Audio:

• Karina’s Crossing: Tunnels, Mountains, and an Angel (English)

• Karina’s Crossing: Túneles, montañas y un ángel (Spanish)

English (Spanish below):

Karina’s Crossing: Tunnels, Mountains, and an Angel

Mario: Building a Life Without Papers

Mario was born in Durango, Mexico. At eighteen, he crossed the border with his parents, landing briefly in Phoenix, Arizona. It was hot, harsh, and they stayed only about a week before following family connections west to Orange County, California.

That was around 2005—nearly twenty years ago. Since then, Mario has done what so many immigrant fathers do: worked hard, raised his children, and tried to build a beautiful life in a beautiful place.

On the surface, he has succeeded. The family lives in a safe neighborhood. The kids grew up with schools, parks, and friends. But underneath, Mario has never had what many people take for granted: legal security.

After almost two decades in the United States, Mario still has no permanent residency, no path to citizenship, and no real protection. When he is asked what he has been able to achieve “legally” in those twenty years, the answer is brutally simple:

Nothing. Just survival.

He has a wife he loves, children he adores, and a community he considers home. Yet, at any moment, it could all be taken from him. The stress of living undocumented—never knowing what might happen next—is a weight he carries every day.

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Andrea: Crossing at Nine Years Old

Andrea was nine years old when her world changed overnight.

She grew up in Aguascalientes, Mexico, with a little sister, Ellie, who was three. From a child’s perspective, life shifted in a single sentence: her mother announced they were leaving. Within what felt like a blink, her mother was selling everything in the house. One day they had a home. The next day the furniture was gone, the bags were packed, and Andrea was told they were getting on an airplane.

She didn’t know where they were going.

The plane took them to Tijuana. When they landed, a man Andrea didn’t know was waiting for them near a clock in the airport. Her mother had arranged everything in advance. He was a coyote—a smuggler hired to get them across the border.

Then came the first trauma Andrea still remembers vividly: they separated her from her mother.

Andrea and her little sister were taken to a random house filled with strangers. Her mother disappeared somewhere else. Andrea didn’t know where her mother was, or when she was coming back. She just knew she had to take care of her three-year-old sister, in a place that wasn’t home, surrounded by people she didn’t know.

They stayed there for days. She remembers sitting in that house watching telenovelas, the adults trying to keep her sister distracted and exhausted enough to sleep. The plan, she would later understand, was to cross the girls at the border while the younger one slept—less crying, fewer questions.

At some point, the coyotes shifted from distraction to preparation. Andrea was placed in a car with a woman who told her to practice English. The woman coached her on what to say when they reached the border checkpoint:

“I’m your mom.”

“The other woman is your grandma.”

“These children in the back are your brothers and sisters.”

Andrea sat in the car, heart racing, trying to memorize a fictional life. She was nine years old, being told to lie to border agents in a language she barely knew.

In the car there was a “mother,” a “grandmother,” a couple of other children, Andrea, and her little sister. They drove to the San Ysidro border crossing. At the line, the adults were questioned. Miraculously, no one asked Andrea anything. She stayed silent, praying her little sister wouldn’t wake up and cry.

And just like that, they were on the other side.

The coyotes drove them to Santa Ana, California, to a house where another stranger—a woman they were told was their aunt—came out in the middle of the night. Technically, she was their maternal grandmother’s sister, a great-aunt Andrea had never met. Still, this woman took Andrea and her little sister inside, laid them down, and put them to bed.

Over time, this “stranger” would become a real aunt. She opened her home and her heart, and eventually became an anchor in their new life. She passed away in 2020, but the memory of her stepping into the night to receive two frightened little girls will never leave them.

The next crucial moment came days later.

Andrea remembers their aunt telling her that her mother was on her way. After four days apart, they went to sleep not really knowing what to expect. When Andrea woke up, she saw a woman lying on the couch. At first, she didn’t even recognize her.

