The Children of Sanchez

by Oscar Lewis

  The way I figure, if I’m going to die anyway, I ought to treat myself well while I am alive, right? How do I know what will happen to me in the next world? If I have ten pesos in my pocket, and feel like having a sweet, I’ll buy it, even if my other expenses are not taken care of. So that I won’t be left with just my desires, eh? I hate to deny myself little things.

  I have often asked myself, what is worth more at the end of one’s life, the things one has accumulated or the satisfactions one has experienced? I believe that human experience is worth more, no? And although I have worked all my life, now, when I want to go somewhere, I go in a taxi. I never travel in a bus.

  If I go into a restaurant, I don’t order beans. I order a fried steak or a couple of eggs. If I want to sit down, I sit; if I don’t feel like getting up in the morning, I sleep. Yes, the best heritage I can leave my children is to teach them how to live. I don’t want them to be fools … I swear by my mother, I won’t let them become ordinary workers.

  But it wasn’t all easy going at the market. The market administration sometimes asks traders for their credentials, to force us to join a union, see? The market superintendent is in cahoots with all of them. Imagine, to sell second-hand clothing in the Thieves’ Market they ask you for a Social Welfare card, a Department of Health card, a union card, your police record! I have no cards and I’ve had a lot of arguments about it. I resent it, it makes me rebellious, you know what I mean? There I have my merchandise spread out on the floor and the guards come and want to take it away, so I argue with them, see?

  Like once, I had just finished fighting for a spot one Saturday, because every morning when the doors are opened, we have to run to get a good spot. There are no permanent places for the peddlers, the one who gets there first, gets the spot. It’s like those cowboy pictures, when they open the market doors, we all race in like horses. I had just had a violent argument over my spot when the guard comes over and squats down to take the cloth with my merchandise on it.

  “You can pick up this at the office,” he says. “You don’t belong to any organization and you don’t have any card.”

  “Look, you, leave my stuff alone or I’ll knock the shit out of you,” I say. “The market wasn’t built for you sons-of-bitches or for the organizations.”

  “Go talk it over with the superintendent,” he tells me.

  “No,” I say, “he’s just here to collect money for the government. The Constitution says that nobody can prevent another person from working honestly. Why should he count for more than the Constitution? You touch my things and I swear I’ll kick the stuffings out of you.”

  We use strong language here at the market. That’s the way they understand each other, you know what I mean? The one who hollers the loudest is the one who is feared the most.

  Once I had to do something that disgusted me. I had to kick a guy. In the market, we are all braveros, tough guys, and whenever I was making a deal this bravero, “Whitey,” would come over and stick his nose in and would get the merchandise away from me. He tried to lord it over me and when I asked him not to butt in, he answered with dirty language. I tried to avoid a fight and held back, I always kept holding back. Finally, one day I was closing a deal and had the goods in my hands, when this guy “Whitey” took out the money and paid. He said, “Let’s have the goods.”

  “What do you mean? I’m the one making this deal. Who the hell told you to pay for it? Give it to you? I’ll give you shit!”

  “Give it to me or I’ll take it!” says he.

  “I’d just like to see you.” And then, wham! I let him have one right between the eyes. He dropped. He got up and I caught him against the wall and kept hitting him. I knocked off his eyebrow with one punch. He tried to kick me and that made me blind mad. When he was on the ground, I kicked him and his ribs made a funny sound.

  “Poor guy,” I said to myself, but there was the whole bunch from the market around us and I had to finish him off. Otherwise they’d think I was a jackass and they’d keep starting up with me. Even though it was repulsive to me, I kept kicking him, not trying to kill him, of course, but catching him in the side or on the rear end. I didn’t even aim at his face, it was already covered with blood. Finally, he said, “Enough, enough.” I didn’t give him his money back and he never tried anything with me again.

