by Oscar Lewis
Well, Baltasar and I got along very well together. He called me “tu” right off, and that made me feel more relaxed with him. He devoted himself to showing me around Acapulco, I accompanied him to the slaughterhouse, to the movies and to the cantinas. In fact, he made me go wherever he went.
One evening, I wanted a beer. “But let’s go where we can dance or where there is a sinfonola, because I don’t like a place that resembles a morgue.”
“Well,” he said, “then let’s go to the ‘zone’ where my sister works.”
“Your sister? And just what is your sister?” The “zone” was where all the prostitutes were, and I was full of curiosity about this. How was it possible that …?
“Come, you’ll see. Calm down, we’re almost there. Marta knows that I have a sister working here. Luisa is one of the finest whores around, but I don’t see her often.”
Well, we arrived and Luisa looked just right for that place. That is, her body was not very deformed, let us say. She sat with us and we drank many beers. I had to pay for it all, including the extra charge Luisa made for her company. Baltasar bawled her out for charging to drink with her brother and brother-in-law. So she said, “No, brother, you should understand that this is my business … if you don’t want me to work in a place like this, then pay to get me out!” Anyway, I handed over the money and we left.
I didn’t remain in Acapulco more than three days on my first visit because I felt uncomfortable eating off them. Besides, I was working in a factory at home and I wanted to get back before I lost my job. So I said good-bye and went to Mexico City.
It was the best factory job I had ever had and I really liked it. They paid me twelve pesos a day for eight hours of work and gave us three days vacation a year. There were about four hundred men working there and we were all forced to join the CTM. I had never been in a union before and I must say that it was a terrific mockery. I was never called to a single meeting and I didn’t even know where the headquarters were. They didn’t bother to tell us that, but they never forgot to deduct our five pesos dues every month.
And politics is another gigantic farce, because millions of pesos are dancing around in it … millions for this public work and millions for that, but it is only a front to hide the millions which go into the pockets of the bureaucrats. I don’t understand politics, but all this business of campaigns and elections is such a farce that I don’t know why the people of Mexico are accepting it. Here the elections are not free because they know beforehand who is going to be the President.
I don’t claim to know much about freedom, except that I have been free all my life and have done what I always felt like doing. But when I was working in the factory I was no longer free because they forced me to register to vote, and they sent around circulars telling us we must vote for the government party. The vote is secret but they threatened us with a three-day no-work punishment if we didn’t vote their way. For me this is no longer the principle of free elections. It is anti-constitutional, but that is nothing to be surprised at any more. Frankly, I don’t care which candidate gets in, because either one of them will rob the people.
The year I worked in the factory I was in only three fights. The environment we live in demands fighting. I don’t want to leave here unless I am carried out on their shoulders. That’s the way heroes and corpses go out.
The first fight was over a poker game between me and three boys from the Street of the Tinsmiths. All of us were half drunk, especially Roberto, because liquor had a strong effect on me. I felt great about that fight. I knocked down one after another, until they stopped. The four of us remained good pals. That’s the way it used to be here, but now these rules have degenerated.
In the second fight, I was attacked by a gang one night while I was walking with a friend, Miguel, near the market. Miguel ran away and left me to be beaten up by five fellows. I had been drinking and couldn’t defend myself well. They cut my head and raised my eye to the size of a tomato. My lip was hanging down because of a cut that took six stitches. I hadn’t looked for that fight, but I got a bawling out from my father and from Manuel anyway.
The third fight was the worst. I didn’t go looking for that fight either, but they forced me. I was having a friendly discussion about a boxing match with a couple of fellows. Three cops came along and told us to move on.
I said, “Can’t a fellow have a chat on the street without anybody stopping him? This is a free country.”
“No, it’s not a free country,” says this wise guy. “Move on, you bums, and make it snappy.”
“All right, don’t push me, I can walk.”
Then they tried to put the bite on me for twenty-five pesos, and I didn’t give it to them, see? I had twenty-nine pesos on me, and I gave them to a friend of mine.
“Here,” I said, “please take this money because it seems these gentlemen want to rob me.”
“Shut up!” and bang! one of the cops hit me with his stick, one of those billies made of hard rubber. When they hit you, you don’t bleed but they almost knock you out. All the bleeding is inside. I got sore, really mad, and took a swing at him. Then they began clubbing me and punching me, clubbing and punching, back and forth, like a ball. They also kicked me, until everybody thought they had killed me. They injured my ribs and my head, and gave me such an awful kick that they wrenched my knee. And then they broke my leg bone.
By that time, the neighbors had notified my family, and Consuelo and Manuel came out and argued with the cops. All the while, the fellows and neighbors shouted to the cops to leave me alone, but none of them mixed in, not one of them. Two or three times my friends have disappointed me. When I see one of them in trouble, even if he had turned his back on me before, I go all out to help him. But they only looked on. Oh, well …
The cops didn’t arrest me, they just left me there on the ground. My brother and sister took me in a cab to the station house to file a complaint, but nothing happened to those cops. So you can see what I think of justice here. Hand them a peso and you get justice.