Her mother’s face and body were bruised. There was blood. She looked broken.

But then her mother spoke, and Andrea recognized the voice. In an instant, the fear, confusion, and pain collided with an overwhelming relief:

Her mother was alive. She had made it back to her daughters.

That reunion, in a stranger’s house in Santa Ana, is etched into Andrea’s memory as the moment their new life truly began.

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Ellie: Childhood in Between Worlds

Ellie was only three when she crossed. Her memories are different—fragmented, emotional, and often tied to old home videos that help her reconstruct what happened.

She remembers wearing a tiara at a Catholic ceremony, wanting a bigger candle to be treated like one of the adults. She remembers being loud, stubborn, and a little bit wild—breaking tables and windows.

What stands out most from those early years is not the journey itself, but the emotional climate at home. She remembers her mother being deeply sad. She remembers Andrea—six years older—stepping into a protective, almost maternal role. For Ellie, her sister was her true guardian. Her biological father felt like a distant figure, emotionally absent to the point that, in her words, he was “always dead to me” even before he actually passed away. Later, questions would surface about the likelihood that Ellie had a different biological father than her older sister, leading to talk of a DNA test.

Ellie’s earliest sharp memory of loss comes from her great-grandfather’s funeral in Mexico. She remembers the smell in the room, the flag over the casket, and the raw grief of her mother crying “from her soul.” She also remembers wandering off as a child, getting lost, and being brought back over and over again by strangers charmed by the “cute little girl”—an early lesson in how vulnerable children can be.

She does remember arriving to the aunt’s house in Santa Ana. In her mind, it was raining. She recalls sleeping in the living room and feeling comfort simply because Andrea was there, even though she had no idea about the complex lies and logistics being spun around them by adults.

For Ellie, the big emotional moment was also the reunion. She remembers her mother arriving days later, covered in bruises, so changed that at first Ellie didn’t recognize her. When it finally clicked that this hurt, battered woman was her mother, something inside her locked in: while life was unstable, her mother would always fight to come back, which Ellie never doubted.

Soon after, the family’s path took a detour through Texas. They spent time in a town literally named “White Settlement,” where Ellie jokes they were “the only Mexican family in the whole place.” She went to preschool there, then the family bounced around Fort Worth and Arlington before eventually coming back to Orange County.

From that point on, Ellie’s upbringing looked, on the surface, like that of many other American girls in Southern California: school, friends, extracurriculars, and later, social media and fashion. She says she didn’t experience obvious discrimination. If anything, she often felt she had to “dim her light” because she seemed “too much”—too confident, too outspoken, too different.

Inside, though, she carried that sense of not fully belonging anywhere. Born in Mexico, raised in the United States, living in a mixed-status family, her identity has always existed in between worlds.

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Karina: Breaking the Chain

Karina’s story is the backbone of this family’s journey.

She grew up in Aguascalientes, raised primarily by her grandparents. They gave her a childhood filled with love and stability. She excelled in school—so much so that her grades opened a rare opportunity: she was allowed to skip high school entirely and go straight from middle school into university-level nursing studies.

At fifteen, she was the youngest in her program. That made her stand out—in ways that were both good and dangerous. A young man four years older took an interest in her. She was vulnerable, inexperienced, and, in her words, he “put his eyes on me.” One day, he raped her.

She became pregnant.

In her community, being a single mother out of wedlock carried crushing stigma. Rather than supporting her, the adults around her arranged for her to marry the man who had assaulted her. Overnight, she lost control over her education, her body, and her future.

Early on in the course of their young marriage, he started hitting her and abusing her. He choked her. He dictated every aspect of her life. There were no real options for protection; as she explains, in her part of Mexico at that time, authorities often shrugged unless there was “a murder or a lot of blood.” Domestic abuse was normalized and minimized.

Karina was forced to drop out of her nursing program. Her husband, meanwhile, continued his own education, eventually finishing medical school and becoming a physician—a respected professional with money, status, and influence. She became pregnant again, and by her early twenties, she was the mother of two daughters and the victim of constant domestic violence.

