Beatriz Xochitl Larrondo Quintero
(2/2/1922 – 3/28/2016)
Forward
Forward My mother was always an artist at heart. She painted and sketched constantly, creating hundreds of paintings and drawings. She wrote poetry and always created her own birthday and special occasion cards to express her love and share her wisdom.
When she turned 80, she decided to memorialize her family story as it had been passed down to her by her mother. She titled this trove of stories and drawings, BeaBook.
Mom was born in Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico in 1922. During her formative years, she was devotee of Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico’s leftist president who gave life to the ideals of the Mexican Revolution and she never lost her commitment to social justice causes. She had enough education in Mexico to be able to work as an elementary school teacher.
At age 21, she met and married my dad who had come from Los Angeles to visit Culiacán. At that time, World War II was raging and soon, Dad was drafted and sent off to fight the Imperial Japanese Army in the Philippines. Mom came to the US by herself and settled in Redwood City where his parents were then living.
Part of the joy of reading these pages is in immersing yourself in Mom’s language which she learned the old-fashioned way, by osmosis from her environment.
Salomón Quintero
September 20, 2021
