April 22, 2021 • 51 mins
Emma Ramos grew up in a deeply religious, and deeply patriarchal, town in Mexico, where carving out an independent life for herself—outside her parents’ expectations—was a constant negotiation. Which is why she hid the most traumatic thing that ever happened to her from her loved ones for more than a decade—until she found herself living under her parents’ roof again, in the midst of the pandemic.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio High
Family Secrets Listeners. It's Danny here to share a bit
of exciting news with you before today's episode. We just
found out that our podcast is a nominee for the
Webby People's Voice Award in the category of Best Series.
This is a huge honor and honestly it put the
(00:22):
spring in my step as I walk alone each day
down into my basement to record my conversations with my
amazing guests. Podcasts can be a bit like the sound
of a tree falling in a forest. You know, is
anyone listening? Does it really exist? So here's the thing.
This is the People's Voice Award, So you get to vote.
(00:44):
It would mean so much if you'd go to vote
dot Webby Awards dot com and cast your vote for
Family Secrets. Thank you so much for hearing me out.
I love you guys. Now on with today's episode, I'm
(01:06):
Danny Shapiro and this is Family Secrets, the secrets that
are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
and the secrets we keep from ourselves. My guest today
is Emma Ramos, actress, comedian, and writer. Emma has an
(01:26):
important story to tell, and her telling of it is brave.
After all, she was told that if she ever spoke
of it, she could be risking her life and the
lives of her loved ones. But secrets only accumulate power
when they stay silent and dormant. Here's Emma. I grew
(01:47):
up in Cula, Cancinaloa, Mexican that's in the northwest of Mexico.
That city. Unfortunately, I'm a really bad rep You could
see it briefly in the collateral with Tom Cruise. It's
well known for its nargo culture. To me, it was
really well known for its beautiful contexts. Uh. This is
(02:10):
one of the cities of Metago that actually is awarded
for its beautiful sunsets. So I grew up in middle
class and uh, I would say in the nineties in
this town there was this striving draw cartel that was
out around the families who grew up there for generations,
(02:32):
very conservative, staunch Catholics, very proud people that had their
honorable jobs. But this political and corrupted system was happening around.
And I grew up in the middle of all of that.
What did that feel like? And was there is a
(02:54):
sense that there was danger that you were in danger.
I mean, how did how did that play out in
your family? I would say that parents from my community.
Um needs a million awards from middle classes because it's
a constant like distracting your kids and trying to make
it as if nothing is happening. I say that women
(03:17):
from my hometown, because women are in charge of, you know,
taking care of of the kids and men go to work.
It's very, very nineteen Still, they would distract us and
they would you know, filled our afternoons with toys and
school would be very I would say normal, but for example,
(03:38):
in the middle of class there would could be a
gun shooting. I learned the word as from school. Our
teachers taught us to go to the ground whenever there
was a gun shooting happening outside, and I learned how
to distract myself, well, danger, what's happening, because it's kind
(03:59):
of a second nature. You built this muscle of being
completely out of your control. So I would kind of
like look to my friends while I was laying on
the floor and make them laugh while, you know, just
to distract ourselves while it happened. And then we would
go back to school, you know, like there was no
discussion I would say, like that could happen. Also, you
(04:21):
could be at church and there could be a squeeze
of a gun shooting between a Hallelujah and an amen.
But then the math would keep going and we would
have And the economy of being part of that community
is that conversations outside while that was happening, had nothing
to do with that world. Women were preoccupied with, you know,
(04:46):
beauty pageants or what were they wearing, or let you know,
when was the next keen Stays or the girls or
the first communion, and everything was very much connected to
being good with God and being a a good girl.
That was kind of how you made your parents and
your grandparents proud. You know, good grades and being a
(05:07):
good girl meant that you would be leaning into those
feminine things. And if you were a boy, well you
need to be brave because you are going to be
someone who's going to take care of women. In the
world of Emma's childhood, there was a strict delineation between
the roles of boys and men and the roles of
(05:30):
girls and women. An undercurrent of danger ran through their
daily lives, such a part of the fabric of their
community that it went without saying it just was. So
is it fair to say that the men and the
boys were the ones who were more sort of hyper
aware of the dangers and of protecting the girls and
(05:54):
the women from those dangers. Yes, now, looking back, I
have a lot more compassion really for for men, because
it was inherent that they would have to take that responsibility,
whether they wanted or not. It was part of being
a man. They would be part of those conversations. They
(06:14):
would be the ones who, you know, if there was
any need to defend their work, and I would say,
defend their work because um, in this system, whatever kind
of job you had, you would have to negotiate with
you know, that other corrupted system. Example, you would have
to pay a certain amount of your income to these
(06:37):
people just for them to leave you alone. And if not,
if you would try to be if you were that guy.
I have a friend whose brother tried to, you know,
to just defy that reality and with murders, so that
would be kind of the process, right. But because women
were meant to stay at home, that was the way
(06:58):
that men would protect them. Tell me about your parents.
Tell me about your mother first. My mother is someone
that I hear these stories since I was a baby.
That she wanted to study literature when she was a kid,
but she couldn't. She couldn't go to Mexico City to
study literature because she had to decide and start a family.
(07:21):
She started her family when she was twenty one. She
was very young. She's um, the second of six kids,
and she grew up very quickly because of the same.
She became a mom at a young age, and she
couldn't continue studying, and her entire life and happiness was
(07:45):
about making her home as beautiful as possible, as perfect
as possible. She takes a lot of pride in not
talking about violence and not talking about the ugly stuff
how she called it. She is also very very proud
of the way she coped with life. In fact, before
(08:05):
this conversation, Danny, I would just wanted to double check
things with her, just to see if my memory was right.
And uh, she has this thing where she purposely forgets.
She tells me that she doesn't remember the things that
she doesn't want to remember, and that's the way she
just chooses to be happy. Every day she chooses to
be happy. And that's why certain moments in certain pictures
(08:27):
go to the trash and we act like it didn't happen,
and that's the way I respect her life. Yeah. Yeah,
that's so interesting, Emma, because really one of the predominant
themes in this podcast is that what you just describe
your mother doing, it's actually impossible, Like you can't just
decide not to remember something, or secrets go into corners
(08:51):
or things that we don't remember that we choose not
to remember. They kind of stay there in a way,
they never completely disappear. So it's just it's so interesting.
I mean, can completely understand someone doing that. I mean,
especially in circumstances where the way you're describing it, it
sounds like your family and your home community were so
surrounded by, you know, things that were really frightening and
(09:13):
encroaching and threatening. Yes, And I'd say that there's something
strange about sharing this with you. There's a there's a
thing about language also that I have to be aware
that I feel like, because I'm sharing this in English,
i am short of protecting them because if I would
(09:34):
say it in Spanish, and if they would understand what
I'm saying, they would be very annoyed. They would feel
that I am kind of ill mannered. By just exposing
something that's not good about where I was from. Right,
there is a misunderstanding of being grateful, and they've built
(09:55):
this quilt of emotions, And that's why I feel sometimes
hesitant to even share realities. But I I find certain
anecdotes so telling. For example, I remember this during Christmas.
She was the one in charge of buying all the
presents because my dad would make the money and she
would do the house things which involved being Santa. So
(10:18):
there was this particular Christmas she went to the supermarket,
had all the gifts in her car, and then two
kidnappers approach her with guns, you know, like pointing out
her head. They would just kind of like wanted to
kidnap her and like like steal the car and steal
the gifts, and god knows what they were going to
(10:39):
do with her. So she rans outside, she tried like
to negotiate with them, screaming, and just she ran back
to the supermarket. So these guys just stole the car
with with the toys. But when she talks about it,
what I find fascinating is that what she remembers the
most is that when she was hiding behind the counter,
(11:04):
filled with fear, she would look at the supermarket floor
she noticed that it was dirty. So she's like that
flow was so dirty, and I was distracted by like
all the dirtiness and all the hair that was on
the floor, and that was happening, while like the cashier said,
we need to call her husband. So now the superhero
(11:24):
and the Savior King which is Dad, right, which is
another human being who gets a call that his wife,
you know, just dealt with that, and he has to
come and save her, and we as kids receiving I
know the story now as an adult, but back then
I couldn't. I didn't know what happened. I just I
just remember seeing Mom coming back from who knows where
(11:48):
and just shutting down and not telling us anything. And
then you know that, I believe that Christmas we they
organized somehow getting our toys, but I find that detail
for some reason. So telling of the women from my city, well, yeah,
I mean, you're describing this amazing coping mechanism. It's not
(12:11):
that different from the way you described telling jokes and
making making people laugh during school when you had to
what was the word when you had to go down
on the floor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean you're down
there and and making people laugh and sort of doing
what you can do to not be thinking about what
is actually happening. And your mother in the supermarket is
(12:35):
looking at the floor and the dirt and the grime,
and it's sort of what she can do to not
be completely freaking out about what just had happened to her.
