Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio High
Speaker 1: Family Secrets Listeners. It's Danny here to share a bit
Speaker 1: of exciting news with you before today's episode. We just
Speaker 1: found out that our podcast is a nominee for the
Speaker 1: Webby People's Voice Award in the category of Best Series.
Speaker 1: This is a huge honor and honestly it put the
Speaker 1: spring in my step as I walk alone each day
Speaker 1: down into my basement to record my conversations with my
Speaker 1: amazing guests. Podcasts can be a bit like the sound
Speaker 1: of a tree falling in a forest. You know, is
Speaker 1: anyone listening? Does it really exist? So here's the thing.
Speaker 1: This is the People's Voice Award, So you get to vote.
Speaker 1: It would mean so much if you'd go to vote
Speaker 1: dot Webby Awards dot com and cast your vote for
Speaker 1: Family Secrets. Thank you so much for hearing me out.
Speaker 1: I love you guys. Now on with today's episode, I'm
Speaker 1: Danny Shapiro and this is Family Secrets, the secrets that
Speaker 1: are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 1: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. My guest today
Speaker 1: is Emma Ramos, actress, comedian, and writer. Emma has an
Speaker 1: important story to tell, and her telling of it is brave.
Speaker 1: After all, she was told that if she ever spoke
Speaker 1: of it, she could be risking her life and the
Speaker 1: lives of her loved ones. But secrets only accumulate power
Speaker 1: when they stay silent and dormant. Here's Emma. I grew
Speaker 1: up in Cula, Cancinaloa, Mexican that's in the northwest of Mexico.
Speaker 1: That city. Unfortunately, I'm a really bad rep You could
Speaker 1: see it briefly in the collateral with Tom Cruise. It's
Speaker 1: well known for its nargo culture. To me, it was
Speaker 1: really well known for its beautiful contexts. Uh. This is
Speaker 1: one of the cities of Metago that actually is awarded
Speaker 1: for its beautiful sunsets. So I grew up in middle
Speaker 1: class and uh, I would say in the nineties in
Speaker 1: this town there was this striving draw cartel that was
Speaker 1: out around the families who grew up there for generations,
Speaker 1: very conservative, staunch Catholics, very proud people that had their
Speaker 1: honorable jobs. But this political and corrupted system was happening around.
Speaker 1: And I grew up in the middle of all of that.
Speaker 1: What did that feel like? And was there is a
Speaker 1: sense that there was danger that you were in danger.
Speaker 1: I mean, how did how did that play out in
Speaker 1: your family? I would say that parents from my community.
Speaker 1: Um needs a million awards from middle classes because it's
Speaker 1: a constant like distracting your kids and trying to make
Speaker 1: it as if nothing is happening. I say that women
Speaker 1: from my hometown, because women are in charge of, you know,
Speaker 1: taking care of of the kids and men go to work.
Speaker 1: It's very, very nineteen Still, they would distract us and
Speaker 1: they would you know, filled our afternoons with toys and
Speaker 1: school would be very I would say normal, but for example,
Speaker 1: in the middle of class there would could be a
Speaker 1: gun shooting. I learned the word as from school. Our
Speaker 1: teachers taught us to go to the ground whenever there
Speaker 1: was a gun shooting happening outside, and I learned how
Speaker 1: to distract myself, well, danger, what's happening, because it's kind
Speaker 1: of a second nature. You built this muscle of being
Speaker 1: completely out of your control. So I would kind of
Speaker 1: like look to my friends while I was laying on
Speaker 1: the floor and make them laugh while, you know, just
Speaker 1: to distract ourselves while it happened. And then we would
Speaker 1: go back to school, you know, like there was no
Speaker 1: discussion I would say, like that could happen. Also, you
Speaker 1: could be at church and there could be a squeeze
Speaker 1: of a gun shooting between a Hallelujah and an amen.
Speaker 1: But then the math would keep going and we would
Speaker 1: have And the economy of being part of that community
Speaker 1: is that conversations outside while that was happening, had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with that world. Women were preoccupied with, you know,
Speaker 1: beauty pageants or what were they wearing, or let you know,
Speaker 1: when was the next keen Stays or the girls or
Speaker 1: the first communion, and everything was very much connected to
Speaker 1: being good with God and being a a good girl.
Speaker 1: That was kind of how you made your parents and
Speaker 1: your grandparents proud. You know, good grades and being a
Speaker 1: good girl meant that you would be leaning into those
Speaker 1: feminine things. And if you were a boy, well you
Speaker 1: need to be brave because you are going to be
Speaker 1: someone who's going to take care of women. In the
Speaker 1: world of Emma's childhood, there was a strict delineation between
Speaker 1: the roles of boys and men and the roles of
Speaker 1: girls and women. An undercurrent of danger ran through their
Speaker 1: daily lives, such a part of the fabric of their
Speaker 1: community that it went without saying it just was. So
Speaker 1: is it fair to say that the men and the
Speaker 1: boys were the ones who were more sort of hyper
Speaker 1: aware of the dangers and of protecting the girls and
Speaker 1: the women from those dangers. Yes, now, looking back, I
Speaker 1: have a lot more compassion really for for men, because
Speaker 1: it was inherent that they would have to take that responsibility,
Speaker 1: whether they wanted or not. It was part of being
Speaker 1: a man. They would be part of those conversations. They
Speaker 1: would be the ones who, you know, if there was
Speaker 1: any need to defend their work, and I would say,
Speaker 1: defend their work because um, in this system, whatever kind
Speaker 1: of job you had, you would have to negotiate with
Speaker 1: you know, that other corrupted system. Example, you would have
Speaker 1: to pay a certain amount of your income to these
Speaker 1: people just for them to leave you alone. And if not,
Speaker 1: if you would try to be if you were that guy.
