The President of Love | Translation

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[Daniel Alarcón]: A warning before we begin: this episode contains strong content, discretion is advised.

This is Radio Ambulante, I’m Daniel Alarcón.

This story begins in 2013 in an apartment in Barcelona with a conversation between a Mexican woman, Linda, and her daughter Frida. Frida is eight years old, and her mother knows she is old enough to understand certain things.

[Linda]: I remember I said, well, I have to tell you something, how your mom works. Well, you know your mom is an artist and she’s a theater actress… and yes, yes, of course, my mother is an artist and all that, right? But I used that for something else. I mean, for her to remember that I was an artist, right?

[Daniel]: She wasn’t lying. Linda had studied theater in Mexico before emigrating to Spain in the mid-2000s. It was her great passion. But there was something else she wanted her daughter to know that day.

Frida is now 20 years old but also remembers very well how that conversation began:

[Frida]: She started explaining to me in terms that she assumed I would understand [about her work].

[Daniel]: So, after reminding her that she was an actress, Linda continued by saying…

[Linda]: Well, look, I want to tell you that your mom has a job where she kisses men and they give her money.

[Daniel]: Frida thought for a moment, almost speaking aloud…

[Frida]: If you’re someone who kisses people, makes them feel good, does this and gets paid for it, what are you?

[Daniel]: And she immediately drew her own conclusion.

[Frida]: And I said, then you’re something like the president of love, like that’s what I stick with. So that’s what you are.

[Linda]: And I said, well, yeah, something like that, honey. It was like… You’re the best, Frida.

[Daniel]: That was Frida’s first thought about her mother’s work. Imagine that title: president of love. The best job in the world in the eyes of a child, right? Linda felt an enormous sense of relief.

[Linda]: I mean, I don’t want to feel bad about my job. I don’t want my daughter to judge me, you know? I don’t want to live this life that a lot of my colleagues live, where their children end up judging them, even though they raised them. It’s like… No, I don’t want that to happen, right? If she understands it, she won’t judge me, right?

[Daniel]: But at the same time, she was very aware of the world they lived in. So, to protect her, she immediately asked something from Frida…

[Linda]: You can’t tell anyone at school, okay? I’m telling you just in case one of your little friends says something about me. Then you’ll know that this is true, but you act clueless. And when they ask what your mom does, you say that my mom is a theater director, my mom is an actress, my mom is an artist, but you know this is the job I do.

[Daniel]: That would be their big secret. And Frida would follow it to the letter. She even found it fun, like a game.

[Frida]: When I got to school knowing that, I didn’t mention it. And every time someone referred to it, if my mom was with men, if my mom did this, it was like, no, not at all. My mom is a theater director, please. I mean.

But it wasn’t something… I don’t want to make it sound like it was traumatic, having to constantly think about what to say and not say, because it was really easy for me, it was like telling you a little white lie, you know, a bit.

[Daniel]: And for a while, it worked: the secret was safe.

Until, when Frida was about eleven, someone at school started paying attention to the details. Many times, Linda would pick up Frida dressed in tight clothes and high heels, heavily made up. Sometimes, she would even be seen arriving in a car they didn’t recognize, with a man no one had seen before.

And it was all these rumors that would start becoming a problem that would change both of their lives.

A break and we’ll be right back.

[Daniel]: We’re back on Radio Ambulante. The journalist Esperanza Escribano reported this story. Here’s Esperanza.

[Esperanza Escribano]: We’ll return to that conversation between Linda and Frida soon. But let’s start with Linda…

[Esperanza]: Linda. Hello.

[Linda]: How’s it going, Esperanza?

[Esperanza]: How are you?

I met with Linda one afternoon in June 2024. As you may have noticed from her accent, Linda has been living in Spain for many years. Maybe long enough for the memories to start distorting.

[Linda]: The more time passes and the further I am from Mexico, my childhood has transformed into other things. Now I see my childhood as very idyllic, even though it wasn’t idyllic.

[Esperanza]: Linda was seven years old and her sister was four when their mother decided to separate from their father. She preferred to raise her daughters alone rather than continue enduring the abuse. They moved in with their aunts to a house that was still under construction. Their mother found work doing door-to-door surveys, and they never heard much about their father again. After about three years, they managed to move to an apartment in another neighborhood. And there, Linda and her sister had to change schools again.

[Linda]: I think the best memory was that I met Gloria Trevi there.

[Esperanza]: The Mexican singer and actress appeared one day near the school, and Linda couldn’t take her eyes off her…

[Linda]: She’s so beautiful! Gloria, we love you! And I was impressed by how tiny she was, right? She was so powerful, and suddenly, she was a super small woman who seemed like she didn’t matter, you know?

[Esperanza]: Linda was hypnotized. Since she was very young, she had dreamed of being an actress. That’s why, during her adolescence, she began signing up for various places to take theater and dance classes… But she soon realized it wouldn’t be so easy for her.

[Linda]: Studying art isn’t made for people like me in Mexico. And they made that very clear to me.