We don't decide what are coping mechanisms will be. We
don't get to choose. Oh, I'll be the funny one,
or I'll focus on the small detail to avoid seeing
(12:57):
the big picture. Some coping mechanisms are healthy and others
are self destructive. Whatever they are, they're an attempt to
control an uncontrollable environment. And when it comes to Emma's father,
all he wants to do is keep his family safe
in an unsafe place, and he has a lot of
very strong ideas about the way his kids Emma is
(13:19):
one of three, should live their lives. Tell me about
your father. My father is a beautiful man, a very
sensitive human being that was never allowed to explore his
feminine side. He works in the agricultural business. He inherits
(13:43):
his land that was like from you know, many generations
before him, so kind of also his story was written
for him before he could say anything. I saw that
that was only for women, but I think, you know,
I think for men too. My father's also very proud
to share like the same values that my mom has
(14:05):
to prioritize family. So just you know, his biggest moment
of happiness is to be with his kids. I think
he imagined that, you know, working and giving us everything
they steele cafe sustain. So he would say, like you
know that he would take care of our clothing, our
house needs, and our education education with something huge. But
(14:29):
I'm from that generation that the Internet happened, so I
don't think they could plan that I was going to
have access to so much information when they invested on
the best education they could. So I think that Dad.
I clearly remember graduating from college having all these dreams
where I would see finally that we had in Mexico
(14:52):
at the time, only one female senator, and I remember
meeting her more than being so connected to her thinking
and reading and understanding that there was a way in
which women could also vent their truth and would be
paid for it, and coming back home and telling Dad
(15:12):
that I would want to pursue that, and him being
extremely confused and afraid that that meant that I would
not learn how to cook, because I've never learned how
to cook. I can't cook anything. But his advice would be,
you should start to learn how to cook, because that's
what's next. You know, like you have the best education,
(15:34):
therefore you are connected to this group of people. Thank god,
I did everything that you could be safe while growing up.
And please don't be a disappointment, and you give me
more hard at tags while you're still how side in
the world without being protected from and via man. So
I think that that where our relationships started having a
(15:55):
lot of conflicting conversations based on his idea of how
should I continue in my life and my impetus of
just responding to a call, which was to keep exploring
and asking questions and and make money for myself. It's
so interesting the way that the Internet really does play
(16:15):
a role in so many of these stories that you
ended up being exposed to. Your aperture was open so
much wider to the possibilities that were available to as
a young woman then they might have been without the
advent of the Internet when you were growing up. Yeah,
(16:37):
we'll be right back, So Emma hustles, she has big dreams.
She goes to college, graduates early. She's smart, talented, well liked,
and ends up with a good job in public relations
in Mexico City. She works during the day and it's
(16:59):
even studying for a master's degree at night. Tell me
what happened about fifteen years ago one evening when you
were on your way from work to your classes. So
now knowing that that was not happy about me continuing
and pushing to be the next senator in machial but
(17:20):
even if we fight, he loved me, so he allowed
for me to work on this job in Mexico City.
One of those things where I got away with pursuing
my career. But obviously I had to call Dad every
Saturday and like all of his mechanics around having him
at ease that this little girl was, you know, doing
(17:42):
the right thing and just working and balancing the fact
that I wanted to be this superwoman to simplify as
that term. So while I was doing that, being a
superwoman at that time, and I'm twenty one at the time,
I was truly truly young to have this position at
(18:03):
the company as a director and also studying my first
master's kind of my mind was in that, you know,
drinking that juice, that there was a possibility of young
women being part of politics and doing something for themselves
other than just being there because they were women, they
were pretty, or whatever. Men thought that we were. Men
(18:27):
from my generation would say that I got that far
in my profession because I was pretty, and I would
be so livid. So with that thrive and anger, that's
why I was like, I will keep studying, and my
focus was like first as masters, then the PhD, and
(18:47):
Mexico City. This was the time where Fox was president,
and I just mentioned him because when we say in
Mexico is a dangerous country, it's just so general. It's not.
It's really it's like any other country. It really depends
on the moment in politics. If we had a precedent
for the first time from a different party. Mexico is
(19:09):
a country who had seventy one years free was governing,
which would be the equivalent of the Republicans, and then
we had folks for the first time, so the political
temperature and violence of the city was different. That's why
there were certain things called express kidnaps. An express kidnap
(19:30):
has nothing to do with being the daughter of a
mogul or an ambassador. It's a method of abduction in
which a victim is targeted, abducted, often violently, and held
captive for a quick, small ransom, either from the victims family, employer,
or most often a T M machines. I usually could
go to school, would take a site taxi to be cautious,
(19:54):
but that day I believe I had an exam or something,
and the traffic wasn't like imp posible, so I took
a cab from the street, which you shouldn't, but my
focus was in becoming the next senator, so so I
had to go. I had to go to class. Um.
So as soon as I got into the car, I'm
(20:15):
giving you these details just to paint the picture of
how distracted and focused I was, so kind of like
how my mind delayed a lot of the things that happened.
Kind of I was absorbed them in a delay because
I was on the phone, still dealing with my job,
and I had in my hands um paperwork from school.
(20:38):
So I was kind of focusing and trying for the
cab to just get me to school. And as soon
as I cop on a inside the cab, two men
stepped in, and it kind of because I was still
on the phone and I couldn't I couldn't understand. I
felt that they were they were pointing at me, and
(20:58):
there was a cook halpen me of a lot of fear.
I would say in these guys voices, they were screaming
commands and they were screaming things. Because I wasn't moving,
I couldn't understand what was happening. So I would say
that after two minutes of understanding what was happening, then
I looked down and I see that there were guns
(21:20):
pointing um at my ribs. They were touching my ribs
from both sides. I looked at the cab driver, and
the cab driver acted after if he was a victim.
But they are part of the whole thing. So then
I understood what was happening. And then kind of there's
a moment where I felt that I was out of
(21:42):
my body because all of this. The next moves happened
so quickly. The guy on my left took my necklace.
The guy in my right opened my bag and took
my phone and took all of my I D and
everything I had inside my bag. So I remember her
that he was addressing me by my name and he
(22:03):
would say my address. And unfortunately, the way I d
S work in Mexico, you will always I will always
have This is another caveat of patriarchy. I will always
have my parents address on my I D until I
get married, then I will have the address or whoever
I marry, whatever home I moved to. So the fact
(22:25):
that they were saying out loud my parents address and
my name, and they start saying that if I moved
that I was going to be murdered. And they would
be like, this is how it's going to go down.
They start explaining to you, um that they're gonna stop
at different a T M S. You have to give
them the nip uh and they would take the largest
(22:47):
amount of money. And if you cry, they will kill
you if you if you scream, you would try to
do anything. So they start attacking you with all these words.
So you become so small and your fear, you know,
inhabits you of any emotion. And I remember I started praying.
(23:08):
I started praying, praying and praying and praying Holy Father
and Spanish like a mantra. I could not stop praying.
I couldn't believe what was happening. They stopped at three
different A T M. S. I stupidly had three cards
with me, something that you shouldn't do. As this is going,
I would say that this is happening with Mexico traffic.
(23:31):
It's like the next two hours, right, it takes more
or less two hours, and they're driving around and they
remember being inside the cab and all of a sudden,
right next to us there was a you know, a
police officer, and we had to act. I remember having
one of the guy's arm holding me, and I have
to act as if we were, you know, just three
(23:53):
friends driving somewhere. It's terrifying and claustrophobic. Even listen sending
to this, can you imagine what it must have been
like inside that car. He's violent, out of control, dangerous
men have Emma's name, her family's address, and guns in
her ribs. She can't signal a police officer. She's completely
(24:15):
utterly trapped. But then her coping mechanisms begin to kick
in at that point. I don't know how, but thankfully,
being two hours with these two individuals, three individuals if
I count the cab driver, but I was focusing on
the guys with a gun. I started clocking their energy
(24:37):
and their frequency, if that makes sense. It's just like
I would say, like they're one was a little kinder
than the other. And I start to myself, I have
to convince them of not raping me. I just have
to convince them. I am going to convince them of
not to rape me. So I already talking to what
(25:01):
I called the good one, the good guy, which is
the guy on my left. The guy on my right,
which was the bad guy, would go outside and get
the money from the A t M. And the guy
on my left. I started just engaging and looking at
his eyes. And every time the guy on my right
would pop outside and get the money, I would talk
to him and I would look straight to his eyes
and be like, I know you have a sister. I
(25:22):
know you have a mother. There's someone, a girlfriend, someone
in your life looks like me. Look at my eyes.
