Dreaming of Hope Street

1 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street NONFICTION/PERSONAL NARRATIVE

Author Contact: P: 917-723-6991 Web: www.ederholguin.com Ederman1@hotmail.com

Dreaming Of Hope Street

by Eder Holguin

2 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Introduction

Are you frustrated with your current living situation? Do you feel that life could be better in many ways? Do you feel like your dreams are so far outside your reach that it is pointless to keep trying? I know exactly how you feel. I wrote this book to let you know that your dreams are so important that you should never give up, no matter how impossible they seem. I want you to know that there’s always hope. No matter how bad your current life situation is, there’s always hope. Never give up on your dreams.

Dreaming of Hope Street is my personal journey, told in the classic Coming-of-Age tradition, and proves that, though life can be ugly and brutal, even the most disadvantaged can overcome the odds and find happiness, their own Hope Street. The narrative steps along and rings with authenticity; it’s often sad, shocking, but ultimately uplifting and motivational.

Today, nearing forty, I am a successful New York entrepreneur in the online media industry. However, as a kid in the mid '80s, I fled a frightening home life and wound up living for years on the streets of Medellin, Colombia. It was a dicey existence, in what was described during this era as the ‘most dangerous city in the world’, where international drug lords like Pablo Escobar ruled, where you could be shot for looking at the wrong guy the wrong way. The incredible journey from living under those circumstances to becoming a successful entrepreneur

3 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street and how through effort, dedication and hard work I was able to get to where I am today is told in this book. Those life lessons and principles are universal and apply to everyone.

I hope this book serves as a source of inspiration; that, by reading it, you can realize that you too can achieve your dreams. My intention when writing this book was to provide you my story as a source of inspiration and to help you realize that you are the not a victim of your current circumstances, you have the power to create your own life. The choices you make and things you do today will determine your futre. No matter how many times you have failed in the past, how many times you tried; just by changing your attitude and making different choices you too can change your life when you make the decision to do so, you too can become successful; achieve your dreams and live a happy life.

To those who are victims of abuse and are currently living in fear, please find the help that you need. Open your eyes and realize nobody deserves to be the victim of physical or verbal abuse.

You deserve to be happy value yourself and love who you are. Once you do this and discover your self worth, life will open up new opportunities and will bring new people into your life.

4 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter One

My mother always told me that I had ruined her life by being born. Late at night she’d come home drunk and wake me. I was a little kid and was always afraid of her. She was a violent person and she didn’t really care if she hurt me. She would sit by my bed and cry while she told me how terrible her life was, how unfair it was, how she hated my father and how everything had turned out wrong. She was the proverbial victim who only saw the negative influence of everyone around her, ignoring her own faults and blaming everyone and everything for her own misery and unhappiness. One of her main regrets was that she did not have an abortion when she became pregnant with me. “I would’ve had a future,” was a line she always worked herself up to.

That’s when I knew the rage was coming. In her mind, I was the cause of her misery and sadness. Later, when she did really terrible things and I went to the hospital several times, I suspected my life would soon be over. Even at the age of seven, I sort of knew my mother would eventually kill me, I just didn’t know how or when.

I would wake up in the dark and be afraid, afraid of her, afraid of losing everything, from my little toys to anyone who might care what happened to me. If she kills me, I would wonder, what will she do with my body? I was terrified by the idea of being secretly buried, deep down in the dirt somewhere. Would she tell anyone? Would anyone ever know that I was dead? I clearly remember the time she stabbed me in the arm with a fork. I had repeated something she’d said during one of her drunken fits about a neighbor’s gambling habit. The pain barely registered, but

5 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street I was scared and desperate to get away from her. Running off, I wandered around the city, using my T-shirt to stop the bleeding. When it was dark out, I crept back home and was relieved to find she had gone drinking with her friends. I believe that was the day that I first began to make my plans—my desperate plans. ***

***

This was in the 1970’s, and we lived in Medellin, Republic of Colombia, at that time a city about the size of Philadelphia. Medellin is in western Colombia, situated a mile above sea level, like Denver, in the temperate Aburrá Valley of the Cordillera Central. Over the last few decades, the city has grown enormously to become Colombia’s second largest, mostly due to its heavy industrialization. As is well known, Medellin was at one time the headquarters for Pablo Escobar’s worldwide drug cartel, until he was killed in a shoot-out with army commandos in ‘93.

During the 1980’s, as I was growing up, Medellin was known as the most violent city in the world, unrivaled—in terms of bloodshed and body count—until the Mexican drug wars of the early 21st century.

As I was growing up, there was no real middle class in Medellin. One was either rich or poor. The rich lived in the beautiful sections of the city, dating back to the well-heeled 17thcentury Spanish settlers, or in the luxurious barrios, urban enclaves like Envigado, el Poblado and Laureles. The poor were relegated to the tenements and makeshift homes of the sprawling inner city slums along the Medellin River, where swimming was hazardous to one’s health.

Some of the poor had it a little better than others, living in an actual house or apartment building, no matter how run-down.

6 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Our family fell into the latter group, the upper-middle of the lower classes. But on this scale, we were all in the same boat, the same day-to-day struggle for survival. After working overtime at mind-numbing jobs that paid less than a subsistence wage, most people returned home to little food and less happiness. Flies and crying babies, garbage and smelly sewers, curses and broken families were familiar scenes in the hills of the oriental comunas. One was simply ground down day after day.

For those at the bottom, Medellin offered little more than a life marked by toil, want and an early death. For others living in the pitiful comunas in the hills surrounding Medellin, life was one hell after another. With no public transportation, they had to trudge for hours every morning to find menial work and then stumble back home in the evening, dead on their feet, a little change in their pocket for the day’s effort.

My parents met in high school. My father, John Holguin, was almost eighteen and my mother, Cecilia Zapata, was sixteen. She liked his handsome features and cocky attitude, while he thought she was a pretty and pliant girl, popular, well dressed and presentable. They were married at the beautiful chapel of Villa Hermosa and moved in with my dad’s mother, Emma. He got a job at Coltejer, one of the largest textile mills in Medellin, while my mother stayed home. I was born a year later, in September of 1972. That’s when the trouble began.

Since I’ve grown up and have heard many stories from various sources, I know pretty accurately what actually happened with my parents when I was very little. As I got older, I could see for myself.

There was really no way that my inexperienced schoolgirl mom could live up to the standards set by Grandma Emma. My dad was used to being looked after by her, waited on hand and foot, having his “special” meals prepared, his clothes laundered and ironed daily and all on a

7 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street tight budget. The fact is, my father was spoiled rotten and my Grandma Emma treated him like the proverbial king-of-the-castle, the Favored Son syndrome and a typical thing with Colombian mothers, or rather, with some Colombian mothers. By contrast, my mom was unskilled at being a wife and mother; she was hardly more than a kid herself, with her own ego-driven desires and teenage interests. She wouldn’t bow down and cater to her husband’s whims or provide the attention he demanded. He became ever more critical of her as a wife, especially when he’d been drinking. He would constantly scold her for not being a good mother to baby Eder. I saw a snapshot once of her holding me when I was about five months old; she did not look happy at all, and neither did I. Mom was helpless in the kitchen, and that was another annoyance to my father. Being as young as she was, attractive and lively, Cecilia was naturally more interested in clothes and hanging out with her friends, the latest pop tunes, going to parties, having fun. My father didn’t approve, he was always jealous of her easy way with people and there were fights about her flirting. As my mother always said when I got older, “Your father treated me like garbage.”

Punctuated with traditional Colombian slang, “He’s nothing but a Sumbambico!” she’d say, using one of her favorite terms, meaning something like “a complete idiot.”

As well as being spoiled brat, my dad was also hotheaded. Soon, his anger towards my mom went from hollering to serious tirades. The verbal attacks quickly escalated into physical abuse. He’d lose his temper over almost anything and start slapping Mom. But that wasn’t enough punishment for her shortcomings as a wife and mother. After one of these beatings, he’d lock her in the dark, damp basement for hours at a time. “This was the nightmare your father put me through,” she complained to me many times. “I should have killed the son of a bitch in his

8 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street sleep! No, I should have killed the sumbambico before I got pregnant with you! That’s what I should have done!”

It is hardly surprising that the only way my young mother could deal with this monster of a husband was with alcohol, as happens with so many of the powerless in this world and even those who have lots of power. I’ve learned that it’s literally the only way some people can cope with life. After a while, Mom began drinking heavily and staying out late, which gave Dad even more reason to erupt into his violent attacks and basement shut-ins, this was the vicious circle that perpetuated within their relationship.

One night, after my mother came home late, Dad grabbed her keys and threw her out of the house. “Go live with your friends, you perra!” he yelled obscenely, loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear.

It was a while before anyone knew whether my mother was dead or alive. ***

***

Now that it was just my dad, Grandma Emma and me, the house was much more peaceful. I was in kindergarten and beginning to understand the world around me, mostly by the things I saw on television, which brought far away places into our humble living room. TV was an education in itself. One of my early recollections is of the curious New York City blackout of 1977. It was fascinating to me that people in such a big city had to deal with some of the same challenges that were just daily occurrences for us. Even more fascinating was that this was world wide news; after all, we lived this way on a weekly basis. I remember seeing news clips about a man named Elvis Presley who had died and people were making a big deal out of it.

9 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Little things come back to me, goofy things. I remember Grandma had pet names for me, her favorite being papasito, meaning cute little fellow. Later, the kids in the neighborhood gave me another nickname. When I became fascinated with Superman and Christopher Reeve, they started calling me Ederman. I think I saw the original movie about 10 times; I was so obsessed with it, I started wearing a red cloth around my neck. In the beginning, I did it at home, but eventually I started doing it at school. “Is it Superman? No, it’s Ederman!” And that’s what most everyone began calling me, Ederman. The wiseacres all thought that was hilarious, playing off my movie hero like that. The joke wore thin but the name stayed. From then on, I was Ederman.

I still sometimes sign messages like that.

My father remained working at the Coltejer textile company and Grandma Emma took care of me, while doing all the chores and keeping our small home spotless and tidy, even if the outside wasn’t much. We would walk to the noisy neighborhood market, where she would carefully pick out fresh items for the table. She would also take me to El Centro; we would go to Junín—downtown Medellin’s most popular place. It was full of movie theaters, street vendors and a park with beautiful fountains. We would often take time to stop for empanadas and hot chocolate and sometimes I’d get ice cream or candy. I distinctly remember treats being a very serious concern of mine and selections were not made hastily.

No matter how little money she had to spend, Emma always came up with delicious meals: Sancochos, Bandeja paisas and other traditional Colombian dishes, heavy on the pork and chicken. She was a sweet natured, salt-of-the-earth lady, very loving and giving. Grandma Emma was the first person to truly care about me.

At some point, when I was in first or second grade, my mother came back into the picture. She was living nearby and wanted to see her little boy. I’m told there were scenes and

10 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street arguments, but eventually my father agreed to let her take me for a few days (my mother had threatened to go to court and sue for custody). As it turned out, Mom didn’t give a damn about seeing me. She was just using me as a way to get back at my father. She had a lot of warped ideas like that.

In the time my mother had been away, she had become a full-blown alcoholic and daily drug user. Instead of taking me to the amusement park like she’d promised, she took me to these horrible, dirty dives in Lovaina and the bad parts of Guayaquil. Sometimes we had to stay there overnight and I would see these men and women taking drugs and pairing off. My mother’s main concern was finding money for drugs and booze; I can only guess what she did to scare up the cash. (I’m told her drug of choice was ‘basuco’, a low-grade cocaine mixed with coca paste and cannabis.) She was drowning her pain and sorrow and I wasn’t a consideration. As I said, my mother had to be high to deal with life.

Of course, I didn’t understand all of that then. It would be years before I understood all the pain she was dealing with and for me to develop the level of compassion to forgive her, for now, I just knew my mother was someone I didn’t want to be around, with her awful drinking, the slurred speech and those disgusting people. She was like this evil witch who would swoop in on me for a few days, take me to these creepy places, put me through a terrible time and then vanish for a couple of months. The only thing I liked about my mother was those cheery absences.

Finally, fearing another “visit” was about to happen, I asked Grandma if I had to go with my mom. When I told her about some of the places my mother was taking me, and the people she hung around with (I think I threw in some tears, too), Grandma Emma said I didn’t have to

11 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street go with her anymore. “Don’t say anything to your father,” she instructed. “I’ll talk to Cecilia myself.”

After that, my mother stopped coming around to fetch me and I began to feel a lot safer.

Grandma Emma was watching out for me. I will always remember that, always.

And I will always remember the day it all fell apart and I was thrust back into the terror of my mother’s clutches.

That day, I came home from school to find my father sitting at the kitchen table, weeping.

This was unheard-of; I knew something terrible had happened. “Grandma’s in the hospital,” he managed between sobs.

The next day I didn’t go to school and my father skipped work so we could visit Grandma. When I saw her lying in the hospital bed, looking pale and weak as she reached out to touch me, I tried to fight the tears but couldn’t. They took me out so my father could be alone with her. That was the last time I saw Grandma Emma. It was that night, or the next, that she had a stroke and passed away in her sleep. I remember walking up that morning and hearing my dad cry all morning. I didn’t have to ask the reason why; I knew what had happened, I could see it in his eyes.

At the time, I was in the second grade. I tried my best to deal with losing Grandma Emma (the only real mom I’d ever had), but it was a lonely and sad period. I hoped my father and I could pick up the pieces, build a new life together and maybe even be happy some day. I would take care of myself and go to school while he worked at the textile company. But this was just another futile, childish dream.

In fact, Dad took his mother’s death very hard. He began to deteriorate, drinking heavily and staying out all night. I’d lie awake and wonder where he was and what would become of us.

12 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street In the morning, I’d eat whatever I could find, a cold arepa with quesito and some hot chocolate, if there was any, and get myself off to school. But I was unable to concentrate on my studies, or anything else.

It wasn’t long before my severely depressed father was skipping work and spending most of his time in the barras around the neighborhood, drinking aguardiente and hanging out with his friends. Sometimes they would throw parties that would go on for several days. He missed work often. He didn’t care about anything, not himself, certainly not me. When the axe fell at his job, his behavior went into overdrive. He became increasingly erratic and unpredictable. He sold Grandma Emma’s house and spent the money (which I was told he was supposed to share with his two brothers) on drinking and partying, anything that would help him forget his sorrows.

Days would go by before he turned up.

13 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter Two

As hard as my father tried to keep the household together, the death of Grandma Emma was simply too heavy a burden to bear—at least for the time being. It wasn’t long before his grieving, his drinking, his incredible sense of loss all collided in his poor heart and soul and Dad had to be hospitalized. My recollections of this period are dim and hazy, but I do recall the image of my farther morphing into a strange caricature of the reliable and generally sturdy workaday soul he typically was; his strong figure was ultimately replaced—for a time, that is, the time of his greatest pain and heartbreak—by a slurring, erratic soul whose emotions were apt to spill out anywhere and at anytime. My father spent the vast bulk of this time away from the household, as mentioned . . . no doubt partly from a sense of shame, due to the state he had descended into, but also, I’m sure, somewhere deep down inside, from a desire to spare his grieving son the additional spectacle of the complete breakdown of his father.

His continual dousing of his heart and body with mind-numbing, system-wrecking alcohol finally reached a point of terminal excess and he began to suffer the effects of acute alcohol poisoning. His body and mind, used as they were to a healthy routine of rich foods, exercise and sleep, could only suffer for so long the total replacement of all these essentials with alcohol, alcohol and only more alcohol.

14 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street After an incredible ten day binge, wandering about muttering and swaggering to and fro in an ever-deepening (and ever more dangerous) stupor, the family finally intervened. My father’s seeming superhuman capacity to absorb outrageous amounts of alcohol had finally, it seemed, hit the wall.

It was the ever-reliable Uncle Fabio (who had been carefully watching over me during this tenuous period) who sprung into action to finally steer my father away from this disastrous behavior, which was pushing him directly towards the cemetery. Fabio bundled this muttering heap that once was my father, cleaned him, put him in fresh clothes and got him to the hospital quickly. He could sense that his poor brother’s system was at last breaking down, finally and completely, under the strain of that constant torrent of booze.

All I knew was that my father went to the hospital for something. I don’t recall the reason that was given, or if one was even given. After all, I was but a small child, just barely seven years old—the unedited, heavy facts of life going on out of my sight among the adults in my household were not often communicated. It was only much later in life that the sad details of this painful interlude in my father’s life were related to me . . .

“It’s a good thing you brought this man to us, here today, Señor Fabio,” the doctor informed my uncle. “There is no question that, left to his own devices, this man would have approached a terminal state of poisoning very quickly. You probably saved his life. One more tiny binge added to his present, heavily deteriorated, state would have no doubt led to acute poising, mania and finally coma and death.”

“Is he going to be alright?”

“He should be fine—that is physically,” the doctor said. “But psychologically the same factors remain in place. We are purging his entire system clean. After he is completely detoxified

15 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street he will need a period of rest and recuperation. He is going to be weak . . . very weak. I suggest very strongly that somebody stay with him and look after him. And,” the doctor looked significantly at my uncle, “please get all alcoholic beverages out of his reach, if only for the time being. Otherwise I’ll be seeing you here again, perhaps under much more tragic and painful circumstances.

“I understand perfectly, doctor.”

My uncle described to me the sight that greeted him when he went to visit his typically proud, ever-efficient brother in his hospital room: there my father was, pinned like some dangerous lunatic to his hospital bed with restraining straps; IV’s poking into his arms and tubes running down his throat, enduring a complete fluid detoxification of his system. The hospital had, essentially, stuck a series of hoses into my father to flush out every last drop of alcohol that he had absorbed over that titanic binge. The IV’s were replacing all that poison with nutrient-rich saline solution.

When he was bundled home after discharge, my dad was extremely weak and running a very high fever. We all did our best to look after him, of course. Little did we realize that my father was not out of the woods yet. At first, he complained of itching and extreme discomfort—the tossing and turning in the bed, the maddening stretching of minutes into hours, that is common to all who are being weaned from drugs or alcohol.

The days wore on and, slowly but surely, he began to grow a little more comfortable in his bed. He found himself able to take little catnaps here and there. He wasn’t, however, free and clear—not yet.

Having suffered the worst his body had to offer during his detox, it was now his mind’s turn to run haywire on that long, slow road back to normalcy.

16 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street My uncle returned home from work, late one afternoon, and went to check on his brother. He found my father sitting up stiffly, strangely, looking disoriented. His eyes seemed far away, his voice like an echo coming down a long, empty corridor. He sensed immediately that something was not right with him.

“That’s it,” my father explained, when my uncle asked him what was wrong. He gestured about the room with a stiff, mechanical arm. “It’s over.”

“What’s over?”

“Everything,” my father announced in monotone, but with huge significance. His eyes were wooden, bulged. “She came. Over there.” He pointed back to the head of his bed.

Breathlessly, in a hushed whisper, he explained to my poor, longsuffering uncle (who himself, let us not forget, was still dealing with Grandma’s death too!) what it was that had happened, that had scared him so terribly: “Sleeping . . . I was sleeping, or almost asleep. And then I heard a noise, a noise to make your skin crawl. Then I knew the sound—the sound of a knife sharpening. Slowly, carefully, shhhrp, shhhrp,” he mimicked the sound. “Like a threat. Like the most terrible threat you ever heard in your life. I lifted my eyes and the mirror caught my attention.” He pointed limply to the mirror, his eyes bugged. “There she was. Face white as snow. Pale. Huge teeth. Grimacing. In a long cloak. Long and black, with a hood over her long head. What was she doing? Sharpening a scythe, smiling at me with a sick smile. Death Fabio, death.” His face went completely blank.