[Esperanza]: People of indigenous origin, like her… She would audition for the institutions, but they never admitted her, even though – she says – she was very good and had a lot of talent. This frustrated her a lot; she was disappointed. That’s when her mother remembered a place.

[Linda]: And she said to me, “Hey, I remember they made a kind of school for indigenous people and very excluded people and stuff, I don’t know what. Why don’t you go?”

[Esperanza]: She was talking about the Laboratorio de Teatro Campesino. So, after so many rejections, at 19, Linda went there.

[Linda]: And I went in. I remember the teacher Roberto was there, and he said, “You can start tomorrow.” And I was like, aaaaaaaaaahh. Finally, I’m going to study theater.

[Esperanza]: Linda really enjoyed the classes and putting on plays with her classmates. She dreamed of living off that in the future.

Until one day…

[Linda]: I came across an ad in the newspaper that said, “We need models. Contact John Gray.”

[Esperanza]: Linda was in her twenties and thought that maybe a first job as a model would open the doors to acting more easily. So, she called the number and spoke with the so-called John Gray. It was clear he was using a fake name. They arranged to meet in the Zona Rosa in Mexico City, a neighborhood full of shops, hotels, and art galleries. There, John appeared, a mature man with green eyes.

[Linda]: Of course, I had never been to a place like that, you know? And he started… And a beer, a wine, and stuff, you know? How beautiful you are, how young. What do you do? I study theater and I’m a dancer.

And suddenly, he shows me a magazine with a bunch of naked women in it. And I’m like, what’s going on? What is this?

[Esperanza]: It didn’t seem like John Gray was looking for the type of models Linda had imagined. But being there, she agreed when he invited her to visit a place. Something inside her pushed her to go see what it was about. The place was called Dow Jones. When she entered, Linda found a large room full of sofas of different sizes. There was a bar, a DJ booth, and, in the center, a stage where several women, semi-nude, were dancing. At the back, behind some curtains, were the VIP rooms where private dances with clients took place. Linda was shocked by the attitude with which the dancers moved.

[Linda]: I was thinking, how can there be so many beautiful women in one place? They all looked like Hollywood actresses. All of them.

[Esperanza]: She was in a strip club. And those women on stage, with little clothing and high heels, are called teiboleras. While showing her around, John explained that when the dancers weren’t performing, they would accompany clients for drinks because they earned a 70% commission on whatever the clients consumed. And this also applied to private dances, where they would be fully nude with a client in a private room.

[Linda]: And they were making a ton of money. And there I was, in poverty, right? because I was a theater actress.

[Esperanza]: Right away, Linda was sure she wanted to work there.

But it wasn’t just for the money. She also felt it could be a way to explore her acting side.

[Linda]: At one point, I said, I’m going to learn here what I’m missing. This is the practice of what I’ve learned. You know? And these women are the bosses. These are the teachers. These women should be teaching theater and dance in all the theater and film schools. You know? The teiboleras.

[Esperanza]: So, when John Gray told her, “Come one day and try it,” Linda didn’t hesitate. The next night, she went to the place. She felt ready to debut as a teibolera. She wore a loose black tank dress and square-heeled shoes. She hadn’t put on makeup or done her nails. She didn’t even wear earrings or any other accessories.

[Linda]: I went dressed in a way that I thought prostitutes dressed. When I got there, my coworkers said to me, I mean, you’re not going down like that, girl. You look awful.

[Esperanza]: Her coworkers lent her a dress and high-heeled shoes. Despite the darkness of the place, they made her up heavily so her features would stand out and styled her hair with extensions. Seeing herself this way, she felt much more confident to go down to the strip club…

To her, it was like being on stage, playing a new character…

That first night, Linda had a few drinks with clients in exchange for her commission and managed to earn 300 dollars, which, in the late ‘90s in Mexico, went a lot further than it would now, more than double.

Before leaving, when John Gray asked her how everything had gone…

[Linda]: I told him, “It was great, man.” He said, “Are you coming back tomorrow?” I said, “Well, tell me, because I need to write you down.” Because, of course, they need to make sure the girls are there…

[Esperanza]: Linda told him yes, that he could count on her, that she would return…

This world she had just discovered attracted her so much that she was ready to leave behind her theater student life and become a teibolera. Very soon, her new character would be born: at night, in the strip club, Linda would become Linda Porn.

[Esperanza]: Linda quickly got absorbed into her new character. She accepted right away and very naturally that she would be a sex worker. She knew very well it wasn’t an ordinary job.

[Linda]: Being a prostitute is a complex job, and not just anyone can do it. So, you have to have something to develop that job.

If you can undress in front of a stranger and if you can exchange pleasure with a stranger, right? Then that’s when I realized I could do it. If not, I wouldn’t have done it, right? If I hadn’t gone.

[Esperanza]: Not only could she do it. She liked it.

[Linda]: I also discovered a lot about sexuality. It wasn’t traumatic. Quite the opposite. But, well, this is kind of romanticizing prostitution, but that’s what happened to me.

[Esperanza]: And the clarification she makes is valid because, of course, Linda’s case isn’t like that of many other women who end up prostituting themselves because they have no other choice.

