Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice

Liliana was a prolific writer. She wrote to preserve her thoughts and build close relationships. It also gave her agency. She preserved her writing and saved mementos, like bus tickets. She left behind a detailed archive of her life that her family kept in boxes after her death, and Rivera Garza has feared opening these due to the painful memories they might unleash. Now, Rivera Garza applies the Danger Assessment tool (a structured evaluation method used to assess an individual’s risk of committing or becoming a victim of violent or homicidal behavior) to Liliana’s archive, looking for evidence of the rising threat to her life. 

Liliana developed a personal and unique style of penmanship and incorporated doodles and stickers into her work. She made careful and deliberate choices about the type of paper and ink she used. She also made copies of the letters she sent and saved those she did not. She wrote daily until her death.

Rivera Garza reflects on her childhood with Liliana, describing her as an “accomplice” as well as a sister. Their parents instilled independence in their daughters, and their family was close-knit, “a volatile sovereign republic of four inhabitants, requiring so little from the outside world” (57). Liliana was younger, and she spent most of her childhood under the blue skies of Toluca. There, she wrote many letters since phone calls offered less privacy and landlines were not common. She corresponded with friends her age as well as family members, including aunts, neighbors, and friends she made via swim meets. She replied to all the letters she received. Teenage Liliana and her female friends most often wrote about love and boys: “The letters were a way of moving forward together, protecting each other as they left behind the solid ground of obedience and docility and childhood” (61-62). The friends often mentioned their deep devotion to and love for one another, noting that they hoped never to be separated. 

Ángel Gonzalez Ramos’s name appears in Liliana’s writing for the first time in June 1984, just before she started high school. She met him at a gym she had joined to gain strength for swimming. They were dating by the conclusion of her first semester of high school, which her archive confirms. She wrote three short, affectionate notes to Ángel in June 1985. Yet her musings in a notebook from a few months later show that her relationship with Ángel “had taken an abrupt turn” (69). She now found him irritating. By August, something else had occurred because Liliana wrote that she had been “too hard on Ángel” (71), though she also wrote that she did not like how he loved her. Liliana did not describe the mysterious incident that prompted these reflections.

Rivera Garza recalls that the “biggest discussion” she shared with her sister concerned love. They were in a car at a market in Toluca; Rivera Garza and her mother had just had an argument, and she remarked angrily that she hated their mother. Liliana rebuked her sister, telling her that she did not know how to love. Rivera Garza felt contempt for love, which she saw as restrictive. Yet she always understood Liliana’s love for her; it was others who garnered her distrust. On the last page of one of her notebooks, Liliana wrote of her longing for peace and intimacy and the inferiority of connections that left her wanting.

Rivera Garza learned about her sister’s relationship with Ángel in 1987, when Rivera Garza was completing a master’s degree at the university in Toluca but living in Mexico City, traveling back and forth frequently to teach a course but avoiding her family’s house. The sisters did not share intimate details about their romantic relationships, but they spoke frequently about love and freedom. Rivera Garza assumed that Ángel was a temporary fixture. He never entered the privacy of their family’s home, but his arrival in his car or on his bike was always noted: “We laughed at him, high-heartedly. We told her: your driver has just arrived, when his car approached our home” (90). 

Liliana’s archive shows that she and Ángel began dating in 1987 and split up, for the first time, in July of the same year. Liliana had several suitors, and Rivera Garza wonders how Ángel managed to “ease himself back into her life” (92). A card from Ángel for Valentine’s Day in 1987 is telling; the front asks the recipient if she knows who loves her, while the inside simply reads, in large letters, “Yo” (“I” in Spanish): “I above all […] Ángel’s ‘I’ rushed out from the card to hit Liliana’s eyes. His ‘I,’ not his love, was both the medium and the message” (93). He love-bombed her with candy and flowers, which Liliana described as Ángel ‘s “vehemence.” 

Rivera Garza wonders if her 16-year-old sister saw the control he sought to exercise over her. Liliana’s writing from May 1987 indicates that she felt uneasy; she describes herself as “hysterical,” indicative of Ángel’s gaslighting. Ángel wrote an apologetic letter later that month. It reveals that he was unfaithful with a young woman named Araceli, whom he calls “that” but does not name. Yet their relationship did not recover, as Liliana’s letter to Ángel from July 26, 1987, indicates: She contrasts the vehemence of his attention against his betrayal, which she finds unexpected. Two days later, Liliana wrote about how she was “in crisis” despite having recently celebrated the milestone of high school graduation. 

Rivera Garza was living, working, and writing in Mexico City during this time. Liliana arrived at her apartment in September 1987 to take the entrance exam for the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM). Two weeks later, she was admitted to the university’s architecture program at the Azcapotzalco campus, and she and her sister began searching for lodging. Ángel jotted a note to Liliana in October, apologizing and expressing frustration at not being able to see her since she moved. He had failed the university’s entrance exam and indicated that he was going to travel to the US before returning to Mexico.

Liliana’s archive contains copies of letters that her father wrote to her while completing his doctorate in Sweden. In one, dated to December 1987, he sends birthday wishes to his daughter and describes her birth as a “beautiful moment.” In another, he gives Liliana advice about her new life as a university student in Mexico City: “You have so much to do in the future” (104). He also expresses fatherly concern for her dramatic life change. He speaks again about her future and the support she will receive from him.

Rivera Garza completed the manuscript for her first book, which her sister influenced. Liliana was dead when Rivera Garza received the San Luis Potosí Award a couple of years later but lives within the manuscript’s pages. 

Another letter from Liliana’s father, dated to April 1988, reveals his concern for his daughter in a large city where she encountered new people about whom her family knew nothing: “What worries me is that whole business of moving to a new house, meeting new people, people we don’t know anything about. Take good care of yourself in that city of Mexico” (109).