Columba Bush’s painful, unlikely road from Mexico toward the White House

In Mexico, Columba, now 61, is sometimes spoken of as a real-life Cinderella. There is pride here that the daughter of a local farmer joined one of the most powerful political families in U.S. history. But like many fairy tales, hers has storylines of secrecy, trauma and sadness.

Her early years were defined by a tortured relationship with her father — one that both connects her to the roiling immigration debate and helps explain why ending domestic violence is a cause to which she is passionately and personally committed.

“She could be a powerful voice against domestic violence” because of what happened in her own home growing up, said ­Beatriz Parga, a Colombian author of a 2004 book about Columba published in Spanish.

Parga’s book — “Columba Bush: the Cinderella of the White House” — offers accounts from Columba about how her father battered her mother and intimidated her. Its cover declares, in smaller letters: “It’s too late, Papa.”

According to both sides of the family, Columba’s parents had a loveless, stormy relationship. Her mother, Josefina Gallo Esquivel, came from a wealthier family in León.

Their marriage formally dissolved in 1963, leaving their shy, deeply religious 10-year-old daughter feeling stigmatized and set apart from other children in a conservative Catholic city.

“When my parents divorced, it was a really big deal for their families and friends. To get divorced in the sixties in Mexico was a sin,” Columba said in “Mamá,” a 2003 collection of essays about Latinas and their mothers.

Over the years, Columba has offered few details of her childhood. She said her father deserted his family in Mexico when she was small, leaving an impression that she never saw him after that and that she did not visit the United States until Jeb swept her off her feet.

As is often the case with broken families, there are conflicting versions of what went wrong.

Members of her father’s family in Mexico — a half-dozen of whom were interviewed by The Washington Post — insist that he was very much a part of Columba’s life when she was growing up. They say she visited him more than once in La Puente, Calif., outside Los Angeles, and even lived with him for a while in her late teens, as her romance with Jeb was blooming.

A cousin, Abdon Garnica Yebra, recalls picking almonds with her one weekend, when she visited California for the summer.

Columba’s father provided financial support and arranged for his daughter to obtain the legal documents she needed to settle in the United States, several relatives said.

Records indicate that Columba was issued a Social Security card in California in 1966. But it is not clear when she obtained a green card, and the Bushes declined to provide the date.

Garnica’s relatives say she became estranged from him around the time she started getting serious about Jeb.

“When Columba met Jeb, she stopped talking to her father,” said Antonia Morales Garnica, 65, who was married to Jose Maria for 30 years until he died. “He suffered.”