Isabel Santana—Mexico

A young woman grows by study and faith at the Church school in Mexico City

Far from Home

In 1966, fourteen-year-old Isabel Santana was overwhelmed by her new surroundings. She had just left her home in Ciudad Obregón, a city in northern Mexico, to attend the Centro Escolar Benemérito de las Américas, a Church-owned school in Mexico City. The capital was a sprawling metropolis of seven million people, and everyone seemed to dress and speak differently than the people she knew back home.

Isabel Santana’s student photo from Centro Escolar Benemérito de las Américas. (Church History Library, Salt Lake City.)

The way they said “please,” “thank you,” and “excuse me” was so formal. That was not how people spoke in the north.

The restored gospel had taken root in Mexico in the 1800s, and the country now had two strong stakes. Over the past two decades, the number of Latter-day Saints in Mexico had grown from about five thousand to more than thirty-six thousand.

As membership increased, Church leaders wanted to make sure the rising generation of Mexican Saints received every opportunity for schooling and occupational training. In 1957, the First Presidency appointed a committee to investigate education in Mexico and make recommendations for establishing Church schools throughout the country. Finding that urban areas did not have enough schools to accommodate Mexico’s booming population, the committee proposed opening at least a dozen primary schools across the country, as well as a secondary school, junior college, and teacher training school in Mexico City.

At the time, the Church operated schools in New Zealand, Western Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, Tahiti, and Fiji. By the time it opened two primary schools in Chile a few years later, the Church also had education efforts underway in Mexico. When Isabel arrived in Benemérito, some thirty-eight hundred students were enrolled in the Church’s twenty-five primary schools and two secondary schools in Mexico.

Benemérito was a three-year secondary school. It opened in 1964 on a 287-acre farm north of Mexico City. Isabel had first learned about the school while attending a Church-run primary school in Obregón. Although she did not like living more than a thousand miles from her home and family, she was eager to attend classes and learn new things.

Benemérito’s gymnasium and auditorium, Mexico City, circa 1968.

The school was staffed entirely by Latter-day Saint teachers from Mexico. Students took required classes in Spanish, English, math, geography, world history, Mexican history, biology, chemistry, and physics. They could also enroll in art, physical education, and technology classes. The seminary program, which operated separately from the school, provided students with religious education.

Isabel’s father, who was not a member of the Church, supported her desire to attend Benemérito and agreed to allow her and her sister Hilda to enroll together. Hilda was a year younger, but she and Isabel had been in the same grade since primary school because Isabel did not want to go to school alone.

Isabel and Hilda had traveled to Benemérito with their mother. The school was still partly under construction when they arrived, with dirt grounds, few school buildings, and fifteen cottages for students to live in. Even so, Isabel was struck by the size of the campus.

She and her group were directed to house number two. There they were warmly welcomed by a cottage supervisor, who showed them the washing machines, wardrobes for storing their belongings, and bedrooms, each with two bunk beds. The four-bedroom house also had a dining room, kitchen, and living room.

Isabel spent much of her time observing the other students and trying to adapt to an unfamiliar culture. Benemérito had around five hundred students, most of them from southern Mexico. Their life experiences were different from Isabel’s, and she found that their food was also more diverse. She was surprised by the spicier flavors and choice of ingredients.

Whatever the cultural differences, every student at Benemérito was expected to abide by the same rules. They followed a strict routine of waking up early, doing chores, and attending classes. They were also encouraged to develop strong spiritual habits, like going to church and praying. Having grown up in a mixed-faith family, Isabel and her sister had never done these things regularly until they came to Benemérito.

Within a few days of her arrival, Isabel noticed some students growing homesick and leaving. But despite the newness of the people, food, and customs, she was determined to stay and succeed.

See the full text in Gospel Library for notes and source citations.

Safe and Sound at School

In early October 1968, Isabel Santana was in her second year at Benemérito de las Américas. The Church school now had twelve hundred students—more than twice what it had when Isabel arrived there—and an expanding campus with a new auditorium-gymnasium, a small grocery store, two shop buildings, a reception center, and thirty-five more residential cottages. When President N. Eldon Tanner came to Mexico City earlier in the year to dedicate the new buildings, the Tabernacle Choir had also come to perform at the service.

Isabel and her younger sister Hilda had adapted quickly to life at the school. Isabel was naturally shy, but she refused to let her shyness get in the way of her education. She made a close friend, learned to navigate the cultural differences she encountered, and did her best to talk to people she didn’t know.

She also established herself as a diligent student. She regularly sought the advice of teachers and administrators at the school. One of these mentors, Efraín Villalobos, had attended Church schools in Mexico as a young man before studying agronomy at Brigham Young University. He had a good sense of humor, and Isabel and the other students at Benemérito found him to be very relatable. Far from home, they looked to him as a tutor, guide, and father figure.