Put her in my eyes, look at my eyes. Threw
her in my eyes. You don't like, it's okay, You've
raised enough women. It's okay. It's just going to be
this one. I stray to God with this one that
you let go. So I started kind of trying to
make him see me as someone he liked, he loves,
(25:47):
he would have compassion towards And I don't know if
this makes sense to you, but and this is very physical.
I think that this is very easical because I would
feel the guns the way it just pushed my it
for the guy in the left, the metal or whatever
it was made with started having a little bit more ease,
(26:08):
so I would I would say something, said, Okay, so
at least this guy maybe is going to help me
out when the time comes. Because the nature of this
is once they take all the money, then they moved
to a different place, which is they go outside the
city and that's where it happens. So with the last guy,
he got upset because he couldn't take money from the
last a t M. So he starts yelling, he starts healing,
(26:32):
and he starts getting really annoyed and saying really horrible things.
That's what he was going to do to me. And
I don't know where I found this strength, but I
just fought him back with the same level of my voice,
and I just screamed back at him and I said,
do not be an idiot. This is my nip. Just
(26:54):
press it correctly, Just press it again and this is
my nip right it. So I just thought back and
kind of gained his respect for just fining back. So
Emma screams and fights, which is amazing enough that she's
operating on such an intuitive level that she knows what
(27:15):
to do in the midst of a life threatening situation.
But then she takes it to the next level. Remember
the way as a kid she used to make the
other kids laugh when they were down on the floor
dodging bullets. Emma deploys humor. She isn't a trained comedian,
not yet, but she's funny and she uses it. So
(27:36):
then at the time came of moving outside, Um, I
made this guy laugh by you know, continuing this rhetoric.
I knew that wherever in Mexico, whatever social class you
come from, the one thing we have Mexicans in common
is our belief in God. The Catholic system has done
(27:58):
really horrible things and some great things, which is we
all believe there when we die, we're going to go
somewhere and we can be forgiven and we in the
next life will be better. So with that story, I
just told him and I was like, listen to me,
my mom, and this is true. My mom is very religious,
she's very connected with a bath Vatican. I'm going to
(28:21):
if you don't rape me, this is what I'm gonna do.
And I started just talking about how I was gonna
negotiate a past, a past for him to you know,
to have a little just like just like a Nintendo game,
just to cavil a mushroom or when you are playing
Mario or whatever. I was like, I'm gonna give you
a point if you if you let this one go. Um.
(28:43):
So once he laughed, and he basically said, listen, I've
never ever encounter anybody that has first talked back to
me secondly made me laugh. So I'm just gonna give
you a chance. So they let me go. They said, Okay,
we're gonna let you go, but remember we have your
address and your your parents address. Um, if you look back,
we're gonna still point a gun at you. So you're
(29:04):
gonna walk. You gotta have to count to eleven. If
you report, they give you all these instructions. Um, we
will come and murder you. So don't play funny da
da da, and don't forget Tona goes you don't forget
my point in the sky. So so I walked, and
I tell me, I think I counted to a thousand.
(29:27):
My body because of the past three hours of just
like holding this play for that, you know, like holding
this story for them, holding some sort of like fake
strength was so so so tight that finally I don't
know where I was. Obviously I didn't have anything. I
had to have a bag and I have a phone.
I don't know what neighborhood I was in. Um I
(29:49):
started bawling, and a guy in the corner just saw
me crying in the corner and just if he wanted
to help, and also that for me kind of I
was still in shock, so I couldn't trust anyone, and
I couldn't put you know, words together, because everything that
I did not feel for the past three hours, it
(30:09):
came like it just hit my body. So I couldn't
couldn't stop crying and just feeling so so so afraid.
I would say the next twenty minutes, any I don't,
I kind of There are images that comment back and
forth of what actually happened. The only thing I remember
is that somehow there was a woman, an older woman,
(30:31):
that she could put things together. What I was saying
while crying so she put me in a cab. She
paid this cab driver to take me to my apartment
in Mexico City, and that drive back home was when
I had to make a choice. If I called my
parents and tell them what happened, I would have to
(30:53):
go back to my hometown. I would have to say
goodbye to my grad school, to my life as a
working woman in Mexico, to all of these things. I
would have to say goodbye. I would have to go
back home and my father, you know, I would have
to ask for forgiveness. Basically on top of this, because
(31:14):
I was in Mexico City doing what I was doing
because I said I could, and this happened. So at
that moment, the only thing I could do was rely
on my roommates at the time and deal with my
PTSD for my like, by myself and just stay quiet.
(31:35):
How do you deal with your PTSD on your own
with no help? For the next week, I asked my
roommates if I could sleep with him. I couldn't sleep
by myself. I would wake up just just in shock. Um.
I had a boyfriend at the time who was obviously
furious and feeling so he had no power to do anything,
(31:56):
because in these these cases you couldn't report it to
the police. The police was cluded on this and and
that would have given another layer of danger if I
would report it. And also he knew that if I
told my parents, that would be the end of me
seeing him. Also, so I would say that I we
would watch movies. That was the first time that I
got was obsessed with philispo Mo Hofman. I think I
(32:18):
watched every single Philistiner Hofman movie. I watched The Band
of Brothers for the first time. Anything that was like
far away from my reality. I got. I was so
into science field. I need like I was engaging in
stories that were outside Mexico and my situations that were
funny and different. And I kept working. I went back
(32:42):
to work. I went back to work. I think I
I missed work for the next three days, but I
went back to work, and I would just I mean,
obviously this pdo became, you know, like there were like
three months after a friend, uh was coming behind me
and just say hey, am and just I just couldn't.
I just started screaming, UM. So I had radical reactions
(33:05):
for the next months or so. But that's how I
dealt with it, and I think that that I became
extremely resilient and that what doesn't kill me make you
funnier than he didn't. I just it just make me.
It just makes me want to push more for faciness
and creating spaces or women to be free and to
(33:29):
be safe to do what they want to do. Really,
we'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
(33:51):
When it comes to telling her family, Emma is in
an impossible position. To tell means that she might be
putting them in danger. To tell also means that she'll
be curtailing her own life. Her protective father, who hadn't
wanted her to work and live in Mexico City, will
force her to come home and learn how to cook
(34:11):
and run a household. So she lives with her PTSD
and just pushes through deals with it. Her life thus
far has taught her to pay attention and do whatever
it takes to get ahead. She hasn't considered whether she
loves what she's doing. She's just trying to move forward.
I think I've had delayed reactions all over my life
(34:32):
because of this way of growing up and comedy and
acting came as a delayed reaction because the propeller, the
Senator and me was and that was the only thing
I knew back then that would give voice to my
questions and my observations about injustice in the place where
(34:57):
I lived, and the propeller and the path was set.
That happened, and I kept going because that was the
way to be involved. That was keeping me in the conversation.
I was not benched. I was still in the game.
I remember that another job I had right before I
(35:20):
decided to move to New York and become a community
actress um I had another big job for the government
in Mexico. And there was a delayed reaction to all
of this because in one of these trips to New
York work trip to New York, I had at the
time the money that none of my friends had because
(35:44):
I start I worked from a very early age, because
that was what my plan. My independence and my freedom
was a priority for me. So I I was economically solvent.
And I looked at myself in the mirror, knowing that
a lot of my male friends also envied my position,
and yet I saw so much emptiness because I had
(36:08):
to adjust my truth to be seen. And by adjusting
my truth was this suit I had this Louis Baton
bag and these like you know, the stiletto that all
of these things I carried, and I was like walking
back and forth to the New York Stock Exchange and like,
(36:29):
you know, all of this exterior persona that they taught
me that that's how women are independent and that's how
we have a voice. I could never say how I
really felt. I also have worked my muscle of being
invisible when I had to be invisible in order to
(36:50):
keep a job. I knew that I got so far
in the game because I knew how to play it,
and the way how to play it is to navig
it around whose empower and whose empower is these men
at the time that have this need to accumulate wealth
no matter what and to see women as traught. So
(37:13):
the decision to do what I do now truly truly
came as a need to have fun. I said to myself,
I've done so much. Can I have recess now? I
always say like I had a childhood of an adult,
and now as an adult, I'm living like a child
because I worked so hard for that. So many of
(37:36):
us who become artists, writers, creatives of all kinds come
to this kind of crossroads, especially women, How do we
become authentic, do what we love, find our own voices.
