TETHER DREAMS IN THE SHADOW GAME
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 4
FELIX GOMEZ-THE SHOT CALLER
xxxx
Three men rode into town on horseback, slowly passing the dilapidated buildings and run down store fronts that lined both sides of the dirt road which served as the only street in the dusty little town. They followed the street until they passed the cluster of buildings, and then it reverted back to a trail that ended at the front gate of the Old Spanish Mission Church. Tumble weeds, wind devils, and stray dogs, scurried about, as two of the men dismounted, while the third man remained in his saddle, holding the reins to their horses.
As the sun began to set behind them, the two men stood in front of the glass enclosed sign in front of the old church. The church was large enough to hold ten times the stated population of the town. There was still enough light to read the posting; Our Lady of Victory, Etchohuaquila, Sonora, Mexico, Population 136 Souls, and under the proclamation; Requiem Mass for Senor Rodolfo Enrique Luis Gomez, 5 p.m., September 12, 1969. They looked at each other and then walked through the gate, through the courtyard, and on into the church.
The men’s sombreros, hung against their backs, while the sound of their custom made boots announced their arrival to all the mourners in the church. The sound echoed pass the first pew where the Gomez family sat, mourning the loss of Senor Adolfo Enrique Luis Gomez, husband, father and the patron of the La Santa Muerte disciples. He had been cut down by an assassin’s bullets two days earlier. Now, with incense permeating the air, the parish priest performed the Requiem Mass in Latin, as his body lay in a white Cedar casket at the foot of the altar, surrounded by dozens of red and white roses, placed there by his family, friends, and loyal followers.
The widow, Senora Gomez, and her nine children, did not notice the two strangers standing before the casket, as the family bent their heads in prayer. Suddenly, a loud gasp erupted from the mourners, as one of the men reached into the casket, and pulled the corps of Senor Gomez halfway out of it. The man began to curse and strike the body with his fist. Pandemonium broke out as several men rushed the altar in defense of their patron, while his widow cried out in horror, and her oldest son, Manuel, leaped from their pew to lead the charge.
The second man, with a poach mark face, turned to confront them, with a gun in his hand. This did not stop Manuel, from reaching out for him, and the man shot Miguel in the face, and he was dead before he hit the floor. Both strangers retreated through the crowd, holding them at bay with drawn pistols, until they reached their horses, and then all three galloped away into the sunset, shooting wildly into the air.
The murder of Senor Gomez and his eldest son, Manuel Jose Gomez, catapulted eighteen years old Felix Gomez, to the unenviable position as head of the family and the family business, and by default exalted leader of La Santa Muerte in Sonora, Mexico. He was unprepared for either of these positions, his dead brother, Manuel had been groomed from birth to take his father’s place, he being the eldest son, but destiny has a way of charting its own course.
Two days later, after the family had safely interned the bodies of Sr. Gomez and his eldest son; Manuel, at the family plot in back yard of the church, Felix turned to his uncle, Sebastian, and asked him what he should do next. His uncle, Sebastian, had been running the family business for years and the family business was at the root of the trouble between the Gomez family and the Lopez Brothers, who were the two desecraters at the church. The Gomez family business consisted of smuggling people into the United States. They secured the routes and provided the guides and Safe Houses for thousands of people seeking a better life in El Norte, the U.S.A.
Sebastian told his nephew not to worry, he had everything under control. He would take revenge for the killings and the business would take care of itself, with his guidance.
It was 1969, and times were changing. The war in Viet Nam raged on, and many of the returning vets brought with them a heroin drug habit and a taste for good marijuana, which converged with the flower generation’s penchant for pot and LSD, creating a huge market for illicit drugs in the United States, and the Lopez brothers were determined to cash in on it, there was simply too much money to be made to let this opportunity slip through their fingers.
The Lopez brothers were drug smugglers and they needed the routes that the Gomez family controlled to bring their drugs into the United States safely.
The Gomez family had been bringing people, mostly day pickers, into California for two decades. They supplied the people who picked the crop in the San Joaquin Valley in California, the bread basket of the United States, and therefore of the world. It was a de facto arrangement between the farmers, who couldn’t bring their crops to the market without them, the government officials, who turned a blind eye to the smuggling of undocumented workers, and the county officials whose pockets were lined with money from the farmers and the smugglers, and considered it their civic duty to keep the conduits open.