“She came! For me. . . ” My indefatigable uncle, once again, bundled my father up and rushed him back to the hospital.

Clearly he wasn’t out of the woods yet.

17 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Fabio told me my dad was really out of his mind, believing he had been “set up” by the FBI and that they had “stolen” Grandma’s house. “He’s claiming there’s this big international conspiracy against him.” My uncle kind of spelled it out: dad was a bit crazy and I shouldn’t expect too much from him.

But my father seemed to be trying hard to keep it together. He had found a new job at a department store and wasn’t drinking nearly as much. We had moved to a tiny house in the neighborhood; it wasn’t much, but I was close to my school. Yet, despite this apparent recovery, something was going on in the background, something that was never fully explained to me.

One day, I left school and started walking toward home, only a couple of blocks away.

My father had a habit of watching for me from the doorstep and I would wave when I got within sight. Suddenly, my mother appeared from across the street (with that “swooping in” bullshit of hers) and I was jolted to a stop. “Come on, papasito, let’s go get some ice cream,” she said with a friendly arm on my shoulder. “I just talked to your dad. He said it was okay.”

This didn’t exactly sound right and I looked down the street and saw my father. He waved and gave me a nod.

My mom led me across the street to a waiting taxi. As we drove off, I saw my father come down off the steps and hurry into the street, shouting, waving his arms. As we got near, my mother yelled, “Go!” and the driver shot past him. I looked back. He was standing there, throwing his hands up. It was obvious he had not wanted me to get into the cab with her. Alarm bells went off, but there was nothing I could do.

We drove to her mother’s house. “I thought we were getting ice cream,” I said.

“We will. But first Grandma Ines wants to see you.”

18 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street My mother’s mom was always nice to me and I was greatly relieved that we wouldn’t be left alone. Grandma Ines gave me some snacks and her son, my Uncle Wilson, taught me how to play video games, which were just then becoming available in Colombia. I was fascinated and quickly learned how to work the controls. Wilson was fun to be with and we played for hours.

Even my mom was being nice, bringing me milk and cookies.

As the sun began to set, I asked when I was going back home. My mother just shook her head and Grandma Ines stayed in the kitchen. Suddenly, with my little kid perceptions, I knew they were not going to let me go back home. But I wanted to be back with my father. I definitely didn’t want to be around my mother.

All I really remember of that night was my dad showing up with the police, followed by a lot of yelling and arguing. Dad was accusing my mother of kidnapping me and wanted her arrested. She was accusing him of being an unfit father, incapable of caring for a child. “He should go back to the crazy ward!”

Grandma Ines, I later found out, knew several local politicians and called one of them to the house. Eventually, the cops were persuaded that the matter of custody had to be settled in court. My father didn’t get his way and the two officers escorted him out.

My mother was delighted. But I wasn’t.

19 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter Three

With the death of my grandmother, Emma, and the frightening disintegration of my father, I was in a zone of uncertainty and looming darkness. I was afraid a lot. But I had a safety net in my wise Grandma Ines. My mother was only around off and on, and would do her usual disappearing act for long periods. My grandmother did not approve of how her daughter was carrying on and understood my fear of her. For now, I would be safe.

She owned a large two-storey house in Belen, a much better neighborhood than I had been used to. Located in the southwestern part of Medellin, Belen is filled with parks and places to play and have fun. It is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city and is crowded with large families. The area is divided by a wide boulevard, La Ochenta, one of the most colorful avenues in Medellin, lined with interesting mom and pop shops, arcades, lots of food stands and restaurants. The whole area is like one huge shopping mall.

Grandma’s son, my sturdy Uncle Wilson—who would figure in one of the most important days in my life in my late teens—lived at home and was employed as a messenger at Prebel, a large cosmetics company. He was in his early twenties, good looking, honest and hard working. He treated me like a favorite nephew, whenever he wasn’t flirting with some girl.

Now, I had two people around who cared about me and it became a happy period. Like my wonderful Grandma Emma, Grandma Ines was great at taking care of the house, cleaning,

20 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street doing the laundry and all the rest. She, too, cooked great meals, with lots of fresh, healthy vegetables. Uncle Wilson supported us with wages from his messenger job and I went to the local elementary school. It was sort of a normal family, but instead of a mom and dad, I had a grandmother and an uncle. This was fine with me. It was like one of those offbeat families in the sitcoms imported from the U.S. Grandma Ines had worked hard all of her life. Like many girls in Colombia, she married young and had children right away. Early on, when her husband developed diabetes and lost his health, he couldn’t work. In addition to being the mother of small children, and her husband’s nurse, Ines became the family’s breadwinner.

The underclasses of Medellin have little opportunity for formal education, but Grandma Ines had plenty of charm, life experience and know-how to draw on. She was always ready to roll up her sleeves and get to work. She began modestly, baby-sitting for wealthy families and this led to cooking for them (she was a wizard in the kitchen). Her husband died when the kids were little and she had to raise them as a single, working mom. At the time, she had two girls to care for, my mother Cecilia, and Rosa (Wilson came later). Grandma Ines had a positive, success-oriented attitude toward life; if you wanted something bad enough, and were willing to do whatever it took, you’d get there. My own sense of dogged determination I owe to Grandma Ines. Without her influence, I very much doubt I would have survived the troubles that came later.

Eventually, through contacts she’d made working for well-to-do families, my grandmother got a job as a receptionist at the exclusive Hotel Nutibara, one of Medellin’s finest.

She was good at networking and met a lot of influential VIP types, including city politicians.

They liked her pleasing personality, innate intelligence and polite manners. She was often hired

21 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street to baby-sit for them. When they learned about her culinary skills, she was asked to cook special meals for the various families. She even had their children stay with her at her home when the parents had to be away from the city. Eventually, several important people who had befriended my grandmother loaned—or just gave her—the money needed to build a lovely new home.

She was still young and attractive and, around this time, met a sterling gentleman of forty. Efren worked as a distribution manager for the local beer brewery and had been there over twenty years. Although they never married or lived together, they had one child, my Uncle Wilson. Efren helped take care of the family and as I grew up I always called him Grandpa.

From the accounts I’ve heard, they had something of a storybook love and they stayed together until he passed away, twenty-eight years later. I always remember Grandpa Efren as being, like his son, Wilson, hard working and dependable.

Living with Grandma and Uncle Wilson, with Grandpa Efren frequently around, I had stable influences and good role models. My Aunt Rosa and her husband came to visit often, bringing along my cousin, Tatiana. We would play together and became like brother and sister.

Over the next few years, I did well in school and made friends easily. I learned to enjoy reading, to study diligently, to apply myself, to stay alert and to take pride in whatever I did. I was pretty good at sports, too. I played soccer in the neighborhood sandlot games, becoming a halfway decent midfielder.

My dad was hardly ever there during this time. Uncle Fabio had kept me informed about him. Losing his mother, his wife and his son, had unhinged my dad. Fabio knew of his meanness toward my mom, but his brother never wanted to talk about her; Fabio thought he was ashamed of how he’d behaved. Dad had become a heavy drinker, a morose drunk, and went from job to

22 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street job. Once in a while, he’d call and promise to take me places, like the zoo, El parque Norte and the big amusement park outside of the city. I’d get up early on those days and wait for him all morning, looking forward to the fun we’d have, but a lot of times he just didn’t show up.

Sometimes he’d come to the house so crocked Grandma Ines wouldn’t let me go with him.

Fortunately, he always had a girlfriend and that’s probably the only reason he didn’t drink himself to death. A few years later, he left Colombia and moved to the States. He was to play a part in my future life, but at this time he was never really there.

Fortunately, my mother only stayed with us once in a while, a few days here, a week or two there. I tried to keep to my room or play outside when she was around. She would sleep late, eat, dress for the evening and depart. She would come back at night and I’d hear her having heated words with Grandma. I tried to tune it all out. Sometimes she’d come into my room and go into a tirade over everything that was wrong in her life, including me. At some point, she’d vanish and we wouldn’t hear from her for a time. Same old; same story. Looking back, I see the pattern: she only came home when she needed help or money. Grandma Ines did not approve of her daughter’s lifestyle, but she never stopped trying to help. It was not in her nature to say no.

My mother had been drinking for some time and finally her drug use also got out of hand.

It was an expensive lifestyle and this led her to become involved in some sort of “companionship service” that catered to upscale professionals. She was living in the fast lane, way out on the edge. And then one day, out of nowhere, my mother had some amazingly good luck, or maybe it was just destiny.

She was still in her twenties, stylishly petite, quite good looking and a great dancer. At an exclusive nightclub she encountered this fellow, Alberto Gomez, an executive at a pharmaceutical firm. Alberto turned out to be an all-round nice person who had lost his wife in

23 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street an auto accident, leaving him to raise his thirteen-year-old son, Carlos. As I was to learn, Alberto was from a wealthy family, well educated and well traveled, a very cosmopolitan man, with a penchant for custom suits and vintage wristwatches. He was, no doubt, lonely and fell in love with my mother. After a couple of months of dating, he asked her to move in with him. He wanted to give her, and me, a better life. Grandma told me about it and said I should go with my mother. Alberto owned a gorgeous house in La Floresta, one of the finer neighborhoods in Medellin, and his son would be like a stepbrother. “You’ll have it better there,” Grandma promised. “Your mother’s young. Don’t worry. She’ll settle down. Alberto is just the man to help her.”

It sounded like an exciting adventure and maybe my mom would stop being so full of anger. With Grandma’s blessing, I looked forward to a new life. ***

***

I was ten years old when we moved in with Alberto, a few years younger than his boy, Carlos. The place was magnificent, a sprawling, two-storey, five-bedroom hacienda, finely decorated and set within a grove of tall, shady trees. There were flowering terraces and a big backyard. It was like Wonderland to me. I had my own room, with colorful kids’ furniture. I got a lot of new toys and nice clothes. Alberto even insisted on enrolling me in the same private school Carlos attended. The Instituto Conrado Gonzales; it was quite a change and I was happy.

I loved my new school, a fine, modern building with small classes and great teachers.

Everyone wore cool clothes, white button-down shirts, jeans and black leather shoes. It did a lot for my confidence to have wealthy schoolmates accept me as one of them. Naturally, I’d always felt a little inferior to the upper classes, but at the new school I began to come into my own,

24 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street feeling like I belonged. I was getting good grades in almost every subject and I never missed a homework assignment. When the jocks asked me to play in their soccer games, I usually came through with some fancy footwork and dead-on place kicking. For the first time in my life, I was proud of myself.

My mother seemed happy with our rise in social status. I remember hearing her laughing; something I’d not heard her do very often. Alberto was definitely a steadying influence, just as Grandma Ines had said. I think Mom was drinking still, but now it was socially, with Alberto and his friends. We settled into a regular family routine: dinner together at home or a fine restaurant, outings in the park, trips to the movies. Everything went on well for over a year. I loved Alberto and thought of him as my stepfather. I got along fabulously with Carlos, even though he was a teenager and more interested in girls than a little brother.

However, my mother could not quit the alcohol and drug cycle; no matter how hard she tried (I learned later she had been in rehab a couple of times). She was good at hiding her addictions, but eventually it was out in the open and there was friction between her and Alberto.

Sometimes there were hushed arguments. I began to get an uneasy, though familiar, feeling of dread.

Alberto was away at his office during the day and he sometimes had to travel to Bogota or Cali overnight on business for his pharmaceutical firm. Carlos was frequently off with his high school friends. This left me alone with my mom. Sometimes she would try to be the normal mom and sit with me to do homework, but that never worked out well. She would lose patience and start smacking me if I didn’t have the correct answer, or the correct answer fast enough. At least it was only slapping I had to fear. Since moving in with Alberto, her really scary side had subdued. Or, that’s what I thought.

25 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Late one afternoon, I was in my room doing homework. My mother barged in and I could tell she was high and mad about something. I’d seen it many times before and I was afraid. I continued to do my homework and pretended she wasn’t there.

Whenever she was drunk or stoned my mother always had an excuse for tearing into me.

This time, she claimed I had been watching TV instead of doing my homework, which wasn’t true.

“I’m almost done!” I cried, poised over a math textbook.

But it was too late. She rushed at me with a silver-buckled leather belt. “You lazy little bastard!”

I tried to dodge and squirm away, but in the close confines there was no place to run or hide. A stinging lash caught me on the shoulder, the neck and then across the face. I screamed and went down, the pain flashing through me. From the floor, I threw up my arms, but that only made the blows hurt more.

Frantic, I tried to crawl under the bed. She kicked me solidly in the side and grabbed an ankle. With that extra power smaller women seem to possess, she dragged me away from the bed, going berserk, yelling and cursing as she continued flailing me with the leather strap. At some point, the large silver buckle slammed into my forehead. I saw a burst of light and blood came trickling down into my eyes.

“Get up!” she demanded, jerking me by the arm. “Get up!”

Terrified and trapped, I staggered to my feet. “Please don’t kill me,” I blurted out.

“Kill you? Kill you! That’s what you deserve!”

By now, there was blood spattered on the floor.

26 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “You’ve ruined this rug!” She yanked me after her, across the hall to the bathroom and shoved me inside, slamming the door. “There! That’s a good place for you to die!”

Cringing in a corner, I was shaking with fear. When I was sure she’d gone downstairs, I took a towel, wiped the blood from my eyes, and looked in the mirror. There was an inch long gash in my forehead. I was a complete mess, wet with blood from face to chest. Would I bleed to death? I didn’t know what to do. I thought of Grandma Ines and wished I’d never left her house.

For a long time I stayed in the bathroom, holding the towel to my forehead, crying, wondering how long I had left. Help me, I prayed, help me. Don’t let me die.

And then I heard Alberto come in from work. Soon, he was yelling and running up the stairs. He flung open the bathroom door, saw me, saw all the blood and recoiled in raw horror.

“My God!” Alberto wrapped a fresh towel around my head, rushed me down to his car and we sped to the local hospital’s emergency room.

It took ten stitches to close the wound in my forehead; I still have the scar. I was cut and bruised all over my face, neck, arms and legs. When these and the head wounds were treated and bandaged up, I came out looking like something Dr. Frankenstein had patched together on an off day. The X-rays showed I had a mild concussion and two cracked ribs, which made it excruciating to breathe.

“This child has been severely brutalized,” an outraged doctor told Alberto. He demanded to know how it happened and said it would have to be reported. My stepdad had to talk fast to stop him from calling in the authorities. I don’t know exactly what he told them; I was on heavy pain medication. Some money probably changed hands. After all, this was Medellin; this is how things were handled back then.

27 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street When we got home, Alberto tore into my mother. And it went on for hours and into the next day. Shouting and shrieking, doors banging (“Are you crazy!”). Alberto had been stunned by her violence. I knew he cared more about me than did my own mother. The doctor had ordered me to bed, so I couldn’t go to school, not the way I looked and felt. Carlos let me share his room and he stayed home with me, just in case. He had one of those simple video games like I’d played with Uncle Wilson. It was fun but I couldn’t get too excited. With my ribs banged up it was very painful to laugh, not to mention going to the bathroom.

Several days after the beating, Alberto came home from work and found Mom unconscious in her bedroom.

28 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter Four

At that time, I wasn’t told why my mother was rushed to the hospital. I was barely eleven years old at the time and in quite a dazed state from all that I had withstood. I only remember being glad she was gone.

As I later learned from her brother, Uncle Wilson, Mom had been drinking when she attacked me and had continued drinking all during the time Alberto was angry, berating her for what she’d done. “You should be ashamed of yourself!” he had told her repeatedly. It got to her and became too much and she tried to kill herself. She took half a bottle of some kind of pills and washed them down with rat poison and Aguardiente.

She was in the hospital four days. When she got back home, things settled down for the next few weeks while she regained her strength and health. Alberto made sure she was comfortable and had a neighbor take care of all the cooking and chores. I could tell Mom felt guilty about what she’d done, but she never brought it up and I simply avoided her as much as possible. I had recovered and was back in school.

After a couple of months, I again heard arguments between Alberto and Mom. She was apparently drinking again, using drugs and hanging out with some very odd characters. Even after the problems she’d put him through, Alberto still loved her and wanted to save their relationship. He begged her to quit abusing herself and everyone around her. And for a while she would keep away from the barras and the shady amigas, only to fall back into a cycle of drinking and arguing with Alberto. It became a nauseatingly predictable pattern.

29 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Children don’t hold grudges for long, yet they remember everything. For them, fear eventually fades, but leaves its mark. My mother was bad news and I knew it, even as a fifth grader, but I desperately wanted things to work out with her and my stepdad, so I could be in his world, go to a great school and have Carlos as my big brother. It was my own personal Hope Street, and I wanted to live there and have some kind of future. Thus, I worked really hard at avoiding another murderous assault from my mother, trying hard to do everything she demanded and making sure everything was clean and organized in the house. I didn’t want to make her look bad. I became adept at not seeing things and tried to ignore her behavior as much as I could.

However, that game ended one day in June.

School was out for the summer and I was at home more often. My mother and I had been a part of Alberto’s household for roughly two full years. Mom had been arguing with someone on the telephone (probably my father) and, when she hung up, I could tell she was annoyed. As she sometimes did, she busied herself with the flowers and plants on the terrace. Everything was in bloom and needed tending. She called me to help her and we worked together, watering flowers and pulling weeds. Then she decided we needed some bigger pots for the large begonia plants. There was an odd lot bazaar about five blocks away and we walked over.

Mom picked out two big ceramic pots and right away I knew there was going to be a problem. She didn’t want to pay a delivery charge. Her idea was that we would each carry one of these huge pots back to the house. When I lifted one of them, I could barely hold the thing and tried to tell her I wasn’t able to lug it five long blocks. She shot a look at me and I shut up. I got hold of the pot, hefted it up as best I could and wobbled out of the bazaar after her.

I made it three blocks. But finally, my numb arms simply gave out. The ceramic pot slipped from my grasp and broke into shards on the sidewalk.

30 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “Stupido!” my mother blathered. “You malparido hijueputa!” I burst into tears and that really set her off. “Get your ass back home!” she screamed. “Sumbambico!” she kept yelling the rest of the way and I was crying as people walked by and looked baffled.

As soon as we got inside the front door, my mother put down the pot she’d carried, grabbed me by the hair and jerked me off my feet. “You broke that pot on purpose,” she hissed, shaking me by the head. “You’re just like your father, a worthless shithead!”

“No!” I yelled. “It was too heavy. I couldn’t hold—” She punched me in the face and I went flying backwards into the living room and down onto the floor. When I looked up, she was coming at me.

“I’ll teach you to break things!” she yelled.

“No!” I pleaded, trying to scramble away.

Her first kick landed squarely in my stomach and I doubled up on the carpet, gasping in pain. She kept kicking, catching me in the back, ribs and head. “You little rat!” she was shouting.

Somehow I managed to get up on one foot in hopes of fleeing, but then she started in with her fists, a blur of slugs and punches.

She’s been building up to this for a long time and now she’s really going to kill me, I realized. “Please,” I begged, “Don’t.” But my mother couldn’t stop. She had morphed into an out of control fiend, full of murderous savagery. I tasted blood coming from a split lip.

