Overcoming Adversity, Helping Others Personal hardships fueled Margarita's eagerness to help children and their mothers. Margarita grew up poor and lost her mother as a child. Despite her age, Margarita works six days a week at the Tortillera. She says her role there now is to supervise, and she does, but she never stops working. Margarita breaks only occasionally, when things slow, for a glass of tamarindo juice or rice milk, but she soon returns to the constant, and at times overwhelming, heat of the kitchen.
Smoke billows into the women's faces as they stir the entrees and feed the fire.
At the dishwashing sink, water pours continuously from the spigots as Margarita and the women try to keep pace with heaps of dirty dishes. Unable to bear children, Margarita adopted eight, each from different families. She feels no bitterness or resentment about her barren womb. She is a mother to many here in Santa Cruz. God did not give me children, but instead a community to care for.