Speaker 1: I have a friend whose brother tried to, you know,
Speaker 1: to just defy that reality and with murders, so that
Speaker 1: would be kind of the process, right. But because women
Speaker 1: were meant to stay at home, that was the way
Speaker 1: that men would protect them. Tell me about your parents.
Speaker 1: Tell me about your mother first. My mother is someone
Speaker 1: that I hear these stories since I was a baby.
Speaker 1: That she wanted to study literature when she was a kid,
Speaker 1: but she couldn't. She couldn't go to Mexico City to
Speaker 1: study literature because she had to decide and start a family.
Speaker 1: She started her family when she was twenty one. She
Speaker 1: was very young. She's um, the second of six kids,
Speaker 1: and she grew up very quickly because of the same.
Speaker 1: She became a mom at a young age, and she
Speaker 1: couldn't continue studying, and her entire life and happiness was
Speaker 1: about making her home as beautiful as possible, as perfect
Speaker 1: as possible. She takes a lot of pride in not
Speaker 1: talking about violence and not talking about the ugly stuff
Speaker 1: how she called it. She is also very very proud
Speaker 1: of the way she coped with life. In fact, before
Speaker 1: this conversation, Danny, I would just wanted to double check
Speaker 1: things with her, just to see if my memory was right.
Speaker 1: And uh, she has this thing where she purposely forgets.
Speaker 1: She tells me that she doesn't remember the things that
Speaker 1: she doesn't want to remember, and that's the way she
Speaker 1: just chooses to be happy. Every day she chooses to
Speaker 1: be happy. And that's why certain moments in certain pictures
Speaker 1: go to the trash and we act like it didn't happen,
Speaker 1: and that's the way I respect her life. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so interesting, Emma, because really one of the predominant
Speaker 1: themes in this podcast is that what you just describe
Speaker 1: your mother doing, it's actually impossible, Like you can't just
Speaker 1: decide not to remember something, or secrets go into corners
Speaker 1: or things that we don't remember that we choose not
Speaker 1: to remember. They kind of stay there in a way,
Speaker 1: they never completely disappear. So it's just it's so interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, can completely understand someone doing that. I mean,
Speaker 1: especially in circumstances where the way you're describing it, it
Speaker 1: sounds like your family and your home community were so
Speaker 1: surrounded by, you know, things that were really frightening and
Speaker 1: encroaching and threatening. Yes, And I'd say that there's something
Speaker 1: strange about sharing this with you. There's a there's a
Speaker 1: thing about language also that I have to be aware
Speaker 1: that I feel like, because I'm sharing this in English,
Speaker 1: i am short of protecting them because if I would
Speaker 1: say it in Spanish, and if they would understand what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, they would be very annoyed. They would feel
Speaker 1: that I am kind of ill mannered. By just exposing
Speaker 1: something that's not good about where I was from. Right,
Speaker 1: there is a misunderstanding of being grateful, and they've built
Speaker 1: this quilt of emotions, And that's why I feel sometimes
Speaker 1: hesitant to even share realities. But I I find certain
Speaker 1: anecdotes so telling. For example, I remember this during Christmas.
Speaker 1: She was the one in charge of buying all the
Speaker 1: presents because my dad would make the money and she
Speaker 1: would do the house things which involved being Santa. So
Speaker 1: there was this particular Christmas she went to the supermarket,
Speaker 1: had all the gifts in her car, and then two
Speaker 1: kidnappers approach her with guns, you know, like pointing out
Speaker 1: her head. They would just kind of like wanted to
Speaker 1: kidnap her and like like steal the car and steal
Speaker 1: the gifts, and god knows what they were going to
Speaker 1: do with her. So she rans outside, she tried like
Speaker 1: to negotiate with them, screaming, and just she ran back
Speaker 1: to the supermarket. So these guys just stole the car
Speaker 1: with with the toys. But when she talks about it,
Speaker 1: what I find fascinating is that what she remembers the
Speaker 1: most is that when she was hiding behind the counter,
Speaker 1: filled with fear, she would look at the supermarket floor
Speaker 1: she noticed that it was dirty. So she's like that
Speaker 1: flow was so dirty, and I was distracted by like
Speaker 1: all the dirtiness and all the hair that was on
Speaker 1: the floor, and that was happening, while like the cashier said,
Speaker 1: we need to call her husband. So now the superhero
Speaker 1: and the Savior King which is Dad, right, which is
Speaker 1: another human being who gets a call that his wife,
Speaker 1: you know, just dealt with that, and he has to
Speaker 1: come and save her, and we as kids receiving I
Speaker 1: know the story now as an adult, but back then
Speaker 1: I couldn't. I didn't know what happened. I just I
Speaker 1: just remember seeing Mom coming back from who knows where
Speaker 1: and just shutting down and not telling us anything. And
Speaker 1: then you know that, I believe that Christmas we they
Speaker 1: organized somehow getting our toys, but I find that detail
Speaker 1: for some reason. So telling of the women from my city, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you're describing this amazing coping mechanism. It's not
Speaker 1: that different from the way you described telling jokes and
Speaker 1: making making people laugh during school when you had to
Speaker 1: what was the word when you had to go down
Speaker 1: on the floor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean you're down
Speaker 1: there and and making people laugh and sort of doing
Speaker 1: what you can do to not be thinking about what
Speaker 1: is actually happening. And your mother in the supermarket is
Speaker 1: looking at the floor and the dirt and the grime,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of what she can do to not
Speaker 1: be completely freaking out about what just had happened to her.