And then, as suddenly as the attack had begun, she was gone and I heard her bedroom door slam. The whole thing had lasted only a couple of minutes, but it seemed much longer.

I was bleeding from my head and face and was afraid I’d damage the living room carpet.

Using wet paper towels, I cleaned up the stains—the last thing I wanted was for my stepfather to see them—but I was bleeding and so bruised all over I could barely move. I didn’t know what to

31 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street do. Silently, I crept outside and hid in the bushes, crying, ashamed, not wanting anyone to see me battered and beaten again. Looking back on that day, I see what a desperate, wounded animal I was.

Sometime later, I watched Mom, all dressed up, leave the house and get into a Mazda driven by this woman she hung around with in the bars and clubs. I used the opportunity to go back into the house and up to my bathroom. I washed away the blood and then put on a baggy shirt to cover the cuts and bruises as much as possible. There was no way to hide the swelling around my eye and mouth.

When my stepfather came home from work I stayed in my room, a newspaper in front of my face. With Mom out and Carlos off with his friends, Alberto wanted to take me to a restaurant for dinner. I said I’d already eaten, but that made him suspicious, as I always jumped at a chance to go anywhere with him. He went away, but came back ten minutes later holding up a bloody paper towel. “Where’d the blood come from?” he demanded.

Now, he saw my face.

“Jesus!” Alberto rushed over and started examining me. “Your mother did this, didn’t she?” he asked, angrily.

“It was an accident,” I lied. “I’m okay.”

He just stood there looking at me, speechless, tears welling up.

Late that night, I heard Alberto and Mom arguing, even though they tried to keep their voices down. I fell asleep straining to make out what they were saying.

As I fell asleep that night, something strange happened; I had a very unusual dream. In this dream I was learning to fly and I felt fully aware of all my surroundings and actions. I knew I was sleeping and understood that in my dreams I could do anything. I felt joy and happiness

32 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street and my first reaction was to try to fly away. At the beginning it was very difficult and I could only fly for a couple of minutes at a time, not getting very high in the air, but with practice I started improving and flying higher and higher. This was the first of many dreams to come, which, unknown to me at the time, would serve as an escape from my personal pain and also an important role in my personal transformation.

In the morning, I was awakened by my mother’s shrieks and shouts. Carlos came into my room and said that his dad had told my mom that she had to leave. He was packing her things.

A horrible, gut-wrenching sensation took hold. “Me, too?” I asked weakly. “Do I have to go, too?”

Carlos gave me a look I’ll never forget, a sad, goodbye look. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“I’m really sorry.”

That morning was a kind of doomsday for me and it’s hard to recall just what happened after I realized we were being kicked out of Alberto’s house. I know I was scared, bewildered.

Would I ever see Alberto or Carlos again? Two people I’d come to love. And my private school … I wouldn’t be able to go there anymore. I knew my mother would blame me for the breakup.

What would she do? I remember my heart was pounding as I was packing my things. She let me take most of my new clothes, but only a few of my toys. “We don’t have room for that junk.”

(Only a child knows how terrible it can be to part with beloved toys, which to them are like little friends.) Moving mechanically on nothing but fear and shock, I knew that my opportunity to rise above the struggling classes of Medellin had slipped away.

33 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter Five

But not all was lost, we moved back in with Grandma Ines and Uncle Wilson. Grandma had spoken with Alberto and knew all about what had happened. She attended to the cuts on my face and the black eye that had developed and then made sure I was unpacked and comfortable in my old bedroom. I heard her bawling out my mother for the trouble she’d caused.

Grandma was always our last resort and would welcome us with open arms, no matter what. She had long been on record about Mom’s behavior, her drinking and drug taking, her temper, and her “work” in the escort scene. However, she was never judgmental, not the type to harp on negative things. Her three-bedroom house was not luxurious like Alberto’s, but it was well maintained and finely kept, always clean and neat. Of course, Grandma’s cooking was the best. In the backyard, her beautiful flowers and plants flourished. She still worked for the wealthy families she’d been with for years, sometimes as a nanny, other times as a cook.

Grandma Ines had just three vices: cigarettes, strong Colombian coffee and those cheesy telenovelas, the soap operas that were so close to the scenario of her own life.

Uncle Wilson had left his messenger job at the cosmetics company, had worked as a security guard for a while and was now managing a small restaurant in Las Palmas. He would have other jobs later, including insurance salesman and apartment rental agent. Uncle Wilson was a serious guy, a hard worker; he also had an eye for the ladies. He was tall and thin and dressed older than he was. He’d had to grow up fast and be the man of the house.

For the next year, our life seemed to be working out. I, approaching my teens now, was back at my old school and making new friends. As before, my mother disappeared frequently for

34 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street long periods and wasn’t around to tell me how I reminded her of my father, whom she loathed, or what a great life she would’ve had if she didn’t have me to “worry about”.

Grandma Ines’s house was near the park and I loved going there with her. We went back to the same routine as before. On Sundays, she would take me to church and then we would get ice cream for me and a steaming coffee for her. We never talked about my mom. That was a hopeless topic. My dreams also continued during this time, the recurring dream about flying happened every other week or so. I was really mastering the art of flying in my dreams, this was my way of rising above all my problems, a great way to get away and experience freedom.

By the early 1980’s, I was growing up and taking an interest in the same things other teenagers were into. I was too shy and lacking in self-confidence to pursue girls very much, but I had a passion for rock ‘n’ roll, especially stuff from the States and the UK. My friend, Federico, had an electric guitar and I would go over to his house to watch him play. I had a natural aptitude for music; some inbred rhythm and I picked up basic guitar in a matter of months. We listened to groups like KISS, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and the Rolling Stones. We’d work up our own versions of their tunes and had a great time with the lyrics. That’s how I first discovered the fascinating flux and flow of the English language, the colorful words, the powerful slang and the shifting meanings.

In addition to music, I loved going to the movies. Of course, American films are popular worldwide and Medellin was no exception. When we were living with Alberto, I saw a lot of movies. Music, films, TV and magazines were my introduction to America, a far-off dreamland I never thought I’d ever see. Of course, we kids paid attention to what happened up north and I remember all of it in a kaleidoscope of names, images and sounds: Nixon and Ford, Carter and Reagan, Indiana Jones and Michael Jackson, Bruce Willis and Clint Eastwood, Schwarzenegger

35 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street and Cruise, Madonna and Prince, NASA’s Challenger disaster and Rubik’s Cube, Levi’s and Nike sneakers, Rolling Stone magazine and Burger King Whoppers, Miami Vice and 21 Jump Street, Magnum PI and The Cosby Show ... John Lennon shot and killed, but for what reason, New York?

Things were always happening in the States and we were the listening world. It was during this time when I first started to fantasize about moving to the States. How amazing to be a part of such a great country, live in such a diverse place and open my mind to new languages, ideas, religions, philosophies and more. My dreams of moving to this wonderful country would continue and grow with the years that followed. Was it particularly unusual that such a small child who hardly knew any of the basic staples of a happy home—owing to the constant moving about as a result of never-ending family disorder—would begin dreaming of life in the even more distant and risky world of a different land? A land completely unknown and to which he had no real connection? Would it perhaps have been more understandable that a child who had experienced the repeated uprooting and dislocation of my tumultuous youth would dream instead of the single thing that he never possessed—a fairytale happy home of Colombian stability?

Maybe… But if there is a single thing that was hammered into my fiber at this critical age of early development, it was this: level headed pragmatism. I had to face, over and over again, the harsh fact of life that this stereotypical dream of familial, domestic bliss had been blown to pieces a long time ago—each new opportunity to build something hopeful and constructive was broken apart right before my eyes by human frailty. With each falling to pieces of another household, with each heartbreak the small child that I was back then grew a little less heartbroken . . . and a little more clear-eyed and realistic.

36 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street It wasn’t that I didn’t ache for the same comforts and safety that every growing youth yearned for—I never lost my hope. I never ceased to remain a hopeful child. I simply began to look elsewhere for these comforts after my providers and loved ones let me down, chronically mistreated me, or simply vanished into the past forever (as did, sadly, Alberto and Carlos).

Perhaps the single greatest change within me was this: when my head hit the pillow at night, and I closed my eyes and dreamed of a world of longings-fulfilled, of happiness-achieved, of love and comfort ready-made and available, I no longer dreamt of these things coming to me via a happy, passive life of Colombian good fortune. I slowly formed the ideas of action. I dreamt of breaking the bounds of these endlessly painful goings-on, these painful repetitions that came to me over and over again as I sat still and traveled along the path taken by my family. I dreamt of going out and finding that joyful, hopeful world, full of people places and things that corresponded to my developing interests . . . my then-blooming interest in the arts, in music and culture, in the fascinating events taking place in other parts of the world beyond the same old pain and repetition that Medellin always seemed to deliver to me.

More and more, as I was exposed to a larger slice of—and increasingly paid specific attention to—the flux of culture and news from around the globe, the identity of that joyful, hopeful world that spread out before my imagining mind as I lay in bed at night, that thing that I discovered that I yearned for the most, was the idea of that magical land I grew up seeing on TV and in the movies—the United States of America.

In a young, pre-teen life filled with such bitter disappointments, the flow of music, movies and current events flowing from North America hit me almost like a reassuring lullaby, reminding me that there was another world out there to be had, a world of laughter, a completely interesting world of opportunity, a fascinating neon-colored world filled with great music and

37 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street unusual stars, of crazy lingo, of hilarious comedy and great books. I latched on to the idea of America at a very young age, and the idea grew—grew right along with me, physically, intellectually and emotionally . . . right along with my confidence, right along with my sense of self, my picture of my developing identity and, ultimately, my destiny.

Thus, here in these earlier years, the idea of America and the mere daydreaming escape that it represented was a fateful one. Perhaps the most fateful of my entire life. That daydream—like the start of a long term version of a pubescent crush on a dream girl—would eventually mature over the years to the point where dreams would no longer suffice and action would finally be required . . . and I would wrestle my dreams into a reality.

After a certain age, I was always a persistent reader. My favorites were books on chess, travel and the Age of Exploration. I was especially interested in the father of modern Colombia, Simon Bolivar, as well as the great Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Cristobal Colon, for whom the nation was named. And then there was the ruthless and doomed Magellan, the gold-crazed conquistadores. I also read Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, the most famous book by a Colombian author. I remember devouring Jonathan Livingston Seagull and most of the novels in V.C. Andrews’s popular Flowers in the Attic series about abused kids (which I could obviously relate to).

At the local library, I stumbled onto H.G. Wells and his quaint science fiction, as well as his Outline of History (I was spooked to learn that Cromwell’s head was dug up long after he died and put on display in London). In school, we read celebrated Latin American works, as well as translated English and American classics, books like Robinson Crusoe, David Copperfield and Tom Sawyer. I remember reading Mark Twain and laughing at his very funny sayings, like calling a lie a “stretcher”. There was even a translation of The Catcher In The Rye circulating. I

38 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street read it, but didn’t get the point, except as another angle on the Americans (apparently a lot of people in the States were crabby from an early age), though I loved Holden Caulfield’s repeated, “I’m out of my mind. I really am.” Losing myself in a book provided some of my happiest times, and still does.

At one point, I learned from Grandma Ines that my mother had met a man and was pregnant with his child. She only told me about it when Mom was beginning to show. I don’t know if Grandma was disgusted with this new waywardness, or secretly pleased with the prospect of having an infant to cuddle and care for. Mom went to live with her sister Rosa for the final months of the pregnancy and, in April of 1984, when I was fourteen years old, she gave birth to my half-sister, Monica. Naturally, the baby was left with Grandma a lot of the time and, after a few weeks, most of the time. As far as whom Monica’s father was, it seemed everyone had adopted a pact of silence. I never got the story straight, though I heard things. I heard things.

39 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter Six

Not long after Monica was born, big surprise; my mother picked up right where she’d left off, out late with different men, drinking, doing drugs and taking her frustrations out on me every chance she had. Often, when Grandma wasn’t home, she’d haul off and whack me across the back of the head for some small infraction, like breaking a shoelace, or just to get my attention.

I’ll never forget (because it was a major turning point) that time I was in my room showing a friend the scar on my forehead and the one on my arm where she’d stabbed me with a fork. I didn’t know my mom was eavesdropping and when my friend left, she went into one of her demented kicking-punching-cursing fits, accusing me of gossiping and badmouthing her to the neighbors. When she saw that her fists were not doing as much damage as when I was little, she grabbed a ceramic plate and broke it over my head. That hurt.

As always, after she got tired of battering me, she went and locked herself in her bedroom. Suddenly, but not exactly out of nowhere, I realized I was goddamn sick and tired of her abuse. I knew I had to do something about it; I wasn’t sure what exactly, but something needed to change. I spent the next couple of weeks fantasizing about how my life would magically improve; from running away, to crazy fantasies like hoping Mom would win the lottery and move to Italy or China or my dad would return for me and take me to live in New York with him, unfortunately none of those things ever happened.

One morning, she woke up and was in a really bad mood, she had lost some money and for some reason thought I had taken it. She woke up and came into my room, screaming. I didn’t feel like taking any more abuse from her; I got up and slammed the door, I started walking away and she

40 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street tried to grab my hand, I pulled with all my strength and almost knocked her down. She looked up surprised. “Don’t touch me again,” I said in a strong voice, and left.

After that day, it became impossible for me to concentrate at school and I struggled to keep from failing (after holding a solid “B” average). Life had gotten very complicated. I could no longer accept my mother’s erratic violence and cruelty. I knew something really bad was about to happen and I didn’t want to be in the middle of it. I was worried about Grandma Ines, since she was always in the middle of all these altercations. She was getting older and always had a lot to do. With the new baby dumped in her lap, she was kept busier than ever. Even though she never complained, I sort of felt like a burden to her. As kind as Grandma always was, I couldn’t go to her and explain how I was living in fear of my mother. I didn’t know how to voice the obvious: that my mother hated me and wished me dead and was working on it pretty diligently . . . nor could I tell Grandma that I was through taking her daughter’s abuse and was prepared to do something about it.

Later that week, I got so desperate I couldn’t go on. At a ripe fourteen years of age, I made up my mind: I was tired of being afraid every single waking (and sleeping) moment. I decided to kill myself.

I swiped a single-edge razorblade from Uncle Wilson’s shaving kit and locked myself in the bathroom. It wouldn’t hurt to cut my wrists. Just do it, I told myself. Just do it! Get it over with! I didn’t want to live anymore in the world I was in, so far from Hope Street. I put the edge of the blade to my wrist and closed my eyes. “It won’t hurt,” I whispered. I pressed down and made a short stroke, then looked. The blood welled up in a thin red line. I stayed there in the bathroom holding that razorblade a long time before I realized I simply didn’t want to die.

41 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street I had lots of crazy things going through my mind, sitting there at the crossroads to oblivion. But I knew deep down I didn’t have it in me to do anything really violent. Hell, I didn’t even like to kill flies.

Now, I had another thought, a realization: I couldn’t stay at Grandma Ines’s house anymore. I had to get out, take off and just disappear. Wasn’t that something I’d had in the back of my mind since second grade?

But go where?

I thought about calling Alberto, whom I had not seen in a couple of years (my mother had prevented me from saying a proper goodbye). But I couldn’t bring myself to bother him. He had put up with enough trouble and I would just remind him of it. Besides, he probably had a wife or live-in girlfriend by now and no longer wanted a stray stepson. Thinking of him as my stepdad was hard to let go of, but now I knew it had all been a fantasy. A fantasy that might have become a reality, had my twisted mother not demolished it the way she did.

There was nowhere to go. I knew no one to turn to for help. No one in the family would want to take sides in a custody battle, which my mother would win (she’d fight to keep me just to be mean). Oh, it was a dandy situation, just great. That night, I went to bed thinking about my options. As I fell asleep, I had a dream about flying away; this time it was different, during my dream I flew over the city and really far away. I woke up and realized that’s what I needed to do.

So, I finally decided, to hell with it, I would live on the streets until I could do better.

Now I was committed and nothing could stop me. Just like that, I made the decision to go. A classic running-away-from-home gig.

The next day I told my buddy, Beto, about my plan. “It’ll be like McCartney’s Band on the Run,” I cracked. He liked the sound of it—the whole idea, the giddy intrigue—and agreed to

42 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street help. Over a couple of days, he helped me sneak my clothes and stuff out of the house, a little at a time, and we hid them in his father’s garage. When everything I could take with me was out of my room, I went into my mother’s closet and grabbed two small suitcases. She was out at the bars and Uncle Wilson was at his girlfriend’s. Grandma was sleeping soundly. At the last minute, I thought of leaving a note so she wouldn’t be mad at me. But what would I say—that I’d rather live on the street than in her house?

Forget stupid notes. It was now a matter of survival. I took the two empty suitcases and silently departed from Grandma Ines’s house (I forgot the Casio watch she had given me and had to go back for it). It broke my heart to leave, but I was saying goodbye to all that. As I went, I didn’t dare glance back.

Hurrying through the dark streets, I focused on a clean getaway with no slip-ups. Inside Beto’s garage, we put my smuggled clothes into the two suitcases and I was all set.

“You got any lucas?” he asked.

“I’m okay.” I had saved the equivalent of about ten dollars.

“Where will you go?” he wondered.

I told him I wasn’t sure, but would let him know. We said our farewells and parted at the shadowy door of the garage.

“Good luck,” Beto said. I walked away carrying the suitcases into the night.

The luggage was not much to lug, containing little more than clothes and a few paperback books. I was traveling light. However, it looked a little funny for a youngster to be out late in the evening with suitcases. The cops, the tombos, might see me and think I’d robbed a house. What would I say to explain myself? “No officer, I didn’t steal anything. These are just some clothes

43 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street of mine. See, I’m running away from home so I don’t end up being killed by my crazy mother.”

That’d get a big laugh, until they saw I was serious. Or, I could say I was on my way over to Aunt Rosa’s house and had been watching TV and didn’t realize it was so late. That seemed a better cover story and decided that’s what I’d tell anyone who questioned me.

I knew a section of a large park nearby, a wooded area where few people went at night. I decided to hide my stuff there and try to figure out my next move. As I took a shortcut through a side alley, there was a man standing in the doorway of a building, drinking a bottle of Coca Cola.

He didn’t see me as I slipped along soundlessly on my sneakers, keeping in the shadows. I was already learning how not to be noticed.

It was now nearing midnight and I’d never been in the park that late. I was a little afraid.

But here and there, in pale swatches of moonlight, I spotted only a romantic couple sitting on a bench or lying in the grass together, either talking or making out. They looked like they were happy, so it must be possible.

Ominous shadows made me quicken my pace. When I got to a heavily wooded tract, I was relieved to see no one was around to observe as I hustled into the trees and out of sight.

Searching out a grassy spot, I dropped the suitcases and lay down to rest after my nervous flight. I had thought to pack a sandwich and got it out of my jacket; it tasted good, and made me wonder, quite literally, where my next meal would come from. I also wondered what Grandma’s reaction would be when she saw I was gone and had taken my clothes. It would make her sad, but she’d know why I was gone. My mother? The only thing that would make her sad was the fact that I had swiped two of her goddamn suitcases. I’d taken the expensive ones Alberto had given her, so I wouldn’t look homeless and possibly dangerous. Smart, huh?

44 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter Seven

That first night I slept in the park, hidden in a dense patch of trees—a brand new gypsy I was, hardly fifteen years of age. Some little creatures were scampering about in the nearby undergrowth, no doubt curious about their uninvited guest. There was nothing to wrap around me for protection; I hadn’t had room for anything bulky like a blanket. I put on a sweater, rolled up a pair of jeans to use for a pillow and drifted off.

