摘要：Mita is sixty two and strong on the good days: on the days her kidneys don’t feel like they’re on fire, cutting her inhalations short and turning her face to ash.1 Mita grew up in the city, helping her mother earn a living by taking in laundry, doing seasonal plantation work, and gathering firewood. When Mita began to have children, she continued to live at home. Her “husbands” were “malos” (rotten), coming and going as they pleased. Like herself, Mita’s children started working at a young age to help sustain the family, never attending school. When Mita’s mother died in the mid-1980s, the small family home went to Mita’s older sister. After squatting in the city for several years, Mita was finally granted a subsidized mortgage from the municipality for a plot of land in Barrio los Heroes.
