MEXICO CITY — In Lilia Rubio’s examine, positioned inside her Mexican-style house within the Condesa neighborhood, there are a number of pictures that bear witness to her private affections and her skilled journey.
Resting on a big picket desk, the interpreter—maybe probably the most often employed by the Mexican Presidency—retains a photograph of herself alongside former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador; one other standing subsequent to Queen Elizabeth II; two extra that includes household teams; and a single portrait that stands out for each its dimension and its significance: that of her mom and father, to whom she says she owes every little thing she is at this time.
How is it that the daughter of a rural household from Jalisco—who migrated out of financial necessity, first to Tijuana and later to Utah—ended up deciphering the phrases of Mexico’s presidents throughout their official conferences with overseas heads of state?
She is 74 years outdated. Petite in stature, she possesses a distinguished bearing and a vibrant, spirited character. Seated at her work desk, she adjusts the lapels of her floral-patterned jacket and displays: “If my dad and mom had the heart—the drive—to depart a small village and launch themselves into that nice journey, passing via Tijuana after which on to the USA, why shouldn’t I?”
Rubio has supported the official deciphering duties—from English to Spanish and vice versa—for the final six Mexican presidents, in addition to for President Claudia Sheinbaum. She has been current throughout their conferences with U.S. Presidents Invoice Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump. She additionally accompanied them of their interactions with different world leaders, similar to Queen Elizabeth II of England, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, amongst others.
However her universe transcends the political sphere. Likewise, she has plied her commerce for rich entrepreneurs, non-governmental organizations, feminist teams, and grassroots actions throughout numerous components of the world.
Rubio says that, because of her occupation, she has traveled to greater than 30 international locations—so many, actually, that she considers herself a citizen of the world. “I’ve all the time been a migrant, actually.”
The interpreter just lately printed a memoir titled Mi voz (Endora, Mexico, 2025), which already has an English version: My Voice (Palabra Nómada, Mexico, 2026).
She wrote about her ancestors from Jalisco and the journeys that led her to the sphere of language interpretation: her household’s battle towards financial hardship in Tijuana; her youthful battles for independence in Utah; and the journey she took via South America with a dissident theater troupe within the Seventies.
Lilia lives with one foot within the Mexican capital and the opposite in the USA, for each skilled and private causes. Consequently, she is intimately accustomed to the binational actuality. She is properly conscious of the raids and violent detentions presently being carried out towards migrants by brokers of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“President Donald Trump wants to understand that issues can’t be dealt with this fashion,” she says.
“Does it damage you to see scenes of those assaults?” I ask her.
“I can’t even have a look at them; I haven’t watched a single scene,” she replies. “I solely have to listen to the start of a information report, and it’s as if the scene performs out proper earlier than my eyes. I image it: the screaming, the chaos, the struggling. I haven’t watched something, and I gained’t. That’s how deeply they damage me.”
FROM JALISCO TO UTAH, VIA TIJUANA
Rubio recounts her life story with ardour. She tells of a time in Spain when a good friend remarked that, watching her stroll, he acquired the impression she got here from a household accustomed to shifting vigorously via the mountains. She advised him he was proper.
“My grandparents and great-great-grandparents roamed the mountains sporting huaraches (sandals)—virtually barefoot—as a result of again within the village, they couldn’t even afford donkeys; or else they used the donkeys to go out to the pastures to work and haul of their crops,” Rubio remembers.
Pushed by that very same willpower, her household migrated to Utah, the place her father, José Rubio, ultimately got here to be acknowledged for his contributions to the group. Resting on her desk is a posthumous crystal award devoted to her father, who handed away in 1998.
Her dad and mom—her father and her mom, Felicitas Zamora—first migrated from Jalisco to Tijuana’s “Purple Zone.” Her father disliked farm work, so he turned a barber as a substitute. As soon as in Tijuana, he discovered work at a birria restaurant, and it was there that the remainder of the household ultimately joined him.
Tijuana was Rubio’s house for the primary ten years of her life. “We lived in these picket shantytowns—among the poorest neighborhoods possible—fully devoid of facilities: no working water, no electrical energy,” she mentioned. “All kinds of transients drifted into that neighborhood—the poorest of migrants, folks with no formal training.”
By way of sheer effort, her household opened their very own birria restaurant. It was there, Rubio remembers, that Mike Malloy, a Mormon missionary, arrived and launched her father to the Church of Latter-day Saints.
“And whereas Dad was prepping the onions and cilantro, the limes and the goat birria, [Malloy] simply talked and talked,” says Rubio. Quickly after, her father turned a Mormon and introduced his household into the fold.