I slept fitfully, but I’d been doing that for a long time.

Shafts of sunlight coming down through the treetops woke me, not yelling and fear. Now that I had taken a decisive step away from despair, I think I actually felt happy. No place to live, no money, no prospects, no real hope. Still, my mood had elevated considerably. I was determined to, somehow, make a life for myself . . . or die trying.

My first move: find a place to stay. The woods were a good temporary base, but what would happen when it rained and got cold?

I left my suitcases hidden under some bushes and took an early bus downtown. There were cheap places to get breakfast, including a cafeteria where I downed some eggs and potatoes. I had on decent clothes and looked no different than the youngsters going off to the neighborhood high school. No one knew I was now living in another dimension, a place where the schools are closed and the kids are all grown up.

Wandering around in a big city like Medellin can be very pleasant, the urban sights and sounds: a great diversion; the life energy: colorful and vivid; the construction sites growling with huge machines; the madcap traffic; the busy department stores with goods from all over the

45 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street globe; the Euro-chic boutiques with their exotic window displays; the finely dressed men and fashionable women going about their daily business. It gave me a unique, excited sensation to think I could be part of all this. In later years, I was to feel this same exhilaration in other big cities, a realization that the world is a fascinating place, full of endless activity, limitless possibilities. I bought a mango from a street vendor and walked about munching on it, like I hadn’t a care in the world. An old beggar woman, a vieja, passed and held out her hand; I gave her a small coin. If I’d had a guitar, I would have gone into one of my Led Zeppelin riffs for her, some of my home-brewed stuff from Stairway to Heaven.

After a couple of hours, I found myself in a rundown section of the city that looked about right for my purposes. It was dotted with small machine shops, woodworking tradesmen, plumbing supply stores and such. I knew that street people were always hanging around and someone might be able to help me find a cheap place to stay. Once that was done, I could get a job and pull myself together. School, I couldn’t think about at the moment.

Sometime later that day, I talked to a guy, in his twenties, who told me he’d been on the street for years and knew of several garages where people could “crash” for next to nothing. We walked around together for a while. Eventually, he pointed out a dingy-gray, back alley building by the river in a sad barrio called Zamora. “That’d be a good bet,” he said.

Feeling shaky, but steeling myself, I walked over and knocked on a side door. It was opened by a stringy-haired teenager, in a dirty Black Sabbath T-shirt, who looked like one of Dickens’s London urchins. When I told him I needed a place to stay for a short time, he invited me in.

It was a small, rundown place, long since unused for anything productive. A bare light bulb in the ceiling and a dirty window supplied the only illumination. There was a plastic shower

46 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street curtain hanging over a portable mini toilet. Various items of clothing hung from the walls. The floor was cracked and spotted with ancient oil and grease stains. There was a smell, a mixture of rust, old tires and dried sweat. A guy in jeans was sleeping in a shadowy corner.

The teenager introduced himself as Flaco, and said there were four people staying in the garage and each person contributed a dollar a week. “The guy who owns this and a couple of other garages is a good llave. He never bothers us.”

Flaco told me he’d have to ask the other “residents” if I could move in, but was sure it would be okay. “I’m kinda the house manager here, so there’s one thing I should know.” He dropped into a conspiratorial undertone. “You can tell me the truth or you can lie. Prob’ly best to lie if you have to. Are you running from la ley? Are the tombos after you for anything?” The question startled me, for I’d never thought of myself as someone the police would be after. When I assured him I had simply left a dysfunctional home, fed up with abuse, Flaco gave me a bustedtooth grin and said that was something he could relate to. He told me to come back after sundown.

I mentioned that I had a couple of bags.

“Bring’em. You can prob’ly move in tonight.” He glanced back at the sleeper and rubbed his fingers together. “We use’ly get something in advance.” I took out a small bill and handed it over. Flaco had a sly quality that, ironically, made him seem trustworthy.

It was still early in the day so I went to the movies to kill time. I saw some Hollywood film that had Americans living in gorgeous homes, driving cool cars, with good jobs, credit cards and everything. Yet, astonishingly, they were unhappy! Unbelievable, how those gringos don’t appreciate what they have.

47 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street A city bus took me back to the park and I hiked across to the woods. There were plenty of people around enjoying the sun, but I was able to duck into the trees without drawing attention.

By timing it right, I could get back downtown just before dark. A young fellow carrying suitcases wouldn’t draw attention when lots of people were out and about. I pulled the two bags out of the bushes and opened one up to change shirts. Rummaging around in the clothes I found an envelope. Inside were thirty thousand Colombian pesos, the equivalent of about $20 U.S. My righteous pal, Beto, had slipped the money in when we were transferring my things to the suitcases the night before. It was a gesture of pure friendship, which I have never forgotten.

After a nap, I carried the suitcases out of the park and caught a crowded bus for downtown. Going to Zamora was quite an adventure, as this was a very different kind of neighborhood than I had always known. Here, everyone lived well below the lowest levels of poverty.

As I was starving, I stopped at a fritanga. I put the suitcases under a table and sat there slowly eating a chicharron and arepa, drawing out the meal as long as I could. When the sun began to fade, I took the suitcases up the street, a few blocks from the gray garage. The area was mostly industrial and gleefully noisy workers were quitting for the day. To kill time, I got an ice cone from a cart vendor, which allowed me to loiter around finishing it without looking out of place. I remember it was a cherry-red, my favorite flavor, just like Mick Jagger says in that song.

Except I was not, “Down at the Chelsea drugstore ... standing in line with Mr. Jimmy.” Not quite.

As bluish twilight fell, I presented myself at the garage.

True to his word, Flaco welcomed me. “Everything’s all set,” he said. “Glad to have another parce on board.” In the dim light from the overhead bulb, I could see no one else was in

48 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street the oily quarters. Flaco showed me to my space, a dusty corner where I could sleep. He even had a “mattress” for me to use, a flattened out cardboard box. “Floor’s a little dirty,” he needlessly pointed out. “But we’ve got running water.” He indicated a utility sink at the back of the garage.

“Cold only, but it’s use’ly drinkable.”

I stacked my suitcases against the wall to take up as little room as possible and laid out the cardboard. All the while, Flaco kept up a running monologue. He was one of those streetsmart parces, wise to the ways of survival. He told me he had also left home very early and had been on his own for three years. “It’s all about stayin’ alive, ain’t it?” he mused, philosophically.

Eventually, he grew silent, staring into space, like he was contemplating the calamities of existence. I remained quiet and stretched out on the cardboard mat, exhausted. I had a lot to think about, too. As I went to sleep that night, I began to understand the meaning of my dreams. I realized that flying meant not only escaping the painful reality I had been living, it also meant becoming aware, aware of the possibilities that lay ahead. This realization hit me like a brick over the head; the moment you open your mind to different possibilities and realize that you can “fly” away from your current reality, there’s no limit to the type of life you can create, even if it starts with a humble beginning. This was my first realization to building a better future, becoming fully aware and fully conscious of my choices, my behavior and my emotional state.

Now, I no longer inhabited the pleasant streets of Grandma Ines’s lovely Belen, but was situated in Medellin’s worst slum neighborhood shantytown. Zamora had everything: poverty, crime, drugs, filth, disease, noise, violence, terror and heartbreak, they all lived at Zamora. The average American or European stepping into this scene would believe himself to be very near the bottom of the world.

49 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street There were five of us staying in the tiny garage in that tumbledown back street. It was certainly a small space, just big enough to hold a compact car and not much else. We hardly had room for the five cardboard pads we used to keep off the grungy floor.

I was a few years younger than the others and they could tell I was a little frightened, this being the first time I’d ever been out on my own. They asked me very little and I did the same.

Mainly, I was scared because I had no way to earn money. For the first week I wandered around the city in a fruitless search for any kind of work. It was pretty pathetic. I applied for a delivery boy job at a supermarket and was quickly turned away, too young. I tried for jobs as a dishwasher or busboy in any number of restaurants; again, I was told to come back when I was old enough for a work permit. A pharmacy needed someone to make local deliveries and I thought I had a chance, but no. “I’m sorry, kid,” the manager finally decided. “I need someone with a driver’s license.”

They always tell you no but you keep going on and you try and you hope.

There was this one restaurant, a pretentious, tablecloth kind of place. I went around to the back alley near the open kitchen door and waited until I saw the cook. “Can I get a chance to wash dishes or something for you?” I called out.

He stopped in the doorway, munching on something. “No, no,” he snapped, brusquely, “Nothing here.” Tired from rejections and a day’s pavement pounding, I just shrugged indifferently and turned away, thinking, That’s fine, okay, who cares? However, I must have looked like a waif sent in from central casting, because this mean-faced stove-jockey took pity on me. “Can’t give you a job, son, but here,” he said, handing me an overstuffed roast pork sandwich he had on his counter.

50 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street I still recall the way it tasted. The aroma of roast pork always reminds me of that grumpy cook who gave me a backdoor meal. One of my more pleasant nightmares.

The guys in the garage saw how frustrated I was getting with the job search. Finally, Ricardo, who was in his late twenties and very street wise, asked if I’d care to get into the same line of work he and the others were in, commission sales. “It’s not hard selling door-to-door,” he explained. “The boss is always looking for someone with a good appearance who can sell.”

“I’ve never sold anything,” I admitted. “But if you guys showed me how...”

“Don’t worry, Ederman, you’ll pick it up fast,” Ricardo assured. “We only sell simple household goods that women buy all the time—shampoo, soap, cosmetics, different cleaning items. It’s a service for the lady of the house. Sure, we’re helpin’ with her shopping chores.

Some days your commissions are damn good, other days you come up short. But it all evens out.” He turned quiet and talked about himself, as Ricardo was apt to do. He said he’d once been a pickpocket (a gentleman’s calling), but found he had no nerve for breaking the law. “Selling is an honest living and I don’t mind it.”

“How do we get paid?” I asked.

Ricardo went into detail about working on commission, getting a percentage of whatever you sold, what a good company his was to work for and so on. He offered to hook me up with the owner, John Paul, who had built the company from scratch, one of those guys who had several businesses and was able to pull himself up through sheer determination. Ricardo stressed that he got nothing for bringing in a new salesman. Somewhere he’d picked up the American term “brownie points” and said this would be his only reward if I came on board.

I had no idea what “brownie points” were (some kind of cookie maybe), but being desperate, I jumped at the chance to earn some money. I knew nothing about selling, but then, I

51 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street knew nothing about anything. Not a goddamn thing when you came right down to it. What’s more, by joining with everyone in the “house”, working the same job, I had a sense of belonging.

I wasn’t alone, not totally lost.

When you’re fifteen years old and life and your hormones force you through a sea of changes, existence can be tough enough, even when living in the happiest of homes. For me, living out in the fringes of existence, life was even more uncertain and precarious. There was no pretending this was a family like I’d always wanted, first at Grandma Emma’s house and then at Grandma Ines’s, and like I’d almost had living with Alberto. But it was better than nothing. I was following a primal instinct: all creatures gather together in their kind.

Ricardo allowed me to work with him for two days of on-the-job-training. My other roommates, Flaco, David and Jose, also took time to give me pointers on door-to-door selling.

Much of it was plain common sense, although, some of their tips were hard to follow, “Never accept no,” was a tad confusing to a rookie.

We had to be awake at six a.m. in order to get “cleaned up” (splashes of cold water from the sink) and be over at the company’s downtown office by seven. It was a good hike and everyone walked fast so as not to be late. Along the way, we’d pass factory and restaurant workers, all of them groggy-eyed and pissed off looking. At the storefront office, we picked up our individual backpacks, which had been prepared that morning. These were filled with various kinds of packaged goods, toiletries, items for the bathroom and cleaning products for the house.

We had to sign for each load, agreeing to be responsible for the items counted and recorded.

Once we were ready, we were assigned a supervisor and a route, which varied each day.

We then went out and caught a bus for one of the small towns or suburbs beyond the metro area,

52 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street paying our own fare. John Paul, the boss, was a slick operator from Bogota (said to be the son of a Corsican gangster out of Marseilles) and cleverly stocked only those items that were not readily available outside of Medellin. He had marketing savvy, an eye for both quality and a bargain, purchasing large quantities of mostly off-brand merchandise at wholesale prices. We then sold these at two or three times cost. The salesman’s commission on the various items ranged anywhere from a few centavos for a toothbrush, to a couple of pesos or more for things like shampoo and conditioner. There was also an incentive program, a bonus for top producers.

We got paid daily and, of course, in cash. Like we could deal with a check, none of us had ever seen one with our name on it!

Once we arrived at our designated territory for the day, usually about nine a.m., the supervisor would send us off in different directions to neighborhood streets lined with modest homes. We would go door-to-door pitching and selling, or not selling, until noon, when we got a short lunch break. Then it was back to the job and we continued until about five o’clock. It was hard work carrying that heavy backpack when it was hot out. My four parceros all had experience in direct sales to housewives and knew what they were doing. I was totally inexperienced, but I soon got the hang of it.

The wise and extremely devious Jose had explained the value of having a good story to tell, a line of chatter that would grab sympathy. “Sad sells,” was one of his maxims (another was, “Don’t talk yourself out of the sale,” which I never understood until later). Rather quickly, I developed a good cuento centered on a very basic, well-founded pitch. While talking with each customer, I’d find a way to work in the fact that I was an orphan. Eventually, I became pretty adept at these strategic insertions. No remark a customer might make was so remote that I could

53 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street not use it as a pivot into my story. I was working my way through high school and then I would be going on to college. I had a future. Sometimes I’d say I wanted to be a doctor, other times a teacher. Rather than take the easy way, I’d say, falling into a life of selling drugs or joining one of the militia groups, I wanted to work hard and be a productive citizen. Oddly enough, this was all true (except for the doctor/teacher thing). I was something of an orphan; I was arranging to take night school courses; I would be going on to college.

Another thing I learned to play on was the guilt angle. Here I was, a mere child, out working long hours to stay alive, and people were often touched by my plight. In a way, they felt guilty. I learned to use this to get them to buy and it worked fairly well. Other times, if a customer wasn’t going to buy, or didn’t have enough money, I’d aim for a handout or even some food. “Thank you,” I’d gush. “I’ll be able to eat tonight.” It was hardly an exaggeration. I was telling the truth, though cloaking it in a fog of falsehoods. Desperation breeds strategy.

Sometimes I’d have little to show for all the hours walking around in the heat and humidity, doing my orphan-schoolboy routine, while other times luck would be with me and I’d end the day with some folding money to my credit. Like Ricardo had said, it all evens out. A week’s earnings, fifty hours on average, might amount to as much as five bucks U.S. So, learning and earning, I settled in with the sales job, tiresome but reliable, and with “living” in a crowded mini garage. Eventually, I found that we were allowed to take a shower at the office and this was something of a treat. Dinner? That was usually a ten-cent loaf of bread and we’d all split a two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola. Sometimes we’d have a little extra coin and spring for rice and beans. What I recall most about that time is my sheer borderline existence, a low-gear dead zone where life fluctuates from minimal sufficiency to flat out desperation. I

54 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street guess things went along about as well as one could expect under such circumstances. It was still better than getting beat up by my mother.

55 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter Eight

Being broke and hungry when you wake up is a kick-ass motivator. One such morning, I went off to work craving a hot chocolate like Grandma Ines used make for me, and a pandequeso; a warm and delicious cheese bread. But I had no lucas to buy anything. I would have to sell before I could eat. At times like this I was tempted to go to a payphone and call Grandma. I’d been gone months and knew she’d be worried about me. But that was a call I was not yet prepared to make. I didn’t have enough emotional battery-power to risk draining myself further. Contacting her would have to wait until I felt stronger and a little more charged up.

When hunger is the driving force, you become very wise to the ways of the world, alert to the subtleties. You learn to read not only body language but also between the lines; basic survival stuff, as well as valuable sales experience. For one thing, you learn to accept the fact that people (nice, ordinary people) think absolutely nothing of handing you a lot of horseshit, big, steamy lumps of it. “Come back tomorrow ... Try me next week ... I’ve got no money in the house ... My car’s in the shop ... My cousin broke his leg ... My husband’s cheating on me ... My son’s in the army and hates it.” Listening to that kind of talk gets you nowhere. As I learned more about street-level sales and marketing, I began to understand Jose’s spacey dictum: “Never let ‘no’ get in the way of a sale.”

Unfortunately, on this particular day when I was so hungry, we were assigned to the hilly, suburban area outside of Medellin and that meant a lot of extra walking and strain. It was early morning and already closing in on eighty degrees. I trudged along on the sun blinding streets, sweating in my T-shirt and jeans, lugging the heavy backpack of products, doing my best to get

56 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street something going. But it turned out to be one of those maddeningly slow days. No matter how I tried, my polished school-kid bit wouldn’t cut it. Nobody was buying anything, not my products, not my story. I even got a few of those snobby looks that seem to say, “Come back when you’re better dressed.”

As the noon break came, my hunger kicked into high gear. If I didn’t eat something soon I wasn’t going to make it until quitting time. When I saw one of my co-workers sitting under a tree eating a sandwich, I hustled over and tried to borrow a little money for lunch. “Money?” he asked. “Money? What the hell is that?”

“You sell anything?”

He shook his head and stared into space with the shame of a defeated soldier.

Moving to another street, I kept knocking on doors, trying to look normal, upbeat and not on the verge of fainting, but—one after the other—no sale, no sale, no sale. The housewives just weren’t buying. Chicharrón! Now, I had a problem.

I sat down on the curb in the shade of a big lumber truck from a nearby construction site.

Quickly, I hit on the idea of discounting some of the more expensive items in the backpack, a sales promotion gimmick to drum up food money. That’s it. Offer the little lady a “special”, good for today only. Surely, that would generate some business.

As I was looking around for a likely house to approach, I spotted a small group of construction workers sitting on the flooring of a new house they were framing. They were downing sandwiches from their lunch pails and drinking bottles of cervezas from the tienda on the corner. Here was a captive audience. Good. But the problem was these were men, the wrong customers for most of my merchandise. On the other hand, they were young men and young men have girlfriends and wives—and girlfriends and wives like presents.

57 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street I wandered over to them, four working-class yokels, and began pitching. “Buenos dias, caballeros. May I take a moment of your time?” I said, opening my backpack. They just looked at me and went on munching their sandwiches, not really paying attention. “I know you all have girlfriends and wives ha! Maybe both. Anyway, the ladies spend a lot on cosmetics and things. I can offer you top of the line products at a big discount.”

“We ain’t interested, little man,” one of them said.

“But think about when you get home tonight and you give your sweetheart a gift of the very newest lipstick or nail polish from New York. She’ll love you for it!”

A burly guy opened a fresh beer and made a rude crack about girls that drew a laugh.

I pretended I didn’t hear him and kept going. What the hell did I have to lose? At one point, I sat down on the ground, settling in. “Hot day,” I observed. I admired their framing job.

“Chévere! You guys do nice work.”

“Look, kid. We’re not gonna buy anything, so scram, vamoose!”

I didn’t hear “no”; I heard something else. As if he’d invited me to show my offerings, I pulled some items from the backpack. “These are the very best cosmetics and I’m offering them at a true discount. You’ll be saving real money.”

The burly guy quaffed some more beer and gave out a long, wet belch. That also got a laugh. Apparently, he was the comedian in the group, kind of a Rodney Dangerfield type.