Her grandparents remained her emotional lifeline. When her grandmother died at seventeen, and her grandfather later passed away as well, Karina felt the last of her protectors slip away. It was just her and her husband now—and he was her tormentor.

The abuse and isolation pushed her into deep depression. Desperate and feeling trapped, she tried to take her own life multiple times. Once, she went to a building intending to jump, and her sister physically stopped her. Twice, she tried to overdose on pills. She describes feeling death close to her, as if she had crossed a line and been pulled back.

At one point, she tried to leave her husband. In retaliation, he kidnapped their older daughter from school and kept her for a week, knowing Karina would be forced to return to him to get her child back. It worked. She went back. The cycle of control tightened.

Eventually, she initiated divorce proceedings with the help of a family friend who was a lawyer. Her husband responded by gathering people to testify against her, trying to paint her as unstable and unfit to keep the children. With his status and money, he had every advantage. She had none.

Karina realized that staying in Mexico meant more than living with abuse—it meant risking losing her children to a man who had already shown he would use them as weapons.

So she made a decision: she would leave the country.

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Planning the Escape

By then, Karina had one thing that allowed her some independence: her grandfather had paid for her to train as a hairstylist, against her husband’s wishes. She eventually opened her own small salon. When she decided to escape, she sold everything she could: the salon chair, the equipment, her furniture. She emptied her credit card. What couldn’t be sold, she donated—to children’s homes and to elder-care facilities.

She also had something else: faith. As she describes it, she believed God was with her and would show her the way. That faith didn’t erase the fear, but it gave her enough courage to keep moving.

She separated her living situation from her husband’s, rented a house, then stepped into a kind of underground life—hopping between friends’ homes, hiding, planning. She spoke to people who knew the migration routes. At first she considered moving to another part of Mexico, but she knew her husband’s money, connections, and profession would allow him to track her down and legally fight for custody.

Eventually, someone suggested the United States.

Karina made arrangements with coyotes. Part of the plan was for her daughters to go ahead of her. At nine and three, Andrea and Ellie were sent first—on the plane, to Tijuana, into the care of strangers. It took an almost unimaginable level of trust and desperation to let her babies out of her sight in the hope they would be safer on the other side.

Then came her own crossing.

Unlike her daughters, Karina did not get to sit quietly in a car and ride through the checkpoint. By the time it was her turn, she had been robbed in Tijuana—her jewelry and remaining money taken. She could no longer pay for the “easier” method of crossing.

She was sent through the mountains.

It was during an El Niño year, raining hard. She crossed on foot, through mud and darkness, up and down hills, and eventually through tunnels. There were different stash houses along the way—one in San Diego, another in Pomona. At each point, the coyotes collected more money. At one stop, they demanded an extra $50 to complete the journey, threatening to send her back to Tijuana if she couldn’t pay.

Fifty dollars may not sound like much in some contexts, but for Karina at that moment, it was everything. She had nothing left. The threat was real: if she couldn’t pay, they would return her south—without her children.

In that moment, one of the coyotes intervened. He had been watching her and decided to help. He paid the $50 for her. When Karina asked his name, he said, “Ángel.”

To her, he truly was an angel.

Eventually, they drove her north and arranged a call from a public pay phone to the aunt’s house in Santa Ana, where her daughters were staying. The coyotes warned that if the family did not have the money ready, they would return Karina to Tijuana. Her aunt initially said she didn’t have it. In panic, Karina insisted that her uncle did, even though she wasn’t sure. They drove to the house anyway.

If no one had answered the door, Karina’s life might have taken a very different turn.

But her uncle did come to the door. They allowed her a moment to greet him. She hugged him, handed him the money that Ángel had fronted her, and he handed it to the coyotes. Only then was she finally free to go inside.