Speaker 1: We don't decide what are coping mechanisms will be. We
Speaker 1: don't get to choose. Oh, I'll be the funny one,
Speaker 1: or I'll focus on the small detail to avoid seeing
Speaker 1: the big picture. Some coping mechanisms are healthy and others
Speaker 1: are self destructive. Whatever they are, they're an attempt to
Speaker 1: control an uncontrollable environment. And when it comes to Emma's father,
Speaker 1: all he wants to do is keep his family safe
Speaker 1: in an unsafe place, and he has a lot of
Speaker 1: very strong ideas about the way his kids Emma is
Speaker 1: one of three, should live their lives. Tell me about
Speaker 1: your father. My father is a beautiful man, a very
Speaker 1: sensitive human being that was never allowed to explore his
Speaker 1: feminine side. He works in the agricultural business. He inherits
Speaker 1: his land that was like from you know, many generations
Speaker 1: before him, so kind of also his story was written
Speaker 1: for him before he could say anything. I saw that
Speaker 1: that was only for women, but I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I think for men too. My father's also very proud
Speaker 1: to share like the same values that my mom has
Speaker 1: to prioritize family. So just you know, his biggest moment
Speaker 1: of happiness is to be with his kids. I think
Speaker 1: he imagined that, you know, working and giving us everything
Speaker 1: they steele cafe sustain. So he would say, like you
Speaker 1: know that he would take care of our clothing, our
Speaker 1: house needs, and our education education with something huge. But
Speaker 1: I'm from that generation that the Internet happened, so I
Speaker 1: don't think they could plan that I was going to
Speaker 1: have access to so much information when they invested on
Speaker 1: the best education they could. So I think that Dad.
Speaker 1: I clearly remember graduating from college having all these dreams
Speaker 1: where I would see finally that we had in Mexico
Speaker 1: at the time, only one female senator, and I remember
Speaker 1: meeting her more than being so connected to her thinking
Speaker 1: and reading and understanding that there was a way in
Speaker 1: which women could also vent their truth and would be
Speaker 1: paid for it, and coming back home and telling Dad
Speaker 1: that I would want to pursue that, and him being
Speaker 1: extremely confused and afraid that that meant that I would
Speaker 1: not learn how to cook, because I've never learned how
Speaker 1: to cook. I can't cook anything. But his advice would be,
Speaker 1: you should start to learn how to cook, because that's
Speaker 1: what's next. You know, like you have the best education,
Speaker 1: therefore you are connected to this group of people. Thank god,
Speaker 1: I did everything that you could be safe while growing up.
Speaker 1: And please don't be a disappointment, and you give me
Speaker 1: more hard at tags while you're still how side in
Speaker 1: the world without being protected from and via man. So
Speaker 1: I think that that where our relationships started having a
Speaker 1: lot of conflicting conversations based on his idea of how
Speaker 1: should I continue in my life and my impetus of
Speaker 1: just responding to a call, which was to keep exploring
Speaker 1: and asking questions and and make money for myself. It's
Speaker 1: so interesting the way that the Internet really does play
Speaker 1: a role in so many of these stories that you
Speaker 1: ended up being exposed to. Your aperture was open so
Speaker 1: much wider to the possibilities that were available to as
Speaker 1: a young woman then they might have been without the
Speaker 1: advent of the Internet when you were growing up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back, So Emma hustles, she has big dreams.
Speaker 1: She goes to college, graduates early. She's smart, talented, well liked,
Speaker 1: and ends up with a good job in public relations
Speaker 1: in Mexico City. She works during the day and it's
Speaker 1: even studying for a master's degree at night. Tell me
Speaker 1: what happened about fifteen years ago one evening when you
Speaker 1: were on your way from work to your classes. So
Speaker 1: now knowing that that was not happy about me continuing
Speaker 1: and pushing to be the next senator in machial but
Speaker 1: even if we fight, he loved me, so he allowed
Speaker 1: for me to work on this job in Mexico City.
Speaker 1: One of those things where I got away with pursuing
Speaker 1: my career. But obviously I had to call Dad every
Speaker 1: Saturday and like all of his mechanics around having him
Speaker 1: at ease that this little girl was, you know, doing
Speaker 1: the right thing and just working and balancing the fact
Speaker 1: that I wanted to be this superwoman to simplify as
Speaker 1: that term. So while I was doing that, being a
Speaker 1: superwoman at that time, and I'm twenty one at the time,
Speaker 1: I was truly truly young to have this position at
Speaker 1: the company as a director and also studying my first
Speaker 1: master's kind of my mind was in that, you know,
Speaker 1: drinking that juice, that there was a possibility of young
Speaker 1: women being part of politics and doing something for themselves
Speaker 1: other than just being there because they were women, they
Speaker 1: were pretty, or whatever. Men thought that we were. Men
Speaker 1: from my generation would say that I got that far
Speaker 1: in my profession because I was pretty, and I would
Speaker 1: be so livid. So with that thrive and anger, that's
Speaker 1: why I was like, I will keep studying, and my
Speaker 1: focus was like first as masters, then the PhD, and
Speaker 1: Mexico City. This was the time where Fox was president,
Speaker 1: and I just mentioned him because when we say in
Speaker 1: Mexico is a dangerous country, it's just so general. It's not.
Speaker 1: It's really it's like any other country. It really depends
Speaker 1: on the moment in politics. If we had a precedent
Speaker 1: for the first time from a different party. Mexico is
Speaker 1: a country who had seventy one years free was governing,
Speaker 1: which would be the equivalent of the Republicans, and then
Speaker 1: we had folks for the first time, so the political
Speaker 1: temperature and violence of the city was different. That's why
Speaker 1: there were certain things called express kidnaps. An express kidnap
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with being the daughter of a
Speaker 1: mogul or an ambassador. It's a method of abduction in
Speaker 1: which a victim is targeted, abducted, often violently, and held
Speaker 1: captive for a quick, small ransom, either from the victims family, employer,
Speaker 1: or most often a T M machines. I usually could
Speaker 1: go to school, would take a site taxi to be cautious,
Speaker 1: but that day I believe I had an exam or something,
Speaker 1: and the traffic wasn't like imp posible, so I took
Speaker 1: a cab from the street, which you shouldn't, but my
Speaker 1: focus was in becoming the next senator, so so I
Speaker 1: had to go. I had to go to class. Um.
