Cast: The Family
Rebeca Eunice Perez
Rebeca is four years Adela’s senior. She is a single mother of five and has accepted Adela’s three children as her own as well. She helps her mother with their home-based tortilla business and struggles to make ends meet. After a 9-hour shift of making tortillas and caring for the children at home, she pounds the pavement to make things happen for Adela’s murder case on almost a daily basis. She has countless setbacks along the way, but that only fortifies her fight and keeps her going. She is able to transform her pain into a collective healing process and emerges as a feminist leader in her community.
Adela Chacon Tax
She was murdered in 2007 by an ex-boyfriend at the age of 27 after working at a local restaurant/bar for only a week. Her death is the instigating incident of the story. She was the mother of three and dearly loved by her children, mother, nieces, sisters, neighbors and friends for her bold, jokester attitude. Her absence/presence is felt throughout the film during shots of the city at night, her empty bedroom, the clapping of tortillas, and smoke in the kitchen. The family has very few pictures of her, but she remains present during moments of silence and rhythmic clapping.
Mamita
Adela’s mother can’t forgive herself for allowing her daughter to leave that fateful morning for work. Mamita is an elderly, hardworking woman. She sells tortillas in the open-air market after she makes the early-morning batch. She has gotten ill as a result of her daughter’s violent death and easily breaks into tears.
Rebequita Azucena
Adela’s oldest daughter was ten when her mother was killed; by the end of the film she is thriteen. Rebequita, an exceptionally beautiful child, attempts to be the strong one for her siblings and tries to compensate for her mother’s death. Her testimony is crucial in the trial because she identifies Ricardo as the man that used to harass and threaten her mother. She later becomes the target of a drive-by shooting
Angel
Adela’s second child was six when his mother was killed and by the end of the film he is nine. He is a rambunctious child who acts out to get attention. He tends to fight with other children, refuses to go to school, and throws fits from time to time. He longs her hear his mother’s voice again.
Dania
Adela’s youngest child was just barely a year old when Adela was killed. By the end of the film she is four years old. Dania remembers only what people have told her about Adela.
Cata
The oldest of the four sisters, Cata helps watch the children and takes over the tortilla business from time to time when Rebeca needs to make the rounds.
Aura
The second oldest of the four sisters, Aura helps take the burden off Rebeca as well when she can. She does not go to the cemetery for Day of the Dead because it’s too difficult for her to see Adela’s grave.