Joaquina: San Pancho's Post Office

Joaquina Avila is San Pancho’s one-woman, roving postal service. She’s been on the job since 1998, connecting San Pancho with the rest of the world by mail. There is no post office building in San Pancho, so wherever Joaquina goes, that’s where the post office is. She was our housekeeper for seven years -- she recently left to run her own fruit stand -- and during that time our home was, in effect, the post office.

Knowing that she worked at our house, town residents who didn’t want to wait for Joaquina to deliver their mail often stopped by to pick it up. Joaquina is totally deaf, and everyone in town knows that. To attract her attention, Mexicans would stand at the gate and wave. If that didn’t work, they shouted her name, knowing that I would respond on her behalf. I would holler “Momentito,” find Joaquina, and tell her a customer was waiting. Joaquina would finish whatever household task she was doing, and then take her time about finding the person’s mail. I got acquainted with a lot of people as we chatted until Joaquina arrived.

Americans sometimes got in trouble with Joaquina because they didn’t understand her rules about mail pick-up. The mail was stored in a blue plastic basket on our porch step -- it looked as though Joaquina had left the basket for people to sort through -- and sometimes they simply took their letters out of the basket. If Joaquina caught them in the act, she chastised them. No one except Joaquina was supposed to touch the mail, although the offenders had no way of knowing this.

Joaquina devised relay systems for getting mail to homes outside of central San Pancho. The mail for Casa Caintuckee, for instance, was dropped off with the sister of the housekeeper, who works in Chalupa’s Restaurant in the village. The sister in turn gave the mail to the housekeeper, who then gave it to the homeowners. The complexity of this arrangement may explain why the owners of Casa Caintuckee never received a bank statement.

Joaquina holds a lot of power and she knows that. If the Telmex bill doesn’t get paid on time, for example, telephone and internet service could be cut off. I have seen mature adults beg her for their Telmex bills.

Although Joaquina says her mail delivery job is stressful, it’s clear to me that she enjoys it. I doubt that she will ever resign or retire. She’s not grooming a successor and she has no assistant -- though I might qualify for the job.