Cristela Alonso

Yes.

So my mom grew up in a little village, in a little ranchito in Mexico called El Sancarron.

Back then, it was like in the middle of nowhere.

And my mom grew up very Catholic, and it was this thing where her parents were very strict, her mother was very strict, and people couldn't date.

You actually had a lot of arranged marriages.

a lot of times where girls would be engaged to older men, you know, because the men had all the power.

And the men, if there wasn't an arranged marriage, the men had all the power where they could kidnap the women and take them from their house.

Do you mean literally kidnap?

Yes.

So the women, once they were taken from their home, they were basically this man's property.

And that's how my mom and my dad ended up together.

And it was this culture, this environment where the women were submissive to the men.

My mom and my dad got married through the church so they couldn't divorce.

You know, my mom left my dad, but they never divorced because they were Catholic.

That was how much my mom couldn't do it.

So she stayed married to him.

But after they got married, because he was a man, he would drink a lot, be very physically abusive to her, had another family.

That's the thing that made my mom leave my dad when she discovered.

The church doesn't approve of that.

Absolutely.