It took me a long time to recover from that beating. The wind was taken out of me and I have really tried to avoid trouble and fights since then. Many people judge a man by the way he fights. They see him pull a pistol or a knife and they say, “Ah! there’s a man for you. He doesn’t back down for anything or anybody.” I don’t judge a man like that. The real man is the one who faces up to life with integrity, the one who faces reality without retreating. I judge a man by his deeds. If he can face up to life and to his obligations, then for me he is a man; in a word, a real man is a man like my father.
And to my way of thinking, a man who only produces children without accepting the obligations that go with them, doesn’t deserve to live. That god-damned son-of-a-whore Crispín is that type. He has forgotten all about his daughters and sends them a present only once a year. It’s better for him not to come to the house, because the day he does, I don’t know which of us will come out alive.
I’m sorry to have to say it, but my brother has shown a lack of responsibility in this respect, though he did his best to get ahead and to provide his children with at least the necessities of life. My father has set him a good example, so I don’t understand why Manuel neglected his children. It seems to me that my brother’s life has been a pity and a failure. He had more education than I, and more intelligence even than Consuelo. And he had fame as a storyteller … a party without him was no fun … but, in spite of all this, he wasted many years of his life. I haven’t done much for my family either, though I’m ready to give every drop of my blood for Consuelo, Marta, Manuel, my father, and for my nephews and nieces.
My family is uppermost in my mind. My biggest ambition in life is to improve their economic situation, if I can do it honestly. I’ve never been concerned with having a better life for myself, but only for them. It has been my greatest desire that we should be united. But when my mother died, our castle crumbled, its foundations fell and sank into the ground.
When Manuel’s wife died, Delila came to take care of the children. My father seemed very happy with her and she and I got along better than I did with my other stepmother, Elena. There is a monument to Delila here in my heart for her noble work in taking care of my nieces and nephews. None of us, not even Manuel, the father of these children, did as much. I esteemed and loved her for it, and that is why I regretted what happened between us. I didn’t want to hit her, but she made me do it. And I believe she did it intentionally.
One evening, I was having a beer with my friend Daniel, when my nephew Domingo came crying. “What happened, son?” I asked. Geofredo, Delila’s son, had knocked him down. This had happened many times and I had never said anything, though it always made me angry. I went to make a complaint to Delila, and then I gave my nephew some advice. “Don’t be a fool, son. I have already told you not to give in to anyone.”
“Yes,” said Delila, “go on, tell him to grab a knife and stick it into Geofredo’s guts. You are always teaching him to fight and to give it to the other fellow.”
It was true I had taught my nephews something about personal defense, but only with the hands, with clean fists, the way any man must learn. This time I told Domingo not to speak to Geofredo or to play with him. Delila was listening and finally she said, “I’ve had enough of your frigging around. What’s bothering you? Let’s come out with it … are you fighting me because I am with your father?”
“Listen, Delila, why bring up things that have nothing to do with the case? We were talking about the kids.”
She went on. “Well, if you don’t like me being with your father, why don’t you give him what I give him!” Those were very strong words for me and I warned her, “You’d better shut up or it will go badly for you.”
“It won’t go badly for me! Who do you think you are? For me, you are only a pitiful jerk!”
That’s when I punched her and she jumped on me. She was quite a fighter and I had to give her four or five punches. I held back because, first, she was a woman, and second, she was pregnant, and third, she was my father’s wife. She scratched my face and hands and I had to grab her. At one time, she fell and pulled me down on top of her. I would have fallen on her stomach but I stopped in time, kneeling over her and holding her hands. The children ran to the café to call Manuel.
When he arrived I had calmed down a bit, but then Delila told him I had come in drunk on marijuana and that I had pulled her by the hair into the courtyard and had locked her out. That was a big lie. because I had pulled her out by her hands. Manuel didn’t ask me for my side of the story but began to bawl me out and insult me. That hurt because I was only trying to defend his children, and he should have been a little less righteous.
I didn’t wait for my father to come home. I went to Ramón’s to get some money and took off for Acapulco.
Marta and Baltasar had invited me to come back to visit them, though I don’t think they expected me so soon. Again, I noticed that Baltasar took me wherever he went. “Come on, let’s go,” he always said when he had to go out. It seemed quite natural to me and I went along in good faith. It wasn’t until much later that I realized my brother-in-law was jealous of me and didn’t trust me with my own sister.
This time I looked for a job. Baltasar kept saying he would speak to this one and to that one, but I don’t believe he ever did. I might have gotten a truck-driver’s job, if I had had a driver’s license. I still don’t have a license, because of my history. I’ll have to save up five hundred pesos to buy back my prison record and destroy it, before I can apply for a license. Here, with money you can do anything!
If I had a driver’s license, I could laugh at the world. Ever since I learned how to drive, I felt I wanted something more out of life. I wanted to do anything that involved cars, like the automobile business, or a parking lot, or being a chauffeur. If I could go to a training school, I would study to be a first-class auto mechanic.