Linda, on the other hand, felt so comfortable in that environment that she decided to leave theater. Since she felt she had nothing to be ashamed of, she wanted to tell her colleagues. She was very direct.

[Linda]: And at one point, I told them: I can’t come anymore, I’m going to have to quit the company, and everyone was like, why? And I said, well, first because I’m a stripper…

[Esperanza]: The reaction of everyone was the same and immediate…

[Linda]: But how can you do that? How degrading, and brrraaauuu, brrrauuu.

I mean, that’s the general reaction of society towards prostitutes. [Esperanza]: Even from their own families. Linda had already seen it in many of her colleagues. But in her case, it was different…

Fortunately, when she told her mother and sister, they didn’t judge her. From the very first moment, she felt supported by them.

In a matter of weeks, her life changed completely. Right there, at the strip club, they gave her an apartment to live in, which she shared with one of the other girls.

[Linda]: After I joined the strip club, I kind of distanced myself from everyone.

I found my other environment, I was only hanging out with my stripper friends, or my bosses, I had kind of found a family, right? There.

[Esperanza]: A family she needed because, some time later, her mother and sister emigrated to Spain. With the money she was making at the strip club, Linda was able to visit them. She spent some time in Spain and other times in Mexico. But it was in her home country where she met an actor and singer with whom she started dating and soon got pregnant. They both decided to keep the baby. They were excited about the idea of becoming parents. But just a few weeks later, he left her.

[Linda]: At that moment, my mom told me to come over and we’ll figure out what to do here.

[Esperanza]: At three months pregnant, Linda left sex work and moved to Murcia, a city in southeastern Spain. There, her mother and sister were waiting for her. And six months later, on April 22, 2005, she gave birth to Frida.

[Linda]: I remember how I dressed her, right? She was like a little doll, right? She started walking at eight months. She was always very smart, very sharp. She was a very happy girl, very… I don’t know, she was super funny.

[Esperanza]: With her baby in her arms, she decided she wouldn’t go back to her old job.

[Linda]: I felt a lot of stigma, right? And it was like, no, Frida can’t have a mother who’s a prostitute. And I said, I’m going to find a decent job. And I started with, right? That was also my return to the arts, right? Because it’s, no, it’s more honorable for your mother to be an artist than a prostitute, right?

[Esperanza]: While trying to return to the world of the arts, she got a job as a waitress to pay the bills. But things weren’t easy. She worked so many hours that she would fall asleep in her uniform. And what she earned didn’t even cover the rent. While she worked, she had to leave Frida with her mother, and if her mother couldn’t take care of her, she would hire a babysitter.

Until one day, when Frida was six years old…

[Linda]: She hugged me and said, “I love you, Mom,” and was wearing broken sneakers.

[Esperanza]: The “bambas,” the shoes.

[Linda]: And it was like, you’re not going to wear those broken sneakers. No, I mean, no. You’re going to have your toys. I don’t see my daughter, I can’t even make rent, and you’re wearing broken sneakers. What sense does that make?

[Esperanza]: Linda went back to looking for clients. She placed ads in the newspapers, in the classifieds section. She worked in the mornings while Frida was in school and spent the afternoons with her. They made up for a lot of lost time together. But she quickly realized that Murcia wasn’t the best place for sex work. In a bigger city, she could have more clients. So she started thinking about Barcelona.

[Linda]: That’s where the porn industry is, where there are more brothels, I mean, so I said that’s the place I have to go.

[Esperanza]: Frida was seven years old when they moved. What was hardest for her was coming to terms with being far from her grandmother, they were very close.

Here again, Frida.

[Frida]: Yes, I did feel a little bit of that feeling of not wanting to leave Murcia, but at the same time, my mom really fed me the idea that Barcelona was going to be really, really cool.

[Esperanza]: At that time, Frida knew her mom was an artist but still didn’t know exactly what she did. Linda had shared all her cultural universe from Mexico with her, including Gloria Trevi’s songs that they sang together. If Linda had met Gloria in high school, Frida didn’t even need to meet her. She had the star at home.

[Frida]: I literally saw my mom as a pop star. You know, I mean, my mom was my Gloria Trevi. I swear.

[Frida]: I saw her as someone very, very superior. That was my perspective as a little girl of my mom, as someone very… a very beautiful, very intelligent, very loving person, very much… you know…

[Esperanza]: It was a few months after arriving in Barcelona that Linda sat down with Frida and told her what she really did for a living. And after that conversation, Frida now also saw her mom as the “president of love.”

Although she missed her grandmother and aunt, Frida had adapted well to the city change. She was growing up with her mom and her friends, other sex workers who took care of her and loved her as if they were family.

Despite being in that environment, Frida felt like she had a life just like any other child. She went to the square, celebrated her birthdays in parks with ball pits. She had adapted to her new school and was doing well in her studies. But after a few years there, she began to suffer bullying from her classmates; they made racist comments. Eventually, the harassment got very bad.

