Transcript for the Piece Audio version of La Primera Vez (The First Time)

La Primera Vez – Script

Ambi from the main plaza in San Andrés Chicahuaxtla fades in.

NARR: TODAY WE’RE VISITING A FRIEND IN THE SMALL COMMUNITY OF SAN ANDRES CHICAHUAXTLA. LET’S SIT FOR A SPELL AND CHAT WITH EPIFAMI JIMÉNEZ SANTIAGO AS SHE REMEMBERS HOW SHE BEGAN AS A POULTRY VENDOR…

Epifami: I had a cousin named Abraham, he sold, too. So, he says, chicken’s good—it’s a good seller. And well, we had no money—I mean, there was not enough for the kids, for anything—so we decided to get started in this business.

Music fades up and under the story that follows…

E: It really cost us to get it going because the first time we didn’t really know how to slaughter the chickens. It’s not so easy; it’s an animal, too, and…it hurts to see it like that.

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E: Just to take care of the animals and uh, you know, well it took a lot, to feed it, give it water—all of that. You have to clean where they sleep, clean their water, their food dish—all of that you have to take care of. It was tough for me—for both of us.

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E: So my husband he, my husband grabs the feet, and I, well, I grab its two wings. And I started to saw off its head. But the first time, well, I felt—well I was trembling while I was cutting. I didn’t know how to cut it. The knife—no, no it was like it didn’t really have an edge to it. And there you are cutting hard back and forth and it just makes you kind of panicky to do it because you don’t know how. That’s, well, that’s what happened to me.

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E: And later, after cutting the head off it began to move—it was just so ugly. The chicken moved so much. I just felt awful, you know, because to see how it moved like that…Well, after that first time I just couldn’t even eat. There’s this smell—uh, no, no—It’s just not the kind of thing that helps your appetite if you’re the one killing it. It has this smell like a rotten egg. So, you kind of feel like you might throw up. And it’s like a pet, so it hurts. You care for this animal, you really care for it—and a person just can’t kill something like that. For example, a chicken from a chicken farm, you didn’t see it grow. You didn’t feed it. You don’t feel much. But to kill a chicken, a homegrown one—you saw it grow. You saw it’s mom, you saw it as an egg. All of that. And it hurts.

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E: The same happened to me when I had this little frog. I loved that frog because I bought it when it was just a little thing. My little frog I saw it grow from just a little thing. I bought it. I saw it grow. And wherever I went, my little frog followed me. It was so cute my litte frog. And one day it got sick. When it got sick I felt so awful. A little bubble flared up on his back. And I got sick just seeing him like that. Truly. Later I called a veterinarian—they tried to rupture the bubble. Ah, no, it felt like I was the one sick, just from seeing him like that.

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E: But now, not as much. Now that we’ve had this business for a while—well, now we don’t, we don’t slaughter them in the same way. Now we’ve been taught how to slaughter the animals in a different manner. Still I feel—I can’t kill a chicken if it’s mine, if I saw it grow up. I can’t kill it. Because it hurts. It really hurts me to see it growing growing like that. No, no you can’t, you can’t kill it. This I’ve learned.

The music fades up. Then we hear an overlap of the following…

E: I am listening to…
E: You are listening to…
E: …to The Voice of the Mixteca
E: XETLA
Alberto (her son): …From Chicahuaxtla

The music fades up and finishes.