Page 7 - IAV Digital Magazine #551

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This Grandma’s Dying Wish Was A Giant Dick On Her Grave
By Nathaniel Janowitz MEXICO CITY — Before her death, 99-year-old Catarina Orduña Pérez had one final wish: a giant statue of a dick on top of her grave.
Her family unveiled the com- pleted monument — a 5-and-a-half- foot-tall cock and balls weighing nearly 600 pounds — mount- ed on her tomb at a cemetery in Mexico this past weekend as a “recognition of her love and joy for life.”
“She wanted to break the para- digm of every- thing Mexican, where things are sometimes hid- den because of not having an open mind,” her grandson Álvaro Mota Limón told VICE World News in an interview. “She was always very avant-garde, very forward- thinking about things.”
Doña Cata, as she was lovingly known throughout the small town of Misantla in the eastern state of Veracruz, had a particular affinity for penises, and
what she believed they represented. “She always said, in the Mexican sense, that we were vergas,” said Mota Limón.
There are few words in Mexican slang as dynamic as “verga,” which is perhaps best translated in English as “cock” due to its general use as a profani- ty. Depending on how it’s phrased, “verga” can be a brutal insult, telling someone to go fuck them- selves (vete a la verga) or that they’re not worth shit (vales verga). Or it can be a
compliment, a badge of honor, that if something is “verga,” it’s cool or badass.
Doña Cata often used it with that sort of colloquial pride when refer- ring to the mem- bers of her family as vergas, according to her grandson; that they were people of moral fortitude, with “integrity, courage, passion, and at the same time, love and joy,” said Mota Limón.
The great-grand- mother had grown up in poverty and not attended
school as a child, but through her hard work and determination became an influ- ential member in the town of Misantla. Politicians often made a point to visit and court her, knowing the clout she wielded in the area.
Doña Cata instilled the mes- sage to her chil- dren, grandchil- dren, and great- grandchildren that they were ver- gas and could accomplish what- ever they wanted, especially the women, in a country steeped in machismo, said Mota Limón. Many members of the family went on to wide-rang- ing careers. His sister got her doc- torate degree. Mota Limón him- self completed two master’s degrees and even became mayor of the town for a period.
Mota Limón recalled how his grandmother “saw life with great optimism and that problems should- n’t overwhelm us.” She concep-
tualized that idea to the family with the metaphor of a penis, meaning when
you’re verga, “one should not give up. When prob- lems arose, you needed to face them head-on.”
Over the years, Doña Cata had told her family and people around Misantla that when she died, she wanted her tomb adorned with a penis. Mota Limón thought it was just Grandma being Grandma: bold, spunky, and play- ful as always. He didn’t think she was serious. But before her death, he asked her about the long- standing request.
“She told me that it was her desire so that no one would forget her and that every- thing we loved about her would be remembered more easily,” he said. After Doña Cata’s death, on Jan. 20, 2021, “we talked as a family and decid- ed to make her dream come true.”
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