  Since I’ve been working at Tepito, some people have a poor opinion of me. They think that everything in the market is stolen goods. But that’s a lie, yes, a lie. The truth is that only about 50 percent of the stuff sold is crooked. But it’s only little stuff … the handful of tools, the dust mask or rubber boots that the workers rob from the factories, or a bicycle someone stole on the fly. If it’s a radio, it’s the kind that’s practically falling apart. Like everywhere else in the world, the real good “hot” merchandise, the fine radios and machinery, is bought up by the big capitalists. Nobody around Tepito has the money to buy good stuff.

  When I know something is stolen, I usually don’t buy it. In my type of work you have to be somewhat of a psychologist, to know whom you’re buying from. I can always spot a crook, a cop, a dope addict, a prostitute or an innocent.

  The majority of my friends in the market are reformed crooks. They practically have a language of their own, called “caló,” which I understand very well. When a thief wants to sell you something, he says, “Hey, ñero, you wanna buy the swag? Hey, ya c’n have the junk cheap, ya c’n have the crap almost f’r nuddin’.”

  “How much do you want for these things?”

  “Ain’t got no time, wanna make a fast deal, slip me a “sura.”

  A “sura” means twenty-five pesos; a “niche” means fifty; a “cabeza” is a hundred, and a “grande” is a thousand. Some of the expressions are now used by upper-class boys. It’s become sort of a fashion.

  Ten years ago there was more “hot” merchandise in the markets because the police were not so active. Now they consider the place a gold mine and are on permanent duty. Even on their day off they come to the market to see whom they can screw. It’s a business with them. They know that just by putting one of my buddies in the patrol car, they can make themselves twenty, thirty, or fifty pesos. We all feel obligated to give the police money whenever they ask for it.

  In my opinion, the Mexican police system is the best system of organized gangsters in the world. It is a disaster, a filthy thing. I might as well come right out with it, the justice here in Mexico turns my stomach. Why? Because justice is for the one who has the money. When a rich man gets killed, the police don’t let grass grow under their feet, because there is money around. But how many poor guys are found drowned in the canal, stabbed in the back, or lying in the gutter in a dark street, and the police never, but never, solve the crime. And there are people who do two or three years in jail, because they have no one to stand up for them, or because they don’t have fifty pesos for a payoff.

  Most of the police start out wanting to straighten out the world. They start out wanting to be upright and not accept a single centavo. But once they are given the pistol and the shield and have the power and they see that wherever they turn they are offered money … well, it’s a kind of epidemic that hits them. One of the generals of the Revolution once said that the official did not exist who could stand up under a fifty-thousand-peso broadside. And that’s about the size of it. They take a bribe once, then twice, and after that it becomes a habit, a racket.

  Suppose you are robbed of thirty thousand pesos and you go to the Police Department. They register the complaint, but before you leave, someone gets a good-sized tip out of you to “hasten” the investigation. When you pay them off they get active.

  They start by questioning their “goats,” their stool pigeons, about which buyer might have the stolen money or goods. The buyers don’t operate in the markets; they live here today, there tomorrow. The police go to the house of the likely buyer and try to force it out of him. If he doesn’t give it up willingly, he is taken to the station for a “
heating.” Sooner or later the police get the money or the goods, but when you come back to ask about it, they don’t give it to you. They get more money out of you for the “investigation.” You go back and forth to the Police Department, but your stolen goods don’t appear.

  The police agents have their own buyers of stolen goods, who they sell your stuff to after they find it. Some policemen come personally to the market to sell “hot” articles. I have bought things from them, because it is safe, since they represent Justice, no?

  Two or three times I bought “hot” things from crooks. It was risky, but if things were bad with me financially I’d think over the possibilities of getting into a jam and take a chance. But most of the stuff I bought was not worth much.

  I wasn’t lucky all the time, even when I was acting within the law. One time I bought a radio chassis; it worked but it had no case. I bought it from a fellow peddler for fifty-five pesos and since we don’t cheat each other, I didn’t even test it. I left the market and this pal grabs me, this cop, whom we call “the Bird.” He’s a guy who isn’t good enough even to be a cop. He is very fat and always has one cuff of his pants higher than the other. His coat is so greasy you could scrape it with a knife. He isn’t wearing a disguise either, he is just a character, a dirty rastrero. He grew up in the market but since he became a cop he gives himself all kinds of airs.

