Oaxaca appears in Maria Elena Dominguez’s history as the location of a Franciscan-run orphanage outside Matías Romero, a temporary refuge that she never accepted as home. Its role in the narrative is part of the displacement that followed her family’s destruction in Chiapas and preceded her transfer farther north to El Asilo Seguro.

Setting and Context

The orphanage stood on the outskirts of Matías Romero in Oaxaca. Maria Elena arrived there several days after soldiers killed her father and took her mother and older brother away. An older driver had given her food during the journey; afterward, the orphanage became the first of several institutions through which she was moved.

Maria Elena’s Experience

In retrospect, Maria Elena could recognize that the orphanage was not as bad as the places that followed. But she did not think of herself as an orphan and refused to remain there. She ran away twice, and each time she was found and returned without making it home to Chiapas. On her third attempt, she was caught and sent to a juvenile detention center in Colima.

Narrative Significance

Oaxaca marks an intermediate stage in Maria Elena’s displacement: it offered shelter, but not a home she could accept or a route back to her family. Her repeated attempts to leave show that the institutional label of orphan did not match her understanding of herself. The transfer from the orphanage to detention, and eventually to El Asilo Seguro outside Hermosillo, establishes a progression toward increasingly unsafe confinement.