I almost got hooked up with a girl there in Acapulco. Rather, she was a married woman, married in church and all, and with a child, and a husband, but she was so young and pretty, that I liked her right away. She was very friendly and one day I asked her, in a joke, whether she would like to go to Mexico City with me. She said yes, anytime I was ready, just like that! And we weren’t even novios yet! Although she opened the way, I never dared to make love to her, because, first, my sister was around, and second, this girl was married in church. If she had been married only by civil law, well, it would have been different.
Baltasar offered me another sister of his. He said. “She is as dark as you but she really is a pretty chick. You saw how Luisa was? Well, this one is younger and even better. Arrange your driver’s license and settle down in Acapulco. It’s not necessary to marry here. If you don’t want my sister, I’ll get Melania for you!” I never did go to see his sister, but as a joke, I sometimes called Baltasar my twice-brother-in-law.
I never thought Baltasar was a bad fellow, but he had lived as much as I, and between two sharp adventurers, there is little trust. My sister Marta would always be an impassable wall between us. You can imagine how I felt when he told me he had had thirty women, some of them the mothers of his children. And sure enough, we met one of his ex-wives in the street. She stopped him and said, “Listen, half-pint, how about getting me some fresh tripe?” And we passed a couple of his kids playing in the street.
He said Marta knew all this and accepted it, but from that time on I didn’t like Baltasar. I didn’t trust him. He might do to Marta what he did to all those other women. I never said anything to him or to my sister, because I might have put my foot into it.
I stayed on for a few days, or perhaps it was a few weeks, but Mexico City had a powerful hold on me, and I wanted to go back. I missed my neighborhood, in spite of the fact that it had deteriorated and become more corrupt. But I still felt like somebody there and had the people’s respect, which I had bought with my fists. And because my mother had died there, I had a special feeling for the place. I, too, will die there some day, perhaps tomorrow, for I will never abandon it.
So after a while I said to Marta, “Do you know what, sister? I’m going home.”
“What are you going back for?” she said. “You fought with Delila and don’t expect my papá to receive you well. You know how he is.”
“Well, yes, sis, from the moment I first punched her I’ve regretted it. But what do you want? The thing is done and there is no help for it. I’m going only to look around. I’ll come back soon, I promise you by God.”
She tried to discourage me, but when the travel bug entered me I got stubborn. There wasn’t a person who could stop me. Marta was used to my character and to my desperate ways, so she loaned me a peso to get out to the highway, where I hitched a ride to the capital.
I arrived without a centavo, so I went to Ramón’s. I never go to Ramón for money unless I’m down and out and desperate, because he doesn’t just do you a favor, you have to work for it. That man always had the advantage over people like me, those of us who have lifted things. He was vengeful that way and used us. He had thousands of pesos, which I helped him get, but when I come to him for a loan he says he can’t spare any. But if I would like to earn some … he usually had a soft job for me, like delivering a “hot” scale or picking up a “crooked” radio … or stealing something he had a customer for. All I usually asked for was a loan of twenty pesos, but the favor he wanted might have landed me in jail!
When I got back from Acapulco, Ramón’s son, who followed in his father’s path, said, “Listen, Roberto, I need some car-radio antennas, because a customer wants a few.”
I thought it over and said, “Well, I must have some money, so lend me a bicycle to ride over to Lomas and I’ll see how many I can find.” It was an easy job, but I had bad luck with the very first one I tried to pull off a car. It wouldn’t come loose and I pulled this way and that; before it came off I had lost a slice of flesh from my finger.
“Cursed lu
ck of mine! To spill blood for kid stuff like this!” I was angry with myself. I rode back quickly, delivered the antenna and received ten lousy pesos for it.
My finger was wrapped in a piece of newspaper I had picked up in the street, but the cut continued to bleed. I went to my aunt, who washed it with boiled water and peroxide, and bandaged it. I was staying with her, for my father was still angry with me and didn’t want me to set foot in his house. He had told my brother that what I had done to Delila was unpardonable and that he never wanted to see me again. My father was my world, and when they told me what he said, my world fell.
The next day, on June 25, 1958, a girl named Antonia (not my half-sister) came to visit my aunt. I had known this Antonia for years. She had lived with her mother and brothers in the worst “Lost City” in the neighborhood. As a matter of fact, I didn’t remember until later that I had never liked this girl’s manner. She was one of those who stood on the street corner talking to the boys in a loud, familiar way. It certainly never occurred to me then that she would ever become my woman.
It was early in the morning when Antonia arrived, and her hair was still uncombed and her dress dirty. I have never liked a sloppy woman, but something about her, I don’t know exactly what, attracted me. Apart from physical desire, the thing I liked was her attentiveness. My aunt introduced us, and, right off, Antonia told me she had good hands for curing and that in no time she would have my finger fixed up.
So there she was curing me, holding my hand in hers, and asking me if I had a wife. Then she began to complain of her husband. “He leads me a dog’s life,” she said.