Speaker 1: So as soon as I got into the car, I'm
Speaker 1: giving you these details just to paint the picture of
Speaker 1: how distracted and focused I was, so kind of like
Speaker 1: how my mind delayed a lot of the things that happened.
Speaker 1: Kind of I was absorbed them in a delay because
Speaker 1: I was on the phone, still dealing with my job,
Speaker 1: and I had in my hands um paperwork from school.
Speaker 1: So I was kind of focusing and trying for the
Speaker 1: cab to just get me to school. And as soon
Speaker 1: as I cop on a inside the cab, two men
Speaker 1: stepped in, and it kind of because I was still
Speaker 1: on the phone and I couldn't I couldn't understand. I
Speaker 1: felt that they were they were pointing at me, and
Speaker 1: there was a cook halpen me of a lot of fear.
Speaker 1: I would say in these guys voices, they were screaming
Speaker 1: commands and they were screaming things. Because I wasn't moving,
Speaker 1: I couldn't understand what was happening. So I would say
Speaker 1: that after two minutes of understanding what was happening, then
Speaker 1: I looked down and I see that there were guns
Speaker 1: pointing um at my ribs. They were touching my ribs
Speaker 1: from both sides. I looked at the cab driver, and
Speaker 1: the cab driver acted after if he was a victim.
Speaker 1: But they are part of the whole thing. So then
Speaker 1: I understood what was happening. And then kind of there's
Speaker 1: a moment where I felt that I was out of
Speaker 1: my body because all of this. The next moves happened
Speaker 1: so quickly. The guy on my left took my necklace.
Speaker 1: The guy in my right opened my bag and took
Speaker 1: my phone and took all of my I D and
Speaker 1: everything I had inside my bag. So I remember her
Speaker 1: that he was addressing me by my name and he
Speaker 1: would say my address. And unfortunately, the way I d
Speaker 1: S work in Mexico, you will always I will always
Speaker 1: have This is another caveat of patriarchy. I will always
Speaker 1: have my parents address on my I D until I
Speaker 1: get married, then I will have the address or whoever
Speaker 1: I marry, whatever home I moved to. So the fact
Speaker 1: that they were saying out loud my parents address and
Speaker 1: my name, and they start saying that if I moved
Speaker 1: that I was going to be murdered. And they would
Speaker 1: be like, this is how it's going to go down.
Speaker 1: They start explaining to you, um that they're gonna stop
Speaker 1: at different a T M S. You have to give
Speaker 1: them the nip uh and they would take the largest
Speaker 1: amount of money. And if you cry, they will kill
Speaker 1: you if you if you scream, you would try to
Speaker 1: do anything. So they start attacking you with all these words.
Speaker 1: So you become so small and your fear, you know,
Speaker 1: inhabits you of any emotion. And I remember I started praying.
Speaker 1: I started praying, praying and praying and praying Holy Father
Speaker 1: and Spanish like a mantra. I could not stop praying.
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe what was happening. They stopped at three
Speaker 1: different A T M. S. I stupidly had three cards
Speaker 1: with me, something that you shouldn't do. As this is going,
Speaker 1: I would say that this is happening with Mexico traffic.
Speaker 1: It's like the next two hours, right, it takes more
Speaker 1: or less two hours, and they're driving around and they
Speaker 1: remember being inside the cab and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: right next to us there was a you know, a
Speaker 1: police officer, and we had to act. I remember having
Speaker 1: one of the guy's arm holding me, and I have
Speaker 1: to act as if we were, you know, just three
Speaker 1: friends driving somewhere. It's terrifying and claustrophobic. Even listen sending
Speaker 1: to this, can you imagine what it must have been
Speaker 1: like inside that car. He's violent, out of control, dangerous
Speaker 1: men have Emma's name, her family's address, and guns in
Speaker 1: her ribs. She can't signal a police officer. She's completely
Speaker 1: utterly trapped. But then her coping mechanisms begin to kick
Speaker 1: in at that point. I don't know how, but thankfully,
Speaker 1: being two hours with these two individuals, three individuals if
Speaker 1: I count the cab driver, but I was focusing on
Speaker 1: the guys with a gun. I started clocking their energy
Speaker 1: and their frequency, if that makes sense. It's just like
Speaker 1: I would say, like they're one was a little kinder
Speaker 1: than the other. And I start to myself, I have
Speaker 1: to convince them of not raping me. I just have
Speaker 1: to convince them. I am going to convince them of
Speaker 1: not to rape me. So I already talking to what
Speaker 1: I called the good one, the good guy, which is
Speaker 1: the guy on my left. The guy on my right,
Speaker 1: which was the bad guy, would go outside and get
Speaker 1: the money from the A t M. And the guy
Speaker 1: on my left. I started just engaging and looking at
Speaker 1: his eyes. And every time the guy on my right
Speaker 1: would pop outside and get the money, I would talk
Speaker 1: to him and I would look straight to his eyes
Speaker 1: and be like, I know you have a sister. I
Speaker 1: know you have a mother. There's someone, a girlfriend, someone
Speaker 1: in your life looks like me. Look at my eyes.