Her mom was involved concerning the setting in Tijuana; her father, about not having sufficient revenue. However their Mormon contacts advised them that in Provo, Utah, a neighborhood restaurant referred to as El Azteca was searching for a prepare dinner. And so, they determined to maneuver.
THE REBELLION OF EL TEATRO CAMPESINO
Her household arrived in Provo. In keeping with Rubio, they have been the one Latin American household on the town again then.
“The Mormons discovered it admirable that Mother and Dad—with their 4 youngsters—had come to a city so removed from Mexico to construct a brand new life. We didn’t communicate English, we had no cash, and our Spanish was that of the peasants from Jalisco,” she defined.
Your entire household labored at El Azteca. Lilia began out as a dishwasher, all whereas attending her new faculty alongside her sisters and studying English.
As Lilia entered her teenage years, she continued to check and work, but she grew more and more stressed together with her household’s conservatism.
However then, sooner or later—she remembers—a younger Chicana lady from the legendary El Teatro Campesino (The Farmworker’s Theater)—based by playwright and actor Luis Valdez—handed via Provo and turned her life the other way up. She advised Lilia that their troupe carried out in California’s agricultural fields, elevating consciousness amongst undocumented farmworkers about their labor rights and the fact of racism.
Lilia had by no means heard of racism earlier than. “[The young woman] advised me that in Utah, we have been dwelling in a really blessed bubble, however that in California, Latino communities confronted persecution—you possibly can be detained only for talking Spanish, and other people lived in fixed worry of immigration raids.”
“That,” she mentioned, “is the place my rise up started.” In Mi Voz, she recounts how she set her plan for independence in movement. Her automobile for doing so was the theater. She participated within the Mormon group’s theater group, adopted by a quick stint within the theater program on the Mexican Social Safety Institute (IMSS) in Tijuana.
On the age of 20, in 1971, she struck out on her personal, breaking away from her household. She moved to Mexico Metropolis, the place she taught English to help herself whereas attending the Nationwide College of Dramatic Arts. She left the varsity after two years to hone her craft via theatrical activism in avenue and group areas. This path ultimately led her to embark on an journey—spending a yr and a half touring throughout South America with a youth-led group devoted to protest theater, which was later joined by Chilean documentary filmmakers from the Informe collective.
In 1976, Lilia determined to quiet down in Mexico. She found—fairly by likelihood—that there was a faculty devoted to interpretation and translation. Unaware that this was a acknowledged occupation, she enrolled within the Institute for Interpreters and Translators, funding her research by persevering with to show English.
Thus started her profession working for numerous language interpretation and written translation businesses; at this time, she works for CM Idiomas. Rubio considers herself the dean of interpreters for presidential groups. Concurrently, for a time, she carried out interpretation and journalistic work for The Wall Road Journal and served as a contributor to the tradition part of the newspaper La Jornada.
INTERPRETING POWER
Whereas Lilia speaks at size when discussing her private historical past, she stays guarded when referring to her employers inside the spheres of political and financial energy. “I’m an lively interpreter,” she states. “Confidentiality is vital; it’s each a contractual and an moral dedication.”
Lately, Rubio accompanied Sheinbaum on her official journey to the 2026 FIFA World Cup draw held on the Kennedy Heart in Washington, D.C. “I used to be there merely for help; she is completely fluent in English,” she notes.
The President has not but met with Trump. Nevertheless, the interpreter has seen the U.S. chief on numerous events—similar to when he visited Mexico as a candidate for the primary time in 2016 to satisfy with Enrique Peña Nieto. “I used to be with López Obrador on each journey the place he met with Trump,” she says. Amongst these was the assembly within the Oval Workplace of the White Home in 2020, throughout which they exchanged baseball bats.
Rubio is anxious concerning the immigration enforcement measures applied by the Trump administration. “We should obtain immigration reform; it’s essential. America can not hold placing it off.”
“We’re witnessing unprecedented instances concerning migration flows worldwide, in addition to within the reactions of the USA, European nations, and Latin American international locations. However migrating is a human proper—and who’s going to cease it?,” says the interpreter.
Laura Castellanos is an impartial Mexican journalist based mostly in Mexico.
The article was edited by Rodrigo Cervantes, @RODCERVANTES
LILIA RUBIO WENT FROM WASHING DISHES IN UTAH TO WORKING WITH INTERNATIONAL HEADS OF STATE. NOW, SHE TELLS HER STORY. was first printed on palabra and was republished with permission.