[Frida]: They would pull my hair, push me down the stairs, tell me to kill myself, that my color was disgusting, that I had the color of shit, that my hair was like a broom’s hair.

[Esperanza]: And it wasn’t just her classmates, even her teachers made her feel bad.

[Frida]: For example, I was late to class one day, and if I had painted my nails because my mom had painted them the day before or whatever, my teacher would say, “Look who’s late, but she has time to paint her nails and come to class like a diva.”

[Esperanza]: All her classmates would laugh, and Frida would die of embarrassment.

She was 11 when she started to notice that one of her teachers was paying more and more attention to her. All the time, she asked questions, almost like interrogating her.

[Frida]: What did you have for breakfast? Or she’d say: Are these marks from something? Has someone done something to you? Do you want to tell me something? And it was like, all the time, “Do you want to tell me something?” And I was like, No, I want you to leave me alone.

[Esperanza]: These marks, Frida says, were from injuries she got while playing hockey and also from bites that Linda gave her as a sign of affection. It was a game they had between them.

[Frida]: It might sound bad, but my mom bites me, and I do the same with my dogs to feel that I love you so much that you’re like, you’re squeezable. I don’t know how to explain it.

[Esperanza]: But none of what Frida said mattered because the questions kept coming.

[Frida]: But your mom doesn’t throw many parties, but does your mom know the man who came to pick you up?

[Esperanza]: Once, when Linda arrived wearing a dress and heels, her teacher asked her if her mom always dressed like that. It felt like they were always under suspicion.

[Frida]: What bothered me the most was that other moms could dress like that without being judged beforehand.

[Esperanza]: It was clear that the secret about Linda’s work was at risk. Linda sensed it.

[Linda]: I knew something was going to happen at some point.

[Esperanza]: And it happened. One day, a letter arrived at their house from the General Directorate of Child and Adolescent Care of Catalonia, the DGAIA.

[Linda]: I read it, and they told me that they had opened a neglect case for Frida, blah blah blah… That’s when I was like, What’s going on? What’s happening?

[Esperanza]: A neglect case is a process started by authorities when they believe a minor is in a vulnerable situation. With that opening, child welfare starts to investigate whether the situation is serious and whether intervention is needed to guarantee the well-being of the minor. Upon reading that letter, Linda was scared. She immediately called some of her clients who were lawyers, and they told her not to worry, that it was just a warning and that everything would likely clear up. Linda had an appointment with social services to request help for her child’s school meals on Monday, February 20, 2017, and she thought she could explain that there was no neglect there.

But just a few days before the appointment, on Friday, February 17, Frida was at school when one of her teachers asked her to leave class because there were some people who wanted to ask her some questions. It was two social workers from the DGAIA who were waiting for her in a room next to the principal’s office.

They immediately started with the questions…

[Frida]: They asked me if my mom had ever bitten me, if my mom had ever hit me, if my mom had ever let someone into my room, if my mom had ever done something to me, if my mom drank a lot, I mean, they started with a very, very, very strong harassment, also using very harsh vocabulary for a child. I mean, they were speaking to me in a very harsh way, and I was feeling really bad.

[Esperanza]: Frida, very nervous, only answered with monosyllables. Until the DGAIA women pulled out a paper.

[Frida]: They told me if I signed this, I could go with my mom when I left. And that’s what I did.

[Esperanza]: She signed the paper without reading it. That’s why she didn’t know that by signing it, she was accusing her mom. From that moment on, her custody was given to social services.

An instant later, they took her out of school and put her into a van.

[Frida]: Like those in horror movies where they kidnap children. It was a white caravan with seats in the back and all the windows tinted black.

[Esperanza]: Frida was terrified. She didn’t know where they were going until they finally arrived at a hospital. There, two doctors started examining her legs and arms, writing down every mark they found on her body.

[Frida]: From that moment, the workers I had been with in the room came up to me and asked, “Who did this to your legs? Who did this to your legs?” And I said, no one. And they said, “Who did this to your legs?” in a very aggressive way too.

[Esperanza]: She repeated over and over again that the marks were from hockey, but the women kept insisting. And once they finished the medical examination, they told her what the real plans were.

[Frida]: They told me I was going to a house where there were kids like me, and they didn’t know when I would be back, and I had to leave right away.

[Esperanza]: Frida stayed completely silent. Frozen. She didn’t know what to say or ask anything more. But at that moment, she sensed she was going to be away from her mom for a long time.

Linda got a call an hour before she was leaving the house to pick up Frida from school. It was the DGAIA, and they told her they had taken her custody.

[Linda]: They told me not to worry about picking up the kid from school, and I was like, wait, what? Of course, I thought logically, that there had been a trial, there were proofs, we had gone to court. What is this?

[Esperanza]: But on the other end of the phone, they just kept telling her…

[Linda]: You know what you did. You know you’ve abused your daughter. You know all the damage you’ve caused her.

I asked them, where are you getting all this from? I mean, where are you getting this from? How can you just take my daughter like this?

[Esperanza]: Before hanging up, they told her that they would take Frida to a children’s center and that the upcoming appointment with social services was canceled.

