Remember, in the story, we are told that Ernesto and his family lived in a small mountain village. In fact, here's a quote from the opening lines of chapter one, Ernesto Galarza recounts,<em> "Unlike people who are born in hospitals, in an ambulance, or in a taxicab, I showed up in an adobe cottage with a thatched roof that stood at one end of the only street of Jalcocotán, which everybody called Jalco for short. </em><em>Like many other small villages</em><em> in the wild.."</em>
His statements show a contrast with the kind of economic system they later discovered in America, because unlike in Mexico where they were mainly involved in farming their life in America involved finding a different source of income.