But smuggling drugs was an entirely different story. The Gomez Family would lose their political protection if they allowed drugs to move along their pipe line. President Nixon’s War on Drugs policy would be enforced and would have a devastating effect on the entire organization. It would be suicide to allow the Lopez brothers access to their network. But not all of the Gomez brothers thought the same. Carlos and Caesar Gomez ran the family operation on the American side of the border, providing safe houses and transportation to the orchards in central California, and they agreed with their older brother, Adolfo, but Sebastian, the second oldest brother, believe that running drugs was more profitable and the way of the future, and any adverse effects would only be the cost of doing business.
The Lopez Brothers got wind that Sebastian was not 100% in agreement with his older brother, and decided that it would be better dealing with Sebastian rather than Adolfo.
They arranged a meeting with Adolfo, to try and work things out. They wanted to avoid a war if they could and they didn’t want to anger the members of La Santa Muerte; they knew what they were capable of. They considered them to be religious fanatics and dangerous, and in that part of Mexico strong religious beliefs prevailed, and La Santa Muerte was around long before the Christians had come to the New World, in one form or another.
The Lopez Brothers wanted to break with the past. Their God was money, and money was power, and although they respected the power of the mystic, they were willing to break with old tradition and defy the Americanos, and anyone else who got in their way. There was just too much money to be made.
They met outside of town near the old water tower that used to service the old steam engines, hauling Box Cars and flatbed train cars, to Mexico City. The spur line was closed, but there was an old station building still standing, not far from the water tower.
They met there at dusk, the Lopez Brothers, Hector and Luis, on horseback, and Senor Gomez and his brother Sebastian arrived in an old 1956 forest green Buick Road Master, with a third man sitting in the back seat.
The Lopez Brothers dismounted and tied their horses to a hitching post, outside of the dilapidated building, as the Gomez brothers exited the car along with the third man. When the brothers saw who the third man was, Hector Lopez immediately went into a rage.
“Why did you bring a Shaman with you? This is about business. ” He spat out, while shaking his head.
“This is more than just business. What you two are suggesting is to end our way of life. Thousands of people depend on us for their livelihood, and if you were to use our connections to move drugs the Americanos would come down on us hard. As it is now, the Americans need us, but to bring poison into El Norte would mean a war that we cannot win. We all will be dead or in jail or on the run. We would know no peace. ” Senor Gomez said, and then nodded his head to the Shaman, who began to chant and move in circles around the Lopez Brothers.
“What the fuck is he doing?” Hector shouted, as the Shaman began to kick dust in his direction and sprinkle water into the air.
“This is a cleansing ceremony, which is necessary because your mind is full of hate and you do not know what you are doing.” Adolfo answered.
“Tell him to stop or I will blow your fucking brains out.” Hector yelled as he brandished a 38 revolver at Adolfo.
“Do what you must, but a curse will be put upon you and your children.” Adolfo replied, standing his ground.
A shot rang out, but not from the direction of Hector. Sebastian stood there with his hands in the air, as a third man revealed himself from behind some sage brush fifty feet away with a repeating rifle in his hands. He had been lying in wait, hidden in the underbrush, and as Adolfo fell to his knees and turned his head to look at his brother, the assassin fired a second time, and Adolfo crumbled to the ground, and then the assassin turned the gun on the Shaman.
Sebastian lowered his hands and said over his shoulder as he walked back to the car, “I got a funeral to arrange”.
That night Hector Lopez’s eldest son fell ill with a fever and his body was cover with warts, and by morning the child was dead. The next night his son, Ricardo, suffered the same fate. Hector went into a rage, and he blamed the curse that Adolfo said would be placed on his family.
After the Lopez brothers defiled the body of Senor Adolfo Gomez in the church, Felix naturally turned to his uncle, Sebastian, for advice on what to do next. Sebastian effectively cut Felix out of any say in the running of the family business, and his other two uncles did whatever they were told to do by Sebastian.
Felix waited for retribution, for the murder of his father and older brother, which never came. The long arm of the Gringos was being felt by the Gomez organization, just as Senor Adolfo had predicted, and they were being systematically dismantled by Law Enforcement agencies on both sides of the border.