Speaker 1: Put her in my eyes, look at my eyes. Threw
Speaker 1: her in my eyes. You don't like, it's okay, You've
Speaker 1: raised enough women. It's okay. It's just going to be
Speaker 1: this one. I stray to God with this one that
Speaker 1: you let go. So I started kind of trying to
Speaker 1: make him see me as someone he liked, he loves,
Speaker 1: he would have compassion towards And I don't know if
Speaker 1: this makes sense to you, but and this is very physical.
Speaker 1: I think that this is very easical because I would
Speaker 1: feel the guns the way it just pushed my it
Speaker 1: for the guy in the left, the metal or whatever
Speaker 1: it was made with started having a little bit more ease,
Speaker 1: so I would I would say something, said, Okay, so
Speaker 1: at least this guy maybe is going to help me
Speaker 1: out when the time comes. Because the nature of this
Speaker 1: is once they take all the money, then they moved
Speaker 1: to a different place, which is they go outside the
Speaker 1: city and that's where it happens. So with the last guy,
Speaker 1: he got upset because he couldn't take money from the
Speaker 1: last a t M. So he starts yelling, he starts healing,
Speaker 1: and he starts getting really annoyed and saying really horrible things.
Speaker 1: That's what he was going to do to me. And
Speaker 1: I don't know where I found this strength, but I
Speaker 1: just fought him back with the same level of my voice,
Speaker 1: and I just screamed back at him and I said,
Speaker 1: do not be an idiot. This is my nip. Just
Speaker 1: press it correctly, Just press it again and this is
Speaker 1: my nip right it. So I just thought back and
Speaker 1: kind of gained his respect for just fining back. So
Speaker 1: Emma screams and fights, which is amazing enough that she's
Speaker 1: operating on such an intuitive level that she knows what
Speaker 1: to do in the midst of a life threatening situation.
Speaker 1: But then she takes it to the next level. Remember
Speaker 1: the way as a kid she used to make the
Speaker 1: other kids laugh when they were down on the floor
Speaker 1: dodging bullets. Emma deploys humor. She isn't a trained comedian,
Speaker 1: not yet, but she's funny and she uses it. So
Speaker 1: then at the time came of moving outside, Um, I
Speaker 1: made this guy laugh by you know, continuing this rhetoric.
Speaker 1: I knew that wherever in Mexico, whatever social class you
Speaker 1: come from, the one thing we have Mexicans in common
Speaker 1: is our belief in God. The Catholic system has done
Speaker 1: really horrible things and some great things, which is we
Speaker 1: all believe there when we die, we're going to go
Speaker 1: somewhere and we can be forgiven and we in the
Speaker 1: next life will be better. So with that story, I
Speaker 1: just told him and I was like, listen to me,
Speaker 1: my mom, and this is true. My mom is very religious,
Speaker 1: she's very connected with a bath Vatican. I'm going to
Speaker 1: if you don't rape me, this is what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1: And I started just talking about how I was gonna
Speaker 1: negotiate a past, a past for him to you know,
Speaker 1: to have a little just like just like a Nintendo game,
Speaker 1: just to cavil a mushroom or when you are playing
Speaker 1: Mario or whatever. I was like, I'm gonna give you
Speaker 1: a point if you if you let this one go. Um.
Speaker 1: So once he laughed, and he basically said, listen, I've
Speaker 1: never ever encounter anybody that has first talked back to
Speaker 1: me secondly made me laugh. So I'm just gonna give
Speaker 1: you a chance. So they let me go. They said, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna let you go, but remember we have your
Speaker 1: address and your your parents address. Um, if you look back,
Speaker 1: we're gonna still point a gun at you. So you're
Speaker 1: gonna walk. You gotta have to count to eleven. If
Speaker 1: you report, they give you all these instructions. Um, we
Speaker 1: will come and murder you. So don't play funny da
Speaker 1: da da, and don't forget Tona goes you don't forget
Speaker 1: my point in the sky. So so I walked, and
Speaker 1: I tell me, I think I counted to a thousand.
Speaker 1: My body because of the past three hours of just
Speaker 1: like holding this play for that, you know, like holding
Speaker 1: this story for them, holding some sort of like fake
Speaker 1: strength was so so so tight that finally I don't
Speaker 1: know where I was. Obviously I didn't have anything. I
Speaker 1: had to have a bag and I have a phone.
Speaker 1: I don't know what neighborhood I was in. Um I
Speaker 1: started bawling, and a guy in the corner just saw
Speaker 1: me crying in the corner and just if he wanted
Speaker 1: to help, and also that for me kind of I
Speaker 1: was still in shock, so I couldn't trust anyone, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't put you know, words together, because everything that
Speaker 1: I did not feel for the past three hours, it
Speaker 1: came like it just hit my body. So I couldn't
Speaker 1: couldn't stop crying and just feeling so so so afraid.
Speaker 1: I would say the next twenty minutes, any I don't,
Speaker 1: I kind of There are images that comment back and
Speaker 1: forth of what actually happened. The only thing I remember
Speaker 1: is that somehow there was a woman, an older woman,
Speaker 1: that she could put things together. What I was saying
Speaker 1: while crying so she put me in a cab. She
Speaker 1: paid this cab driver to take me to my apartment
Speaker 1: in Mexico City, and that drive back home was when
Speaker 1: I had to make a choice. If I called my
Speaker 1: parents and tell them what happened, I would have to
Speaker 1: go back to my hometown. I would have to say
Speaker 1: goodbye to my grad school, to my life as a
Speaker 1: working woman in Mexico, to all of these things. I
Speaker 1: would have to say goodbye. I would have to go
Speaker 1: back home and my father, you know, I would have
Speaker 1: to ask for forgiveness. Basically on top of this, because
Speaker 1: I was in Mexico City doing what I was doing
Speaker 1: because I said I could, and this happened. So at
Speaker 1: that moment, the only thing I could do was rely
Speaker 1: on my roommates at the time and deal with my
Speaker 1: PTSD for my like, by myself and just stay quiet.
