Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Antonio the Beautiful Mexican




This unique young guy lived on the streets of Monterry since he was six years old. His family lived in the hills out of Monterrey in a single room house with a dirt floor—no bathroom, no kitchen, no beds, nada. The mother had 10 children by different fathers. There was no man in the house. the family was so poor that sometimes they had to eat weeds or what they could find.

So at the age of six Antonio used to go down to Monterry center by himself and beg for pesos. He was such a beautiful child that he did quite well. He returned home in the evenings and gave what he had earned to his mother.

Eventually he started living on the streets of Monterrey. He liked the life. He continued to help his family. And he earned more and more. And as he grew into a handsome youth, older men and women hit on him and he started earning a lot more. It seems that police chiefs had a particular fondness for him and he lived with many of them. But he still kept to the streets for his life; he would only go to their homes to eat, to give them what they wanted. But he never slept inside unless it was very cold.

He learnd about mota--marijuana--at a very early age and started smoking it continuously. This was a habit he never has given up.

He was a marvelous, totally accepting young man. He was totally without animosity unless crossed. He accepted all and it made absolutely no difference if those that solicited him were fat, old, ugly, tall or short. It was all the same to him. He was totally the man however and was never in a passive role.

At sixteen he crossed into the United States and went up into Texas, to Dallas. There he became a cocaine dealer and earned a fortune which he spent as fast as he earned it. He lived a wierd fast life, with a girl-friend and others. Throughout his life in the states he would be taken care of by, of all things, sheriffs!!

He crossed back and forth from and to Mexico. He told me that he had crossed on his own five times. Eventually he floated up to Chicago where he lived on the street in the Pilsen neighborhood, which is almost exclusively Mexican. Again people were eager to help him out.

I met him through a Mexican ex-lover who met him on 18th Street and invited him back to his house. They had a long relationship together. And still have an involvement to this day, but they are both back in St. Luis Potosi, Mexico where Antonio settled down with a woman and gave her a child. But he still wants to come back to the streets of Chicago.