She stepped into the house quietly. It was late—almost midnight. Everyone was asleep. Karina began speaking softly. From their beds, her daughters recognized their mother’s voice.

They ran into the living room, crying, hugging her, clinging to her.

That moment—mother and daughters, reunited in a foreign land after tunnels, kidnappings, separations, and near-death moments—is the emotional heart of this family’s story. Karina would carry the bruises of that journey on her body. All three would carry the memory in their souls.

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Starting Over: Texas, California, and “Paradise”

After a short time staying with their aunt, Karina and her daughters moved into a small rented room of their own. About a year later, chasing the hope of better work opportunities, they moved to Texas. Karina had heard she could work as a hairstylist there and eventually get licensed even without immigration papers.

The law changed just as she arrived.

Still, they tried. They lived in White Settlement, then Fort Worth, then Arlington, jumping between cities over nine months. They were almost always the only Mexican family in their neighborhoods. When it became clear that the licensing path wasn’t going to work, they returned to Orange County—what Karina now calls “paradise,” not because it is perfect, but because her daughters finally had stability.

Karina supported the family as a hairstylist and, over time, did something remarkable: she went back to school and became a mental health therapist.

She did it because she knew depression. She knew suicidal thoughts. She knew abuse, betrayal, and the crushing weight of feeling trapped. She wanted to help people who had been through similar darkness. Her message to them is simple: If she survived, they can too.

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Faith, Free Will, and Forgiveness

Throughout her journey, Karina’s faith has been a constant. Raised Catholic in Mexico, she and the girls initially attended Catholic churches in the U.S. Over time, they shifted to a Christian church with Pentecostal style. Church became not just a place of worship, but a source of emotional and community support. There were services almost every day of the week. Bible studies were often held in their home.

Later in life, Karina’s spiritual path expanded. She participated in ancestral healing ceremonies using mushrooms and, eventually, ayahuasca. She describes these experiences as opening her “third eye,” deepening her understanding of herself and her purpose. They also helped her see more clearly how religion can be used both to heal and to manipulate.

For her, God is not about fear, control, or punishment. God is love, justice, and free will. God is the force that cares for foreigners, widows, and orphans—the very people most harmed by violence and displacement. She believes that anything done in the name of God that separates families, harms the vulnerable, or justifies cruelty is not truly from God at all.

Her faith also led her to one of the hardest things any survivor can do: forgiveness.

Years after arriving in the United States, with her daughters grown and their lives more stable, Karina began to seriously consider contacting her ex-husband. Not to reconcile, but to close the circle—to speak as the person she had become, no longer a terrified teenage bride.

Before she could, news came from Mexico: he was dead.

Her older daughter, who kept in touch with her paternal grandfather, relayed the news. Officially, it was labeled a suicide. Unofficially, the details made that story difficult to believe—two gunshot wounds to the head. In Karina’s eyes, it was clearly murder, and the authorities had little interest in investigating.

By the time she heard this, Karina had already done the internal work of forgiving him. Not excusing what he did. Not forgetting. But releasing the poison of hatred and resentment that could have consumed her life forever.

Forgiveness, for her, was a form of liberation. She often says that holding onto hatred is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. She chose not to carry that poison anymore.

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Breaking Generational Chains

Karina speaks about “the sins of the fathers remaining on the heads of the children,” passed down through generations. Abuse becomes normalized. Violence becomes “just what men do.” Trauma gets inherited, silently shaping every new relationship.

She decided that the chain stopped with her.

By leaving, by surviving, by refusing to let her daughters grow up thinking that abuse is normal, Karina broke that cycle. She knows her daughters will still face struggles in their own relationships—that’s part of being human. But she believes they will face those struggles with more freedom, more self-worth, and more tools than she ever had.

Ellie and Andrea carry their own forms of strength. Andrea, the protector, who took responsibility for her little sister at nine years old in a stranger’s house. Ellie, the confident one, who grew up between worlds and learned to own her light instead of dim it. Together, they now support their mother’s work, help with her projects, and, in their own ways, model resilience for others.