Linda didn’t know what to do, she was very lost.

[Linda]: I called my friends, asked around, and braved the storm. And from there, it just… pfff, there was a huge down, right?

[Esperanza]: In the midst of the confusion, Linda was already starting to suspect what was happening.

[Linda]: I’m Panchita, a single mother, migrant, prostitute. Of course, they were going to take her away from me.

[Daniel]: This would mark the beginning of a new chapter in her life. A very dark chapter where she would have to fight for what she loved the most.

A pause, and we’ll be right back…

[Daniel]: We’re back. Esperanza Escribano continues telling us…

[Esperanza]: They took Frida to an Emergency Reception Center. It was a gray building, hidden among other identical ones, with no name or address visible. As soon as she entered, she saw a room full of babies.

She kept moving forward, and they asked her to hand over her backpack and take out everything from her pockets. They also asked for her mobile phone. They told her she wouldn’t be able to go to school or contact anyone from the outside for a week.

They took her to a room she would share with six other children. She felt like crying, but she held it in. That first night, she barely slept. The next morning, they introduced her to the person who would be her educator at the center. She was the first to tell her what was really happening.

[Frida]: She was the first one who said, “But don’t you realize that you’ve reported your mother?” And that’s when I, indeed, realized that I had reported my mother.

[Esperanza]: The whole situation was very violent for Frida. But she still dared to ask if she could speak to her mom. The answer was blunt.

[Frida]: No, that my mom had done things wrong and now I couldn’t talk to her.

[Esperanza]: Meanwhile, Linda was trying to figure out which center they had taken her daughter to. She spent the whole weekend not knowing anything about her. They had never been apart before. She missed her terribly, and the house felt empty without Frida.

[Linda]: I remember how in the mornings she would wake up, and you could hear the little footsteps of a child. And that’s something that stayed with me, right? It was like, “I don’t hear Frida’s feet in the morning every time I wake up,” you know?

[Esperanza]: Her mother, Frida’s grandmother, traveled that weekend to be with Linda.

A few days later, Linda managed to get an appointment at the General Directorate of Childhood. There, they handed her a report explaining why they had taken away her custody. Words like abuse, neglect, and abandonment appeared. The documentation also contained false information, like that they had just arrived from Mexico, that Frida was born there, and that they were living crowded in a room. Linda was desperate, and that’s why she signed the papers where she acknowledged everything they accused her of. If she didn’t, the next step wouldn’t begin: a work plan she had to follow to get her custody back or, at least, for her mother to be able to be Frida’s foster family in the meantime.

And even though she knew all these accusations were lies, she started doubting herself.

[Linda]: At one point, I said, “No, maybe they’re right. I mean, maybe, maybe Frida is better off with them, right?”

[Esperanza]: All the security she had always felt as a mom was now hanging by a thread.

At the same time, the educator at the center was telling Frida that her mother agreed she should be there.

[Frida]: Okay, so if she wants me to be here, then she must think this is okay.

[Esperanza]: It felt strange to her because they had never been apart, but they showed her the papers, and Frida thought that since everything seemed so official, they couldn’t be lying to her. How could an institution, an authority, make up that her mother didn’t want to be with her?

[Esperanza]: A week after they took Frida and the period of no contact was over, Linda finally found out where the center was and was allowed to speak to her by phone. Linda put the phone on speaker to record the call.

[Call]:

[Linda]: Hello. Good afternoon. I have a call with her.

[Center employee]: Yes, darling, I’ll get her for you right away. One moment, please.

[Linda]: Thank you.

[Center employee]: You’re welcome. One moment.

[Call]

[Linda]: Hello, my love. How are you?

[Linda]: How are you, darling?

Frida: Fine. And you?

[Linda]: I’m fine, my love. Very excited because this is the first call they’ve let me make to you.

[Esperanza]: Frida picked up the phone and locked herself in her room to talk to her mother. But she was nervous and didn’t want anyone to hear her. She sounded curt. Linda immediately noticed something was wrong…

[Call]

[Linda]: What’s wrong, my girl? Are you angry? Why?

[Linda]: Oh, okay. I thought you were, my love. What’s wrong? Are you sad? Huh? My love. Huh?

[Linda]: Beautiful, I love you. I love you more than anything in the world. Precious. I think about you. Every. Every. Every. Every minute of the day. Okay. Never forget that. Mom is here. Always. Always. Mom. Grandma. Aunty. You’re not alone. Right? Okay. You’re not alone, my love. Do you understand? Do you understand, my darling?

[Linda]: Okay, my life. Okay, but you’re not alone. Okay. You’re not alone. Here’s your mom. Okay. This is going to be for just… for a moment, that’s all. Okay, this is going to pass. We’re all doing a lot of things to make this right. Okay. My love. Did you hear that?

[Frida]: No. Because I’m here.

[Linda]: Okay, my love. But you’re going to get out. Okay. Are you going to get out?

Of course, you will, my love. Why? Why do you say no? Darling. You’ll see, you will. You’ll see, everything’s going to be okay, my love. Everything’s going to be okay. Okay. Everything’s going to be okay. You have to trust that. And you have to think that everything’s going to be okay, okay?

