fox, grew up. But his victory in the July 2 election isn't the subject of nearly as much discussion in Rancho el Mezquitillo as what will happen to Rosa Avina.

Most people in the village have heard about the granddaughter in America; men out riding their bikes stop to ask when she's coming home. Pictures of the little girl and her father hang in a frame on the wall of Ponciano's parents' house along with photographs of Maria Guadalupe's two other granddaughters, who live in Rancho el Mezquitillo. They are both around Rosa's age. When Ponciano's older sister, Paz, visits with her daughter, Diana, who will turn two in December, the Lazaro-Avina kids compete to take care of her. Diana remains the center of attention all afternoon. Maria Luisa, six, and Silvestre, nine, take turns holding her on their laps while they watch cartoons. Later, Silvestre and twelve-year-old Moises play ball with her. Maria Luisa and her cousin Juana, seven, gently take Diana's hand and lead her outside to play. All of the kids adore her; they constantly fuss over her, hug her, straighten her burgundy-red velvet dress and play with her pigtails.

Maria Guadalupe, who is 49, remarks on how nice it would be for Rosa to grow up with Diana. "I have eleven kids, and they never bored me, tired me or gave me any trouble," she says through a translator, "so it would be great to have another one in the house -- one I can pick up and hold."

Two of her other children live in the village with their spouses; three of her sons, including Ponciano, live in the United States. Maria Guadalupe gets teary-eyed when she talks about her third-oldest child. She hasn't seen Ponciano since 1990, when he joined a cousin in Los Angeles in search of higher-paying work. "After he left, there were days where all I would do was cry for him. I was so worried, because he wasn't always working or living at the same place, so we couldn't write to each other," she says. Once Ponciano got settled and found more steady employment, she says, he started calling his aunt's house and sending letters and money more regularly.

"Ponciano was always a hard worker in school," his mother remembers. "His teachers said he was a good student and that he always paid attention in class."

The school in Rancho el Mezquitillo, Escuela de Narciso Mendoza, only goes through grade six. Another town up the road has a middle school, but children aren't required to complete seventh and eighth grades. No one in the Lazaro-Avina family, including Ponciano, has received higher than a sixth-grade education.

Maria Guadalupe explains that Ponciano always used to help around the house -- bringing in wood to burn before they had a gas stove, planting corn and tending to the peach trees. As she says this, she nudges the kids sitting on either side of her and they giggle.

"Ponciano was always really calm. They've all been really calm," Maria Guadalupe says.

And she's not exaggerating; the household is amazingly quiet. Maria Guadalupe never needs to raise her voice at the children; their regard for her is obvious. Maria Luisa and Silvestre rarely leave her side. Sometimes, she says, laughing, she gets so hot with the two of them always clinging to her -- she spends hours in the kitchen making more than a hundred corn tortillas a day -- that she wishes they'd give her some space. The kids tease each other like all brothers and sisters do, but their love for each other is easy to see. The older kids watch out for the younger ones, and all of them share whatever they have; whenever Silvestre or Moises is eating a bag of potato chips -- doused in red-chile sauce, of course -- they always offer some to the others in the room without any prodding from their mother.

Some of the kids are too young to remember Ponciano; others weren't even born when he left. But the ones who knew him want him to come back -- and they want Rosa to come back, too.