by Arturo O. Martinez
author of Pedrito's World

              During the filming of Viva Zapata in nearby Roma, Texas in 1950, Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn, accompanied by crew members, would stop at the store my mother Martina O. Martinez operated at Second Street and West Street.  At that time of day, around 6 or 7 pm, my mother would be in the kitchen, fixing tortillas, beans, rice, tamales and other Mexican dishes.  Brando and Quin and other actor friends would follow the aroma from the adjoining home kitchen where my mother would promptly fold the tortillas fresh out of the grill, fill them with beans or carnitas, and hand them to the actors.  Brando and Quinn, sweaty and covered in dirt from the day’s filming, would hug and kiss “Mama” and promised to come back another day, for more taquitos.

              That’s the kind of woman Martina was.  No one was a stranger in her kitchen or indeed her home.  Everyone who came into her house was a friend and welcomed with open arms.

              When Marina Olivarez, born November 11, 1897, was 12 years old, he mother died in childbirth; so did the baby.  Martina was the second oldest of eight children left behind, and as the oldest girl, she took over the household and became the mother to her brothers and sisters, ages 2 to 13. Even at the age of 12, Martina was a take-over person.  There was help from her father, of course, as well as from two spinster aunts, but Martina ran the home: cooking, baking, sewing, cleaning.  There was on time for school and what little she learned, she was self-taught.  She loved children and she loved her brothers and sisters, so for her it was an easy talks.

              Six years later, Martina married Gabriel Martinez, two years her senior, a young man who crew up in the neighborhood.  She and Gabriel moved from Rio Grande City to Roma, where Gabriel was working at the time in the country saloon of his older brother-in-law.  In this saloon, Gabriel honed his business practices and vowed to one day open up his own business.

              In the early 1920s, Gabriel and Martina build a house in what was then the outskirts of Rio Grande City, which is now the corner of Second Street and West Street.  In 1928, they build a small meat market-grocery store at that corner, at first selling goat and lamb meat, a favorite of surrounding Mexican-American families.  Over the years, they added to the size of the sore, and began to sell groceries.  The business survived until ____, operated by her children.

              While having babies, raising her family, and minding the home, Martina worked alongside her husband in the store, getting up early every morning to help Gabriel butcher the goats and lambs, gather the eggs from their chickens, milk the cow, and do other chores in their backyard.  From time to time, they would also butcher a pig and people came from miles around to buy Martina’s delicious Mexican pork sausages, tamales, and morcillas.  A morcilla is a blood sausage made in the stomach of the goat, heavily seasoned and including the inners, such as livers and kidneys.  Not everybody’s cup of tea, but aficionados would beg her to let them now when the next goat was being butchered so they could come around for their morcilla.

              In 1940, Gabriel died unexpectedly.  He simply lost weight, refused to eat, refused to see a doctor, saying, “I go to bed, who will feed my children?”  But soon he collapsed, probably of cancer, and died suddenly at the age of 42.  His was another major blow to Martina:  the loss of her mother, the loss of a son who was born on Christmas day and died on Christmas day nine years later, of pneumonia, and now her beloved Gabriel. ...

              Martina died on February 25, 1962, only 65 yeas old, but a body that could no longer resist any more work or any more shocks.  Her funeral attracted the largest crowd seen up until then in the church, the funeral procession, and the cemetery.

              More than 40 years later, there are still old-timers in Rio Grande City who speak kindly about her resolve, her toughness and gentleness, and her many acts of kindness.