[Esperanza]: The whole conversation went like this. Frida was monosyllabic. Linda tried to get her to talk about how she felt, what she had done at the center, if she was sleeping well. After a few minutes, one of the educators started knocking on the door, asking her to hang up because the calls had to happen in front of them. Frida clearly remembers what she felt that day.

[Frida]: In that first call, she asked me if I was angry, if this and that. And for me, it was very strange because it was like, “Yes, I’m angry because you left me here.”

[Esperanza]: Linda kept calling Frida once a week. Her grandmother also called her. They didn’t want her to feel alone. Finally, after a month, Linda was allowed a visit at a meeting point, a place where several families gather to see their children.

They made Linda go through a metal detector and asked her to leave her phone and the sweets and gifts she had brought for Frida.

[Linda]: They took me to a room with a polarized glass and some speakers, and there were people sitting there watching the visits.

[Frida]: You. Imagine you were in a lab, you know? Like, people are watching what you do and how you behave.

[Linda]: Frida was completely terrified. She couldn’t say anything. I’m fine, mom. I’m fine. Yes, I’m fine, mom. Of course. Yes. She told me that. I also said: Of course. Maybe she’s fine. But of course, Frida said that because she was scared.

[Frida]: Also, a lot of doubt about what she wants me to do. Like, I don’t know if you want me to be here or if you want me to say something, or if you think I did something wrong. So, there was a lot of expectation, like, whether my mom was happy to see me.

[Esperanza]: The whole month, she had been sad and angry with her mom for leaving her there. But when she saw her again, those doubts started to fade.

[Frida]: A lot of things that they had told me started to collapse when I saw my mom. Because whether you like it or not, she’s my mom. I know her, I do. And I know how she is.

[Esperanza]: The happiness of being together again was evident for both of them. It was clear that Linda did want to be with her.

They could only see each other two hours a week at the meeting point.

Meanwhile, Linda was trying to get the DGAIA to allow her mother to be Frida’s foster family. But that wasn’t something they were going to accept easily…

[Linda]: At one point, they even suggested, “Well, ma’am, you’re kind of to blame for how she’s behaving. You’re kind of the cause of all this, because you didn’t know how to raise your daughter.”

[Esperanza]: The process was dragging on.

Only after several weeks did Linda get permission to visit Frida at the juvenile center where she was living. But Frida didn’t have the courage to tell her mom that she didn’t want to be there and that things had gotten much worse at school since she had returned to class.

[Frida]: All my classmates knew what had happened and knew the accusations against my mom. And in the yard, they would say things like… “Your mom is this and that, and your mom is a drug addict.” And then in class, one of those days when I returned, I think I said something wrong or did something wrong. And the teacher said, “I think she’s the one who reported you.” She stopped the class and told me, “You’re a brat. Do you know what I had to do for you? Do you know all the effort I made and the risk I took to help someone like you? Everyone told me not to help you. I shouldn’t have done it because you’re ungrateful. Leave the class.” And I left crying.

[Esperanza]: She had to come up with ways to hide and talk to her grandmother on the phone.

[Frida]: Whenever I could make a more free call, well, I’d vent all I wanted against them. So, of course, my grandmother started to notice that. But with my grandmother, I had a bit more freedom because she wasn’t the one being accused of everything.

[Esperanza]: Linda and her mother were still caught up in bureaucratic red tape. For the DGAIA to allow her mother to be the foster family, Frida’s grandmother had to visit the center, be known by the educators, and then they would make a decision. Five, six, seven months passed, and the DGAIA still hadn’t approved the procedure.

Then, a new turning point came. One day, while playing basketball, Frida sprained her ankle and had to walk with crutches. She needed help bathing. A teacher at the center explained what they would do.

[Frida]: And he tells me, “Well, I have the solution, I’m going to shower you.” I said, “No, no, thanks.” He said, “No, no, really, I can shower you. I mean, it’s not uncomfortable for me or anything.” And I was like… “Yeah, but I don’t know you.”

[Frida]: So, when I told my grandmother, she was literally climbing the walls.

[Esperanza]: Her grandmother immediately told Linda. They were both outraged. They don’t know if it was this that accelerated the decision, but finally, the DGAIA accepted that Frida’s grandmother could be her foster family.

Frida returned to Murcia to live with her grandmother and the rest of her family. She had spent almost eight months in the center. Eight months that would mark her forever.

[Daniel]: A pause and we’ll be right back…

[Daniel]: We’re back. Esperanza continues with the story.

[Esperanza]: Linda managed to feel a little calmer because Frida was now with her family in Murcia. But she was still in Barcelona, missing her terribly. She was sinking into a deep depression. She had stopped working and had almost no money. After some time, she was granted permission to visit Frida in Murcia. But they couldn’t be alone. Because she had custody of Frida, her mother had to supervise Linda the entire time during those visits.

They went to the movies, to the supermarket… They tried to regain some of the everyday things. But Frida was also starting to fall into a depression. In addition to being separated from her mother, the new school change was affecting her as well, where she was being bullied for the color of her skin.

