ARACELI CES GEY, "A RIANXEIRA DO RIO DA PRATA"
He was born in O Pazo, -A Coruña- a corner of the town where the Virgin of Guadalupe turned brown from the sun and lived forever in that song that the immigrants sang between tears.
A magical place, given that great men of Galician culture and science met there: Castelao, Dieste, Manuel Antonio, Xosé Arcos Moldes and Angel Baltar Cortés.
Araceli's birthplace
They called her Araceli, “Altar of Heaven”, in Latin, and she was marked by her name and place of birth, where she walked barefoot through the sand until she was twelve years old. She came into the world in the stone house of her grandmother, Juana, called Xarana, on the banks of the Té River. She knew about pain and work, loss and joy, she was not afraid of anything, because she had traversed everything. She was left a very young widow, with two small children and a girl in her womb.
Grandma Juana, "la Xarana", with her son Manuel, (who died in the war), aunt Juanita, and Rosa, Araceli's mother
“That daughter born without a father was my mother,- Araceli tells me, who, although she always smiles, can't stop the sadness from showing through-It's because my grandfather died in the Spanish flu epidemic, carrying patients in a horse-drawn carriage that It belonged to the family transport company.
-“Don't go Jacobo, my grandmother had told him, you can catch it.- It's my obligation, woman, someone must do it and it's my turn”. And he went to the hospital in Santiago, from where he returned sick; He only had time to be fired.
Juana knew she couldn't give in to loss. With her strong and tender hands, like her sweet and powerful voice and her unbreakable stamp, she planted seeds, ground corn and brought into the world, as a local midwife, every child born at that time.
It was the 1920s; If life in Galicia was never easy, it was even less so at that time. She had three children to raise, and she did not know that the only son would be taken by the war a few years later. The poor son followed the fatal and familiar fate of leaving this world, leaving behind a wife and child.
Rosa Gey Fungueiriño, the posthumous daughter grew up as best she could, under the protection of her mother Juana and married José Ces Rodríguez, from O Barral de Rianxo. And so Araceli, Jacoba (Vita), Manolo and Rosa were born.
Photos of the Ces Gey brothers before emigrating
José had been in Teruel, where he was seriously injured, but the care provided by a nurse from the front cured him and he was able to return. Those were the times when houses ran out of men. Araceli, a fervent admirer of Galician letters, and therefore of Rosalía, reminds me of her words "Probes nais que os crian/ i as que os agardan amorosas, probes!"
-I was born on December 8, 1941, the voice of Araceli begins its own story. It was the day of the Virgin and when my mother baptized me she said: “No one is offended, but my José is alive because of the care of a nurse named Araceli and he will have that altar in heaven on earth. Without her my husband would not have returned from the front.”
“I grew up hand in hand with my grandmother, whom I called “mama Juana” and my aunt. On clear nights she accompanied them to the mill, down the road, at the mouth of the river, very close to the ruins of the Castillo de la Luna. That one that was erected since the time of the Templars and about which they told me wonderful legends between grinding and grinding, until dawn. That was a house of brave and tender women, a dynasty of Amazons made of honey, strong and sweet."
Listen to today's Araceli, the one who lives in Buenos Aires with the love of her entire family, and the special affection of her sister Vita, the one baptized Jacoba, much younger than her and whom she filled with love as if she were his first daughter, makes me think that there are destinies that intertwine and repeat mandates.
When she got married, already in Buenos Aires, her daughter Silvina was Vita's darling, who returned her infinite love in this way. tribute to his two great-grandmothers. It is an eternal return, like that of Odysseus, and Itaca-Rianxo for them-was not a denied destination. They had the happiness of being able to return and review the moments of their emigration, with pain but also with love for their ancestral land and gratitude for the host country.
Rianxo
Araceli takes me to Rianxo to relive the dozen years she was able to enjoy in her homeland. Her aunt and her godmother, Juanita, took her with her to sew in the wealthy houses in the town and she also went to school there. On Sundays to mass and tour for the dead of the family in the cemetery that surrounded the parish. There were also walks along the riverbank, and in her memory she has engraved the curls with which her mother groomed her and how happy she was when she put a new dress on her. "-Because although poor, with a piece of cloth the aunt did wonders and I always felt cared for and loved."
The Ces Gey family, before emigrating. In the center, grandmother Juana
That childhood of love was the basis that allowed her to endure the heartbreak of leaving her grandmother and her home, feeling that her life remained there, when her father, already in Argentina, managed to send the money for the tickets for her mother and children. José Ces Rodríguez, like so many emigrants, had left alone, to claim his family's tickets, house and food when he could.