“You’re wasting your time, kid.”

“Let me ask, how many of you have a mom who likes to indulge herself now and then?” I said. “Think of the joy she—” “—Stop, we don’t need anything.”

“I have here a shampoo any lady would—”

58 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “—Goddamn it, kid!”

“—any lady would love.”

By this time they were getting the idea that I was not going anywhere until some product and money changed hands. Simple as that. I just put out those kind of vibes. Jose would’ve been proud of me. I refused to let “no” get in the way of a sale. And it worked. Before much longer I had sold a couple of items to each of the four, all good-natured fellows who recognized I was on the job, too. The volume made up for my discounts.

I hurried off with the cash to the tienda before I dropped in my tracks. Persistence was the lesson of the day. True, I’d lucked out stumbling onto those workers, but I had also made my own luck. Another lesson learned. ***

***

I was never a complainer and was well aware that others were worse off. The Zamora neighborhood was full of people holding onto a threadbare existence by sheer willpower. The undernourished haunted the streets, especially the very young and the old. Then there were the wasted, the wrecked and the washed-up, always hassling anyone in sight for food, drug or booze money. It was dangerous going out at night. The evening crowd consisted mostly of thugs, prostitutes and street hustlers. In Zamora, life was not only cheap, but iffy. The utterly poor always prey on their own; they never get close to anyone else.

To ward off the blues, my roommates—Ricardo, Flaco, David, and Jose—liked to kick back and really party at night. Why not? They were young guys, fending for themselves in a tough world. However, drinking screwcap wine and squirming up against the nasty neighborhood women was not my idea of fun. No thank you. I had too many bad memories of

59 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street what happened when alcohol became the crutch you leaned on. But the four of them had the energy to toil in the hot sun all day, then come home, crank up the radio music, and call in the fufurufas, as they referred to working girls. These low-budget shindigs would go on until late.

During these nights, I’d sit outside of the garage in the stray streetlight where I could read in relative safety. I had found a good high school in Belen that offered night courses leading to a diploma and I was studying hard to make a go of it. It was important that I keep up my dream of an education. I knew there must be a better world, somewhere.

Since my roommates were usually up so late, on workdays it fell to me to act as the morning alarm clock. I still wore the wristwatch Grandma Ines gave me and it was the only timepiece we had. Rousting the four of them after one of their aguardiente & chicas bashes got harder and harder. Once I had started night school, I took my time getting back to the garage, lingering in the streets as long as I dared. When I finally slipped into the garage, I was treated to the stench of cheap perfume and the sight of bodies writhing in a corner. I would put cotton in my ears, curl up on my cardboard and try to tune out the music, the goings-on, the whole world.

After a while, I realized I wasn’t getting enough sleep and would not be able to handle my job, studying and going to school, while living with a crew of hard-drinking, hard-partying pranksters. They were good guys, but I still had one foot in childhood and couldn’t handle their grown-up lifestyle. Quietly, I began to ask around for another place to stay.

Soon, I got to know this guy Octavio, who was on my route sometimes. A lean, banjoeyed twenty-year-old, he was (like all of us) a hardworking hustler, but the soft-spoken kind.

Octavio had been involved with a local militia group, until his teenage girlfriend got pregnant and her father made him quit the militia and get a job to support daughter and baby. To my surprise, Octavio told me he had recently built a “new home”. It was located in one of the

60 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street comunas, on the hills outside of Medellin. This was a hard to reach section, but Octavio offered me a hard to refuse deal. He had just moved in with his girlfriend’s family (“They watch me like the hawk!”) and the new house was standing empty. If I would take up residence and look out for the place, I could stay there for free.

“Que chimba!” I said, meaning “awesome”.

After work the next day, I took the bus with Octavio to the end of the line near the hills outside of town. From there, we had to climb these crooked stairs that had been built out of used bricks. Primitive, but serviceable. Only, I had not realized how far we had to go. It took almost forty hard minutes to reach the top. Even though I was in decent physical condition, the climb certainly gave me pause. Living here, I’d have to do it every day.

At the top, we could see all of Medellin and out into the suburbs. It was a great view, almost worth the effort. Octavio pointed to a little prefabricated building of cement with a sheet metal roof. “There you go, Ederman,” he said proudly.

As we walked to the building, I could see it wasn’t much. Indeed, it was a little slum all on its own. There was a downsized steel door (mounted crookedly) secured with a heavy chain and lock. Octavio got the door open and the late day sun streamed into the interior. I stepped inside and felt the pent-up heat.

It was just one small room, this “house” of his; dirt floor and no windows, only a peephole in the wall near the door. No electricity, no running water, no kitchen. There was a fat candle on an orange crate, apparently used for light when the door was closed. No bathroom, of course, only a latrine in back of the place.

“I love it!” I exclaimed. A big lie, but at least I would be able to study and sleep in peace.

Nobody would bother me way up here in the hills.

61 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Oh yeah?

I eventually learned that Octavio had neglected to mention the violent, trigger-happy militiamen who controlled the area. Guys who’d just as soon stomp you as look at you. He left that part out. Oh, he was a cute one that Octavio was.

62 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter Nine

“Are you out of your mind?” Flaco barked. He looked over at Jose, who was lounging in a corner smoking one of his cigar stumps picked up from the gutter. “Jump in here. Tell little brother he can’t be movin’ to any hilltop barrio like Sucre. I mean, hey!”

“Sucre’s a shithole,” Jose stated with dictatorial authority. He waved the cigar. “At least this dump, Zamora, is close to the city. Sucre’s in another country.”

“Yeah, like Mars,” Flaco cracked.

I was packing clothes and some tattered paperbacks into my two suitcases, the nice ones I had swiped from my mother. “I just want to try living on my own. That’s all.”

Flaco wore his favorite Led Zeppelin T-shirt, rolled and tied bandanna-style around his neck like a boatman. He put a hand on my shoulder. “Are you mad about sumpin?”

“Of course not. I owe you guys a lot for getting me into the sales thing. Turns out I’ve got a real feeling for it. When I met you guys I knew nothing. Now, I know a little something and I’ve got some confidence in myself. Believe me, I’m grateful for your help, your advice, everything.” I flashed my salesman’s smile. “Besides, you’ll have more room for the chicas.”

“You worry me,” Flaco said, shaking his head, half in sympathy, half in disgust.

“Remember, I'm getting the place for free. Look, you know I’ve got this high school course I've been working on. Even though Sucre is pretty bad, I can at least study where it’s quiet. You know I want to go to college.”

“What about going to work?” Flaco asked. “Sucre’s a long trip to John Paul’s.”

63 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “I’ll get up early. I’ll be seeing you guys every day at the office. It’s not like I'm disappearing.” I locked up the suitcases and stood there looking around. The garage was a nasty little scene, muy mañe, but it had sheltered me for months, and my parces had been good to me, helping me get started with some semblance of a trade, some way to fend for myself. I could have fared worse, jumping into the void the way I had with my abrupt leave-taking from home. I had to say something. “I only have a few friends, so I hope you guys aren’t mad at me,” I began, then realized I might break out in tears if I went on, so I shut up and lifted the suitcases.

“Anyway...”

Jose puffed out a perfect smoke ring, a hobby of his. “See that? That’s a zero. That’s the chance people got in Sucre. Zero.” ***

***

So there I was again, out and about in Medellin with my fancy suitcases, once again looking like a punk doing something wrong, who knows what, but surely something.

It took over an hour and three different buses to navigate all the way out to the far eastern fringes of the city, where growth and life seemed to lose interest. From there, I joined a few other sad-case, lost-cause hilltop dwellers to begin climbing the narrow brick stairway that led, eventually, to the top of the mountain. As we trudged on, ever upward, the pace began to get slower, and then it got much slower. Time stretched out as breaths got shorter. Nobody talked.

You took a step and then you took another step. About halfway up, a young girl carrying an infant had to stop for a rest. A little further on, an old man plopped down on the steps, exhausted.

I hoisted my bags past him without a word. Oddly, I still remember seeing his hard-brown laborer’s hands, like relics from an Aztec tomb.

64 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street After almost an hour of struggling with my suitcases, I reached the top, where the brick steps unceremoniously left off. Before me was a wide, mostly flat, godforsaken landscape, a scrubby, twisted-vision of a neighborhood. Fifty or so half-ass makeshift dwellings were set up on the rocky earth and there was a little “store” offering nothing more than milk, bread, rice and beans. Who these people were, these Sucre people, was anyone’s guess. As far as that went, who the hell was I? That, too, was anyone’s guess.

The whole trip had taken a couple of hours and I was beat as I reached Octavio’s “house” in the summer evening’s fading light. I unchained the crooked door and, as I opened it, the heat gushed out like a breath from hell. I propped the door open and caught a mild mountain breeze to air the place out (which became a daily ritual). The suitcases went into a corner of the single room. I lit the big candle on the orange crate and the flickering flame threw my shadow on the concrete wall like I was in a horror movie. That was depressing. I laughed. Flaco had asked if I was out of my mind, which had made me think of Holden Caulfield in that translation of The Catcher in the Rye we’d handed around at school. He was always saying, “I'm out of my mind. I really am.” In my situation, such a concept could come in handy, in a class with my best-selling orphan rap. I tested it aloud, “I'm out of my mind.” And again, “I'm out of my mind.”

Yeah, that’ll work.

I looked at the two expensive suitcases on the dirt floor. Even in the shadowy light you could see the craftsmanship and quality of the materials, buckskin and dark green canvas, bold silver locks. I was real glad I’d “borrowed” them. Fine luggage says something about you; the retired pickpocket, Ricardo, had once informed me. He said the same thing about premium quality shoes. “Politicians know this, oh yes.”

I stepped back outside onto the crunchy ground and the cooler air.

65 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street The big, equator-red Colombian sun was half below the horizon. Delighted birds in the shapeless trees were chirping goodnight and crickets in the brush were starting up. Off a ways, I saw the young girl sitting outside a tin shack, bottle-feeding her baby. Some of the “homes” had lantern light, but most appeared to use candles. Out in the open, a campfire glowed here and there, with vague figures hovering over steaming, industrial-size tin cans. I caught a whiff of something vaguely appetizing. Glad I still had that take-out order of rice stashed in my suitcase; even two-day old food has its charm.

As night came on, all of Medellin began to light up below me and shoot out into a faraway vanishing point. I could almost make out the bright boulevards on the other side of the city near Belen. While I was growing up in Grandma Ines’s house, I would often look toward the eastern mountains. I had always assumed no one lived there; it was funny to be on this side of the city now, looking at Belen. At that moment, I happened to be wearing the Casio digital watch grandma had given me for my birthday, my most precious belonging. It had a lot of functions beyond just the time and date; Alberto collected watches and I’d heard him use the technical term “complications” instead of “functions”. The Casio had a lot of “complications”. I used it as a calculator and a database, alarm clock and notepad. There was even a way to store phone numbers. It doesn’t sound like much, but back in the 1980’s it was a big deal for a kid living on the streets of South America to have a watch like that. You certainly didn’t want to be flashing it around; I usually kept it hidden in a pocket, but on this day I’d worn it to time the bus trips so I could get a good idea of what my daily schedule should be like. It also made me look more respectable to be wearing a good watch. Deluxe luggage, a special watch—even then, under horrid conditions, I was working on my image.

66 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Aside from being perhaps my only genuinely, sentimentally valuable possession, this watch was the only article in my poor runaway’s small arsenal of items that happened to be worth a little something on the street. This monetary value only enhanced, it seemed, its personal value, its emotional value. Despite being a precious gift from my cherished Grandma, aside from all of the functions that it performed outside of the basic telling of time for the wearer—all those sophisticated little whistles and bells that Alberto called its “complications”—aside from all of that, this watch signified a sort of toehold into the class of person I was determined to become.

There, on that dirt floor, in that grim and squalid little shack, the watch was, it seemed, just as much a refugee from the high life and from Hope Street as I was. I relished that fact. The person I was going to become belonged in better surroundings—and so did that watch. I didn’t belong sleeping on dirt floors and in cold garages. Neither did that watch. That watch was for people with things to do, places to go, people to see . . . people making good money, with busy schedules that required organization, people with class, people tuned into the rhythms of life— people who had insight, people who could See. That watch was like a souvenir from a place that I had never visited before . . . and yet, in just the same way that the typical vacation keepsake reminds its owner of the past time and place spent so pleasurably away, so did my watch remind me of the place that I was headed. Into the future.

It was sort of the same with this watch—I had not yet been to Hope Street, but this watch kept me linked directly to it. Hope Street was in the very essence of that watch in a strange sort of a way and, as long as I possessed it, I carried all of its potential and opportunity right there on my wrist.

Yes, that watch meant an awful lot to me. Thus you can imagine how it felt when I, from time to time, usually as a result of not landing enough sales at work to break a terrible spell

67 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street of hunger pangs or lack of bus fare, found myself with no other choice but having to pawn that precious watch. With great misery and depression and amid great pangs of weakness and hunger, I would drag myself to a specific pawn shop in the city, pawn it to the broker whom I trusted, and declare that I would, without question, be back for it directly and implore him not to sell it to another. True to his word (or perhaps never getting an alternative offer), the watch was always there when I came back and my sales numbers bobbed back up out of whatever slump had put me in such tough times in the first place.

I am reminded of Jimi Hendrix, whose music I liked quite a bit as a young man (and still do today). Before his discovery in 1966, Jimi was struggling terribly, so terribly, and repeatedly, that his bandmates and girlfriends would have to, from time to time, prior to a gig, buy his guitar back from the pawn shop. Gigs would then be played, and, inevitably, the cycle would resume: poverty and hunger would set in again—and off the guitar would go once again to the hock shop. It was the only thing of value Jimi owned at this point in his life and its sale, no doubt, broke his heart to bits, each and every time.

Sleeping on a dirt floor wasn’t much of a drawdown from the oily garage deck. I’d thought to pack my cardboard “mattress” and had acquired a couple of old bath towels (you never know what a customer might give you), which I used like a sheet and blanket. When I locked the door and blew out the candle, the room was deep-cave dark. Little pinpoints of moonlight shot through cracks in the shoddy walls and roof. I fell asleep remembering the wonderful bedroom I’d had at Alberto’s luxurious house, my neat toys, the fabulous restaurants we’d gone to, the great school I attended and the well-to-do friends I had begun to make. When I thought of all that, what might have been and where I was now, so very far from Hope Street, it

68 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street was easy to feel discouraged and sorry for myself, which I did for a while; but I always remembered what Alberto used to say to me: “Self pity is the worst disease.” ***

***

I had to get up at five a.m. to be at John Paul’s office around seven. Some rice, or a piece of bread, a swallow of carefully-rationed water, and I was off in the pleasantly cool predawn. It was easier and quicker going down the brick steps than coming up. On some mornings I made the bus connections right away, but other times I had to wait a long while. Still, by hotfooting it, I usually got to work in time to take a shower and get ready for the day’s work.

The same old grind. Pick up a loaded backpack, take a bus out to the sales territory of the day and hit the hot streets. Same old story. Some days you made a little money, other days you sweat your ass off and make almost nothing. Most of the time I lived on bread and rice. I was always hungry, but so was nearly everyone around me; at least there was some consolation in being just one among many. Even an inexperienced teenager could feel the slow death-march of life at the bottom.

I spent a lot of hours traveling to and from work and was able to use the time for study or doing homework assignments. On weeknights I had class and would get back to Sucre very late and go right to sleep to be ready for the next day. On weekends, when I didn’t have class or something to do at the library, I’d sometimes amuse myself by roaming around, taking in the city sights. I had not lost the thrill of being in a great metropolis. Once in a while, a couple of old friends from Belen would join me on these excursions. We’d watch the crowds waiting outside of trendy nightclubs, with the young guys and girls all dressed up. We were frequently witness to drunken men fighting over a woman, some petty grievance, or even a soccer match. Sometimes

69 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street these would escalate and guns were drawn. When things got too rowdy, the tombos would show up and politely start busting heads. For us kids, it was all theater.

I could see that Sucre, like other hopeless barrios in Medellin, was ripe for the local militia to ply their trade. Some of these groups were anti-government, but most didn’t give a hoot about politics so long as they could rule their own little kingdom. They all claimed a vague, paramilitary status, but in fact were really nothing more than armed thugs involved in organized crime. The law looked the other way and the poor could not fight for themselves. They either paid so-called “protection” money, or were forced to provide food or goods in order to avoid trouble.

Octavio came around occasionally to check on his place and how I was managing. He was being treated better by his girlfriend’s family after landing a waiter’s job at one of Junin’s restaurants. “The little one is due in only a month,” he lamented. “I'm not looking forward to it.

These pelaos wake up in the middle of the night and you have to feed’em. And Eder,” he added, revolted, “It’s a lot of extra work and I barely have time to enjoy my life.”

He introduced me to a couple of the neighbors and I got to know this one character they called Alacran, which means “scorpion”. He was in his late teens and had that underfed gauntness many of the poor develop in the tropic heat. In the evening light, I’d be sitting outside of my open door (until the sun went down it was stifling inside), studying world history or math and Alacran would stop by. He liked the idea of joining the militia, lured by the perks and benefits package. “You get new clothes once a month and they pay twice the minimum wage,” he said, marveling at the largesse. “You also get a weapon, parce, a gun. Then you fear no one.

They fear you.”

70 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street One evening after work, I was sitting outside working on my English vocabulary for a weekly test. I happened to notice a girl hanging clothes on a line a few dwellings away. She was nice looking; long black hair, with a shapely figure well presented in T-shirt and jeans. This was the neighbor’s daughter, I assumed, the one Octavio had told me about. Her name was Patricia, and they called her “Patri.” She was a couple of years older than me and had a boyfriend. “He’s one of those jealous bastards,” Octavio had said, hinting at his own stymied interest.

The girl noticed me looking in her direction and smiled, then waved. I nodded in return and went back to my studies. Having very limited experience with girls, I was too shy to show any interest and wouldn’t have the nerve anyway. After the clothes were hung and fluttering in the welcome breeze, she came over to me. “You must be Eder,” she said. “Octavio told me you had taken his place.” She chose a grassy patch and sat down cross-legged. She had exerted herself with the laundry and there was a thin line of perspiration that matted strands of hair to her forehead. She was quite lovely.

As the sun faded and the cool night came on, we talked by moonlight.

Her family had moved to Medellin from Bogota, but her father had little luck finding work in the construction industry. Patri’s mother was a grade school teacher and they got along on her meager wages. For a while they had managed to have a decent apartment in Bello, but it was a stretch and they were forced to find a cheaper place to live. “We looked everywhere, but couldn’t find anything we could afford. That’s how we wound up here. What about you?”

“Oh, I was living in another crummy place and it was too noisy.” I told her about night school, about the certificate I was working on and needing quiet to study.

“You’re pretty young,” Patri said. “Where are your parents?”

71 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street I shrugged, sheepishly. “My dad moved abroad and I don’t really get along with my mom, so I kind of took off on my own.”

Patri told me her dream was to become a photographer and travel around the world. I explained how I wanted to go to college before deciding on a career choice. We wound up talking for hours, even joking and laughing, something I hadn’t done much of lately.

After that first night, Patri would often stop by in the early evening. It wasn’t a romantic thing, but simply friendship between two lonely teenagers. On a couple of Sundays, we spent the afternoon at El Parque de Bolivar, one of Medellin’s largest parks. It was fun being with her and she seemed almost like an older sister. We went downtown a few times to see a movie, pooling our little bit of money for tickets and a bag of popcorn to share. It was great having someone to talk to and hang out with. A sense of normality crept into my life.