  “Let’s see the bill of sale,” he says.

  “Look,” I say, “it has no bill of sale because it’s just a chassis.”

  “Get in, you bastard,” he says. He had three crooks in his patrol car already.

  I tried to talk my way out of it but he took it badly. “So you’re, giving me lip in the bargain,” he says.

  “No, but you want to bleed me and I’m not even out of line.”

  We drove off and I heard the crooks bargaining with him. He wanted five hundred pesos from the first one and two hundred from the second one. We made several stops so the crooks could collect the money. He let those two go. To the last one, “the Bird” said, “Okay, kid. It’s a long time since you signed in … a long time since I picked a flower in your garden. Let’s get up to date, what do you say?”

  This guy says, “No, boss. I’ve been in bad shape … really bad off … I haven’t been out to work at all.”

  “Yes,” says the cop, “you look like you’re dragging your ass. Well, if you’re that bad off, get out and get me twenty-five pesos.”

  And there I am listening to all this. When all the business was finished we drove to the Precinct and entered through the basement. “The Bird” then says, “You know what the story is? Two hundred pesos.”

  “Well, what do you know!” I say. “Justice is progressing! You let the guy who is really a crook go for twenty-five pesos and for this dumb jerk who is trying to earn a living, the rap is two hundred. You are going to screw me, no matter what. No, I haven’t even got that kind of money.”

  Well, we talked and talked and I had an answer for everything. Finally, he said if I didn’t kick in with some loose change he would book me on suspicion. I offered him fifty pesos, all I had on me.

  “All right, all right, let’s have it and get the hell out of here.”

  Once I was really caught red-handed by the police and it cost me plenty. I didn’t know what I was getting into that time. I had a partner by the name of “the Bull,” and we had money in our pockets then. What with the merchandise and cash, “the Bull” and I had about ten thousand pesos. We were on the corner, one day, selling old clothes. I was yelling: “Buy old clothes cheap … pick up something … take something home … right over here …”

  There I was, shouting my head off, when Macario, the janitor’s son, comes over. He was an old friend of mine and had married a girl of the Casa Grande and now had a son. He looked real beat, his clothes all patched, flat broke, because he hadn’t worked for a long time. We had worked together in the leather factory and I always knew him for an honest person.

  “Manuel,” he says, “damn it, lend me something for today’s food, will you?” He was with two other friends. “Lend me five pesos, brother, can you?”

  “Sure, Macario.” I thought, “What can this poor devil do with five pesos? Five pesos, so easy to get and so easy to spend …”

  “Look, Macario, take ten pesos. God has been good, maybe tomorrow I’ll need you.”

  “Thanks a lot, brother,” he says. “Damn it, Manuel, I can’t seem to get work. In the tannery it’s very scarce.” He started to leave, then he said, “Look, Manuel, I almost forgot the main thing I came for. Do you see the guy in the red cap?”

  So I turn and look at the guy with him. “Well?”

  “Look,” says Macario, “his wife and the wife of another guy were going to set up a dressmaking shop, but since this fellow drinks and got drunk for fifteen days straight, his partner made off with the machines and five thousand pesos in cash. The only thing left was a batch of cloth they had bought to make aprons. They want to sell it.”

  When it’s a matter of business, I get suspicious right away. I trusted Macario but, you know, just in case, I went through the usual routine of asking questions.

  “No, Manuel, hell! after you doing me a favor do you think I’m going to saddle you with something hot? This boy is honest. He works in the tannery with me and I guarantee he is honest.”

  I talked it over with my partner and we decided to buy the cloth at one peso a meter. There were 1,800 meters and I had to go to pick it up.

