The Guadalajara Reporter

Infant bus wreck survivor grew into feisty young girl

Concha Rosales had perhaps sixteen years the day she sent her bay gelding up into the portales of the Rooster’s Soul pulqueria to confront a bocon (loudmouth) who had insulted her. No one could remember any female ever doing something like that. And certainly it was hard to recall seeing such a mature, short-tempered male challenged like that by a sixteen year old. Just about everyone who knew the Rosales family well thought Concha was fiften or sixteen; they didn’t really know for sure.

Because the child who became Concha was the sole survivor when a rattling, hard-used bus that went over the mountain side of a zig-zagging dirt road, no one really knew her age, or her name. Nine days after the accident, Guadalupe (“Lupe”) Rosales had gone to the presidencia municipal (county seat), to see if anyone had claimed the wreaks’ single survivor. An unscathed female infant had been found in the ruins of the naufrago. Because it was the end of the wet season and the driver’s seat, the steering wheel, motor and several passenger seats had landed in a rain-filled arroyo, the Guadalajara journalist who wrote a vivid report of the bus-wreck used a shipwreck noun to give some flavor to the story. He was probably bored by yet another bus wreck. They were very common occurances then, especially during rainy season.

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