Speaker 1: How do you deal with your PTSD on your own
Speaker 1: with no help? For the next week, I asked my
Speaker 1: roommates if I could sleep with him. I couldn't sleep
Speaker 1: by myself. I would wake up just just in shock. Um.
Speaker 1: I had a boyfriend at the time who was obviously
Speaker 1: furious and feeling so he had no power to do anything,
Speaker 1: because in these these cases you couldn't report it to
Speaker 1: the police. The police was cluded on this and and
Speaker 1: that would have given another layer of danger if I
Speaker 1: would report it. And also he knew that if I
Speaker 1: told my parents, that would be the end of me
Speaker 1: seeing him. Also, so I would say that I we
Speaker 1: would watch movies. That was the first time that I
Speaker 1: got was obsessed with philispo Mo Hofman. I think I
Speaker 1: watched every single Philistiner Hofman movie. I watched The Band
Speaker 1: of Brothers for the first time. Anything that was like
Speaker 1: far away from my reality. I got. I was so
Speaker 1: into science field. I need like I was engaging in
Speaker 1: stories that were outside Mexico and my situations that were
Speaker 1: funny and different. And I kept working. I went back
Speaker 1: to work. I went back to work. I think I
Speaker 1: I missed work for the next three days, but I
Speaker 1: went back to work, and I would just I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously this pdo became, you know, like there were like
Speaker 1: three months after a friend, uh was coming behind me
Speaker 1: and just say hey, am and just I just couldn't.
Speaker 1: I just started screaming, UM. So I had radical reactions
Speaker 1: for the next months or so. But that's how I
Speaker 1: dealt with it, and I think that that I became
Speaker 1: extremely resilient and that what doesn't kill me make you
Speaker 1: funnier than he didn't. I just it just make me.
Speaker 1: It just makes me want to push more for faciness
Speaker 1: and creating spaces or women to be free and to
Speaker 1: be safe to do what they want to do. Really,
Speaker 1: we'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 1: When it comes to telling her family, Emma is in
Speaker 1: an impossible position. To tell means that she might be
Speaker 1: putting them in danger. To tell also means that she'll
Speaker 1: be curtailing her own life. Her protective father, who hadn't
Speaker 1: wanted her to work and live in Mexico City, will
Speaker 1: force her to come home and learn how to cook
Speaker 1: and run a household. So she lives with her PTSD
Speaker 1: and just pushes through deals with it. Her life thus
Speaker 1: far has taught her to pay attention and do whatever
Speaker 1: it takes to get ahead. She hasn't considered whether she
Speaker 1: loves what she's doing. She's just trying to move forward.
Speaker 1: I think I've had delayed reactions all over my life
Speaker 1: because of this way of growing up and comedy and
Speaker 1: acting came as a delayed reaction because the propeller, the
Speaker 1: Senator and me was and that was the only thing
Speaker 1: I knew back then that would give voice to my
Speaker 1: questions and my observations about injustice in the place where
Speaker 1: I lived, and the propeller and the path was set.
Speaker 1: That happened, and I kept going because that was the
Speaker 1: way to be involved. That was keeping me in the conversation.
Speaker 1: I was not benched. I was still in the game.
Speaker 1: I remember that another job I had right before I
Speaker 1: decided to move to New York and become a community
Speaker 1: actress um I had another big job for the government
Speaker 1: in Mexico. And there was a delayed reaction to all
Speaker 1: of this because in one of these trips to New
Speaker 1: York work trip to New York, I had at the
Speaker 1: time the money that none of my friends had because
Speaker 1: I start I worked from a very early age, because
Speaker 1: that was what my plan. My independence and my freedom
Speaker 1: was a priority for me. So I I was economically solvent.
Speaker 1: And I looked at myself in the mirror, knowing that
Speaker 1: a lot of my male friends also envied my position,
Speaker 1: and yet I saw so much emptiness because I had
Speaker 1: to adjust my truth to be seen. And by adjusting
Speaker 1: my truth was this suit I had this Louis Baton
Speaker 1: bag and these like you know, the stiletto that all
Speaker 1: of these things I carried, and I was like walking
Speaker 1: back and forth to the New York Stock Exchange and like,
Speaker 1: you know, all of this exterior persona that they taught
Speaker 1: me that that's how women are independent and that's how
Speaker 1: we have a voice. I could never say how I
Speaker 1: really felt. I also have worked my muscle of being
Speaker 1: invisible when I had to be invisible in order to
Speaker 1: keep a job. I knew that I got so far
Speaker 1: in the game because I knew how to play it,
Speaker 1: and the way how to play it is to navig
Speaker 1: it around whose empower and whose empower is these men
Speaker 1: at the time that have this need to accumulate wealth
Speaker 1: no matter what and to see women as traught. So
Speaker 1: the decision to do what I do now truly truly
Speaker 1: came as a need to have fun. I said to myself,
Speaker 1: I've done so much. Can I have recess now? I
Speaker 1: always say like I had a childhood of an adult,
Speaker 1: and now as an adult, I'm living like a child
Speaker 1: because I worked so hard for that. So many of
Speaker 1: us who become artists, writers, creatives of all kinds come
Speaker 1: to this kind of crossroads, especially women, How do we
Speaker 1: become authentic, do what we love, find our own voices.