Emma realized that empowerment didn't come in the form of
expensive handbags and stiletto heels. True empowerment came in learning
(37:59):
to fully inhabit her own self. I would never forget
the first time I was walking to a play and
I was like dancing in the morning and rehearsing and
singing and sitting outside. This was that Soho rep and
so you know, you know we're Sovilo reppis in New
York City. It's not it's it's not the risk, Carlton.
(38:21):
You know, it's a very small theater where raps probably
are going to appear in whate your shows. What the
previous Civilo rep not not the one that is now.
But I would feel this joy, the secrecy of like
I cannot believe that I have the privilege to enjoy
myself and to just express these words where I feel them,
(38:43):
and I felt while living all of this. It came
again as as an afterthought, as a delayed reaction of
all of this, understanding that this privilege that I called,
it's called coming from a patriarchical society and never having
a chance to just be Yeah, I love that. It
(39:04):
makes so much sense. And I can think of little
that's more expressive than comedy. Really, that ability to speak
some sort of like truth so deep that it's funny
or to make people laugh, which is actually a through
line in your whole in your whole story. And mean,
you talk about that from the time that you're in
(39:26):
grade school, and then it saves you when you're in
the car with the kidnappers. That just makes a lot
of sense. You were twenty one when this attack happened,
is kidnapping. How old were you when you made the
move to New York? How old are you today? Seven
(39:46):
this year? So for all these intervening years, Emma heeds
the kidnappers warning. She never tells her family. She never
tells her parents. But then during the COVID ninet in pandemic,
Emma returns to Mexico to quarantine with her family. Her
father is ill and she's there to take care of him.
(40:10):
And the thing about secrets is they have their own energy.
Even if it's years, decades, lifetimes, centuries, Eventually they come out.
I'm there as an adult trying to help my parents
business in March. We knew even less that we know now.
(40:33):
The only thing that we were certain was that this
was attacking the elders. And I was there thinking, I'm
here to do the groceries, to do all of things
for my parents because I'm the young person. So this
day I grabbed the car keys and I'm just asking
my mom my dad, what else do we need? Do
(40:55):
we need apples? Do we need that? And my dad,
my dad looks at me. I be He's like, where
do you think you're going. I'm gonna do a grocery today.
He goes, You're not going with those shorts. You're not
you can't go with those short shorts. I'm like, yeah,
it's it's very shocked. This is Queercon, it's March, and
(41:18):
it's really hot. So I am going with I'm not
putting pants and yes, don't know. That was the beginning
of this fight where he would say, you're not going,
I'm gonna go, and I said, Dad, I'm here for
this same reason. Let me go. I can't believe if
you don't change your clothing and you're you, you're not
(41:41):
gonna you don't understand you now the thing. You're American
and you go to all these women marches, and but
here is Mexico, here is different. And he starts getting
very agitated, and I get very agitated too, because I
can't believe that he can't trust is grown a daughter
(42:02):
to do the groceries with with shorts on. So I
said to him, I was like, Dad, do you understand
that I negotiated my way out of a rape and
you think that I cannot handle going outside with short
shorts to bring you drawing? A pandemic apples there. It
(42:23):
is the secret tumbling out and as so often happens
during an argument, at the worst possible moment. It was
a disaster because for both of us there was a
lot of things to combat. First of all, it wasn't right.
It was not the right time for me to just,
(42:44):
you know, shelve that it came out of just picking
the most radical thing. For for him to hear what
he was saying, that it made me furious that I
still don't have independence in his eyes, And for him,
he starts crying um after saying that that I'm very
ill mannered and that he can believe that I don't
(43:07):
respect my elders and all that, and after it, while
he was trying what you have to imagine, this is
a very proud Mexican dad, so I barely see him cry.
So that was shocking too. So with tears in his eyes,
he says to me, if something happens to you at
(43:27):
the supermarket, if you get kidnapped, I don't know what
how I could handle, you know, being a dad and
being a husband. Again, we stayed in that conversation for
a long time, and you know, he said things like
this pandemic is getting all guys corny because they can't
(43:49):
go out. And I was like, what the women do?
I'm like women do and he doesn't want to hear that.
I mean, from that extreme to to just coming together
to agree on disagreeing, no matter, if I dealt with that,
no matter if he still thinks that I was very
lucky to get that was protected from God. This has
(44:13):
not This had nothing to do the fact that I
wasn't raped, the fact that I'm still alive. I had
to do with God protecting me. It had nothing to
do with what I did. And I have to honor
that I have because I don't know. I mean, that's
what I mean. I told you, I prayed. I prayed
(44:33):
a lot inside that cab. So I feel like for
the next twenty years, that's what I'm still gabbling with,
all this like mysticism and believe in God, and like
what is you and what is God? Really? In terms
of protection, Emma and her dad are likely never to
see completely eye to eye about what happened in Mexico
(44:54):
City and the reasons why the kidnappers let her go.
He believes God protected her, and she may believe this too,
but she also knows as she handled herself in a
way that got her out of that car, both and
not either or during the years where you obeyed the
(45:17):
command of the kidnappers to never tell, was that difficult
for you to not tell? How did that sit with you?
And then how does it sit with you now that
you that you did ultimately tell your parents what had happened.
It's not easy, really, it's really not easy to be
open about a secret when your parents are still alive.
(45:41):
I would feel very, very responsible. It's so funny because
they've protected me for so long, and I think there's
a moment in my life that I was it was
okay to to be mad at how things are and
to point fingers and to some sometimes feel like a
victim and sometimes feel you know, rage. But to be
(46:04):
completely honest, now that I'm at a different moment in
my live and that they're older, it would really hurt
me if I took years from their life by now
knowing now, I don't think that's true. I think that
that is just something I've learned somewhere, that these truths
sometimes it's very difficult to carry them. I'm no longer
(46:28):
that kid that just wants yearning for an applause and
you know, for to bring them a plus grade. I
know that, but that girl is true in me, that
girls are still in need. I want, I want them
to be happy. Right now, I don't know when this
is when this is gonna go out. You know that
when this story is going to come out, you know,
(46:50):
I'm still kind of like, because I coming from a
world that goes from generations behind, that this is something
you don't do. You do not tell these stories, you
do not share secrets, because that's the way you protect legacy,
that's the way you keep things going moving forward. And
(47:13):
so this day, Danny, this is so naive of me,
But I still think that these guys live there and
that they still have my I d because this is
the way I grew up. I have tons of anecdotes
of growing up this way. I remember being pulled out
of a beauty paget contest like a small town the
good fighting content, because my dad received a call. And
(47:36):
this is a world where it is a town where
there were kids. If anarcha would like the girl, they
would kidnap her and disappear. There were families who moved
somewhere else. They would move to San Diego. They would
love to the state to hide from them if a
guy liked a girl. So this is not kind of
like oh cute, you know, and funny for an end
(47:58):
of a horror story, like these are stories that I live.
I would love to say that it makes me feel
like I took a weight off of me, but I don't.
I don't feel that way. I don't feel that way
because we are not in a different world. My sister
still lived there, I have nieces, and I have a
(48:19):
lot of friends that live there. I'm the only one
that lives outside. I'm the immigrant. I'm not first generation.
I am the immigrant. This world is still part of
my everyday calls, so I would feel so bad if
I do anything to disrupt their peace. Does that makes sense?
(48:39):
I hear this so often from guests on this podcast.
One of the most profound reasons to have a secret,
to keep a secret, is that we don't want to
hurt one another, especially in families. But you know where
I'm going with this. And yet, and yet, after all
(49:00):
the years of silence and the complexities of life in
the city where Emma's family still lives, even though Emma's
father may not be able to fully process what happened,
it brings them closer together. He said things to you.
I mean, you saw him cry. And the words that
crossed my mind when you were describing that was you
(49:21):
saw your father as vulnerable, yes, and his love for
you making him vulnerable, which is what being a parent does.
Somebody once described it as, you know, walking around with
your heart outside your body once you have children. And
that's what I heard. It took my truth of what
(49:42):
happened and what I dealt. And I don't think he
validated it because he couldn't because the reality of his
life and his perspective is still so it's his truth.
It's definitely his truth, and I just felt a lot
of some passion for the macho culture that I've disliked
(50:06):
for so many years. I would never see that other
side before. Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Media.
Dylan Fagin and Bethan Macaluso are the executive producers. Andrew
Howard is our audio editor. If you have a secret
(50:30):
you'd like to share, leave us a voicemail and your
story could appear on an upcoming bonus episode. Our number
is one secret zero, that's secret and then the number zero.
