Benedicta Alejo Vargas From Benedicta to Pope Benedict, with love
My name is Benedicta Alejo Vargas, I’m from San Lorenzo, in the municipality of Uruapan, and this is my story… My father´s name was Domingo Alejo Amado. He died. My mother is Esther Vargas Reyes. She is still alive. My dad was a farmer and my mother used to wait for my dad to return from the field with rabbits, mushrooms, quelites, coal and wood. My mother waited happily to make rabbit stew, or fungi or quelites – or to prepare a atápakua, or make a mushroom dish from those that we rescued from the ashes. My grandmother taught me how to cook. Her name was Maximina Amado Cruz. I was three when my father died, and my mother had to start working longer selling pork and animals. I didn´t like that. I didn´t like it because my mother always prepared meals from pure meat, sometimes atápakua or meat churipo, she loved all of that.