But it didn’t last long.

This one day, we came back from the park and Patri hurried off to help her mother prepare dinner. As I was unlocking my door, I heard a voice behind me. “Que hubo, parce.

Having fun with my girl, eh?”

I turned to see three guys standing there. Patri’s boyfriend stared at me with a threatening grin.

I was scared and said, lamely, “We were just walking around the park. That’s all.”

“That’s not a good idea, parce,” he warned me.

“Okay, whatever you say.”

“Make sure it doesn’t happen again. Entendes?”

After that, I stopped talking to Patri and life sank back to its smallest dimensions.

72 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter Ten

While living in the garage at Zamora, I had been taking courses at Belen’s San Rafael High School five nights a week, from 7 to 10 p.m. A twenty minute bus ride from Zamora, San Rafael High was one of the oldest schools in Belen, strictly Catholic, with a director who was also the head priest at a local church. After work, I’d rush back to my funky digs, change my sweaty clothes and vamoose off to school. It was a grueling routine and I often felt like quitting, but I knew I had to keep moving forward, or fall backwards. Of course, for me there was no backwards to fall on. I was a conscientious student and kept my eye on the ball, that high school certificate nearing my grasp. If I pushed hard, I’d be able to complete the courses in just another year. With the certificate, I’d be eligible for admission to a junior college. With a degree, I’d have a fighting chance. These were the toils of salvation. Forget the price.

I well remember several influential teachers at San Rafael, but one in particular was Jorge Villas. He took a special interest in me when he saw I was determined to get off the streets and out of a desperate situation. Jorge was slender and tall, with longish hair, a mustache and wireframed glasses like John Lennon wore. Looking back on his upbeat and provocative mentoring, Jorge has, for me, a saintly aspect. He was our biology teacher, a subject he taught with precision, exactitude and a particular care for all living things.

There was also his popular after-hours art program, where I first picked up my interest in graphic design. From Jorge’s entertaining and well-illustrated lectures, we became acquainted with the different schools of modern art. Jackson Pollock’s mesmerizing works were cool, if a bit over our heads. The outright wacko world of surrealism, with dazzling showmen like Dali and

73 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Magritte, was a big hit. Sometimes, when walking home late at night, I’d be reminded of the ominous, shadowy streets of Giorgio de Chirico. What would have been scary became an esthetic moment. Without realizing it, thanks to Jorge, I was reaching toward a bigger world, the world of expression and feeling, of art and understanding. Heady stuff for the teenage Eder. “I'm out of my mind,” I’d recite cheerfully. “I really am.”

Jorge would talk with us about life and its “meaning.” I suppose he would be called a bit of an existentialist, believing, as he did, that we each create our own world. He always stressed, as would be expected from a science teacher, that we must develop the habit of questioning things. “Don’t mindlessly accept all you’re taught,” he warned. “Don’t believe everything you’re told, no matter how authoritative it seems or who says it. Develop your own judgment and taste.

Find out what’s true for you. Ultimately, you must be true to yourself.” He encouraged us to “think outside of the box,” before it became a pop culture slogan.

Jorge’s teaching had a holistic slant. Often, classes would end with a unique, stressrelieving exercise. He would have us lie on the floor and then guide us through some basic meditation and relaxation methods. We were instructed to close our eyes and visualize the problems and obstacles we faced in life, then to see them written out on slips of paper. He would have us imagine crumpling the paper and finally to see it in flames, turning to ash, to be blown away by a mere breeze.

Jorge encouraged me to pursue my dreams with purpose and determination. One time, we were talking together after class about the many rules life lays down. “I’ll tell you a little secret, Eder,” he confided. “Something most people never understand, but I know you will. Rules, rules per se, are for those who aren’t strong enough to make their own. Keep that in mind.” I had told him some of the things I’d gone through at home and how my mother had always been an evil

74 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street figure in my life, which had led to my knock-about existence. As always, Jorge was sympathetic, but did not consider such a background as a major drawback. “It’s been a valuable learning experience. There was a reason you had to go through all of that. It’s given you a head start, made you stronger and wiser than most your age. Trust me, you were born to succeed.”

Eventually, I would come to understand the elemental truth in what he was telling me, though at the time, I couldn’t see the violence and torment I’d been subjected to at home as any kind of “learning experience,” and certainly not a path to success. I was still too close to it. Besides, I didn’t tell Jorge the whole story. Embarrassed, I had skipped over a lot of the really horrible stuff.

For several months after moving to Sucre, I kept going to San Rafael High, bent on getting my certificate no matter what, always looking forward to Jorge’s uplifting presence.

However, with my exhausting work hours and torturous commute from the hilltop, it eventually wore me out and became too much to handle. Every day, I faced hours of bus travel and fast walking, with little food to keep me going. I explained to Jorge about my party animal roommates and how I had been forced to relocate in order to keep up my studies. “But now, paila, I'm living too far away from school!” The irony of the situation was not lost on my teacher and he saw how depressed I was getting. “I’ve got to find a way.”

“There’s got to be a way,” Jorge insisted. I can’t promise anything, but let me check into it.” I kept going to San Rafael for the rest of that nervous week, fingers crossed, fearing this would be the end of my school days. On Friday, Jorge pulled me aside after class. “You have an interview at the Instituto Tecnico with the admissions director. I’ve spoken with her and she will see you tomorrow at nine. They have a special accelerated program on weekends, offering the same certificate you’d get here at San Rafael. What’s more, it’s not that far from Sucre.”

75 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street This was a huge favor and I gave Jorge a hug as I thanked him.

“Keep in touch, Eder. I’ve got a feeling about you.”

It was just a tossed off farewell, but it gave me confidence. I would certainly miss San Rafael, and most especially Jorge, but I was moving on, and he let me know it would be okay.

The Instituto Tecnico en Medellin was located on my side of downtown, near La Avenida Oriental, the most heavily traveled thoroughfare in the city. It was a simple, four-storey brick edifice in the middle of a drab block, nothing like picturesque San Rafael. It looked more like a tenement building than a school. Inside, everything was small. There were small classrooms with small windows, a small cafeteria and a small backyard space with benches and tables where students could socialize. Not fancy, but it would serve its purpose.

As it turned out, the admissions procedure was a mere formality after Jorge’s hardy recommendation. I qualified for government-funded financial assistance and was able to transfer my credits from San Rafael. It was only a half-hour bus ride from Sucre, with classes on Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with supplemental study groups on Sunday. It was a perfect fit.

Suddenly, I was getting the breaks. ***

***

All during this period, I continued to work on my sales skills. Like I had a choice. When you don’t eat unless you sell something, damn right you work on your sales skills.

I knew that Jorge was right about me. The bad times at home, then out fending for myself, working the streets, living close to the bone, had given me a certain kind of insight and motivation most 15-year-olds don’t have, and don’t even want. I also knew I had to better my situation, and soon, or I’d be ground down to nothing like so many in Medellin. It was a race

76 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street against time, as life usually is in these parts. In addition to Jorge’s wise counsel, I kept in mind what I had learned from my two grandmothers, Emma and Ines: you can do anything you want if you’re willing to work for it. I was certainly willing to work, the last year proved that, but I lacked direction, a goal and a certain knowledge.

Then came the hint of a tipping point...

One dreary lunch hour, after a sluggish morning in the heat with that heavy backpack, I joined a few of my fellow salesmen at a dingy cafeteria where a cheap meal could be had.

Starved as usual, I gobbled down rice and beans and listened while the others talked. Like workers everywhere, they had complaints about management. Big complaints. One guy was bitching about the products and brands John Paul stocked. “If we had better quality goods to sell, we’d all earn more,” he asserted. “He’s too damn tight with a peso and we lose sales.” Another griped about the low commission structure and a third was saying there were too many sales teams in the field, limiting each man’s territory, and thus, income. I’d heard it all before and even thought the same things, but on this day it struck me differently. It made me start thinking.

Oh, I was a real thinker, all right.

On the bus home that evening, I considered John Paul’s business model. He simply purchased packaged goods and hired a commission sales staff to hawk them. What was there about that set up that I couldn’t do myself? I knew what would sell and what wouldn’t. I knew the customers first hand and what items they preferred. I knew I could find people to sell doorto-door. The more I thought about it, the more I saw opportunity. If I could provide better products, less in-house competition and higher commissions, I would have no trouble attracting a

77 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street sales force. What was beyond my reach, of course, was the seed money to acquire the inventory and some kind of office with storage capacity.

But was it beyond my reach?

Over the next few weeks, I stole some time away from work to wander around the big wholesale district where the right products could be purchased. Research trips. I asked about pricing and discounts, even haggling a little like I knew what I was doing. I had already learned that desperation breeds strategy and now I was learning that hands-on experience gives you an edge. While hiking through the industrial area of downtown, I stopped in at several small offices to get an idea of what rent I’d have to pay for my headquarters. I couldn’t be in some hole-in-thewall office; in order to attract a good sales team, I’d have to look right, able to pay the bills. In fact, sometimes image is everything in this game—and many others as well.

With the information I’d collected and had in my head, I went, after work, to the library, where I often did my homework, and settled at a back table with pen and legal pad. Using my Casio calculator watch, I worked out a rough budget for daily, weekly and monthly expenses.

There were a number of fixed and variable costs to estimate and consider, including a sliding commission scale for top performing salesmen. By purchasing inventory in high quantity, substantial savings could be realized, but that also meant I’d have to have a bigger storage area, which would increase the rent. In the end, I figured I’d need around $8,500,000 pesos (about $5,000 U.S.) to cover operating expenses for the two to three months needed to get up and running.

But where would I get that kind of money? It would be impossible, unheard of, for a street kid to lay his hands on a number like that. It might as well be a hundred million pesos. Yet something told me I could do it if I tried hard enough. Putting aside the whole question of just

78 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street how out of my mind I really was or wasn’t at that time, I remember sitting there at the library table making a firm resolution to find an investor.

After that day, I began to smarten up and think clearly; totally ignoring my lowly station, my empty pockets, and just as empty stomach, as well as everything I’d heard about the difficulty of starting a business. I would make my own rules, à la Jorge’s advice. Capital was what I needed and that made me, when you came right down to it, no different than any other businessman. I had a strong, profit-making proposal, in a production-proven market. All I needed was an investor who’d hear me out. There were loan sharks around, but I didn’t know any of them. What I needed was some legitimate businessman with money to partner with. I began to formulate a pitch, drawing on my door-to-door sales experience, the books I delved into at the library and the hard-nosed tutoring from Ricardo and Jose.

At night, in my candle-lit shack, after finishing my school work, I’d practice giving my business rap to the wall, polishing it bit by bit. “Caballeros, with my model,” I’d boldly exclaim, “we’ll become known as the only door-to-door vendors in the suburbs with top-of-the-line goods, not off-brands you have to force on customers. Consider: when it comes to everyday package goods, what customers really want are the famous American brands they see in TV programs from the States. And, they’re willing to pay a significant amount more for the right items. In wholesale quantity, such items will not cost us that much more than the off-brands. Our customers will be happy, our salespeople will be happy and our profits will be higher. We’ll capture that upscale end of the market. No one else has seen the opportunity that’s just sitting there for the taking.”

It sounded good, well thought out, according to the wall.

79 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter Eleven

While all this entrepreneurial stuff was running around in my head, with me scheming to make the leap from employee to boss, I was also adjusting to a new school and a new routine.

The Instituto Tecnico en Medellin wasn’t fancy, but it was successful. Courses were offered in various career-driven technical and trade programs, from computer systems to machine operating; these fields all offered good jobs due to Colombia’s increasing ramp-up toward First World industrialization. And then there was the Instituto’s accelerated weekend program in general studies for the high school equivalency certificate. With my credits from San Rafael, I had only a few courses left to complete. Nothing would stop me now.

As I had kept up my studies all along, the Instituto was not a big challenge academically.

Learning was something I took to naturally. I had always been a methodical student, a constant reader, with strong note taking skills and a memory so precise and expansive it sometimes scared me. All of this helped me take in a lot of new information very quickly, which you had to do to keep up with the accelerated program. For example, we were expected to cover much of modern world history in one semester, about twelve to sixteen classes, not counting Sunday study groups and tons of homework. You had to be alert and bring something to the table, or you were going to fall behind. Of course, there were none of the social functions that kids thrive on in regular high school. The Instituto was all business, all about covering the material and moving on. If you couldn’t cut it, you wouldn’t last.

Bogota had invested heavily in such nation-building schools and expected results. Many of the certificate students were older guys, with jobs and families, looking to get ahead by

80 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street moving up the occupation ladder. I’d chat with some of them in the back courtyard during class breaks. Mostly I listened, since they talked passionately about a lot of international affairs I was just becoming aware of and didn’t care much about. I remember that whole deal with Reagan’s CONTRA scandal was a hot topic, though it was several years after the event. It had involved running weapons into Nicaragua, a Latin American country, and the older guys liked to argue nice points of national sovereignty and expound on the CIA’s nasty machinations. I acted as though I was as concerned as they were. Oh sure. When you’re living on a subsistence level, geopolitics is the last thing on your mind.

And so, that became my schedule, in fact, my life. Work all week, hawking toiletries in the heat, studying at the library or in my little shack every evening, then putting in eight intense hours every Saturday at school, with a few more hours for the Sunday study groups.

But school opened me up to new things and it wasn’t all textbooks and class time. I found a few action-oriented pals among the students. I recall three of them who always hung around together: Guri-Guri, El Pollo and Luis were a kind of Three Musketeers of the underclass.

Guri was a good looking, well-spoken guy from the city’s middle-class Villa Hermosa section, mid-twenties, tall and skinny. He dressed like the teenagers we’d see in music videos— Nikes, a Yankees baseball cap worn backwards and, naturally, baggy jeans. Guri specialized in being up on all the inside celebrity gossip, from Medellin to Hollywood. He would have made a great entertainment reporter. He could spiel on for hours, giving you the low-down on which movie or TV star was sleeping around, who was a closet gay, who was a secret drug freak and who was being considered for the next James Bond film. Guri had long accepted Michael Jackson as a god.

81 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Also in his mid-twenties, El Pollo had gone through a hard-nosed childhood after his father left the family. They were forced to live in a remote area far away from the city, or even a small town. He became the breadwinner for his brothers and sisters and grew up quickly. Pollo was wiry and tough and had spent a couple of years in prison for shooting a guy who had tried to rape his younger sister (I didn’t buy the sister angle a hundred percent, but whatever, he definitely shot a man). Totally unlike Guri’s hip-hop style of dress, Pollo took pride in his conservative slacks and shirts, down to his well-polished black shoes. He told me he did not have his own pair of shoes until he was twelve years old, but had shared a pair with his brother.

“Guess how many pair I have now. Over a dozen!” Pollo had an older man’s manner, gave off slightly dangerous vibes and had some scary parces. Definitely not a guy to mess with.

The third member of the student trio, Luis, was a mellow, city-bred hombre in his late twenties. He was a fast learner and could speak several languages, including passable English, which we practiced together. He had a knack for picking up on books, movies and songs and could quote the lyrics of any pop tune. Luis was also quite an operator and knew how to obtain almost anything for almost nothing. He showed me where to get good clothes on the cheap and a place to buy used textbooks (‘that fell off the truck’) at a quarter of their regular price.

Though I was much younger, over that summer, and beyond, they let me join them to play billiards and sometimes we’d go to the movies. We’d frequent the video game arcades, which were becoming a big hit all over South America. I got to be pretty good on the Pac-Man joystick. Hanging around with Guri, Pollo and Luis was a lot of fun and also provided much needed protection for a young kid on his own. Medellin was ruled by drug kingpins and was full of bullies and wiseguys, punks and goons. Street robberies and strong-arm jobs were so common

82 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street the police hardly bothered investigating. But being accepted as part of this particular trio, I could go almost anywhere and feel safe. Everyone knew that Pollo would be serious trouble if you got in his way or bothered any of his friends.

Tagging along with the Three Musketeers, I went to places I’d never been, like the bailaderos. These venues were a cross between a Latin social club and an underground bar, hotblooded and funky, usually located in some rathskeller or loft downtown. Guys and girls could drink, dance to recorded music and just generally hookup. I acted like I was enjoying it, but it wasn’t exactly to my liking and I spent most of my time standing inconspicuously off in a corner, taking sips from a bottle of beer (yuck). Once in a while, a girl might give me a look, but I’d usually pretend I hadn’t noticed her. The few conversations I did have with girls went okay, but I wasn’t in the market for a date and I never got beyond the laughing and joking stage with any of them. Not so for my three buddies. They knew how to score. It reminded me of my garage roommates, a lot of interest in chorro, fufurufas, y parranda (booze, loose women and parties).

Guri was a bit of a local celebrity and would get invitations to all kinds of cool parties. I wasn’t quite so shy at these gatherings and actually met a few teenage girls. I was looking pretty good in some new clothes from the “discount” house Luis had shown me and with my fancy Casio watch on my wrist. Having had little experience with girls, they were still a mystery, but I knew the time would come when I’d have a girlfriend. ***

***

One Tuesday, I was at the library late, preparing for our final test in history. Not my favorite subject, but I’d be done with it once I passed the test. I stayed until I had the material down pat, then packed up my bookbag and hurried out as the librarian was closing up. Bus

83 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street service was always slow at that time of night and there was a long wait. As usual, I spent the time thinking about the goal I’d set for myself, to start my own sales business. Ideas would come to me and I’d jot them down on a pad, working on the investor pitch I was polishing and elaborating.

I didn’t get back to Sucre until after 1 a.m., pretty beat, especially after that long climb up the steps, which I now had down to about half an hour. The long and winding road. I’d have to be up early for work, so I ate my last piece of bread and went right to bed. By then, I had exchanged my cardboard mattress for a heavy blanket I’d found in a discount shop and it made a comfortable groundcloth. It was arranged next to my “night table”, the orange crate that held the fat candle (oddly, it never seemed to burn down). The last thing I always did at night was put my watch on the crate so I could easily reach it to check the time or shut off the alarm.

Somewhere around three o’clock that morning, I was jolted out of a deep sleep by a metal object being pounded on my metal door. I jumped to my feet and stood frozen, a sick yeyo feeling taking hold.

“Que hubo parce!” someone yelled. “Open up!”

Slowly, I crept to the front wall and peered through the tiny crack that served as a peephole. In the moonlight, I could make out four men in ski masks. My heart skipped a beat; I was in trouble.

“Parce! We know you are in there! Open this door, now!”

I was trapped in this one room, defenseless, only the one door. There wasn’t much choice but to deal with the matter here and now. “Hold on!” I finally called out, unchaining and unlocking the door with shaking hands. I pulled it open and stood there in cutoffs and bare chest trying to look unfazed. “What’s wrong?”

84 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “What are you doing here?” demanded the guy in front of me. His voice was that of a teenager, but it had the cocky superiority of a militiaman. “You are trespassing!”

“This is not your place,” another man barked. “Where’s Octavio?”

“He’s not around. I'm a friend and he’s letting me stay here.”

“He’s letting you stay here,” parroted the cocky one. “Maybe so, but you have not paid this month’s maintenance fee. So, you are trespassing.”

“No, no,” I assured them. “Octavio is my parce. He’s not charging me any lucas.”