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Living by the Mercy of God

Today, the family lives in Orange County. Mario still has no papers. Karina continues her work as a therapist and spiritual guide. Andrea and Ellie build their lives as young women who are, in every meaningful way, American—and yet whose futures are still shaped by borders, paperwork, and policies they never chose.

They describe their family story as “Living by the Mercy of God” not because they see themselves as helpless, but because they recognize how many moments could have gone differently: if the aunt hadn’t opened the door, if the coyote named Ángel hadn’t stepped in, if Karina’s faith had broken completely, if Andrea had slipped in her answers at the border, if Mario had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Instead, they are here. Healing. Working. Hoping. Raising the next generation.

Their story is one family’s testimony—but it is also a mirror reflecting countless other families who have fled violence, crossed deserts and borders, been separated and reunited, and then quietly gone to work, raised children, gone to church, paid rent, and tried to build a life in a country that is both home and battlefield.

They are living proof that behind every headline about “immigration” are real human beings: a mother who broke a generational curse, daughters who grew up between languages and laws, and a father who has given twenty years of his life to a place that still refuses to fully claim him.

They are living, as they say, by the mercy of God.

Spanish:

Karina’s Crossing: Túneles, montañas y un ángel

Mario: Construyendo una vida sin papeles

Mario nació en Durango, México. A los dieciocho años, cruzó la frontera con sus padres, llegando brevemente a Phoenix, Arizona. Hacía calor, era duro, y se quedaron solo alrededor de una semana antes de seguir los lazos familiares hacia el oeste, al condado de Orange, California.

Eso fue aproximadamente en 2005—hace casi veinte años. Desde entonces, Mario ha hecho lo que tantos padres inmigrantes hacen: trabajó duro, crió a sus hijos e intentó construir una vida hermosa en un lugar hermoso.

En la superficie, lo ha logrado. La familia vive en un vecindario seguro. Los niños crecieron con escuelas, parques y amigos. Pero por debajo, Mario nunca ha tenido aquello que muchos dan por sentado: seguridad legal.

Después de casi dos décadas en Estados Unidos, Mario aún no tiene residencia permanente, ni camino hacia la ciudadanía, ni una protección real. Cuando se le pregunta qué ha podido lograr “legalmente” en esos veinte años, la respuesta es brutalmente simple:

Nada. Solo sobrevivir.

Tiene una esposa a quien ama, hijos que adora y una comunidad que considera su hogar. Sin embargo, en cualquier momento, todo podría ser arrebatado. El estrés de vivir indocumentado—sin saber nunca qué podría ocurrir después—es un peso que carga cada día.

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Andrea: Cruzando a los nueve años

Andrea tenía nueve años cuando su mundo cambió de la noche a la mañana.

Creció en Aguascalientes, México, con una hermanita, Ellie, que tenía tres años. Desde la perspectiva de una niña, la vida cambió en una sola frase: su madre anunció que se iban. En lo que pareció un parpadeo, su madre estaba vendiendo todo en la casa. Un día tenían un hogar. Al día siguiente, los muebles habían desaparecido, las maletas estaban listas, y a Andrea le dijeron que se subirían a un avión.

No sabía adónde iban.

El avión las llevó a Tijuana. Al aterrizar, un hombre desconocido para Andrea las esperaba cerca de un reloj en el aeropuerto. Su madre había arreglado todo con anticipación. Era un coyote—un contrabandista contratado para llevarlas al otro lado de la frontera.

Luego vino el primer trauma que Andrea aún recuerda vívidamente: la separaron de su madre.

Andrea y su hermanita fueron llevadas a una casa cualquiera llena de desconocidos. Su madre desapareció en otro lugar. Andrea no sabía dónde estaba su madre, ni cuándo volvería. Solo sabía que tenía que cuidar de su hermana de tres años, en un lugar que no era su hogar, rodeada de personas que no conocía.

