Surviving Childhood

Abstract

Childhood is often associated with peace, a world of illusions, and extreme kindness, thus it is thought that children should grow up in a sheltered environment void of any harshness or hardship. The word infant derives from the Latin infans and refers to an undeveloped logical consciousness and an inability to produce speech. Representative of infans, young children are perceived as dependent and powerless, overly influenced by their emotions and consequently defenseless against their fears. At the same time, they rely on the power of their imagination as a means of comfort. Childhood is a period in which small children mature by learning new skills and social structures, as well as acquiring a civic consciousness passed on through parents and school. In accordance with ideas developed in a previous essay by Julia Tuñón, children in classic Mexican cinema have often been represented as a symbol of purity (“La imagen de los niños” 135–48), but what happens when children live in a chaotic world of war and fear where they lose their homes and no longer have the protection of a sheltered environment? This was the case when thousands of families went into exile during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) in order to escape the violence and, later, during the postwar period to escape the persecution of republican sympathizers and supporters.¹ Mexico was one of the countries that welcomed Spanish families and children attempting to escape the consequences of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath.