Baca was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico to a literary broken home. His father was an alcoholic who was always fighting and quarrelling with his mother. Together with his siblings, their parents abandoned them and went to live at their grandparent’s house. It is here that he acknowledges that his process of criminalization starts. The challenges he faces as a child make him what becomes of him eventually, but then, in Grandma Baca’s shack existed a fair share of violence and the drunkenness just like the one he saw back in their own home. The goings on in grandma’s house are not accommodating, for children the age of Baca, he was barely five years old when he gets exposed to the ruthless life of fights and continuous drinking by his uncle Refugio and Grandpa. His process of criminalization may have been sparked by what he saw and heard while staying at grandma’s house.
As a child, Baca may have never expected to see his mother with another man whether his mother gave consent or not. But at a very young age, he witnesses her mother with another man make love with their clothes on, and it happens at grandmother’s house. Naturally, he gets hurt because that is the last thing he expects of her. He asserts that his mother was not comfortable making love with that man, because he says that she protested and wrenched to one side and then to the other while pushing him away. Even after the man tells his mother that he loves her, all his mother does is cry and struggle to break loose. Baca witnesses an immorality, worse still, a rape incident because the man made love to her mother who was not willing and had not given consent. Such is one incident that exposes him to another life out of the ordinary and it contributed greatly to his criminalization.
While staying at grandma’s house, he also witnesses the fights between his parents. When his father comes to visit, his mother clearly tells him not to come near them because he is drunk. In as much as he witnessed the fights while they are in their house, he sees the fights go on while staying at Grandma Baca’s house. The bombshell then comes out, the truth behind their getting married; it is because his father raped her in the past. As a child, it is difficult to come to terms with a nasty truth such as that one. His parents keep on arguing whether in their home or at grandma’s but then, this may have set the pace for him to realize and know the hard truths facing their family and, therefore, making him see the world of grownups even when he is a mere child. Even long before being dropped at his grandmother’s shack, he has his first experience with prison when together with his mom; they visit his father in prison. It is at this time that he has a firsthand experience with the place he is eventually going to spend a good share of his life.
Somehow the experience Baca has with his mother, especially when they are being dropped at Grandma Baca’s house is not one of the best. Together with Mieyo and Martina, he is well aware that life is never going to be the same again, especially when they get to realize that their mother has abandoned them and eloped with a white man named Richard. It is so hard of a mother to dump off her children and elope with another man, more especially when their father is still alive. She may have faced hardships in the hands of their father but then, she does not even get to think about what her children will feel when they eventually come to learn the truth. The journey to grandma’s house was one of the worst experiences of his childhood when he gets emotional the moment reality starts to sink. For a child to be robbed of his happy life and upbringing by his parents was hard enough to turn him into a criminal.
While staying with their grandparents, Baca feels abandoned. Baca even says that “he could never accept that my parents had abandoned us. What a shock! Thinking we were going to join them” (18). It is sad that they had to roam the village, and even if their grandparents take care of them, Baca and his siblings do not receive very good attention in the molding of their character and personalities. They lack the knowledge of the virtues that are meant to shape their personalities in life. It was easier to become a criminal under such an upbringing.
Baca has a difficult upbringing and matters are made worse when his mother and father abandon them at Grandma Baca’s shack. For a young boy to go through such difficult experiences in life is bad enough. It is in that home that he felt dejected by the people he loved and looked up to, but who did not care about him. It is natural that such an experience made him a hardened criminal and his early exposure to difficult situations criminalized him further. It is, therefore, not surprising that he acknowledges that it is at his grandmother’s house that his life as a criminal began.
Reference
Baca, J. S. Finding A Place to Stand. PDF File