Another teacher who inspired her was Leonor Esther Garmendia, who taught physics and mathematics at the school. During Isabel’s first year, Leonor had asked her students to raise their hands if they liked math. Many hands went up. She asked who did not like the subject. Isabel raised her hand.

“Why don’t you like it?” Leonor asked.

“Because I don’t understand it,” Isabel said.

“You’ll understand it here.”

The work in Leonor’s class was not easy. But sometimes she would give the class an assignment and then ask each student to come to her desk to work out math problems with her. Before long, Isabel was able to figure out the problems in her head—an ability she never thought she would have.

Like many of her classmates, Isabel balanced school with work responsibilities. The Church covered most of the educational costs to keep tuition low. To pay the rest, some students cleaned buildings or worked at the school’s on-site dairy. Isabel had found a job as a telephone switchboard operator for the school. Hour after hour, she sat in a narrow phone box and connected calls across campus using a switchboard with pins and numbers. The work was simple, and she often brought a book to help pass the hours.

At the time, university students across the globe were protesting against their governments. In Mexico City, many students took to the streets to demonstrate for more economic and political justice. They also resented the influence of the United States on Mexican leaders. In the students’ minds, the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union was an opportunity for powerful nations to dominate their smaller, more vulnerable neighbors.

Complicating matters, Mexico City was preparing to host the Summer Olympics—the first Olympics ever held in a Latin American country. Tensions reached a peak on October 2, 1968, ten days before the Olympics, when Mexican armed forces fired on demonstrators in Mexico City’s Tlatelolco Square, killing nearly fifty people. In the weeks that followed, authorities arrested leaders of the student movement while both the government and the media tried to downplay the brutality of the Tlatelolco massacre.

Benemérito was close to the bloodshed, and Isabel sorrowed when she learned about the killings. But she felt safe at the school, where most students and teachers did not get involved in political protests.

One afternoon, though, a man called the school and threatened to steal its buses. Isabel was scared, but she didn’t panic. “Who is speaking?” she asked.

The caller hung up.

Unsure what to do, she inserted a pin into the switchboard and called Kenyon Wagner, the director of the school.

“Isabel,” he said, “we are going to take care of it.”

The call turned out to be an empty threat, and Isabel was relieved that nothing bad happened. Benemérito had become her oasis, a peaceful place where she could study the gospel and get an education.

While she was there, she knew she would be protected.

See the full text in Gospel Library for notes and source citations.

Here You Have a Place

After graduating at the top of her class from the secondary school at Benemérito, Isabel Santana returned to her hometown of Ciudad Obregón in northern Mexico. She was not sure what she wanted to do next. She could go back to Benemérito and enroll in the three-year preparatory school, which was designed to ready students for university. But she was seriously considering staying home and attending the local public preparatory school instead.

Isabel’s father was content to let her make her own decision about school. Her mother, however, was not keen on her going to school in Obregón, worried she would get caught up in some radical student movement in the area.

“If she stays here,” her mother thought, “she’s going to become a revolutionary like everybody else.”

Still uncertain, Isabel asked Agrícol Lozano, her civics teacher and the director of the preparatory school at Benemérito, for advice. He encouraged her to return and take the entrance exam.

“Come immediately,” Agrícol told her. “Here you have a place.”

Isabel returned to Mexico City, passed the exam, and was accepted. But she was unsure if she had made the right choice, especially after an aptitude test revealed that she was suited for social work—a career she had no interest in pursuing.

“I’m leaving,” she announced to Efraín Villalobos, her trusted mentor, one day. “I don’t want to be in the preparatory school.”

“No, no, no,” Efraín said. “Your place is here.” He encouraged her to try Benemérito’s teacher training school. Rather than prepare students only for university, the three-year school was also designed to prepare them for teaching at Church-operated schools in Mexico. That meant Isabel would immediately have a job when she completed her coursework.

Efraín’s words persuaded her, and she switched schools.

She quickly came to like the courses and her teachers. During the first years, she took general education classes as well as courses on teaching techniques, educational psychology, and the history of education. Her training was in educating children, and during her last year at teacher training school, she spent a week teaching at a Church-run elementary school in Monterrey, a city in northeastern Mexico. Isabel had never felt a strong nurturing instinct, and she worried that she lacked the patience to work with children, but the week went well.

While in teacher training school, Isabel became good friends with Juan Machuca, a young man from Mexico’s western coast who had recently served in the North Mexican Mission. Some of their classmates teased them about being a couple. Isabel laughed and said Juan was the last man she would marry. “He is my friend,” she insisted. “I’m not going to marry my friend.”

Juan Machuca’s student card from Centro Escolar Benemérito de las Américas, circa 1971. (Church History Library, Salt Lake City.)

After graduation, however, they were both hired to teach seminary and institute at Benemérito. They shared a classroom, and before long, they began going to the movies and spending more time together. In early 1972, as Isabel and Juan chatted in her living room, Juan suddenly asked, “Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” she replied, no trace of hesitation in her voice.