Se quedaron allí varios días. Recuerda estar sentada en esa casa mirando telenovelas, mientras los adultos intentaban mantener distraída y lo suficientemente agotada a su hermana menor para que se durmiera. El plan, entendería después, era cruzar a las niñas por la frontera mientras la pequeña dormía—menos llanto, menos preguntas.

En cierto momento, los coyotes pasaron de la distracción a la preparación. Andrea fue colocada en un auto con una mujer que le dijo que practicara inglés. La mujer le indicaba qué decir cuando llegaran al punto de control fronterizo:

“Yo soy tu mamá.”

“La otra mujer es tu abuela.”

“Estos niños atrás son tus hermanos.”

Andrea se sentó en el auto, con el corazón acelerado, tratando de memorizar una vida ficticia. Tenía nueve años, y le decían que mintiera a los agentes fronterizos en un idioma que apenas conocía.

En el auto estaban una “madre”, una “abuela”, un par de niños más, Andrea y su hermanita. Condujeron hasta el cruce fronterizo de San Ysidro. En la fila, los adultos fueron interrogados. Milagrosamente, nadie le preguntó nada a Andrea. Permaneció en silencio, rezando para que su hermanita no despertara y llorara.

Y así, simplemente, cruzaron al otro lado.

Los coyotes las llevaron a Santa Ana, California, a una casa donde otra desconocida—una mujer a la que les dijeron que era su tía—salió en medio de la noche. Técnicamente, era la hermana de la abuela materna, una tía abuela que Andrea nunca había conocido. Aun así, esa mujer llevó a Andrea y a su hermanita adentro, las acostó y las puso a dormir.

Con el tiempo, esa “desconocida” se convirtió en una verdadera tía. Abrió su hogar y su corazón, y eventualmente se convirtió en un pilar en su nueva vida. Falleció en 2020, pero el recuerdo de cómo salió en la noche a recibir a dos niñas asustadas jamás las abandonará.

El siguiente momento crucial llegó días después.

Andrea recuerda que su tía le dijo que su madre estaba en camino. Después de cuatro días separadas, se acostaron sin saber realmente qué esperar. Cuando Andrea despertó, vio a una mujer acostada en el sofá. Al principio, ni siquiera la reconoció.

El rostro y el cuerpo de su madre estaban golpeados. Había sangre. Parecía rota.

Pero luego su madre habló, y Andrea reconoció su voz. En un instante, el miedo, la confusión y el dolor colisionaron con un alivio abrumador:

Su madre estaba viva. Había logrado regresar con sus hijas.

Ese reencuentro, en la casa de una desconocida en Santa Ana, quedó grabado en la memoria de Andrea como el momento en que realmente comenzó su nueva vida.

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Ellie: Una infancia entre mundos

Ellie tenía solo tres años cuando cruzó. Sus recuerdos son distintos—fragmentados, emocionales y a menudo ligados a viejos videos caseros que le ayudan a reconstruir lo ocurrido.

Recuerda usar una tiara en una ceremonia católica, queriendo una vela más grande para que la trataran como a los adultos. Recuerda ser ruidosa, terca y un poco salvaje—rompiendo mesas y ventanas.

Lo que más destaca de esos primeros años no es el viaje en sí, sino el clima emocional en casa. Recuerda a su madre profundamente triste. Recuerda que Andrea—seis años mayor—asumió un papel protector, casi maternal. Para Ellie, su hermana era su verdadera guardiana. Su padre biológico se sentía como una figura distante, emocionalmente ausente hasta el punto de que, en sus palabras, estaba “siempre muerto para mí” incluso antes de que realmente falleciera. Más adelante surgirían preguntas sobre la posibilidad de que Ellie tuviera un padre biológico diferente al de su hermana mayor, lo que llevó a hablar de una prueba de ADN.

