Life With Struggles

My name is Isabella De La Mora and I am an eighteen year old girl that comes from a very complicated form of living. I was born on May 06, 1818 in Santa Fe, New Mexico where my family and I lived in. Some may say it was not the best place to form a living but others would say it wasn’t the worst. My family was diverse, my father’s ethnicity was Spanish dissent and my mother’s was from Native American dissent, but I would never truly know due to me never getting the chance to learn my family’s history because I was taken away from them at a very young age.

Before I was born the people of Santa Fe, New Mexico was under an unjust form of “government” or ruling power. It was mainly the people running on fairly short amounts of resources and they were not able to find or do any different forms of trading or free roaming, for say, in order for them to keep each other alive. They were under the ruling of the Spanish Government, which to them they were corruptive men that mainly wanted to take any form of advantage of the people from Santa Fe, but eventually the people from New Mexico grew tired of the unfair treatment the Spaniards would give to them, so “they waged a successful revolution” [Santa Fe Trail] which led the people from Santa Fe, New Mexico gaining their freedom in September 1821 [Myers, Harry]. After that “Mexico was a free country and could now trade with whomever they pleased”.

After the freedom the people from New Mexico got was when I was taken from my family. I was taken by a Spaniard priest that got to run away from the revolution. He took me to another mission that we ended up crossing paths while traveling away from New Mexico. While growing up in the missions I had to learn different ways of living. It was very conflicting due to one being my family’s old religious and philosophical ways while the other is the new religious views and ways of living that the Spaniard priests would present to us. I basically grew up questioning everything, from my parent’s logical standpoint to the intentions of the Spaniard men. It has always been a question of who is giving you the right pathway in life and who is basically just painting “pretty picture” and feeding you pure lies. The whole thing is just a simple guessing game of which belief should you take on. Of course, I never meant to question my parent’s way of life, at least never with a cruel intention, but everything seemed like a way of struggle when things can be simplified with a new form of knowledge and equipment. Although everything was made to seem simple, it turned out that everything was truly complicated.

True faith was questioned by my very self when I lost my family and also when I was taken advantage of. By the age of sixteen I was already practicing under the teachings of the priest in the Catholic Church from the mission we were in for me to become a nun. Little did I know that those were not the only true intentions from the priest. Each day he would inappropriately insinuate himself to me but I never knew what to say or do. I had to put his actions as well as mine to question due to the outcomes that could happen. My actions based if I should stay quiet and act like if nothing is truly happening or if to speak up before it is too late and expose his inappropriate actions for everyone to see, but surely no one would believe me based on what my ethnicity truly is and that is mixed, and eventually I should have taken the second choice. One day he was teaching me a new word of the god until he forced himself to me and took my innocence away as well as my faith.

After that I ran away from the missions but with due time I came to the realization that I was with child and I did not know what to do from that point on. I was stuck on a difficult crossroad, should I have kept moving forward and try to make a life wherever I ended up and get rid of the child I was carrying or should I have gone back despite the fact that that awful man was there just in order for my child and I to survive. Eventually my pride got the best of me and I kept moving forward to find asylum elsewhere but I did not get rid of my child. I instead kept him and eventually formed somewhat of a safe home where I ended up in while I was still pregnant. Although everything that came my way was a somehow a sign for me to give up they eventually ended up being signs for me to become stronger.

Works Cited

1. Torrez, Robert. “New Mexico in the 18th Century.” New Mexico Office of the State Historian, newmexicohistory.org/people/new-mexico-in-the-18th-century-1-1.
2. Myers, Harry. “A History of the Santa Fe Trail.” Edited by Joanne VanCoevern, Official Santa Fe Trail Association, 2010, www.santafetrail.org/the-trail/history/history-of-the-sft/.
3. “Santa Fe Trail.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, www.history.com/topics/westward-expansion/sante-fe-trail.

Cite this page