They married civilly in May, during the summer holidays. A few weeks later they traveled fourteen hundred miles with other Church members to the temple in Mesa, Arizona, to receive their temple blessings. The three-day bus ride was stifling as they sat on plastic seats and had no air conditioner.

But the discomfort was worth it. Mesa was the first temple to offer ordinances in Spanish, and at the time it was the closest temple to Church members in Mexico and Central America. For these Saints, the journey was long and required them to make great sacrifices. They often made the trip to take part in an annual conference of Latin American Church members hosted by the stakes in Mesa. These conferences lasted several days and blessed participants with a sense of belonging and spiritual community.

Once Isabel and Juan arrived at the temple, they received their endowment and then were sealed together for time and eternity. As they worshipped there, they felt the temple enrich their perspective on life and deepen their commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

See the full text in Gospel Library for notes and source citations.

I Belong to This

On August 26, 1972, Isabel Santana and her husband, Juan Machuca, could feel the excitement in the air as they parked their yellow Volkswagen outside the Auditorio Nacional in Mexico City. More than sixteen thousand Saints from Mexico and Central America had converged on the large event center for an area general conference. For many, the conference would be their first time hearing general authorities speak in person.

The Church had begun holding area general conferences under the direction of President Joseph Fielding Smith. Since most Church members could not attend general conference in Salt Lake City, the local conferences gave them an opportunity to gather together and receive instruction from local and general authorities. The first area general conference had been held in Manchester, England, in 1971. With more than eighty thousand Church members, Mexico was home to the largest population of Saints outside the United States, making it an ideal place to hold such a conference.

Isabel and Juan were amazed as they made their way to the event center. There were Church members from all over Mexico and as far away as Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Panama. Some of the Saints had traveled three thousand miles to be there. One woman from northwestern Mexico had scrubbed her neighbors’ laundry for five months to earn enough money to make the trip. Some Saints had paid their way by selling tacos and tamales, washing cars, or doing yardwork. Others had sold belongings or borrowed money so they could come. A few people were fasting because they did not have money for food. Fortunately, Benemérito provided lodging for many of the Saints from far away.

As the Machucas waited in line to enter the auditorium, a car pulled up nearby, and out stepped Spencer W. Kimball and his wife, Camilla. Four months had passed since Elder Kimball’s heart surgery, and he had already recovered enough to resume many of his responsibilities in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. In fact, he was scheduled to address the Saints later that afternoon.

Although President Joseph Fielding Smith had helped plan the conference, he had passed away before he could attend. His death marked the end of decades of a long and devoted life of service on behalf of the Church and its members. As an apostle, he had written widely on gospel doctrine and historical topics, promoted genealogical and temple work, and dedicated the Philippines and Korea for the preaching of the gospel. As Church president, he authorized the first stakes in Peru and South Africa, dramatically increased seminaries and institutes around the world, revitalized the Church’s public communications, and professionalized Church departments.

“There is no work that any of us can engage in that is as important as preaching the gospel and building up the Church and kingdom of God on earth,” he had told the Saints at his final general conference. “And so we invite all our Father’s children, everywhere, to believe in Christ, to receive Him as He is revealed by living prophets, and to join The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

His successor, Harold B. Lee, had since been set apart as president of the Church, making Elder Kimball the new president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

Once Isabel and Juan gained entrance to the Auditorio Nacional, they found seats among the thousands of Saints. The auditorium had four tiers of seating around a stage area. A choir of Church members from northern Mexico filled the stand. In front of them was a pulpit and a section of high-backed chairs for the general authorities and other speakers.

The conference opened with a talk from President Marion G. Romney, who had been born and raised in the Latter-day Saint colonies in northern Mexico and had recently been made a counselor in the First Presidency. Speaking in Spanish, he told them of his love for the Saints of Mexico and Central America and his appreciation for the Mexican government.

President N. Eldon Tanner then spoke, celebrating the strength of the Church in Mexico and the other Spanish-speaking nations of the Americas. “Growth is taking place, and leadership is being developed throughout the world,” he declared through an interpreter. To assist these developing leaders, the Church’s General Handbook of Instructions had recently been correlated and translated into over a dozen languages, including Spanish. Leaders across the world could administer the Church according to the same pattern.

“It is marvelous to see how people are accepting the gospel and coming into the Church and kingdom of God,” President Tanner testified, “all bearing testimony to the blessings that it affords them, realizing that it is the Church of Jesus Christ.”

Listening to the speakers made Isabel feel glad to be a Mexican Latter-day Saint. Her education at Benemérito had taught her the value of being a Church member, of making the restored gospel a central part of her life. When she first arrived at the school, she had been a timid girl without a clear sense of her spiritual potential. But her teachers had blessed her in countless ways. She had developed a daily routine of study and prayer, and she walked with confidence and a fervent testimony of truth.

Now, surrounded by so many Saints, she couldn’t help but rejoice. “I’m from here,” she thought. “I belong to this.”

See the full text in Gospel Library for notes and source citations.