You can also find us on Instagram at Danny Writer,
Facebook at facebook dot com, slash Family Secrets Pod, and
(50:53):
Twitter at fami Secret Spot. And if you want to
know about my family's secret that inspired this podcast, check
out my New York Times bestselling memoir Inheritance. For more
(51:13):
podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio High
Family Secrets Listeners. It's Danny here to share a bit
of exciting news with you before today's episode. We just
found out that our podcast is a nominee for the
Webby People's Voice Award in the category of Best Series.
This is a huge honor and honestly it put the
(00:22):
spring in my step as I walk alone each day
down into my basement to record my conversations with my
amazing guests. Podcasts can be a bit like the sound
of a tree falling in a forest. You know, is
anyone listening? Does it really exist? So here's the thing.
This is the People's Voice Award, So you get to vote.
(00:44):
It would mean so much if you'd go to vote
dot Webby Awards dot com and cast your vote for
Family Secrets. Thank you so much for hearing me out.
I love you guys. Now on with today's episode, I'm
(01:06):
Danny Shapiro and this is Family Secrets, the secrets that
are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
and the secrets we keep from ourselves. My guest today
is Emma Ramos, actress, comedian, and writer. Emma has an
(01:26):
important story to tell, and her telling of it is brave.
After all, she was told that if she ever spoke
of it, she could be risking her life and the
lives of her loved ones. But secrets only accumulate power
when they stay silent and dormant. Here's Emma. I grew
(01:47):
up in Cula, Cancinaloa, Mexican that's in the northwest of Mexico.
That city. Unfortunately, I'm a really bad rep You could
see it briefly in the collateral with Tom Cruise. It's
well known for its nargo culture. To me, it was
really well known for its beautiful contexts. Uh. This is
(02:10):
one of the cities of Metago that actually is awarded
for its beautiful sunsets. So I grew up in middle
class and uh, I would say in the nineties in
this town there was this striving draw cartel that was
out around the families who grew up there for generations,
(02:32):
very conservative, staunch Catholics, very proud people that had their
honorable jobs. But this political and corrupted system was happening around.
And I grew up in the middle of all of that.
What did that feel like? And was there is a
(02:54):
sense that there was danger that you were in danger.
I mean, how did how did that play out in
your family? I would say that parents from my community.
Um needs a million awards from middle classes because it's
a constant like distracting your kids and trying to make
it as if nothing is happening. I say that women
(03:17):
from my hometown, because women are in charge of, you know,
taking care of of the kids and men go to work.
It's very, very nineteen Still, they would distract us and
they would you know, filled our afternoons with toys and
school would be very I would say normal, but for example,
(03:38):
in the middle of class there would could be a
gun shooting. I learned the word as from school. Our
teachers taught us to go to the ground whenever there
was a gun shooting happening outside, and I learned how
to distract myself, well, danger, what's happening, because it's kind
(03:59):
of a second nature. You built this muscle of being
completely out of your control. So I would kind of
like look to my friends while I was laying on
the floor and make them laugh while, you know, just
to distract ourselves while it happened. And then we would
go back to school, you know, like there was no
discussion I would say, like that could happen. Also, you
(04:21):
could be at church and there could be a squeeze
of a gun shooting between a Hallelujah and an amen.
But then the math would keep going and we would
have And the economy of being part of that community
is that conversations outside while that was happening, had nothing
to do with that world. Women were preoccupied with, you know,
(04:46):
beauty pageants or what were they wearing, or let you know,
when was the next keen Stays or the girls or
the first communion, and everything was very much connected to
being good with God and being a a good girl.
That was kind of how you made your parents and
your grandparents proud. You know, good grades and being a
(05:07):
good girl meant that you would be leaning into those
feminine things. And if you were a boy, well you
need to be brave because you are going to be
someone who's going to take care of women. In the
world of Emma's childhood, there was a strict delineation between
the roles of boys and men and the roles of
(05:30):
girls and women. An undercurrent of danger ran through their
daily lives, such a part of the fabric of their
community that it went without saying it just was. So
is it fair to say that the men and the
boys were the ones who were more sort of hyper
aware of the dangers and of protecting the girls and
(05:54):
the women from those dangers. Yes, now, looking back, I
have a lot more compassion really for for men, because
it was inherent that they would have to take that responsibility,
whether they wanted or not. It was part of being
a man. They would be part of those conversations. They
(06:14):
would be the ones who, you know, if there was
any need to defend their work, and I would say,
defend their work because um, in this system, whatever kind
of job you had, you would have to negotiate with
you know, that other corrupted system. Example, you would have
to pay a certain amount of your income to these
(06:37):
people just for them to leave you alone. And if not,
if you would try to be if you were that guy.
I have a friend whose brother tried to, you know,
to just defy that reality and with murders, so that
would be kind of the process, right. But because women
were meant to stay at home, that was the way
(06:58):
that men would protect them. Tell me about your parents.
Tell me about your mother first. My mother is someone
that I hear these stories since I was a baby.
That she wanted to study literature when she was a kid,
but she couldn't. She couldn't go to Mexico City to
study literature because she had to decide and start a family.
(07:21):
She started her family when she was twenty one. She
was very young. She's um, the second of six kids,
and she grew up very quickly because of the same.
She became a mom at a young age, and she
couldn't continue studying, and her entire life and happiness was
(07:45):
about making her home as beautiful as possible, as perfect
as possible. She takes a lot of pride in not
talking about violence and not talking about the ugly stuff
how she called it. She is also very very proud
of the way she coped with life. In fact, before
(08:05):
this conversation, Danny, I would just wanted to double check
things with her, just to see if my memory was right.
And uh, she has this thing where she purposely forgets.
She tells me that she doesn't remember the things that
she doesn't want to remember, and that's the way she
just chooses to be happy. Every day she chooses to
be happy. And that's why certain moments in certain pictures
(08:27):
go to the trash and we act like it didn't happen,
and that's the way I respect her life. Yeah. Yeah,
that's so interesting, Emma, because really one of the predominant
themes in this podcast is that what you just describe
your mother doing, it's actually impossible, Like you can't just
decide not to remember something, or secrets go into corners
(08:51):
or things that we don't remember that we choose not
to remember. They kind of stay there in a way,
they never completely disappear. So it's just it's so interesting.
I mean, can completely understand someone doing that. I mean,
especially in circumstances where the way you're describing it, it
sounds like your family and your home community were so
surrounded by, you know, things that were really frightening and
(09:13):
encroaching and threatening. Yes, And I'd say that there's something
strange about sharing this with you. There's a there's a
thing about language also that I have to be aware
that I feel like, because I'm sharing this in English,
i am short of protecting them because if I would
(09:34):
say it in Spanish, and if they would understand what
I'm saying, they would be very annoyed. They would feel
that I am kind of ill mannered. By just exposing
something that's not good about where I was from. Right,
there is a misunderstanding of being grateful, and they've built
(09:55):
this quilt of emotions, And that's why I feel sometimes
hesitant to even share realities. But I I find certain
anecdotes so telling. For example, I remember this during Christmas.
She was the one in charge of buying all the
presents because my dad would make the money and she
would do the house things which involved being Santa. So
(10:18):
there was this particular Christmas she went to the supermarket,
had all the gifts in her car, and then two
kidnappers approach her with guns, you know, like pointing out
her head. They would just kind of like wanted to
kidnap her and like like steal the car and steal
the gifts, and god knows what they were going to
(10:39):
do with her. So she rans outside, she tried like
to negotiate with them, screaming, and just she ran back
to the supermarket. So these guys just stole the car
with with the toys. But when she talks about it,
what I find fascinating is that what she remembers the
most is that when she was hiding behind the counter,
(11:04):
filled with fear, she would look at the supermarket floor
she noticed that it was dirty. So she's like that
flow was so dirty, and I was distracted by like
all the dirtiness and all the hair that was on
the floor, and that was happening, while like the cashier said,
we need to call her husband. So now the superhero
(11:24):
and the Savior King which is Dad, right, which is
another human being who gets a call that his wife,
you know, just dealt with that, and he has to
come and save her, and we as kids receiving I
know the story now as an adult, but back then
I couldn't. I didn't know what happened. I just I
just remember seeing Mom coming back from who knows where
(11:48):
and just shutting down and not telling us anything. And
then you know that, I believe that Christmas we they
organized somehow getting our toys, but I find that detail
for some reason. So telling of the women from my city, well, yeah,
I mean, you're describing this amazing coping mechanism. It's not
(12:11):
that different from the way you described telling jokes and
making making people laugh during school when you had to
what was the word when you had to go down
on the floor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean you're down
there and and making people laugh and sort of doing
what you can do to not be thinking about what
is actually happening. And your mother in the supermarket is
(12:35):
looking at the floor and the dirt and the grime,
and it's sort of what she can do to not
be completely freaking out about what just had happened to her.
