Persistence and Love
Cristina Rodríguez Bremer and Soco García Domínguez were acquainted, as evident from their meeting at the iconic Bar Esquina in Cabo San Lucas. What was initially intended as a scheduled interview turned into a heartfelt conversation between old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a long time. It seemed like they got together to reminisce and relive old memories.
Around 15 years ago, when Tendencia was just a project, Soco with Diana, Romina, and Claudia, founding partners of Tendencia, sought out Cristina for advice. Cristina, a hotel businesswoman, provided books, reference materials, and anecdotes from Baja California Sur to support the initial Tendencia team, solidifying a warm friendship. Since then, Cristina has been a part of the editorial board, and it’s an honor to have her close involvement.
Soco currently lives in Holland, but we were fortunate to have her visit us in Los Cabos and coincide those days so she could guide the conversation with her usual grace. The beauty of this conversation was realising that Cristina’s story is worthy of a magical realism book. We reviewed some milestones of her life, and each one was more surprising than the other.
Cristina is a well-known hotel entrepreneur. In 1994, she became the first female member of Grupo Madrugadores (“Group of Early Risers”). In February of this year, she was appointed as the annual coordinator of this analysis group. The group focuses on establishing constructive dialogues with influential people across the public, private, NGO, and community sectors. The members of Grupo Madrugadores have excelled in their professional work and are recognized for their intellectual and moral integrity.
Grupo Madrugadores
Soco: What does it mean to you to be the annual coordinator of Grupo Madrugadores, after being the first woman to participate 30 years ago?
Cristina: “For me, it is a total honor. I don’t think I deserve it, but it has been a learning experience, and I immensely enjoyed it. But I have enjoyed it very much because I feel that a group of friends has impacted me, working for a city you love. We must see who we will invite and what topic we will discuss. This year, they opened another group in Cabo San Lucas; the more people care about what is happening in the community, the better. Something curious is that La Paz still has no women participating in Grupo Madrugadores yet.”.
Soco: And what was the social context of Los Cabos in the ’90s?
Cristina: “One of the main reasons the group organized in those days was the Estero de San José (San José Estuary). Now, it happens to be in worse condition than ever, and we are once again looking at what can be done because everyone “washes their hands of it.” And there it is: the Estero is dying”.
Growing up in nature
“I’m better this way,”, The interviewee says graciously, dropping her sandals and feeling the freshness of the ground on her feet, au naturel, as it has always been in Cristina’s life.
Her father, Abelardo l. Rodríguez Montijo, was an aviator pilot educated in the United States. In 1948, during one of his exploration flights to the south of the peninsula, he glimpsed the extraordinary natural beauty of a place known as Las Cruces in front of Cerralvo island, near La Paz.
The place always attracted him, where he built Rancho Las Cruces. It’s where Cristina grew up and had a happy childhood by the sea until ten when she moved to San Diego for the first time to go to school with her siblings. “By that time, my \Dad realized he had four illiterate children, and none of us knew anything about school, so it was traumatic”, says Cristina, bursting into laughter. Don Abelardo Rodríguez Montijo, a visionary and pioneer of tourism in Baja California Sur, also founded the Palmilla hotel in 1956 and the hacienda hotel in 1962 in Los Cabos.
Soco: What was it like for you to integrate in San Diego after living in Las Cruces?
Cristina: “It was tough to leave there and still hard for me. You can see that I still wear sandals. I lived in total freedom, in a paradise. To begin with, I had to wear shoes with socks and a uniform and go to a school run by nuns. Living in San Diego meant surviving and waiting for vacations to return to my homeland. But I had the advantage that my mother was American, and she spoke English to us. So, although the transition was challenging, it was not so complicated”.
From Italy to Hotels
Cristina, the granddaughter of mexican president Abelardo Rodríguez and the daughter of Lucille Bremer, an american actress and dancer who left her career in hollywood to settle in La Paz with her husband, moved to Italy to study linguistics at the university of Florence. “When I turned 16, as a gift, my mom took me on one of those trips where you visit a different country each day. When we arrived in Florence, I thought, ‘This is where I’m from, and this is where I want to return one day.’ When I was 19, I came back,” she says. It was the first time in her life that she didn’t hear the sea when she went to bed. She remembers that there was a magnificent river and that it was a wonderful experience, “but there comes a time when you miss these spaces and the sea.” In 1976, she returned to Baja California Sur with her husband, Giorgio Battaglia, who immediately fell in love with the place.
Soco: What made you come back?
Cristina: “Mainly my dad, because I have been in Europe for almost six years, and he told me, “Well, here I am, working hard in the hotels, between Hacienda, Palmilla, and Rancho Las Cruces and none of you are here to help me”. When I arrived, I brought my almost-husband because we got married in San Diego, and of course, he fell in love with the place, too. I have already brought my little piece of Italy with me. And so, we started in the hotel business. I didn’t know what I would be assigned to do, but the current manager of the Palmilla Hotel was not coming back, so my father told me: “You are going to Palmilla, and you are the manager”. My only experience was living in a hotel all my life. Palmilla had been open for 20 years, and I was on my own; it was a family business. The most beautiful thing about hotels, for me, is being able to share and help guests have fun with the community.”
Soco: What family values do you consider essential for the success of hotels?
Cristina: Persistence and loving what you do, of course.
Family and Legacy
Cristina’s life revolves around her family as a proud mother and grandmother. She fondly mentions her gratitude for her son being “a choyero.” she describes him as not easily influenced. She also notes that her daughter is more open-minded. Their typical weekend involves enjoying the beach, which happens to be where she lives. She humorously refers to her living situation as “a little corner of what was left of Palmilla” and appreciates the privilege of living there. Cristina laughs while recalling her father’s teachings about independence, stating that he always emphasized the importance of autonomy, especially for women. He would advise her not to depend on a man or even on him.
Soco: What did you admire about your father?
Cristina: “Well, family, as I have already said, is the most important thing. What has stayed with me the most about my father is that I have never seen a person work as hard as he did. From day to night, he would bring and take his employees. He would search for them and go to the ranchería to find workers. He even polished the floors of Palmilla and Las Cruces himself. He would seek out things and bring aluminium doors in his plane.
He had to build the hotel and an airstrip to welcome guests from Rancho Las Cruces and Hotel Palmilla. The current marina used to be the location of the Hacienda Hotel’s airstrip. We didn’t get in a car to come here. Reaching the hotel required a four-hour drive, at best, from San José del Cabo to Cabo San Lucas.
My dad lived life the way he wanted. He once said that his best efforts in his whole life had been what he did here and that everything he had managed to do in life was for us. He said he would live to be 100, and he died on the day he turned 100. He even accomplished that.”
Soco: And what did you admire about your mother?
Cristina: “My mother exuded grace and elegance even though she lived a simple life in Las Cruces after leaving behind her Hollywood stardom. She was fearless and managed to raise four rambunctious plebes. My mom was pragmatic and resourceful; if one of us got something in our eye, she would say, “Just go swim in the ocean with your eyes open.” I truly admire and love her for that. Although my parents eventually divorced after many years, my mother never found love with anyone else.”
Soco: What do you want your children to remember about you and put into practice in their lives?
Cristina: “I hope they will always stay together. Nothing bothers me more than seeing siblings fight, so I tell them, you guys stick together, whatever it takes!”
