señora

Jurado’s pitch to the señora: Born and raised in the district.

“Senora,” a cellphone vendor called out, asking what she needed and assuming, perhaps, that she spoke Spanish.

In a city that was once part of the Spanish empire, she was no longer “señora,” as she would have been called in Caracas, or perhaps, in her younger years, “muchacha” or “chama.”

The Nuestra Señora del Pilar cooperative, through which hundreds of Jaén olive farmers produce their oil, is the biggest factory of its kind in the world.

And then I remembered Señora Gilberto’s house, which looked like an absolute wreck ever since her son died, but she still lived there anyway, even if it did freak people out who walked by and saw her rocking on a porch where the steps and railing had fallen off.