Little by little, Linda was granted more time with Frida, even being allowed to sleep in the same house. So she began traveling more frequently to Murcia. And with that regained intimacy, Frida began to open up and tell her mother what was happening to her.

[Linda]: And she starts telling me, “I want to be with you, mommy, I don’t want to be here. I mean, I love grandma a lot, but I want to go with you, I want to go with you, I want to go with you.”

[Esperanza]: It was at that moment that Linda became convinced, once and for all, that the best thing for Frida was to be with her. Two years had passed since she had received the first call from the DGAIA. During that time, she had gone from anger to resignation, even starting to believe that she was a bad mother.

[Linda]: Because they make you believe that your children don’t love you, I mean, they make you believe that you’re this disgusting monster who ruined their lives. I mean, a social worker told me, “You’ve ruined your daughter’s life, you know that? You’ve ruined her whole life.” And, of course, there comes a moment when you think, “Yeah, maybe I did.”

[Esperanza]: Linda began to take action to regain custody of Frida. She started speaking publicly about her case on social media. Until one day, she received an email.

[Linda]: And an attorney wrote to me saying, “Hey, I want to see your file and see what’s going on. I mean, this is very strange.”

[Esperanza]: That attorney was Arlene Cruz, from the Dominican Republic. Arlene had already been handling other cases of custody removals of migrant single mothers, and when she saw Linda’s case, she wanted to help her.

They quickly arranged an appointment. Here’s Arlene:

[Arlene]: When I met her, Linda was in a state of having overcome that feeling they try to instill in you, that you’re the bad mother. And a point of… like activating, saying, “No, I have to publicly denounce what’s happening, and I need to seek the necessary alliances because this can’t just be happening to me.”

[Esperanza]: Indeed, Arlene told her there were many other women in similar situations. So they started connecting, sharing their experiences, and not long after, they founded “Madrecitas,” a collective of migrant mothers united to denounce irregularities in custody removals. Arlene would help them with all the legal aspects. Something that, she assures, can be very complex within the DGAIA system.

[Arlene]: It’s about finding a way around a system that really doesn’t want us, the legal experts, to accompany these mothers.

[Esperanza]: That is, a system that doesn’t want lawyers in the hearings. But why? I asked Isabel Carrasco, who was the director of the DGAIA while I produced this episode.

[Isabel]: I believe that the relationship between parent and child has to be maintained. If a lawyer enters, I think everything gets distorted.

[Esperanza]: But for Arlene, it’s clear that the lack of legal assistance allows people who don’t understand how the system works to often end up signing things that incriminate them. Like what happened to Linda.

And the questions don’t stop there. In Spain, custody removals are not decided by a judge but by social service officials. The same institution that opens the case for neglect – which, in the case of Catalonia, is the DGAIA – decides whether custody is removed, where the child goes, and when and how they will be returned to their parents. Let’s say the same institution is both judge and party. That’s why there are many complaints pointing to an arbitrary and biased system. To give you an idea, in Catalonia, there are more children under state care than prisoners in their jails. In 2019, for example, a judge ruled in one case that technical reports lacked objective data and were based on beliefs and assumptions. Arlene has also seen this in many of the cases of the women she has represented.

[Arlene]: They don’t really verify whether there’s something behind it or not. They activate the protocol and take the child. And then we investigate. That’s what happens. They base it on assumptions or on facts that aren’t really even proven. Here, with someone wanting to harm you, they can easily do it. And then it’s up to you to prove that you’re not any of that.

[Esperanza]: Arlene is convinced that, in Linda’s case, the fact that she had worked in sexual labor influenced the decision to take Frida’s custody. Although, of course, that’s not a justified reason to do so.

[Arlene]: Because they already assume that a mother who works in sexual labor can’t be a good mother. And all this, if she’s a migrant, then add 20 more to that. And there you have the equation, I mean:

[Esperanza]: That same equation that Linda suspected from the beginning: single mother, migrant, and prostitute.

Although Isabel Carrasco, the director of DGAIA, refused to talk about Linda’s case or any specific cases, she assured me that the decision to remove custody is made with all the necessary guarantees and has nothing to do with the parents’ professions.

[Isabel]: Different professions do not make us decide whether there is neglect or not; it is about the child being well cared for, and the child’s best interest always comes first. If that woman, right, who may be working in prostitution, does not take care of her child or abandons them, is involved in situations, right, that could put the child in a neglectful situation, actions will be taken regardless of the profession. But I tell you, if the child is well attended to, cared for, and treated well, we don’t have to act.

[Esperanza]: Inside DGAIA, they are considering going back to a system where a judge decides on a child’s custody.

[Isabel]: There are always improvements in all systems, and I think now, well, it’s being debated again a bit, and putting on the table the idea of going back to having it be a judge who decides whether or not to separate children from the home.

[Esperanza]: As of the time of closing this episode, nothing had changed.

[Mother singing]: What’s going on with DGAIA? They cross the line. What’s going on with DGAIA? They cross the line.