The cocky one turned and mumbled something I didn’t catch, but it made the others laugh mirthlessly. Now I saw that the big mouth had a heavy caliber pistol in a shoulder holster.

“Your name?” he snapped.

“My name is Eder,” I said, trying to sound calm but not succeeding.

“Eder, I do not like to repeat myself but, for your benefit, Eder, as a gesture of goodwill, I tell you again, you have not paid this month’s maintenance fee.”

“But Octavio said I don’t have to pay to live here,” I protested.

He shook his head. “Parce, you are maybe un poquito slow in the head? I don’t think so.

Perhaps I am not making myself clear. You don’t pay a maintenance fee to live here; you pay for our protection, entendes?”

One, who had not spoken, an older man, now stepped forward and seemed to take charge.

“Sardino, there are many bad people about. Something could happen to you should you not have our protection. You don’t want anything to happen to you, do you?”

I opened my mouth and the words fell out. “No, I don’t want that.”

85 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “See, you are frightened already at the very thought,” the older one pointed out. “But there is no need. It is a simple thing we ask. Pay our fee and you will be protected, entendes?

You have my personal guarantee.”

“But I have very little money,” I told them. “That’s why Octavio let’s me stay here. I only earn enough to eat and ride the bus. I'm always broke.”

The older man in the ski mask was wagging his finger at me. “No, no, no. This is not good to say. No money. Of course you have money. We’ll show you.” He jerked his head toward the doorway. The two silent men pushed me aside and went in with flashlights.

“I have no valuables, either,” I said, but they weren’t listening.

The men went straight for my two suitcases and opened them up. They tossed everything out on the dirt floor and rummaged through my clothes and paperback books. They took a Yankees baseball cap my dad had given me, a couple of the books and my only pair of good jeans. As they were collecting their loot, one of them spotted my Casio watch on the orange crate. “Chévere!”

The older man snapped his fingers and was handed the watch. He held it under a flashlight and played with the buttons a few moments, then grinned hideously in the mouthhole of the ski mask, a single gold tooth reflecting in the light. “You see, sardino, you do have the payment. This will cover your maintenance fee for a whole month.” He stopped grinning and the gold tooth disappeared. “For a month,” he repeated.

He pocketed the watch and they all departed quickly, moving off into the night like a pack of ghastly rodents.

86 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter Twelve

Me? You can bet I was good and rattled, properly terrorized, which is how the so-called “militia” operates. Pure and simple: scare the crap out of the little people, then shake’em down.

That’s gangsterism 101, a viable business model if you’re ruthless enough.

Too upset to go back to sleep, I lit the candle, brushed off my belongings in the flickering light and repacked them in the two suitcases. It really hurt to lose the watch Grandma Ines had given me; it was such a pleasure to have, so many uses, now it was gone, along with my Yankees cap, the only item I had left from my father. Thankfully, the knuckleheads hadn’t known expensive luggage when they saw it, certainly worth more than everything I owned put together.

Don’t worry, they’ll grab them next time they come for their “maintenance fee.” Only, there won’t be a goddamn next time, I swore.

My first impulse was to pack up and vanish from Sucre at first light. Since they had worn ski masks and I’d seen them only in moonshine, I had no idea who these thugs were and wouldn’t know them if they passed me in the street, on a bus, or climbing those awful stairs (though I’d probably recognize that gold tooth planted within the older guy’s grin). Most likely, they had been sicced on me by Patri’s boyfriend, who knew Octavio and didn’t like him, or me.

Then I began to calm down and sat cross-legged on the blanket, thinking a little more clearly.

They had said I was paid up for a month. If true, that gave me some breathing room. Maybe it wouldn’t be absolutely necessary to vacate immediately, but definitely ASAP.

87 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street That morning, at the office, I asked around about a place to stay, but got nowhere, then hurried off to work a new suburb. I put in a good eight hours and, this particular day, things went my way. At this one house I did my orphan kid routine for a kind lady, timed it right and sold half a dozen items. Then I turned around, laid down an enhanced orphan rap at the next house and sold several high-ticket products. As always, I stayed alert to the feedback I got from customers, tucking it away under “market research” to be worked into my evolving formula for a successful sales organization.

Back at the office at the end of the day, I used the phone to call around to a few of my Belen friends I still saw once in a while, asking if they knew of a place to stay. Nothing worked.

I was getting discouraged. I did not have a number for any of the Three Musketeers, but would have to wait to see them on Saturday at school. I reached my friend Beto, whom I’d stayed in touch with after leaving home that night. His parents were going to be away for a couple of weeks and he said I could stay with him then. But that wouldn’t be until the end of the month. I thought of hustling over to Zamora to see if the garage situation was still available. That might work as a temporary fix.

On an impulse, I dialed Grandma Ines’s number. It had been a long time. But after it rang twice, I lost my nerve and hung up. All I’d need was to hear my mother’s hated voice to send me completely over the edge. Of course, we’ve already established that I was “out of my mind.”

But not out of moves—and I mean literally.

Somehow, I found out about this crummy place downtown, not far from the Instituto Tecnico, where one can rent a bed. I went to check it out. These are known as casas de huespedes, meaning “guesthouse,” similar to a student hostel, but not nearly as fancy. Only about the size of a studio apartment, the room was filled with bunk beds and questionable characters.

88 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street All you get is a place to sleep and a shared bathroom at the end of the hall. The only attraction was the rent, the equivalent of a couple of dollars a week. No cooking, no gambling, no alcohol, no drugs, no stealing, no fighting, no women, no noise, no loud radios, no loitering. It reminded me of that old Eagles song, Hotel California: “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”

That Friday I slipped away from Octavio’s “new house” sans ceremony and nary a glance back and, two hours later, I had settled at the downtown “hacienda,” as I called my bunk in the corner of the “hostel.” At least I got a bottom bed and could stow my bags underneath, seriously locked up, of course. It was a treat having a real bathroom, with a shower. I loved the electricity.

Not that I had anything to plug in, but there were tiny lamps bolted to each bed and I could read with plenty of light on the page, itself a luxury.

The first night I was there, the room was just about empty. A thin guy in his thirties, who looked like he was the janitor or a resident, or both, told me the place was often quiet during the week and then filled up on the weekends. “It’s not, you know, a permanent place for anyone,” he said, like he hoped I wasn’t thinking of staying long.

“I know what you mean. I just need a place to crash until I can find an apartment.” I laughed at a couple of his misfired jokes and, when he questioned me about my personal situation, I sprayed him with just enough of my happy fairy-dust to satisfy his curiosity.

Apparently deciding I was not some kind of caliente, some dangerous person, he told me his name was Pacho and proceeded to spill his whole unspectacular autobiography. Thirty tedious minutes later, he wandered away to lean on a broom and push it listlessly down the linoleumfloor hall. I later learned Pacho was an okay fellow who kept an eye on things for the landlord, sort of the manager, only they didn’t want him to have a title and get the idea he deserved higher

89 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street pay. That was worth noting, an interesting bit of business finesse. The boss got the work done, but didn’t really have to pay for it. I filed that away under “personnel matters, cunning.”

Fortunately, I spent little time at the “hacienda.” School was now very demanding and I had a deeper appreciation of what the Instituto meant by “accelerated learning.” These people were serious. As the courses neared completion, we faced a major test each week and I was at the library every night cramming until late. The days had a way of blurring into each other. Work and study and sleep, work and study and sleep. The next time I saw Pacho, I was lying in bed with a textbook reviewing Hitler’s maniacal rampagings for my final test in Modern World History. “The books, the books,” Pacho said affably. “You’ll ruin your eyes with so much reading.”

“And if I don’t read, I’ll ruin my mind,” I cracked, trying to throw out a little wisdom, which passed over him like an unseen kite.

Arriving at school one Saturday, I saw Guri and Luis talking in the hall and they called me over. “El Pollo disappeared,” Luis told me. “We haven’t seen him all week, and now he’s not in class. It’s the first time he’s ever been absent. And we’ve got this big test.” I knew that Pollo did not have a phone, and there was only a general idea of where he lived. As class started, Guri whispered, “Something’s happened to him. I'm pretty sure.” I knew what he meant. Pollo had been pushing his luck for years. Perhaps his luck had run out. The prospect of just Two Musketeers was decidedly sad. ***

***

Now, I was to learn the great value in being prepared. A life lesson I’ve never forgotten.

90 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Not long after I moved to the bunk bed hostel, I was at the office after work, relaxing, shooting the breeze with a couple of the salespeople. No one was around to hear us and we were again talking about John Paul’s operation and how he could improve things. One of them mentioned there was a new guy around who was setting up as a competitor to JP, a gringo businessman named Mike.

A hundred-watt light bulb snapped on over my sixteen-year-old head.

The very next day I called in sick and dressed as sharply as I could: my one pair of Levis, my knock-off Nikes and knock-off Lacoste shirt. It was a shame I didn’t have my multi-function Casio wristwatch to indicate clear thinking aboard. Adopting a stop-me-if-you-can attitude, I hopped a bus and went in search of the Yankee newcomer. He wasn’t hard to find, sitting in a well-furnished storefront office a dozen blocks from John Paul’s low-rent zone, well within the more desirable wholesale district where suppliers were right at hand. I already liked his style.

The vibes were just right.

When I introduced myself and told him I worked for John Paul, he perked up with interest. “Sit down, Eder. Care for a Coke?” It was uncanny, like he knew why I was there.

Mike was from somewhere in California, a casual-dressing, fast-talking entrepreneur, right out of the movies—good looking, lanky and tanned, muscular and tight, mid-twenties, his blonde hair was the reason why they often referred to him as “El Mono.” I noticed a gold Rolex on his wrist. Mike told me he had moved to Medellin a couple of years earlier because of the rapid expansion in population and growth, with labor, inventory and other costs far cheaper than in the U.S. He flipped houses for a while in Medellin’s better neighborhoods, paying cash for properties that needed little fixing up and selling them for a fast profit. Some of the homes were rented out to American and European tourists and celebrities at hefty rates. “Rock stars are

91 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street good,” Mike said. “When those suckers kick back, they don’t care what you charge’em, long as it comes with a pool and a neighborhood drug dealer.”

He had quickly realized that here was a market crying for “bundled services,” as he put it, and so he extended his offerings for rich tourists to include transportation and car rentals, event planning and private security. “By ‘event planning’,” he said, slyly, “of course I mean girls.” He went on to explain that, “Colombia is becoming a huge market where prices are still low. Add in great food, great weather and pretty ladies, how can I go wrong?” He figured the door-to-door sales industry in South America was destined to be bigger than in the States, where abundant retail shops and stores were readily available. We quickly agreed that the direct sales market in Colombia was barely being tapped.

We talked for a while about different things, especially music; we both liked rock and the same bands. It turned out that he also played guitar and was into motorcycles, a favorite fantasy of mine. His Spanish was pretty good, while my limited English amused him. We were on the same page about a lot of stuff and I could see he liked me. Without seeming pushy, I mentioned how John Paul’s business had opened my eyes to the great opportunities “out there.” Then I neatly segued into my business pitch (as I had done so often with my orphan spiel), explaining that I had put in the time to do the critical, backbreaking field work, and the taxing but necessary research, and had formulated a concept that, though simple and even obvious, was far more advanced than any other door-to-door sales group in Medellin.

Now I really had his attention. He folded his arms and sat back in his desk chair, fairly agog. “Talk to me.”

92 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street And talk I did, confidently, and with a newfound poise that even impressed me. I had rehearsed my investor talk many times and had honed it down to a set of perfectly plausible, market-driven concepts. Because I had done my homework, had educated myself in the overall market, I was well prepared for meeting this guy, at this time, in this place.

“It’s all about positioning,” I asserted, bringing in a term I’d seen in marketing magazines at the library. I stood and went on, working the room, pacing around like I owned the place.

“These other groups out there are all doing the same thing. They stock only generic household items dictated by spot wholesale prices, not by what the customer would prefer. There’s no difference between any of the companies. Nobody is a stand out because their products don’t stand out. They aren’t positioning themselves. They wind up nowhere on the perception map.

With my model, selling only top U.S. brands, we instantly stand out and customers will notice because we’ve got the goods they really want to buy. We position ourselves as the upmarket door-to-door company. We could even provide our sales team with T-shirts, with a logo that plays up our U.S. product line. Some kind of Hollywood-New York look might work.”

Mike was nodding, liking what he was hearing. “For an awfully young kid, you know your stuff, Eder. Look, what you’re saying fits exactly into my own ideas. It’s smart Madison Avenue thinking. And you’re right, the competition is lame, colorless, no pizzazz and they don’t understand sophisticated marketing.” He looked at his Rolex. “Have you got time for lunch?”

It was my very first business lunch. We went to a nice bistro and I reminded myself to be on my best behavior, like when we ate out with Alberto. Forget the fact that you’re starving, as always; act normal, like it’s no big thing for you to have a decent meal. I wasn’t exactly nervous; well, I guess I was. But I had not forgotten Jorge’s line about those smart enough to make their

93 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street own rules. Sure, I was winging it, but in this town who the hell wasn’t? Mike was accepting me as an equal and I was up to it. Again, I was prepared.

We talked it out at length for the next two hours.

The company we were envisioning would offer high-end American brand name products only and we would pay our salesmen higher commissions than John Paul and his ilk paid. “I agree, short coin won’t make it,” Mike said, in his hip California English. “A salesman must be motivated and the only reliable way to do that is with money.” We would also give the staff a voice in territories and the number of salesmen hired. Since I’d spent so much time working in the trenches for JP, I knew the suburbs that would be best for our business model, and those that were not worth the effort, as well as other areas that were as yet untested. “That’s valuable stuff to know,” El Mono confided. “A little industrial intelligence helps us hit the ground running.” He was especially pleased with the wholesale prices I’d negotiated for the coveted U.S. products we would be offering, such as Head and Shoulders, Pantene, Revlon, Olay, Brut, Dial and other high-profile brands. Mike was quick enough to realize that my lowly grunt-work, trudging around to meet customers face-to-face, had given me a solid understanding of how to win over this particular market segment: the lady standing in the doorway. The toughest sell on earth, we agreed, but she’s ready to spend if you can make her happy.

Mike laid out a simple deal. “The startup costs are peanuts. I’ll take care of all the financing we need and recapture down the road when we’re fat. You will get commissions and, after we’ve recovered the initial expenses, you get a salary and I'm willing to give you a small percentage of ownership.”

Thus it came to pass, over a nice bandeja paisa (my first substantial meal in a very long time), that we decided to throw in together. I would be the sales and ops manager, while Mike

94 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street would handle business affairs and pay all expenses, salaries, etc., until the company was profitable. He started right in by paying for lunch with an American Express card, which was like a magic lantern you didn’t rub, but swipe. My lesson this time: Knowledge is power.

Whether your goal is to be a successful actor, singer, or start a business, you need to acquire knowledge in that specific area. Had I not been prepared for this meeting with Mike, he would not have taken me seriously.

95 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter Thirteen

Big surprise, I quit John Paul’s company the next day.

He wasn’t in the office, but the sales supervisor looked at me suspiciously. “Got yourself another camello, Eder?”

“Not yet. I appreciate you guys giving me a job and all, but I'm sorry, I can’t live on these commissions.”

“Maybe you been loafin’ when you shoulda been knockin’ on doors. Ever think of that?”

“Or maybe my uncle died and left me something nice!” I shot back. “Ever think of that?”

It was the new and improved version of me talking, not just a kid with a mouth.

As I strode away, the supervisor called out, “Hey, no hard feelings, llave. Good luck.”

Oh, there would be hard feelings, I knew. That would come when John Paul found out I was now a competitor, spawned and equipped in his own shop. How annoying that would be for the poor man. Think of it, a mere brat from the streets, an ungrateful sumbambico, daring to compete with the very son of a feared Corsican mobster. Takes a lot of goddamn nerve.

Those first weeks were hectic. While I set about finding good sales people, Mike attended to setting up the company structure, with a corporate license and the few other formalities that allowed us to operate as a registered business in Medellin. We named the company “Promociones M & E” after our first names. “In the States you have to fill out all these forms

96 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street and pay for all these licenses and buy big ticket insurance and all kinds of stuff. But here, hey, it’s just a few forms to deal with, a hundred bucks in pesos for the government, plus a little for my man behind the counter there and you’re good to go. I love it.” That was one of Mike’s California expressions, “I love it’.” Another was “scandalous,” used to mean something that was especially good. He told me once, “Until costs went through the roof, I was making scandalous money in L.A. with a courier service for the movie studios.”

With a recruitment budget at my disposal, I placed enticing Help Wanted ads in the cheap newspapers I knew the working classes read. Each day, I’d field many calls and walk-ins. Mike and I had agreed we would not take just any sales people, but only those who “looked right and felt right,” meaning clean and neat. We were looking for experience in door-to-door sales, anything from home products and kitchenware, to insurance and encyclopedias. “Look for guys who know what the hell they’re doing,” Mike said. “You pay more, but you get a bigger bang for the buck. It’s cheaper than training a staff. I’ve been there.” After two weeks, during which I interviewed several dozen salesmen, I selected fifteen presentable fellows with the right background. Meanwhile, I had returned to the same wholesalers I had gotten to know, perhaps even charmed, during my research phase and placed large orders for a long list of cherry-picked products, invoiced at something like three thousand U.S. After a bank check on Promociones M & E, we were given A-list credit, an open account and a ninety-day billing cycle. The rear of our store front office was just big enough to use as a starter warehouse. I went to one of the discount department stores downtown and picked out their finest lightweight backpacks, ordered twodozen, and had them shipped over to the office.

Mike had liked my T-shirt idea, which would give our sales staff a distinctive, uniform identity. He knew a fine graphic artist, in fact a girlfriend of his, and she designed a colorful

97 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street company logo with movie-premiere light beams. When the finished T-shirts were delivered, the salespeople were extremely pleased. The various sizes fit well and they each got three shirts.

Mike had gone the extra step and ordered fine-quality dress shirts for both of us, with the logo on the breast pocket. “Career apparel” he called it. We all looked very professional, like a tightly knit team, not just a ragtag group of street hustlers. Mike referred to our “esprit de corps,” and I had to look that up in the dictionary.

We had obtained some “scandalous” street maps of the Medellin area and all of the surrounding communities. Color-coding showed population density, our key concern. With input from the salesmen and my own experience, we were able to pinpoint areas that were only a short bus ride away and where everyone could have a large number of streets to cover. I let them elect their “team leader” from within their own ranks, who would supervise and honcho activities in the field. That way, I explained to Mike, if they wound up being unhappy with their supervisor for any reason, they couldn’t blame management.

Though I was, of course, only sixteen years old at this point, and had never been a “sales manager” or any kind of boss, I could still make it look like I knew what I was doing. A perfect example of the old saying “The job makes the man.” I would give the whole team a friendly pep talk each morning, psyching them up, gently slipping in some of the snappy motivators I’d picked up along the way, especially the elliptical maxims of my Zamora roommate, that shifty streetmeister, Jose. “Don’t talk yourself out of a sale,” I’d say and they’d nod their heads, or, “Never let ‘no’ get in the way of a sale.” More head nodding. Travel can be such fun, if you know the local language. ***

***

98 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Now things were rapidly changing for me. I had a decent income and a few perks, like paid lunches and expenses. Right away, I hunted for an apartment and found a large studio in a well-kept ten-storey building downtown, near busy Avenida Oriental. I checked out of the bunk bed hostel and retrieved my fancy luggage. On the street, I was looking for a taxi when Pacho came bopping by. I started to greet him and then realized he was talking to himself and maybe had a drink or two under his belt. He was oblivious as he went on his merry way, probably working up one of his self-absorbed monologues.