Araceli's memories of that Rianxo take us to the Avenida cinema, where she went with her grandmother and her aunt, - We always had three places together so we wouldn't miss the movies-The plays in Plaza Rafael Dieste and visits to the house of the sisters of Castelao- Josefina and Teresa-in Abaixo street. Her paternal grandmother took her to see them, her Pepa, who was a cousin of the Castelao family. “That house, he tells me, was already a museum before it was declared such, because everything in it referred to 'O us Daniel', the exiled brother.
On market days they crossed the estuary in a boat. They went with their mother and came to Vilagarcía de Arousa, they brought pigeons to sell, raised in the house, and as a reward, with the money they got, they would savor a sardine sandwich or buy her some shoes.
In his memory, times and places of that rianxeira childhood intertwine and he guides me by the hand until I visit his paternal grandfather, the one from Casa Ces, the husband of grandmother Pepa, who worked in A Coruña in a weapon factory.
The trip was long and expensive, so the man stayed there and alternated trips on weekends to see the family. When Pepa was the traveler, Araceli enjoyed a lot. He talks about A Coruña, and his eyes light up.
-“That walk was very important, it was not only seeing my grandfather but also walking through the “crystal city” and its colorful gardens and collecting seeds of the most beautiful plants for my mother. And what about when we went to pilgrimages like San Ramón or San José where with my brothers we danced to the sound of bagpipes and muñeiras!”
Araceli's voice fades while images of what she recounts and the chains of love that the women of O Pazo and O Barral made and that continue in future generations here in Buenos Aires arise in my mind , where Rianxo became a river with lion-colored waters.
I lived in my homeland for only twelve years- he repeats- they were too few or too many, depending on how you see it. The transplant was done in the most painful moments, the transition from childhood to puberty. With her aunt she acquired a taste for clothing and sewing that, without knowing it, was marking a future that would materialize many years later, when she emigrated. When the rianxeira stopped going to the area and stepped on the streets of the big city of Bos Aires.
She lived happily, but she is aware that her little world was going through the very harsh post-war period, the lack of possibilities for progress and a dignified subsistence. His father's four aunts, who had emigrated to Argentina years ago, never stopped writing to him, insisting that he cheer up. A sister of José Ces had already left and offered him the letter of claim to start the exodus.
It was one night, says Araceli, and her voice breaks, my mother was clearing the table when my father said that his decision had been made. He would sell his "gamela", that boat that he had built with his own hands and in which he sometimes went out to collect poplars or squid, which only come out at night.
Then my mother knew there was no going back, and I, with a broken heart, choked on the words I couldn't speak. I can't remember her departure, maybe because she went out as usual, or maybe because my heart and unconscious mind won't let me do it. On September 7, 1952, he arrived at his destination on the steamer Córdoba. She was carrying a sewing machine for her sister and a toolbox.
Not a year had passed when we embarked in Vigo with my mother and my brothers: Rosa, Manolo and Vita. In the house my aunt and my grandmother, Mama Juana, were crying. Some uncles and my godmother came to the port. I was crying uncontrollably sitting next to the trunk, a couple of suitcases and the Alpha sewing machine.
Passport photos of siblings
We were children and the trip had a flavor of adventure, we would sneak to first class and sit in the beautiful armchairs to sunbathe, and look at the sea, which was endless. However, one morning, when the journey seemed to have no end, we saw the mainland in the distance. It was the coast of Brazil and we reached the Bay of Rio de Janeiro, which showed us a landscape never seen before. Before our rianxeiros eyes, there were palm trees, monkeys, colorful birds and people with darker skin. Rosa and I thought we were in a movie, like the ones at the Avenida cinema. Shortly after, at noon on August 22, 1953, we docked in the calm waters of the Río de la Plata.
Listening to Araceli, I feel that I travel with her until that moment when it seems to her that she has reached another sea, because of the immensity, waters whose brownish color surprises her, life began in a foreign place, time would make her feel very yours.
Among the crowd waiting for the ship in the port, it was difficult to find the father; His mother, still dizzy and sick, was the one who spotted him and joy was the best medicine.
JoséCes stood out with his natural elegance; He was slim and dressed in a suit that made him look like a movie actor, Araceli tells me proudly. And he clarifies that one of his cousins had a tailor shop in Sarandí and they had made him the best, so that his family would feel welcome in a world of progress.
Later he found out that they traveled to the southern part of the city, to the house of his mother's cousins, who was waiting for them with dinner ready and offered them new, unknown foods, while they did not stop talking and crying.
-Now I know they were simple Milanese with puree, but for us they were unknown dishes and to make a joke they told us it was fish. Araceli laughs and says ironically, perhaps they thought that we would not distinguish any other flavor that was not the mariñeiro.
The adaptation began there, demonstrating that it was necessary to include oneself in another, different society. New places, customs, a different way of speaking, even if it was in Spanish like at school, it sounded differently and there were words never heard before. “Non falen galego” they were told, because either they would not understand them or they would be frowned upon. She remembers this with pain, when she is proud of not having lost her language and using it as many times as possible.