Speaker 1: Emma realized that empowerment didn't come in the form of
Speaker 1: expensive handbags and stiletto heels. True empowerment came in learning
Speaker 1: to fully inhabit her own self. I would never forget
Speaker 1: the first time I was walking to a play and
Speaker 1: I was like dancing in the morning and rehearsing and
Speaker 1: singing and sitting outside. This was that Soho rep and
Speaker 1: so you know, you know we're Sovilo reppis in New
Speaker 1: York City. It's not it's it's not the risk, Carlton.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a very small theater where raps probably
Speaker 1: are going to appear in whate your shows. What the
Speaker 1: previous Civilo rep not not the one that is now.
Speaker 1: But I would feel this joy, the secrecy of like
Speaker 1: I cannot believe that I have the privilege to enjoy
Speaker 1: myself and to just express these words where I feel them,
Speaker 1: and I felt while living all of this. It came
Speaker 1: again as as an afterthought, as a delayed reaction of
Speaker 1: all of this, understanding that this privilege that I called,
Speaker 1: it's called coming from a patriarchical society and never having
Speaker 1: a chance to just be Yeah, I love that. It
Speaker 1: makes so much sense. And I can think of little
Speaker 1: that's more expressive than comedy. Really, that ability to speak
Speaker 1: some sort of like truth so deep that it's funny
Speaker 1: or to make people laugh, which is actually a through
Speaker 1: line in your whole in your whole story. And mean,
Speaker 1: you talk about that from the time that you're in
Speaker 1: grade school, and then it saves you when you're in
Speaker 1: the car with the kidnappers. That just makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense. You were twenty one when this attack happened,
Speaker 1: is kidnapping. How old were you when you made the
Speaker 1: move to New York? How old are you today? Seven
Speaker 1: this year? So for all these intervening years, Emma heeds
Speaker 1: the kidnappers warning. She never tells her family. She never
Speaker 1: tells her parents. But then during the COVID ninet in pandemic,
Speaker 1: Emma returns to Mexico to quarantine with her family. Her
Speaker 1: father is ill and she's there to take care of him.
Speaker 1: And the thing about secrets is they have their own energy.
Speaker 1: Even if it's years, decades, lifetimes, centuries, Eventually they come out.
Speaker 1: I'm there as an adult trying to help my parents
Speaker 1: business in March. We knew even less that we know now.
Speaker 1: The only thing that we were certain was that this
Speaker 1: was attacking the elders. And I was there thinking, I'm
Speaker 1: here to do the groceries, to do all of things
Speaker 1: for my parents because I'm the young person. So this
Speaker 1: day I grabbed the car keys and I'm just asking
Speaker 1: my mom my dad, what else do we need? Do
Speaker 1: we need apples? Do we need that? And my dad,
Speaker 1: my dad looks at me. I be He's like, where
Speaker 1: do you think you're going. I'm gonna do a grocery today.
Speaker 1: He goes, You're not going with those shorts. You're not
Speaker 1: you can't go with those short shorts. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's very shocked. This is Queercon, it's March, and
Speaker 1: it's really hot. So I am going with I'm not
Speaker 1: putting pants and yes, don't know. That was the beginning
Speaker 1: of this fight where he would say, you're not going,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go, and I said, Dad, I'm here for
Speaker 1: this same reason. Let me go. I can't believe if
Speaker 1: you don't change your clothing and you're you, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna you don't understand you now the thing. You're American
Speaker 1: and you go to all these women marches, and but
Speaker 1: here is Mexico, here is different. And he starts getting
Speaker 1: very agitated, and I get very agitated too, because I
Speaker 1: can't believe that he can't trust is grown a daughter
Speaker 1: to do the groceries with with shorts on. So I
Speaker 1: said to him, I was like, Dad, do you understand
Speaker 1: that I negotiated my way out of a rape and
Speaker 1: you think that I cannot handle going outside with short
Speaker 1: shorts to bring you drawing? A pandemic apples there. It
Speaker 1: is the secret tumbling out and as so often happens
Speaker 1: during an argument, at the worst possible moment. It was
Speaker 1: a disaster because for both of us there was a
Speaker 1: lot of things to combat. First of all, it wasn't right.
Speaker 1: It was not the right time for me to just,
Speaker 1: you know, shelve that it came out of just picking
Speaker 1: the most radical thing. For for him to hear what
Speaker 1: he was saying, that it made me furious that I
Speaker 1: still don't have independence in his eyes, And for him,
Speaker 1: he starts crying um after saying that that I'm very
Speaker 1: ill mannered and that he can believe that I don't
Speaker 1: respect my elders and all that, and after it, while
Speaker 1: he was trying what you have to imagine, this is
Speaker 1: a very proud Mexican dad, so I barely see him cry.
Speaker 1: So that was shocking too. So with tears in his eyes,
Speaker 1: he says to me, if something happens to you at
Speaker 1: the supermarket, if you get kidnapped, I don't know what
Speaker 1: how I could handle, you know, being a dad and
Speaker 1: being a husband. Again, we stayed in that conversation for
Speaker 1: a long time, and you know, he said things like
Speaker 1: this pandemic is getting all guys corny because they can't
Speaker 1: go out. And I was like, what the women do?
Speaker 1: I'm like women do and he doesn't want to hear that.
Speaker 1: I mean, from that extreme to to just coming together
Speaker 1: to agree on disagreeing, no matter, if I dealt with that,
Speaker 1: no matter if he still thinks that I was very
Speaker 1: lucky to get that was protected from God. This has
Speaker 1: not This had nothing to do the fact that I
Speaker 1: wasn't raped, the fact that I'm still alive. I had
Speaker 1: to do with God protecting me. It had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with what I did. And I have to honor
Speaker 1: that I have because I don't know. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: what I mean. I told you, I prayed. I prayed
Speaker 1: a lot inside that cab. So I feel like for
Speaker 1: the next twenty years, that's what I'm still gabbling with,
Speaker 1: all this like mysticism and believe in God, and like
Speaker 1: what is you and what is God? Really? In terms
Speaker 1: of protection, Emma and her dad are likely never to
Speaker 1: see completely eye to eye about what happened in Mexico
Speaker 1: City and the reasons why the kidnappers let her go.