A persistent rumor continued to circulate around town regarding the death of Senor Adolfo Gomez, it was said that his brother, Sebastian, knew more about his death than he had ever revealed, and that the Lopez Brothers were behind it.
Felix didn’t understand why his uncle wouldn’t do something about the Lopez Brothers, and his rage grew as his helplessness became more apparent, even to the locals, who just shook their heads whenever they saw him about town. He became known as the prince without a kingdom, and the children were the meanest of them all, who took to calling him, The Little Prince of Nothing.
None of this bothered Felix, he had been made fun of all of his life.
He was short and stocky with a large head full of straight black hair. He had the features of a pure Indian and had been called the Little Chief all of his life. He had been fighting since he was eight years old, but nobody called him anything to his face.
What he was concerned with was the welfare of his family; he had seven brothers and sisters to look after, and his mother. His uncle slowly stopped providing for them, soon after he took control of the family business. His only diversion was baseball, he loved the game. He and his friend Fernando would day dream about playing professional baseball, but Felix knew that he was too small to take it seriously. But his friend Fernando had a natural talent; he was a natural born pitcher and had already drawn attention from scouts from the triple AAA clubs. But even baseball had no place in his life now; he was the head of the Household, and did not have time for childish games.
He confronted his Uncle about work and the Lopez Brothers, but his uncle wanted him out of the way, and decided to send him north to the United States, to work with his other two uncles in Los Angeles.
He was sent to a safe house in Playas de Tijuana, Tijuana, Mexico a small town next to the border. A concrete wall ran along the border for miles, ending with a corrugated fence that actually ran into the Pacific Ocean for a hundred yards, at the northern end town, and he could see the United States on the other side. So near, yet so far.
There were twelve other people in the house, waiting for the coyotes (guides) to take them across the border. Four of them were migrant workers from central Mexico, four more were young Chinese men from Hong Cong, who had begun their journey from mainland China three weeks earlier, two men from Mumbai, India, one man from Norway, and a woman from Brazil. They all had to pay $2,500 up front, except for the Mexican nationals, who had family waiting for them on the other side, and would pay their fee for them once they were safely in the United States.
They waited ten days for the coyotes, but there was trouble along the border. It was becoming more difficult to take people across the open desert. The border patrols were being augmented with DEA interdiction teams, and no longer was it possible for the law enforcement agencies to turn a blind eye to the illegal border crossings, just as the old man had predicted, it was all out war.
On the eleventh night they were told to be ready, and at half pass midnight they were loaded into a white van and their journey began. Two hours later they were still in Mexico, traveling east, parallel to the U.S. border, away from Tijuana. The going was slow due to the poor condition of the back roads that they were using, and just after three A.M. they were told that they were in the United States, but they still had a long way to go. From that point on they would travel overland by foot. They had seven hours to make it to the next water supply, thirty miles away, and the sun would be up in three hours. Fourteen people, including two coyote guides began the trek across the open desert, with a limited water supply and the clothes on their backs. There were no Border patrols in the area and the coyotes seem to know what they were doing and where they were going.
By 7 A.M. the sun was high in the sky and the desert began to heat up. They were three quarters of the way to the water stash, and they were making good time, but a low flying fixed wing plane gave them a scare, but they were not detected and they continued on their trek.
By nine A.M. they came to a gully and on the other side there was a Joshua Tree and under the tree there was a cooler filled with bottles of water and roasted ears of corn. The coyotes told them that they would stay there until dark because it was too hot to continue now. They found shade in the gully but had to shift their position as the sun moved across the sky, and by three P.M. they were all sleeping, except for one of the guides, who kept watch.
When Felix awoke, he found himself all alone. He rushed to the top of the gully but could see no one in any direction. He went back to the cooler and found one bottle of water. The sun was setting in the west, so he headed north, hoping to find a highway or road that would lead him out of the desert. That was his only chance, either the heat would get to him or the border patrols, and after four hours of walking under the desert sun he began to think that it would be better if the border patrol found him, at least he would be alive.
Night falls quickly in the desert, and the heat escapes the desert floor like a flock of startled ravens, and before he knew it he was freezing his ass off. He was lost and hungry, and for all he knew he could have been going in circles for hours. Exhausted and tired, he lay down next to a cactus tree on the cold ground and looked up into the sky. There was a full moon above in the pristine night sky and a million stars to show him the way, but the way to where, was the question, and that was not the only question pressing on his mind.