We don't decide what are coping mechanisms will be. We
don't get to choose. Oh, I'll be the funny one,
or I'll focus on the small detail to avoid seeing
(12:57):
the big picture. Some coping mechanisms are healthy and others
are self destructive. Whatever they are, they're an attempt to
control an uncontrollable environment. And when it comes to Emma's father,
all he wants to do is keep his family safe
in an unsafe place, and he has a lot of
very strong ideas about the way his kids Emma is
(13:19):
one of three, should live their lives. Tell me about
your father. My father is a beautiful man, a very
sensitive human being that was never allowed to explore his
feminine side. He works in the agricultural business. He inherits
(13:43):
his land that was like from you know, many generations
before him, so kind of also his story was written
for him before he could say anything. I saw that
that was only for women, but I think, you know,
I think for men too. My father's also very proud
to share like the same values that my mom has
(14:05):
to prioritize family. So just you know, his biggest moment
of happiness is to be with his kids. I think
he imagined that, you know, working and giving us everything
they steele cafe sustain. So he would say, like you
know that he would take care of our clothing, our
house needs, and our education education with something huge. But
(14:29):
I'm from that generation that the Internet happened, so I
don't think they could plan that I was going to
have access to so much information when they invested on
the best education they could. So I think that Dad.
I clearly remember graduating from college having all these dreams
where I would see finally that we had in Mexico
(14:52):
at the time, only one female senator, and I remember
meeting her more than being so connected to her thinking
and reading and understanding that there was a way in
which women could also vent their truth and would be
paid for it, and coming back home and telling Dad
(15:12):
that I would want to pursue that, and him being
extremely confused and afraid that that meant that I would
not learn how to cook, because I've never learned how
to cook. I can't cook anything. But his advice would be,
you should start to learn how to cook, because that's
what's next. You know, like you have the best education,
(15:34):
therefore you are connected to this group of people. Thank god,
I did everything that you could be safe while growing up.
And please don't be a disappointment, and you give me
more hard at tags while you're still how side in
the world without being protected from and via man. So
I think that that where our relationships started having a
(15:55):
lot of conflicting conversations based on his idea of how
should I continue in my life and my impetus of
just responding to a call, which was to keep exploring
and asking questions and and make money for myself. It's
so interesting the way that the Internet really does play
(16:15):
a role in so many of these stories that you
ended up being exposed to. Your aperture was open so
much wider to the possibilities that were available to as
a young woman then they might have been without the
advent of the Internet when you were growing up. Yeah,
(16:37):
we'll be right back, So Emma hustles, she has big dreams.
She goes to college, graduates early. She's smart, talented, well liked,
and ends up with a good job in public relations
in Mexico City. She works during the day and it's
(16:59):
even studying for a master's degree at night. Tell me
what happened about fifteen years ago one evening when you
were on your way from work to your classes. So
now knowing that that was not happy about me continuing
and pushing to be the next senator in machial but
(17:20):
even if we fight, he loved me, so he allowed
for me to work on this job in Mexico City.
One of those things where I got away with pursuing
my career. But obviously I had to call Dad every
Saturday and like all of his mechanics around having him
at ease that this little girl was, you know, doing
(17:42):
the right thing and just working and balancing the fact
that I wanted to be this superwoman to simplify as
that term. So while I was doing that, being a
superwoman at that time, and I'm twenty one at the time,
I was truly truly young to have this position at
(18:03):
the company as a director and also studying my first
master's kind of my mind was in that, you know,
drinking that juice, that there was a possibility of young
women being part of politics and doing something for themselves
other than just being there because they were women, they
were pretty, or whatever. Men thought that we were. Men
(18:27):
from my generation would say that I got that far
in my profession because I was pretty, and I would
be so livid. So with that thrive and anger, that's
why I was like, I will keep studying, and my
focus was like first as masters, then the PhD, and
(18:47):
Mexico City. This was the time where Fox was president,
and I just mentioned him because when we say in
Mexico is a dangerous country, it's just so general. It's not.
It's really it's like any other country. It really depends
on the moment in politics. If we had a precedent
for the first time from a different party. Mexico is
(19:09):
a country who had seventy one years free was governing,
which would be the equivalent of the Republicans, and then
we had folks for the first time, so the political
temperature and violence of the city was different. That's why
there were certain things called express kidnaps. An express kidnap
(19:30):
has nothing to do with being the daughter of a
mogul or an ambassador. It's a method of abduction in
which a victim is targeted, abducted, often violently, and held
captive for a quick, small ransom, either from the victims family, employer,
or most often a T M machines. I usually could
go to school, would take a site taxi to be cautious,
(19:54):
but that day I believe I had an exam or something,
and the traffic wasn't like imp posible, so I took
a cab from the street, which you shouldn't, but my
focus was in becoming the next senator, so so I
had to go. I had to go to class. Um.
So as soon as I got into the car, I'm
(20:15):
giving you these details just to paint the picture of
how distracted and focused I was, so kind of like
how my mind delayed a lot of the things that happened.
Kind of I was absorbed them in a delay because
I was on the phone, still dealing with my job,
and I had in my hands um paperwork from school.
(20:38):
So I was kind of focusing and trying for the
cab to just get me to school. And as soon
as I cop on a inside the cab, two men
stepped in, and it kind of because I was still
on the phone and I couldn't I couldn't understand. I
felt that they were they were pointing at me, and
(20:58):
there was a cook halpen me of a lot of fear.
I would say in these guys voices, they were screaming
commands and they were screaming things. Because I wasn't moving,
I couldn't understand what was happening. So I would say
that after two minutes of understanding what was happening, then
I looked down and I see that there were guns
(21:20):
pointing um at my ribs. They were touching my ribs
from both sides. I looked at the cab driver, and
the cab driver acted after if he was a victim.
But they are part of the whole thing. So then
I understood what was happening. And then kind of there's
a moment where I felt that I was out of
(21:42):
my body because all of this. The next moves happened
so quickly. The guy on my left took my necklace.
The guy in my right opened my bag and took
my phone and took all of my I D and
everything I had inside my bag. So I remember her
that he was addressing me by my name and he
(22:03):
would say my address. And unfortunately, the way I d
S work in Mexico, you will always I will always
have This is another caveat of patriarchy. I will always
have my parents address on my I D until I
get married, then I will have the address or whoever
I marry, whatever home I moved to. So the fact
(22:25):
that they were saying out loud my parents address and
my name, and they start saying that if I moved
that I was going to be murdered. And they would
be like, this is how it's going to go down.
They start explaining to you, um that they're gonna stop
at different a T M S. You have to give
them the nip uh and they would take the largest
(22:47):
amount of money. And if you cry, they will kill
you if you if you scream, you would try to
do anything. So they start attacking you with all these words.
So you become so small and your fear, you know,
inhabits you of any emotion. And I remember I started praying.
(23:08):
I started praying, praying and praying and praying Holy Father
and Spanish like a mantra. I could not stop praying.
I couldn't believe what was happening. They stopped at three
different A T M. S. I stupidly had three cards
with me, something that you shouldn't do. As this is going,
I would say that this is happening with Mexico traffic.
(23:31):
It's like the next two hours, right, it takes more
or less two hours, and they're driving around and they
remember being inside the cab and all of a sudden,
right next to us there was a you know, a
police officer, and we had to act. I remember having
one of the guy's arm holding me, and I have
to act as if we were, you know, just three
(23:53):
friends driving somewhere. It's terrifying and claustrophobic. Even listen sending
to this, can you imagine what it must have been
like inside that car. He's violent, out of control, dangerous
men have Emma's name, her family's address, and guns in
her ribs. She can't signal a police officer. She's completely
(24:15):
utterly trapped. But then her coping mechanisms begin to kick
in at that point. I don't know how, but thankfully,
being two hours with these two individuals, three individuals if
I count the cab driver, but I was focusing on
the guys with a gun. I started clocking their energy
(24:37):
and their frequency, if that makes sense. It's just like
I would say, like they're one was a little kinder
than the other. And I start to myself, I have
to convince them of not raping me. I just have
to convince them. I am going to convince them of
not to rape me. So I already talking to what
(25:01):
I called the good one, the good guy, which is
the guy on my left. The guy on my right,
which was the bad guy, would go outside and get
the money from the A t M. And the guy
on my left. I started just engaging and looking at
his eyes. And every time the guy on my right
would pop outside and get the money, I would talk
to him and I would look straight to his eyes
and be like, I know you have a sister. I
(25:22):
know you have a mother. There's someone, a girlfriend, someone
in your life looks like me. Look at my eyes.