But the worst was yet to come, Araceli tells me, what I call my ordeal. And she continues introducing me little by little to that childhood, almost adolescence, taken up again ten thousand kilometers from her Rianxo.
They rented a house in Lanús. Her father was a cabinetmaker and worked in a carpentry shop, her mother was dedicated to housework and taking care of the large family and did the daily shopping in a friend's business. She was a countrywoman, with whom he nuanced having a pota coffee and cakes to quench his homesickness.
At school, Araceli showed great enthusiasm and dedication; he liked school events, history classes, reciting poems and reading stories, but those months would only be a brief happy stage in his life. Calvary would soon come.
Fate intervened in the form of her paternal aunt, Lola, who noticed that the girl had flat feet and convinced her mother to take her to a doctor. The traumatologists at the Avellaneda Hospital indicated surgery. For the time it was the practice they considered appropriate. It was very bloody because it involved the placement of nails and plates, cutting veins and tendons. For months Araceli came down from the Altar of Heaven and could not walk on earth because she had both her legs in casts.
“The operation would mark my life forever, because I even had to learn to walk, as if I had never done it”- she tells me, while the tears that appear in her eyes seem to reproduce that unforgettable pain, which would always accompany her. And she continues recounting that fact that “it was like an initiation rite, with which the girl that was in me was transformed into a woman marked by suffering but willing to resist, to get ahead; Galician blood encouraged me not to fall”.
And she decided, in her early youth, to take the happier aspects of life, completed her rehabilitation and began working in the world of fashion. She studied at night, coincidentally or not, in front of the Chapel of the Virgin of Guadalupe, that barefoot area, but in Buenos Aires she lived on Salguero and Mansilla streets. "I'll take care of you, Araceli, he seemed to hear her, as I already did there in Rianxo, this sea is calmer and darker, but you and I are the same."
She had jobs in several representative fashion companies, including the famous, at that time, Casa Chaves, for fine women's clothing, and later the firm Suixtil, with its well-known brand Ñaró. Those were years in which the textile industry expanded in Buenos Aires, subsidiaries of foreign or national companies, the fact is that it was a branch with a lot of job offers.
Work Book, already in Buenos Aires
In those jobs she found her first great friend and also her great and definitive love. She was able to get her sister Vita and her father to work there. Life began to smile at him. A good job, with building amenities, contacts with the world of fashion, radio and sports. The companies carried out their advertising campaigns for the new collections with the most recognized characters of the moment. And she enjoyed those meetings in which she was valued and met celebrities, among them Juan Manuel Fangio, five times world champion in Motorsports, who was from the Escudería that the company sponsored.
I look at Araceli and I realize that she is wrapped in happy memories, that those were her golden years, in which she stood out for her virtues as a responsible and efficient employee, with good manners, trustworthy, and then the world of fashion and the models also belonged to him.
Araceli and her husband on their honeymoon. Cordoba, Argentina
“Working there made me meet people and destinations that I would never have imagined. Each presentation of the new seasonal collection involved endless photos and shows. Even, she tells me blushing, when a model was missing I took her place, even though my height wasn't the right one, I knew how to parade clothes with style and they never stopped calling Araceli to cover a bump”. On one of those occasions, a photo came into the hands of a young man, a Spanish relative of a manager.
Araceli at her wedding
That Basque did not stop insisting until he achieved the first date, which was the beginning of a married life and three children. For this reason, I can say that I owe the great love of my life to the Suixtil company.
Araceli in the days when she did the fashion catwalk. She is the smallest, next to the masculine
“My parents made a difficult decision in their lives, looking for a future they uprooted us from the land where we were born and from our affections, however life put us in front of people and challenges that we knew how to face with effort and we forged a future.
Araceli with her husband and daughter Silvina, ("Jarana") in Mar del Plata
Of the four siblings that Vita and I emigrated, that is, the youngest and the oldest, we are the ones who have the most feeling for our roots. We feel like we belong to two countries, and if this pandemic that is plaguing the world today had not mediated, this year we would have both traveled, to return, like every moriñoso Galician, to Rianxo, which is for me the lost paradise to which I always long to return.
Araceli in the maritime procession, in Rianxo, already married and pregnant
And like life, it always has circles that take us and bring us along the same paths, there is a Galician granddaughter, Yaiza, the result of those returns that, like Ulysses, we eternal emigrants usually make, one foot on each continent and the wide sea in between.
I cry in the Río de la Plata singing Rianxeira and a tear escapes me when Piazzola's bandoneon sounds in a bar by the estuary”.
Araceli at the baptism of her granddaughter, Yaiza