Speaker 1: He believes God protected her, and she may believe this too,
Speaker 1: but she also knows as she handled herself in a
Speaker 1: way that got her out of that car, both and
Speaker 1: not either or during the years where you obeyed the
Speaker 1: command of the kidnappers to never tell, was that difficult
Speaker 1: for you to not tell? How did that sit with you?
Speaker 1: And then how does it sit with you now that
Speaker 1: you that you did ultimately tell your parents what had happened.
Speaker 1: It's not easy, really, it's really not easy to be
Speaker 1: open about a secret when your parents are still alive.
Speaker 1: I would feel very, very responsible. It's so funny because
Speaker 1: they've protected me for so long, and I think there's
Speaker 1: a moment in my life that I was it was
Speaker 1: okay to to be mad at how things are and
Speaker 1: to point fingers and to some sometimes feel like a
Speaker 1: victim and sometimes feel you know, rage. But to be
Speaker 1: completely honest, now that I'm at a different moment in
Speaker 1: my live and that they're older, it would really hurt
Speaker 1: me if I took years from their life by now
Speaker 1: knowing now, I don't think that's true. I think that
Speaker 1: that is just something I've learned somewhere, that these truths
Speaker 1: sometimes it's very difficult to carry them. I'm no longer
Speaker 1: that kid that just wants yearning for an applause and
Speaker 1: you know, for to bring them a plus grade. I
Speaker 1: know that, but that girl is true in me, that
Speaker 1: girls are still in need. I want, I want them
Speaker 1: to be happy. Right now, I don't know when this
Speaker 1: is when this is gonna go out. You know that
Speaker 1: when this story is going to come out, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm still kind of like, because I coming from a
Speaker 1: world that goes from generations behind, that this is something
Speaker 1: you don't do. You do not tell these stories, you
Speaker 1: do not share secrets, because that's the way you protect legacy,
Speaker 1: that's the way you keep things going moving forward. And
Speaker 1: so this day, Danny, this is so naive of me,
Speaker 1: But I still think that these guys live there and
Speaker 1: that they still have my I d because this is
Speaker 1: the way I grew up. I have tons of anecdotes
Speaker 1: of growing up this way. I remember being pulled out
Speaker 1: of a beauty paget contest like a small town the
Speaker 1: good fighting content, because my dad received a call. And
Speaker 1: this is a world where it is a town where
Speaker 1: there were kids. If anarcha would like the girl, they
Speaker 1: would kidnap her and disappear. There were families who moved
Speaker 1: somewhere else. They would move to San Diego. They would
Speaker 1: love to the state to hide from them if a
Speaker 1: guy liked a girl. So this is not kind of
Speaker 1: like oh cute, you know, and funny for an end
Speaker 1: of a horror story, like these are stories that I live.
Speaker 1: I would love to say that it makes me feel
Speaker 1: like I took a weight off of me, but I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't feel that way. I don't feel that way
Speaker 1: because we are not in a different world. My sister
Speaker 1: still lived there, I have nieces, and I have a
Speaker 1: lot of friends that live there. I'm the only one
Speaker 1: that lives outside. I'm the immigrant. I'm not first generation.
Speaker 1: I am the immigrant. This world is still part of
Speaker 1: my everyday calls, so I would feel so bad if
Speaker 1: I do anything to disrupt their peace. Does that makes sense?
Speaker 1: I hear this so often from guests on this podcast.
Speaker 1: One of the most profound reasons to have a secret,
Speaker 1: to keep a secret, is that we don't want to
Speaker 1: hurt one another, especially in families. But you know where
Speaker 1: I'm going with this. And yet, and yet, after all
Speaker 1: the years of silence and the complexities of life in
Speaker 1: the city where Emma's family still lives, even though Emma's
Speaker 1: father may not be able to fully process what happened,
Speaker 1: it brings them closer together. He said things to you.
Speaker 1: I mean, you saw him cry. And the words that
Speaker 1: crossed my mind when you were describing that was you
Speaker 1: saw your father as vulnerable, yes, and his love for
Speaker 1: you making him vulnerable, which is what being a parent does.
Speaker 1: Somebody once described it as, you know, walking around with
Speaker 1: your heart outside your body once you have children. And
Speaker 1: that's what I heard. It took my truth of what
Speaker 1: happened and what I dealt. And I don't think he
Speaker 1: validated it because he couldn't because the reality of his
Speaker 1: life and his perspective is still so it's his truth.
Speaker 1: It's definitely his truth, and I just felt a lot
Speaker 1: of some passion for the macho culture that I've disliked
Speaker 1: for so many years. I would never see that other
Speaker 1: side before. Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Media.
Speaker 1: Dylan Fagin and Bethan Macaluso are the executive producers. Andrew
Speaker 1: Howard is our audio editor. If you have a secret
Speaker 1: you'd like to share, leave us a voicemail and your
Speaker 1: story could appear on an upcoming bonus episode. Our number
Speaker 1: is one secret zero, that's secret and then the number zero.
Speaker 1: You can also find us on Instagram at Danny Writer,
Speaker 1: Facebook at facebook dot com, slash Family Secrets Pod, and
Speaker 1: Twitter at fami Secret Spot. And if you want to
Speaker 1: know about my family's secret that inspired this podcast, check
Speaker 1: out my New York Times bestselling memoir Inheritance. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.