Put her in my eyes, look at my eyes. Threw
her in my eyes. You don't like, it's okay, You've
raised enough women. It's okay. It's just going to be
this one. I stray to God with this one that
you let go. So I started kind of trying to
make him see me as someone he liked, he loves,
(25:47):
he would have compassion towards And I don't know if
this makes sense to you, but and this is very physical.
I think that this is very easical because I would
feel the guns the way it just pushed my it
for the guy in the left, the metal or whatever
it was made with started having a little bit more ease,
(26:08):
so I would I would say something, said, Okay, so
at least this guy maybe is going to help me
out when the time comes. Because the nature of this
is once they take all the money, then they moved
to a different place, which is they go outside the
city and that's where it happens. So with the last guy,
he got upset because he couldn't take money from the
last a t M. So he starts yelling, he starts healing,
(26:32):
and he starts getting really annoyed and saying really horrible things.
That's what he was going to do to me. And
I don't know where I found this strength, but I
just fought him back with the same level of my voice,
and I just screamed back at him and I said,
do not be an idiot. This is my nip. Just
(26:54):
press it correctly, Just press it again and this is
my nip right it. So I just thought back and
kind of gained his respect for just fining back. So
Emma screams and fights, which is amazing enough that she's
operating on such an intuitive level that she knows what
(27:15):
to do in the midst of a life threatening situation.
But then she takes it to the next level. Remember
the way as a kid she used to make the
other kids laugh when they were down on the floor
dodging bullets. Emma deploys humor. She isn't a trained comedian,
not yet, but she's funny and she uses it. So
(27:36):
then at the time came of moving outside, Um, I
made this guy laugh by you know, continuing this rhetoric.
I knew that wherever in Mexico, whatever social class you
come from, the one thing we have Mexicans in common
is our belief in God. The Catholic system has done
(27:58):
really horrible things and some great things, which is we
all believe there when we die, we're going to go
somewhere and we can be forgiven and we in the
next life will be better. So with that story, I
just told him and I was like, listen to me,
my mom, and this is true. My mom is very religious,
she's very connected with a bath Vatican. I'm going to
(28:21):
if you don't rape me, this is what I'm gonna do.
And I started just talking about how I was gonna
negotiate a past, a past for him to you know,
to have a little just like just like a Nintendo game,
just to cavil a mushroom or when you are playing
Mario or whatever. I was like, I'm gonna give you
a point if you if you let this one go. Um.
(28:43):
So once he laughed, and he basically said, listen, I've
never ever encounter anybody that has first talked back to
me secondly made me laugh. So I'm just gonna give
you a chance. So they let me go. They said, Okay,
we're gonna let you go, but remember we have your
address and your your parents address. Um, if you look back,
we're gonna still point a gun at you. So you're
(29:04):
gonna walk. You gotta have to count to eleven. If
you report, they give you all these instructions. Um, we
will come and murder you. So don't play funny da
da da, and don't forget Tona goes you don't forget
my point in the sky. So so I walked, and
I tell me, I think I counted to a thousand.
(29:27):
My body because of the past three hours of just
like holding this play for that, you know, like holding
this story for them, holding some sort of like fake
strength was so so so tight that finally I don't
know where I was. Obviously I didn't have anything. I
had to have a bag and I have a phone.
I don't know what neighborhood I was in. Um I
(29:49):
started bawling, and a guy in the corner just saw
me crying in the corner and just if he wanted
to help, and also that for me kind of I
was still in shock, so I couldn't trust anyone, and
I couldn't put you know, words together, because everything that
I did not feel for the past three hours, it
(30:09):
came like it just hit my body. So I couldn't
couldn't stop crying and just feeling so so so afraid.
I would say the next twenty minutes, any I don't,
I kind of There are images that comment back and
forth of what actually happened. The only thing I remember
is that somehow there was a woman, an older woman,
(30:31):
that she could put things together. What I was saying
while crying so she put me in a cab. She
paid this cab driver to take me to my apartment
in Mexico City, and that drive back home was when
I had to make a choice. If I called my
parents and tell them what happened, I would have to
(30:53):
go back to my hometown. I would have to say
goodbye to my grad school, to my life as a
working woman in Mexico, to all of these things. I
would have to say goodbye. I would have to go
back home and my father, you know, I would have
to ask for forgiveness. Basically on top of this, because
(31:14):
I was in Mexico City doing what I was doing
because I said I could, and this happened. So at
that moment, the only thing I could do was rely
on my roommates at the time and deal with my
PTSD for my like, by myself and just stay quiet.
(31:35):
How do you deal with your PTSD on your own
with no help? For the next week, I asked my
roommates if I could sleep with him. I couldn't sleep
by myself. I would wake up just just in shock. Um.
I had a boyfriend at the time who was obviously
furious and feeling so he had no power to do anything,
(31:56):
because in these these cases you couldn't report it to
the police. The police was cluded on this and and
that would have given another layer of danger if I
would report it. And also he knew that if I
told my parents, that would be the end of me
seeing him. Also, so I would say that I we
would watch movies. That was the first time that I
got was obsessed with philispo Mo Hofman. I think I
(32:18):
watched every single Philistiner Hofman movie. I watched The Band
of Brothers for the first time. Anything that was like
far away from my reality. I got. I was so
into science field. I need like I was engaging in
stories that were outside Mexico and my situations that were
funny and different. And I kept working. I went back
(32:42):
to work. I went back to work. I think I
I missed work for the next three days, but I
went back to work, and I would just I mean,
obviously this pdo became, you know, like there were like
three months after a friend, uh was coming behind me
and just say hey, am and just I just couldn't.
I just started screaming, UM. So I had radical reactions
(33:05):
for the next months or so. But that's how I
dealt with it, and I think that that I became
extremely resilient and that what doesn't kill me make you
funnier than he didn't. I just it just make me.
It just makes me want to push more for faciness
and creating spaces or women to be free and to
(33:29):
be safe to do what they want to do. Really,
we'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
(33:51):
When it comes to telling her family, Emma is in
an impossible position. To tell means that she might be
putting them in danger. To tell also means that she'll
be curtailing her own life. Her protective father, who hadn't
wanted her to work and live in Mexico City, will
force her to come home and learn how to cook
(34:11):
and run a household. So she lives with her PTSD
and just pushes through deals with it. Her life thus
far has taught her to pay attention and do whatever
it takes to get ahead. She hasn't considered whether she
loves what she's doing. She's just trying to move forward.
I think I've had delayed reactions all over my life
(34:32):
because of this way of growing up and comedy and
acting came as a delayed reaction because the propeller, the
Senator and me was and that was the only thing
I knew back then that would give voice to my
questions and my observations about injustice in the place where
(34:57):
I lived, and the propeller and the path was set.
That happened, and I kept going because that was the
way to be involved. That was keeping me in the conversation.
I was not benched. I was still in the game.
I remember that another job I had right before I
(35:20):
decided to move to New York and become a community
actress um I had another big job for the government
in Mexico. And there was a delayed reaction to all
of this because in one of these trips to New
York work trip to New York, I had at the
time the money that none of my friends had because
(35:44):
I start I worked from a very early age, because
that was what my plan. My independence and my freedom
was a priority for me. So I I was economically solvent.
And I looked at myself in the mirror, knowing that
a lot of my male friends also envied my position,
and yet I saw so much emptiness because I had
(36:08):
to adjust my truth to be seen. And by adjusting
my truth was this suit I had this Louis Baton
bag and these like you know, the stiletto that all
of these things I carried, and I was like walking
back and forth to the New York Stock Exchange and like,
(36:29):
you know, all of this exterior persona that they taught
me that that's how women are independent and that's how
we have a voice. I could never say how I
really felt. I also have worked my muscle of being
invisible when I had to be invisible in order to
(36:50):
keep a job. I knew that I got so far
in the game because I knew how to play it,
and the way how to play it is to navig
it around whose empower and whose empower is these men
at the time that have this need to accumulate wealth
no matter what and to see women as traught. So
(37:13):
the decision to do what I do now truly truly
came as a need to have fun. I said to myself,
I've done so much. Can I have recess now? I
always say like I had a childhood of an adult,
and now as an adult, I'm living like a child
because I worked so hard for that. So many of
(37:36):
us who become artists, writers, creatives of all kinds come
to this kind of crossroads, especially women, How do we
become authentic, do what we love, find our own voices.
Emma realized that empowerment didn't come in the form of
expensive handbags and stiletto heels. True empowerment came in learning
(37:59):
to fully inhabit her own self. I would never forget
the first time I was walking to a play and
I was like dancing in the morning and rehearsing and
singing and sitting outside. This was that Soho rep and
so you know, you know we're Sovilo reppis in New
York City. It's not it's it's not the risk, Carlton.