[Esperanza]: On November 20, 2020, when more than three years had passed since the custody removal, Linda and dozens of mothers gathered for the first time in front of the DGAIA headquarters.

[Mother 1]: Good morning, I’m Nita, mother of Lucía and Alejandro. They took my children with false reports.

[Mother 2]: I’m Helen, mother of Eyden, Jorlin, and Angelima. They took my children because I don’t have papers, because I have no family, and because I am vulnerable.

[Esperanza]: Linda was moved…

[Linda]: It was very hopeful, right? Suddenly seeing all the mothers who had had their custody removed. And all they needed was someone to say, “I’m just like you.”

[Esperanza]: But Linda’s joy at joining other women contrasted with the deep depression that Frida, now 15, was falling into in Murcia. While she was seeing her mom more often, with each goodbye, Frida would lock herself in her room and into her own world.

[Frida]: I also stopped showering, stopped eating. And I don’t know, in general, I didn’t do many things.

[Esperanza]: During those days when Linda was protesting in Barcelona, Frida had gone to see the social worker handling her case in Murcia. She insisted that she wanted to go back to her mother, but the social worker asked her to be patient. But Frida no longer had the strength to wait.

[Frida]: One day after, two days after that, my family went to sleep. I wrote letters to everyone and took 37 pills.

[Esperanza]: A little later, she woke up vomiting.

[Frida]: Dragging myself, I went to my grandmother’s room and told her that I had taken 37 pills to die and that it hadn’t worked and if she could call an ambulance because I was feeling really bad.

[Esperanza]: They rushed her to the hospital. Once there, her grandmother informed Linda about what had happened, and she immediately left for Murcia. Still semi-conscious, Frida could only think of one thing: that her mother would arrive at some point. And that thought alone made her happy.

When Linda finally arrived at the hospital, they had already performed a stomach pump.

[Linda]: I was completely destroyed. I mean, now the consequences of everything that had happened, of everything DGAIA did, right? They broke her, they shattered her, they ruined her.

[Esperanza]: As soon as they saw each other, both knew that, no matter what, they would never be separated again.

Linda definitively left Barcelona, found an apartment in Murcia, and they moved there together. They weren’t allowed to, but they took the risk. Linda was no longer afraid. In fact, the fear was shifting sides. For the social workers, Frida’s suicide attempt had triggered panic. Linda and Frida quickly noticed a change in attitude, as if they had realized they made a mistake, a mistake that had lasted over three years. Here again is Arlene, the lawyer…

[Arlene]: Frida’s suicidal feelings came from the separation itself, I mean, at one point they realized that the only way to save the person’s life was to return her to the mother, something that should’ve been logical long ago. But returning her meant admitting a mistake.

[Esperanza]: Linda and Frida kept living together and realized that no one was monitoring them anymore.

[Linda]: We learned that DGAIA wasn’t Big Brother, and there wasn’t a camera watching us at home. You know? Because that’s the feeling they give you.

[Esperanza]: And so two years passed, during which, while they began to shake off all the pain from this time, the custody return process continued. The educators handling the case, Arlene told us, were very persistent and always found something to delay the process.

They only returned custody to Linda in December 2022, five months before Frida turned 18 and became an adult.

[Frida]: DGAIA did take something very, very big. I mean, the last time I lived with my mom, I was a child. I think it was many years of separation, too many. And I think it was very, very hard, at the same time that neither of us was who we were.

[Esperanza]: But even though many things have changed, and Frida is now an adult, for Linda, there’s something that will never change…

[Linda]: I always want to remain in the role of her mother, right? And not just in terms of authority, right? But in terms of care, of nurturing, of picking her up, right? Of being, you know, that calm.

[Esperanza]: That calmness that they were denied for so long…

OUTRO

[Daniel]: According to the latest statistical report from DGAIA, around 9000 children are separated from their families due to child neglect cases. Of them, more than 40% are foreign.

Linda continues to be a sex worker and a prominent activist for the rights of sex workers.

Esperanza Escribano is a journalist and lives in Barcelona. She co-produced this story alongside Aneris Casassus. Aneris is a producer for Radio Ambulante and lives in Buenos Aires.

This episode was edited by Camila Segura and me. Bruno Scelza did the fact-checking. The sound design is by Andrés Azpiri and Rémy Lozano with music by Rémy.

The rest of the Radio Ambulante team includes Paola Alean, Adriana Bernal, Diego Corzo, Emilia Erbetta, Camilo Jiménez Santofimio, Melisa Rabanales, Natalia Ramírez, David Trujillo, Elsa Liliana Ulloa and Luis Fernando Vargas.

Carolina Guerrero is the CEO.

Radio Ambulante is a podcast from Radio Ambulante Estudios, produced and mixed in Hindenburg PRO.

If you liked this episode and want us to continue doing independent journalism about Latin America, support us through Deambulantes, our membership program. Visit radioambulante.org/donar and help us keep telling the region’s stories.

Radio Ambulante tells the stories of Latin America. I’m Daniel Alarcón. Thank you for listening.