El recuerdo más nítido de pérdida de Ellie proviene del funeral de su bisabuelo en México. Recuerda el olor en la habitación, la bandera sobre el ataúd, y el dolor crudo de su madre llorando “desde el alma”. También recuerda haberse alejado caminando como niña, perdiéndose, y siendo regresada una y otra vez por desconocidos encantados por “la niña tan linda”—una lección temprana de cuán vulnerables pueden ser los niños.

Recuerda haber llegado a la casa de la tía en Santa Ana. En su mente, llovía. Recuerda dormir en la sala y sentir consuelo simplemente porque Andrea estaba allí, aunque no tuviera idea de las mentiras complejas y la logística que los adultos habían construido a su alrededor.

Para Ellie, el gran momento emocional también fue el reencuentro. Recuerda que su madre llegó días después, cubierta de moretones, tan cambiada que al principio Ellie no la reconoció. Cuando finalmente comprendió que esa mujer herida era su madre, algo dentro de ella quedó sellado: aunque la vida fuera inestable, su madre siempre lucharía por regresar, algo que Ellie nunca dudó.

Poco después, el camino de la familia tomó un desvío por Texas. Pasaron tiempo en un pueblo literalmente llamado “White Settlement”, donde Ellie bromea diciendo que eran “la única familia mexicana en todo el lugar”. Fue al preescolar allí, luego la familia rebotó entre Fort Worth y Arlington antes de regresar finalmente al condado de Orange.

A partir de ese momento, la crianza de Ellie pareció, en la superficie, como la de muchas otras niñas estadounidenses en el sur de California: escuela, amistades, actividades extracurriculares y, más tarde, redes sociales y moda. Dice que no experimentó discriminación evidente. Si acaso, a menudo sintió que tenía que “bajar su luz” porque parecía “demasiado”—demasiado segura de sí misma, demasiado expresiva, demasiado diferente.

Sin embargo, por dentro, cargaba con esa sensación de no pertenecer completamente a ningún lugar. Nacida en México, criada en Estados Unidos, viviendo en una familia de estatus migratorio mixto, su identidad siempre ha existido entre mundos.

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Karina: Rompiendo la cadena

La historia de Karina es la columna vertebral del viaje de esta familia.

Creció en Aguascalientes, criada principalmente por sus abuelos. Ellos le dieron una infancia llena de amor y estabilidad. Se destacó en la escuela—tanto que sus calificaciones le abrieron una oportunidad poco común: le permitieron saltarse la preparatoria por completo e ir directamente de la secundaria a estudios universitarios de enfermería.

A los quince años, era la más joven en su programa. Eso la hacía destacar—en formas tanto buenas como peligrosas. Un joven cuatro años mayor se interesó en ella. Era vulnerable, inexperta y, en sus palabras, él “puso los ojos en mí”. Un día, él la violó.

Quedó embarazada.

En su comunidad, ser madre soltera fuera del matrimonio implicaba un estigma aplastante. En lugar de apoyarla, los adultos a su alrededor organizaron su matrimonio con el hombre que la había agredido. De la noche a la mañana, perdió el control sobre su educación, su cuerpo y su futuro.

Poco después del comienzo de su joven matrimonio, él empezó a golpearla y abusar de ella. La ahorcaba. Dictaba cada aspecto de su vida. No había opciones reales de protección; como explica, en su región de México en ese momento, las autoridades a menudo se encogían de hombros a menos que hubiera “un asesinato o mucha sangre”. El abuso doméstico era normalizado y minimizado.

Karina se vio obligada a abandonar su programa de enfermería. Su esposo, mientras tanto, continuó su propia educación, terminó la carrera de medicina y se convirtió en médico—un profesional respetado con dinero, estatus e influencia. Ella volvió a quedar embarazada y, para comienzos de sus veintes, era madre de dos niñas y víctima de violencia doméstica constante.

Sus abuelos siguieron siendo su sostén emocional. Cuando su abuela murió cuando Karina tenía dici