Why had they left him? Was his uncle behind it? Would he survive? Soon he fell asleep without coming to any conclusions. Right before dawn he was rousted awake with a flashlight shining in his eyes.
“He’s alive” the border guard shouted to his partner, and then he handcuffed Felix and led him to the Van, with U. S. Border Patrol painted on the side. “Welcome to the United States”.
They put him on a bus at the San Ysidro Border Crossing, and ten minutes later he was back in Tijuana, Mexico. He didn’t know a soul there and he had no money. It seemed as though everyone in Tijuana had been going through hell. The soft under belly of the city was permeated by crime, and a great deal of it was being perpetrated by the police. They had their fingers into everything that was making money, Drugs, prostitution, smuggling, kidnapping, whatever. They shook down the tourists, and made life a living hell for the migrant workers who flocked to Tijuana from every part of Mexico, for a chance to cross the border and find work in El Norte, the United States.
He decided that the only thing that he could do was to try and make it across the border alone, only this time he would swim to the United States. He hitched a ride out to Playas de Tijuana; a small Mexican town, nestle in the northwest corner of Baja California, opposite Imperial Beach, California. A chain link fence, that ran fifty yards into the Pacific, was the only thing separating the two countries at that point.
He waited until after midnight, and then he walked into the water and swam out 100 yards and turned right and swam another fifty yards, and then he swam back to shore. It was that simple, he was in the United States. He made it a full two miles before they caught him, walking along the highway, as if he was out for a midnight stroll. This time they decided to prosecute him for illegal entry into the United States. He was transported to the detention center in San Pedro, California for processing and later sent to the County Jail in Los Angeles because of overcrowding, he was made to wear a blue jumper with yellow stripes, indicating that he was an illegal alien.
He soon found out that the County Jail was a dangerous place, overcrowding and racial conflict made life very dangerous for everyone in the facility. The Chicanos ran the place, and they were at war with the Blacks. Fifty percent of the jail inmates were Chicanos, Mexicans born in the US, and those born in Mexico and Central America were called Pisano, they added another 15 %, and Whites were called Woods, who comprised about 10% and Blacks 25%.
The Pisanos, approached Felix as soon as he enter the Dorm, many of them were there waiting to be release or to be sent to the Federal Prison, in El Central, California to do their federal time, and many of them had reached the United States through the Gomez Family network.
The Pisanos surrounded him at his bunk, and one of them with a large MS-13 tattooed on his arm and the words Mara Salvatrucha tattooed across his chest said, “My name is Roman and we know who you are and where you come from, and we need your help, Patron”. Felix had been ready to defend himself and was taken aback by his statement. “What do you want” he managed to say, when the initial shock wore off. The Chicanos jumped our Shot Caller, and put him in the hospital, he was lucky because they were trying to put him in the morgue.
“And what is a shot caller”, Felix said without blinking. “Oh! come on man, he be the boss, number one, he calls the shots for all of the Pisano in this joint. ” Roman said in exasperation
Felix was really confused now; he couldn’t imagine what they wanted from him. “And how can I help you, he managed to say.”
“I don’t know anything about being a shot caller. I’ve only been in this country for a few days.” He told the gathering crowd of Pisanos, who numbered about forty now.
Roman moved closer to Felix, out of ear shot of the crowd, and told him that they were in disarray because the Pisano were all from different countries, he was from Mexico, but the majorities were from El Salvador, Honduras, and several other Central American countries. The problem was that they did not trust each other ever since their shot caller got jumped, but everyone knew who the Gomez family was, most of them came to the states through their network, and as luck would have it Felix shows up as if he had been sent by the Virgin Mary, and after all he was the leader of La Santa Muerte. “Don’t worry I will be your lieutenant. I will show you the ropes” Roman added, and grabbed him around the shoulder.
“Do I have a choice?” Felix manage to say to no one in particular, as Roman told everyone that they had a new Shot Caller, and then he turned around and punched Felix in the face and four or five others join in kicking his ass. After 13 seconds they all stopped and began patting him on the back. “Welcome to MS-13” Roman said as Felix began to rise from the floor wondering what the hell he had just got himself into.
No comments:
Post a Comment