(38:21):
You know, it's a very small theater where raps probably
are going to appear in whate your shows. What the
previous Civilo rep not not the one that is now.
But I would feel this joy, the secrecy of like
I cannot believe that I have the privilege to enjoy
myself and to just express these words where I feel them,
(38:43):
and I felt while living all of this. It came
again as as an afterthought, as a delayed reaction of
all of this, understanding that this privilege that I called,
it's called coming from a patriarchical society and never having
a chance to just be Yeah, I love that. It
(39:04):
makes so much sense. And I can think of little
that's more expressive than comedy. Really, that ability to speak
some sort of like truth so deep that it's funny
or to make people laugh, which is actually a through
line in your whole in your whole story. And mean,
you talk about that from the time that you're in
(39:26):
grade school, and then it saves you when you're in
the car with the kidnappers. That just makes a lot
of sense. You were twenty one when this attack happened,
is kidnapping. How old were you when you made the
move to New York? How old are you today? Seven
(39:46):
this year? So for all these intervening years, Emma heeds
the kidnappers warning. She never tells her family. She never
tells her parents. But then during the COVID ninet in pandemic,
Emma returns to Mexico to quarantine with her family. Her
father is ill and she's there to take care of him.
(40:10):
And the thing about secrets is they have their own energy.
Even if it's years, decades, lifetimes, centuries, Eventually they come out.
I'm there as an adult trying to help my parents
business in March. We knew even less that we know now.
(40:33):
The only thing that we were certain was that this
was attacking the elders. And I was there thinking, I'm
here to do the groceries, to do all of things
for my parents because I'm the young person. So this
day I grabbed the car keys and I'm just asking
my mom my dad, what else do we need? Do
(40:55):
we need apples? Do we need that? And my dad,
my dad looks at me. I be He's like, where
do you think you're going. I'm gonna do a grocery today.
He goes, You're not going with those shorts. You're not
you can't go with those short shorts. I'm like, yeah,
it's it's very shocked. This is Queercon, it's March, and
(41:18):
it's really hot. So I am going with I'm not
putting pants and yes, don't know. That was the beginning
of this fight where he would say, you're not going,
I'm gonna go, and I said, Dad, I'm here for
this same reason. Let me go. I can't believe if
you don't change your clothing and you're you, you're not
(41:41):
gonna you don't understand you now the thing. You're American
and you go to all these women marches, and but
here is Mexico, here is different. And he starts getting
very agitated, and I get very agitated too, because I
can't believe that he can't trust is grown a daughter
(42:02):
to do the groceries with with shorts on. So I
said to him, I was like, Dad, do you understand
that I negotiated my way out of a rape and
you think that I cannot handle going outside with short
shorts to bring you drawing? A pandemic apples there. It
(42:23):
is the secret tumbling out and as so often happens
during an argument, at the worst possible moment. It was
a disaster because for both of us there was a
lot of things to combat. First of all, it wasn't right.
It was not the right time for me to just,
(42:44):
you know, shelve that it came out of just picking
the most radical thing. For for him to hear what
he was saying, that it made me furious that I
still don't have independence in his eyes, And for him,
he starts crying um after saying that that I'm very
ill mannered and that he can believe that I don't
(43:07):
respect my elders and all that, and after it, while
he was trying what you have to imagine, this is
a very proud Mexican dad, so I barely see him cry.
So that was shocking too. So with tears in his eyes,
he says to me, if something happens to you at
(43:27):
the supermarket, if you get kidnapped, I don't know what
how I could handle, you know, being a dad and
being a husband. Again, we stayed in that conversation for
a long time, and you know, he said things like
this pandemic is getting all guys corny because they can't
(43:49):
go out. And I was like, what the women do?
I'm like women do and he doesn't want to hear that.
I mean, from that extreme to to just coming together
to agree on disagreeing, no matter, if I dealt with that,
no matter if he still thinks that I was very
lucky to get that was protected from God. This has
(44:13):
not This had nothing to do the fact that I
wasn't raped, the fact that I'm still alive. I had
to do with God protecting me. It had nothing to
do with what I did. And I have to honor
that I have because I don't know. I mean, that's
what I mean. I told you, I prayed. I prayed
(44:33):
a lot inside that cab. So I feel like for
the next twenty years, that's what I'm still gabbling with,
all this like mysticism and believe in God, and like
what is you and what is God? Really? In terms
of protection, Emma and her dad are likely never to
see completely eye to eye about what happened in Mexico
(44:54):
City and the reasons why the kidnappers let her go.
He believes God protected her, and she may believe this too,
but she also knows as she handled herself in a
way that got her out of that car, both and
not either or during the years where you obeyed the
(45:17):
command of the kidnappers to never tell, was that difficult
for you to not tell? How did that sit with you?
And then how does it sit with you now that
you that you did ultimately tell your parents what had happened.
It's not easy, really, it's really not easy to be
open about a secret when your parents are still alive.
(45:41):
I would feel very, very responsible. It's so funny because
they've protected me for so long, and I think there's
a moment in my life that I was it was
okay to to be mad at how things are and
to point fingers and to some sometimes feel like a
victim and sometimes feel you know, rage. But to be
(46:04):
completely honest, now that I'm at a different moment in
my live and that they're older, it would really hurt
me if I took years from their life by now
knowing now, I don't think that's true. I think that
that is just something I've learned somewhere, that these truths
sometimes it's very difficult to carry them. I'm no longer
(46:28):
that kid that just wants yearning for an applause and
you know, for to bring them a plus grade. I
know that, but that girl is true in me, that
girls are still in need. I want, I want them
to be happy. Right now, I don't know when this
is when this is gonna go out. You know that
when this story is going to come out, you know,
(46:50):
I'm still kind of like, because I coming from a
world that goes from generations behind, that this is something
you don't do. You do not tell these stories, you
do not share secrets, because that's the way you protect legacy,
that's the way you keep things going moving forward. And
(47:13):
so this day, Danny, this is so naive of me,
But I still think that these guys live there and
that they still have my I d because this is
the way I grew up. I have tons of anecdotes
of growing up this way. I remember being pulled out
of a beauty paget contest like a small town the
good fighting content, because my dad received a call. And
(47:36):
this is a world where it is a town where
there were kids. If anarcha would like the girl, they
would kidnap her and disappear. There were families who moved
somewhere else. They would move to San Diego. They would
love to the state to hide from them if a
guy liked a girl. So this is not kind of
like oh cute, you know, and funny for an end
(47:58):
of a horror story, like these are stories that I live.
I would love to say that it makes me feel
like I took a weight off of me, but I don't.
I don't feel that way. I don't feel that way
because we are not in a different world. My sister
still lived there, I have nieces, and I have a
(48:19):
lot of friends that live there. I'm the only one
that lives outside. I'm the immigrant. I'm not first generation.
I am the immigrant. This world is still part of
my everyday calls, so I would feel so bad if
I do anything to disrupt their peace. Does that makes sense?
(48:39):
I hear this so often from guests on this podcast.
One of the most profound reasons to have a secret,
to keep a secret, is that we don't want to
hurt one another, especially in families. But you know where
I'm going with this. And yet, and yet, after all
(49:00):
the years of silence and the complexities of life in
the city where Emma's family still lives, even though Emma's
father may not be able to fully process what happened,
it brings them closer together. He said things to you.
I mean, you saw him cry. And the words that
crossed my mind when you were describing that was you
(49:21):
saw your father as vulnerable, yes, and his love for
you making him vulnerable, which is what being a parent does.
Somebody once described it as, you know, walking around with
your heart outside your body once you have children. And
that's what I heard. It took my truth of what
(49:42):
happened and what I dealt. And I don't think he
validated it because he couldn't because the reality of his
life and his perspective is still so it's his truth.
It's definitely his truth, and I just felt a lot
of some passion for the macho culture that I've disliked
(50:06):
for so many years. I would never see that other
side before. Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Media.
Dylan Fagin and Bethan Macaluso are the executive producers. Andrew
Howard is our audio editor. If you have a secret
(50:30):
you'd like to share, leave us a voicemail and your
story could appear on an upcoming bonus episode. Our number
is one secret zero, that's secret and then the number zero.
You can also find us on Instagram at Danny Writer,
Facebook at facebook dot com, slash Family Secrets Pod, and
(50:53):
Twitter at fami Secret Spot. And if you want to
know about my family's secret that inspired this podcast, check
out my New York Times bestselling memoir Inheritance. For more
(51:13):
podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Family Secrets News
Host
Dani Shapiro
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.