Mi Historia Condensada
Let me go ahead and apoligize for mispellings. Don't wanna offend any of you writers or be laughed at. La inseguiridad.
My journey coming to America is a trip. Like many of you know I wasn't born here in the states. When I was about 8yrs old my parents, invited by a drug lord from southern california during that time, decided to make the journey and cross the border. I remember coming over was not too long after my confirmation. Because I wore the white outfit I used for my confirmation and usually you just get rid of those clothes after confirmation, I had a white polo shirt and white bell bottom pants. We got on a plane in Colima City to Tijuana were we were picked up by my uncle rafa and his wife. From there we went to this raunchy hotel. Which was used to hide immigrants until their coyote came to get them across the border, it had secret exits in the back, and the rooms had at least four ways to exit, just in case you had to do this. Well, we were suppose to wait for a guy that was going to pick us up. I think we were there for two days. The first day we tried crossing, we failed. Appearently, the coyote that showed up wasn't the guy that was going to get us across. He was just some dude trying to make a quick buck off of whom ever, and I kind of knew that. This guys breath smelled like liquor. I knew it wasn't the style of the people who were getting us across, he was dirty and had low dignity. All of this made sense after afterwards, becuase we got detained by the TJ police twice. And we had to pay them off with a good chunk of money. Well, it seemed a lot to me at the time.
The second day, early in the morning, someone in his early thirities shows up at our hotel door, and told us he was sent by Chuy, which is my moms brother. I remember he was wearing a burgandy, windbreaker suit and running shoes. Hair was slicked back and a gold chain around his neck. He reminded me of Manny from Scarface. We took a taxi to the ouskirts of TJ. Then we went down this dirty hill, crossed the freeway and walked along the long fence. I remember a lot of benders. People were selling tacos, tostadas, candies, sodas, all kinds of goodies.
After that, I remember walking across a field, I remember hiding from a helicopter. After the field, we were going through this green bushy area, we passed three guys sitting by a creek that were lost, like many people they didn't get a coyote who knew the way so they got lost. Then, we ended up behind a row of warehouses. As I remember, it looked like we were behind a plaza, imagine how the back of all the stores would look like. No division between the wall, just a door that leads to the particular store and a garbage dumpster. After walking for a couple minutes, two young guys came rushing asking us if we wanted a ride. Our tour guide agreed and paid them off. They put us in a brown chevy van with no windows and drove us passed all the warehouses. Then we got dropped off at a parking area. We got into our tour guides car, which was a like metal brown mercedes. It was a nice car. I remember my mom sat in the front passanger side and me and my dad sat in the back.
From there we got driven to Ontario were people were waiting for us.
And like promised, my dad got a job working for this drug lord. We moved in with my uncle at first, whom lived on the ranch owned bt this guy, after my uncle and aunt moved out and we stayed at the house. We lived on the ranch and kept watch after it, my dad took care of some of the animals on the ranch. They had horses and fighting cocks. Since, my dad knew got to train fighting cocks, his main job was training the fighting cocks and making sure they were healthy and in good condition to fight. This guy also, owned a construction company where my dad would get extra hours it he needed to. This guy would buy homes remodel them and sell them. Everytime this happened my dad would put in extra hours doing construction. Thats what I remember about my dads job. My mom cleaned homes for his associates wives.
I loved living at the ranch. It was my second experience being around drug dealers. And when I say drug dealers I don't mean your local guys hanging out on the corner selling dimes and nickles. I mean big time. These guys were the ones that received shipments coming from the south and enjoyed profit that came from it, and they sure knew how to do it. Cars, clothes, their houses it was easy to tell who was banking in the doug. I remember the guy we worked for. He had a big house were he spent most of his time which was near the ranch. The house had a big swimming pool. And he had some cool cars that he kept there. He had a corvette, a ford short box truck and an old but well maintained chevy. All of them black.
Back in Mexico, I remember going up into the mountains to take food every once in a while to guys growing marijuana. These guys were not dressed up nice or drove nice cars. They did have a lot of fire power. They also had horses but no cars. The first time I saw a field of it, it was amazing to me. Luscious green leaves, it was pretty. Over in the states, I didn't see much drugs. But I knew what was going on. I remember seeing heroin for the first time. It looked like black clay.
My life there at the ranch was waking up in the morning to help feed the animals. Which were alot. About 500 fighting cocks and like 40 horses. I went to schoool, came back and went to ride horses all afternoon until it started getting dark. That was my life every day. On the weekends, there would always be parties at the ranch. My dad and my brother, build a lienso charro. Which is a rodeo Mexican style. All these guys would come and compete with each other, other times they would have cock fights. Most of them were part of the same organization. There was one time two guys were betting like 5 grand on a cock fight. And it wasn't only Mexicans that came. There was one Italian guy who was connected. Everyone, reffered to him as el italiano, And just one time I remember some guys that were like middle eastern. They had those rags they wear on their heads. I remember all these nice trucks showing up. Mexican drug dealers have a thing with trucks.
But one thing that I remember that was significant, was that I was liked a lot by all of them and I remember looking up to them. I remember getting advice from them as well as money. Kind of like the white dude from "Good Fellas" or the Itialian kid from "A Bronx Tale." Life was good.
This was my life when I first came to the U.S. I went through some racial experiences. I remember getting punched by this black kid, but it might of been by accident. And I also remember being called beaner and wetback, even by some of the Mexican-American kids. That was the worst, being put down by my own race, Crespo talks about this. But it didn't affect me much because I had a certain confidence. I felt I had power behind me. And I did.
I remember standing out by the entrance of the ranch with a friend of mine and one of the muscles. While were standing out there one of the older kids that teased my friend and I, walked by. I remember saying something about this kid bothering us at school. And the kid said something back. And flipped us off. The muscle guy(i don't know what else to call him) walks across the road and beats the crap out of this kid. Now, the muscle was problably in his early twenties.
I'm gonne stop here and continue later. Some of you might not connect this to being latin in christ but I aint done yet. I'm gonne continue later.