  When I got to the vecindad I found that the guy had gone out for a drink. His mother was there, an old, respectable white-haired lady. There was the cloth, brand-new and all tied up in steel strips. I chatted with the lady for a while, then I came out with it.

  “Look, lady, talking straight now,” I say to her, “aren’t … maybe … isn’t this stuff hot? You know, if something’s wrong, the cops come screwing around and then we end up working for those bastards. Look, I really don’t want to get into trouble, lady, sincerely.”

  She got red in the face and bawled me out good. She said, “Señor, if you have any suspicions you just better not buy it. We are poor but honest here! I’ll guarantee that, I’ll swear that before anyone. All of you in the market are suspicious. The lion thinks everyone is like himself.” She really let me have it.

  “O.K., lady, don’t get mad. If they’re hot, I’d buy them anyhow. But you have to tell me where they’re from, because if they’re from around here, how can I sell them here? The owner is bound to show up. I’d go to Toluca or to Pachuca to sell them. I’m not asking because it frightens me. Nothing frightens me. The dead don’t frighten me.” I was thinking that if she told me it’s hot, I wouldn’t touch the stuff. I just wanted to get the truth out of her. But she just bawled me out, and I was convinced it was really straight, see? So I bought it.

  Well, there we were selling the cloth. “Come on and buy it at one-fifty a meter. Cloth for sale, cheap!” A man comes up and buys six hundred meters. “Oh, son-of-a-bitch,” I say, “three hundred pesos in one damned swoop. We’re going to make money here.” I started shouting, “Cloth here, two pesos a meter!” It sold quickly. It got so I couldn’t measure so many meters at the same time. That morning we sold over a thousand meters!

  In the afternoon again we spread our canvas on the ground and sold some more, tranquilly. Macario had come to help us sell, but he was timid.

  “Shout, Macario, go on, you son-of-a-bitch,” I said, “don’t be afraid. I suppose you’re ashamed … be ashamed of stealing, not of selling, brother. Look, business is fun, it’s more fun than working. Yell a little.” That’s what I told him. It was a good market, at its height. All the ladies were out buying their little chiles and tomatoes. By six in the afternoon I had 1,800 pesos in my pocket.

  At that time I was eating at a certain café, where I was a friend of Gilberto and Carolina, the owners. As soon as I turned the corner to go to the café, a man embraces me. “Now we’re really screwed!” I thought. I tell y
ou I can smell them! I can smell a cop, I can pick them out with my nose. I had never seen that agent, but right away I knew.

  He asked about the cloth, all right. He held me close to him and we kept walking toward the patrol car. The cops had been waiting for me at the café all day, but Carolina hadn’t sent anyone to warn me because the police would have followed. I didn’t think the cloth was hot, and I still don’t. But the cops have a special way of working here.

  Well, when we got to the car, this character wasn’t embracing me any more. He clutched me by the belt. He really was not a bad sort, for a cop.

  He said, “Well, if it’s not what we’re looking for, please excuse me, but in our line of work we make lots of mistakes.”

  I was surprised. The cops are always so arbitrary and here was such a decent bastard! “What stuff is he smoking?” I wondered. He got me into the car and I kept explaining how I got into the cloth deal.

  “Ay, Manuelito,” he says—he was already calling me Manuelito—“it’s going to be damned messy, because the creditor wants the cloth or three thousand pesos, and we want two thousand.”

  “Ay, no,” I say, “no, then there’s no way out and I’m screwed.”

  “No,” he says, “it’s not worth it, Manuel. Think of the consequences. You’ll get a prison record and then … just for a few pesos that you could dig up somewhere.”

  “But it’s five thousand pesos you want! That’s all! In my whole stinking life I never saw five thousand pesos.” Well, there we go, off to the Police Station. On the way, they picked up a few other friends, some pickpockets. They took their money and let them go. My cop friend kept talking.

  “Think of the consequences. Money comes and money goes but, well, you’re in real trouble. The creditor is powerful and he wants the cloth.”