For the first time in years, I went to the better stores for new clothes; French jeans and an Italian sports jacket, shirts and slacks, shoes and designer sneakers. It felt good to look like I had some status in the world; it also felt good to have new underwear. I even splurged and got myself a newer version of the same Casio watch stolen by the masked ladrones.

Preparing for Saturday classes at the Instituto still took up most of my evenings and I was always at the library late, filling my head with math formulas and physics concepts. Guri had dropped out of school to take a job as manager of a popular nightclub, and Pollo was still a missing person, but Luis, the last Musketeer, was aiming for a scholarship to a business college and stuck with the demanding classwork. This one Saturday, on our lunch break, Luis and I took a bench together out in the courtyard. We only had a couple of months to go before we’d receive our high school certificates. Our spirits were up. He knew about my new venture with a startup sales organization; he could see I was dressing better and had put on some weight. Luis was happy for me, but I could tell he had something on his mind.

He slid closer on the bench. “I never told you anything, okay?� he said quietly and proceeded to tell me what had happened to Pollo.

99 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Pollo had been preso, in jail, all of this time, which didn’t come as a total surprise, Guri had hinted at as much. It seems Pollo and a couple of his bad boy malosos had planned to rob this rich guy who lived in a secluded mansion in an exclusive neighborhood on the outskirts of Medellin. The word was the man kept a lot of cash in the house and was often there alone. Pollo and his cohorts waited until they assumed the coast was clear and broke in through a backdoor.

But the rich guy was not alone; there was a private tombo on duty, who confronted the robbers in the kitchen with a 12-gauge sideloader. When they tried to run, the guard opened fire, wounding all three in the legs. No one was hurt badly, but the real tombos hauled them away to jail.

“He could get ten years.” As we headed back to class, Luis put an index finger to his lips.

“Remember, I’ve said nothing.” ***

***

It turned out I had a little trouble of my own brewing.

Once Promociones M & E was up and running, and we were hitting our quotas every week, making money and attracting attention. Word spread that we paid higher commissions and stocked the better products that were eagerly bought by customers. As I had expected, salesmen from John Paul’s company started coming around to see me. I made excuses and didn’t hire any of them, not wanting a hassle with JP. After work one evening, my old garage sidekick, Flaco, stopped in. He wasn’t looking for a job but wanted to give me a heads up. “John Paul went ballistic when he heard about you starting your own company with El Mono. He says you’re working his territories and knows some of his people have been here to see you.”

“But I haven’t hired them. And I'm not going to. Will you tell him that?”

100 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “I can’t, Ederman. He’d fire me if he knew I was talking to you. Hell, at the office, no one is allowed to even mention your name.”

“Que se joda John Paul,” I snapped angrily. “If he treated his salespeople fairly, I might still be working for him.”

“Nobody really likes John Paul, but they’re all afraid of him. Last year, a guy who ripped him off on a used car deal wound up in the hospital with a broken leg.”

“Maybe he got clumsy and fell down the steps,” I suggested.

“Don’t joke about it, parce.” Flaco looked at me seriously. “I don’t want anything to happen to you. Be careful, like I wouldn’t let anyone know where you’re living.”

I appreciated his concern, but had dealt with so much adversity the last couple of years, I really wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone. I didn’t really care, not really, who was mad or not mad at me. I was on my way to Hope Street and wouldn’t let anything stop me, not this time. If anyone had a problem with that, de malas!

When I mentioned Flaco’s warning to El Mono he laughed. “These little tinhorn dictators down here are a joke. Had a guy’s leg broken, did he? Big deal. If John Paul makes any serious trouble for us, I won’t go that chickenshit route. I’ll do what we’d do in L.A.” “What’s that?”

“I’ll have a sicario put a bullet in him. How would that be?”

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Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter Fourteen

It was hard to believe, but the day finally came when I received my high school equivalency certificate from the Instituto Tecnico en Medellin. It had been a lot of hard work crammed into a little more than eighteen months. I was proud of the achievement and mighty glad to be done with it all. There was a simple ceremony in the courtyard for the thirty-one students who had survived the grueling program, out of an original class of some fifty or more.

God, I felt smart! Later that evening, Mike took me for a celebration drink at an American sports bar. I wasn’t much for alcohol, but sipped a rum and Coke with him. Not bad. I also had my first American ‘cheeseburger platter’, with French fries, coleslaw and dill pickle. Fabulous!

“Now you see why Elvis got hooked on them,” Mike said. “Catsup’s okay on fries, but on a burger I like mayonnaise.”

My business model of selling only famous American brands was working, as Mike put it, like gangbusters. Some of our people had days when they sold out their entire backpack of products, something unheard of at John Paul’s company. With our products fetching premium prices, the salesmen made a decent income. Within only a couple of months we were showing a technical profit. I had slowly added to the sales force, boosting it by another dozen experienced hands attracted by our pay scale and liberal bonuses for high performers (and our snazzy

102 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Tshirts). I kept the whole crew happy by extending our service area to include new suburbs, providing each man with plenty of exclusive territory to work. Mike diligently handled all of the receipts and commission payments. At the end of every workday, as our field team trooped in and out, he had a pile of cash and checks on his desk to record.

Right away I got an increase in salary and found I liked to spend money when I had it.

Gone were the long nights when I stayed home alone because I had no money or clothes to go out. Simply going to a restaurant or a club to hear live music was a trip; sometimes I’d put on dress clothes and just wander around to take in the lively metropolis. A haircut at one of the yuppie salons made me feel like a prince in exile. I could now see movies when they played at the first-run cinema palaces, instead of waiting six months until they finally made it to the rude discount theaters. I was ready to cut loose a bit, something I’d never done. Having gone from childhood to street hustler in one drastic move, I had not mixed with people my own age in a good while. I had been forced to behave like an adult breadwinner for so long I’d lost touch with being a carefree teenager. My former teacher, Jorge, would probably have said it was good life training. No doubt, but it could also be an express train to the loony bin.

My ninth floor apartment was great, though sparsely furnished; I had a new sofa bed, a dining table and a TV set with basic cable, which was just starting up in Colombia by the late 1980’s. From the window over the kitchen sink I had a view of the bustling avenue adjacent to the building. Most of the residents were young people with jobs in the big city. I was finally starting to live like a normal, middle-class citizen. Of course, at that age, girls were also on my mind, but I wasn’t obsessed with sex and romance, just interested. Instead of keeping to myself out of shame or embarrassment at my situation, I was now eager to make friends.

One night, I put on my fine sports jacket and headed over to a downtown section where

103 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street the clubs and restaurants were always hopping. I might even meet somebody, who knows?

Either way, it was exhilarating to be out in the balmy air. I love a city at night. Along one particular street, music from a club spilled out onto the sidewalk and a crowd had gathered to pick up on the beat. I stayed to listen for five minutes and then strolled down the block. At a ritzy café, where lots of people were hanging out, I stood at the bar and had a mild-tasting White Russian, which I had found I liked.

Casually, I checked out the girl situation, more as a

spectator than a player, although a bit of innocent flirting would be nice, just to get in some practice. However, I could nurse the Russian for only so long and finally left without talking to anyone.

Feeling good, I ambled along for a few blocks until I came to the section of the city where many of the exclusive hotels were situated, glamorous enclaves catering to tourists and wealthy businessmen. I decided to check out the bar at the new Hilton. Maybe I’d meet a rich girl from the States, a daydream of many Colombian men. Limousines and taxis were queued up along the street. Doormen in over-decorated uniforms, looking like army generals, were hustling to escort chic couples to their cars. As I reached the Hilton, I happened to glance across the street at the Nutibara Hotel, one of the more trendy hot spots in town. A lot of folks were flowing out of the lobby and one figure caught my attention. It was a woman in a tight black dress, talking and laughing with a small group. I froze at the entrance to the Hilton.

I looked over and quickly realized who she was … it was my mother. I had several emotions run through my body at the same time, I felt angry, nervous, curios; I even felt sick. I hadn’t seen her in a while and I sure didn’t feel like speaking to her. She was wearing a black dress and a very nice expensive coat. What was she doing there? Who was she with? I felt the impulse to run over there and scream at her, “I hope you are happy; thanks to you I was homeless

104 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street and the last year of my life has been miserable,” but I thought she wouldn’t care anyway. As I was about to walk away, I saw a man, dressed in a very expensive suit, get on a brand new car and she joined him, I didn’t even want to know anything else, I went home depressed and feeling sick; all I wanted to do was sleep and forget about this incident.

As things continued to improve and our little venture began to grow, I found more demands being made on me than ever before. It was more than a new challenge—I faced those every day—it was a new way of life. I was multitasking before I’d even heard the term— working longer hours, keeping a close eye on inventory, paying people on time, purchasing merchandise and making sure collections were done right on schedule. All of this had to be handled throughout the workweek and often at the same time on the same day. It was a different routine for me. The things I had to focus on for my own sales efforts were constantly being interrupted by the needs of my crew. I quickly realized the difference between hitting my sales quota, versus trying to help a sales staff of 20 people hit theirs.

Despite the excitement of my new position in life, I felt overwhelmed, especially in the beginning. No big surprise there—I was formerly a homeless street kid, whose life had previously narrowed down to the simple struggle for individual existence. Now I had to manage the key financial aspects of the lives of twenty others and a new enterprise. I made it a point to keep the idea of sharpening my skills as a business owner tacked up on the dashboard of my mind’s eye.

I forced myself into the habit of staying focused on personal improvement and finding ways to make that happen throughout my workdays. It wasn’t a hard habit to maintain. The facts of life at the helm of my enterprise were enough to keep me engaged with self-improvement.

105 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Nobody ever told me being my own boss meant I had to work harder than everybody else in the company. I still had the silly, youthful misconception that the boss of the typical company lives the easy life, the lazy life, that he just sits back, keeps an eye on things in the big picture and collects most of the money. Ha, how wrong was I?

Spending time with El Mono also opened a whole new world for me, not only of experience but of thought. I didn’t at the time quite fully comprehend one saying that was frequently on his lips, “Ederman, 20 years from now, you will still be the same person you are today, except for two things: The people you know and the knowledge you have gained.” It wouldn’t be long before the newness and the excitement of those two things—the knowledge and experience I gained through my association with him, as well as the people I was newly coming to know—placed me on the collision course with Mono that resulted in the dissolution of our partnership.

As I was to coming to grips with the hard responsibilities of business management, I was also socializing much more and moving up the social ladder. Soon, I was getting invitations to a lot of social events in which I began to mix with an increasingly affluent class of people. I was going to parties, visiting business associates, doing face to face meetings with other young entrepreneurs (mostly young Americans and Europeans who moved to Colombia and start small businesses), making friends, new connections, and of course, meeting women.

Our traditional viernes social fell into a common routine. Every Friday night we would either gather at my place, El Mono’s, or we would go to any of the new clubs, which were popping up like weeds in the areas of el Poblado, Envigado, or the outskirts of Medellin. Ah, clubbing, nightlife in Medellin… It was a blast. Music, alcohol, plenty of drugs—never my

106 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street thing; I learned a lifetime wariness of those via the example of my mother—and dancing were to be found in excess as the standard ingredients for a wild Friday evening.

My first downfall; here, via socializing in clubs, drinking and really engaging in “nightlife” for the first time in my life, is where I made my first serious mistakes in business and learned some serious lessons that I would never forget. I started losing track of how much money I was spending and how much I was drinking.

To all things a purpose, I guess. From these nighttime escapades I learned to build up my confidence around strangers. It was an interesting paradox in that I could knock on a complete stranger’s door, overcome their resistance and strike up a conversation that resulted in their giving me money for a product I happened to be carrying on my person. Yet, when you put me in front of a girl in my own age group I would become quiet and shy. In my heart, I knew that approaching new people and meeting total strangers was a very natural thing and that it paid off in many ways. I also knew that what stopped most people from socializing, meeting new people or taking risks was fear—fear of the unknown; an unknown that can frighten us for reasons that spring from places so deep that we’re not even aware of them and the fear comes by surprise. In my case, my sense of self was repeatedly hammered down into withdrawn quietude by my mother. I was almost always punished for speaking out of place or saying things without her permission—thus the resulting introverted personality and the root of my shyness as I matured into early manhood.

And yet I knew that in the same way you could learn to be shy or to fear, to absorb, over time, characteristics that did you a disservice in life, you could also make a conscious decision to do your life a service by learning and practicing positive characteristics and making them a part of your personality little by little. I realized that I didn’t have to be predestined to be a victim of

107 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street my past; that my family misfortunes didn’t have to set the tone for my future. Somehow I became my own counselor. I nudged myself towards learning to step out of that shyness, to command a stranger’s attention, to sell, learn business and learn English little by little. I sensed that, with some good habits and deliberate thinking, one could do and be whatever one wanted.

Hope Street, I began to see, lurked in the mind and the soul just as much as it resided in twists of fate and fortune. Both the good and the bad could be learned. The menu was always in your hands—the question was what you wanted to order up for your life!

I remember one evening; I was sitting in my place after a long week and didn’t have much to do. I decided to visit my friends in Belen. I called Beto and told him I was coming over to hang out and I wanted to grab dinner together.

“Buddy, let’s you and I go and have a nice dinner tonight,” I said before I hung up the phone.

During dinner, I told him about my new venture and we spent a couple of hours talking about the events in my life in the last few years. I told him about my business venture, about leaving JP and quickly got him caught up with the stories regarding El Mono. We spoke about how all these experiences had helped me become a different person in so many ways. It was great catching up with my old friend. Beto lived a different life than mine; his family was the focus of his life. His parents had been together for almost 25 years and they were incredibly close. They spent all their vacations traveling together and were really a great family, a concept that was foreign to me. Beto went on telling me about his father passing recently and how much this had affected him, his brother and his mom. I could see the pain in his eyes, but somehow I couldn’t relate to him; after all, I never had a close relationship with my parents...

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Dreaming Of Hope Street

After our dinner, Beto mentioned there was a new “hip” place where all the young teenagers hung out in those days, in the north of Belen.

“Let’s go, you are going to love it there, most of our old friends will be there; John, William, Turbo, John F…” “Is this a nightclub? I don’t want to go drinking,” I said quickly.

“No, it’s not a club, we gather in Los Alpes these days,” he said.

Los Alpes is a neighborhood in the north part of Belen, neither one of us had really spent much time there but apparently it had become the cool place to hang out since I left Belen.

“What’s in Los Alpes?” I asked quickly, with a curious look.

“You’ll see,” he said, with that typical Beto grin.

We took a long walk after dinner and kept up our casual conversation, asking each other questions and filling the gap of not talking for months. I realized how much I missed Beto; he was always the voice of reason and the person who never denied a friend his helping hand. It was different hanging out with my Belen friends; they liked me for me, not because of what I had to offer.

After finishing our walk, we finally made it to Los Alpes; we went to this house where there was a group of people gathered outside.

“Here’s the parche, Ederman. We spend most Friday nights here.”

I recognized most of the guys there but, to my surprise, there were also many beautiful girls, whom I had never met. Suddenly I realized why everyone would want to come here on Friday nights. I quickly introduced myself and said “hello” to Beto’s friends and all the beautiful girls.

109 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street This was a very different kind of gathering from what I had been experiencing and was used to, hanging out with El Mono. Instead of the typical loud nightclub with people drinking beer, doing casual drugs in the bathrooms, and groups of older women with a lots of make up and cheap perfume, this was a group of normal teenagers, talking about MTV videos, new bands or fashion and drinking coca-cola. It was certainly something new for me; I liked being around people my age who didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about payroll, militias, violence or any of the “normal” things that had become my day to day routine. I suddenly felt older and more mature than all these teenagers, even though they were my age, mostly because I knew most of them had never experienced or seen what I had been through.

We spent about 30 minutes laughing and just enjoying our time together. My limited knowledge of the English language came in handy when discussing new song lyrics and music videos.

This is what being a normal teenager is like… I thought to myself. I forgot about all my problems and responsibilities. As I stood there, I couldn’t help but notice a very pretty girl walking across the street.

“Who’s that?” I asked in a soft voice, to make sure only Beto could hear.

Beto turned around and looked across the street, “Some girl who just moved into the neighborhood, she doesn’t hang out with us.”

I excused myself and told everyone I was going to the local corner store to get some gum.

I walked across the street and walked towards her. I felt my heart accelerating quickly. I was a bit nervous but I was determined to meet this mystery girl.

“Hi, my name is Eder. What’s your name?”

110 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street She quickly smiled, “I know who you are; everyone calls you Ederman.”

This started out great and got better fast. She already knew who I was and that smile was not uninviting. Not only was she not unhappy about my sudden and unexpected arrival—she welcomed it. I was pleased she knew something about me, but I played it off. I stayed cool, trying not to show it. I acted like it was common for me to run into total strangers who knew who I was.

“That’s me,” I said squarely. I looked behind her and then casually off to the side, then squarely flicked my eyes up into hers. “So, what do they call you?”

“Bibi,” she announced. “Everyone calls me Bibi.”

Man was she cute.

“My name is Bibiana,” and she suddenly leaned in close towards my face for a private aside, “It’s great to meet you, Eder,” she said. It was almost a whisper.

My heart was beating on overdrive, turning over my engines and revving me up big time.

I liked this girl. Something new was happening for me here. I’d had my share of flings with girls, had my moments of passion and brief escapades here and there. But I never felt this excited over the idea of a girl while in the throes of closeness, let alone during the first five minutes of meeting her.

We drifted off to the entrance of her home, sat down in the front stairs and spent the whole night talking to one another—it was one of the most memorable and exciting nights of my entire youth. These first moments, discovering bit by bit that, yes, this amazing person is equally interested in me, as I am in her... The magic moment of youthful mutual attraction, imbued instantly with unspoiled, untested dreams of the future, plans and ambitions undamped by the repetition of time and the slower realities of adulthood.

111 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street We spoke for hours about our lives, our deepest dreams, our grand goals, almost as if we were old friends catching up, former pals who hadn’t seen in each other since childhood, each bringing the other one up to speed on the present day. I learned about her family and how they had moved to Medellin from Manizales recently, owing to the business needs of her mother, who had started a small business selling supplies to schools. Her father was physically disabled and was unable to work.

I recall Bibi telling me that she was going to school and was relatively new to Medellin.

She’d been modeling part time, but her ultimate ambition was to someday break into the world of entertainment, specifically to become a TV personality. She dreamt of having her own show, a mixed variety show combining multiple popular elements. With this ambition, she fit squarely into the mid 80’s trend in Colombia, stemming from that country’s fascination with the whole MTV phenomenon. Flick on any of our local television stations, or look in our version of TV Guide, and chances are, somewhere in there, over the course of their programming roster, you’d bump into multiple examples of just this sort of mini fashion/ food /music show.

Bibi and I spent what seemed like the better part—the much better part—of a lifetime talking. I looked at my watch and realized it was time to go back home.

“I guess it’s time for me to get home,” I said.

“Wait here, I’ll go inside and call a taxi,” she replied, as she made her way upstairs.

I waited with her until the taxi came and quickly said my goodbye.

Drifting home on that atmospheric dawn, I felt as though the universe was completely under my control—to tell the truth, I was floating a few feet off the ground. It was the conclusion of one fabulous night. I remember climbing into bed feeling like we were both thinking about the exact same thing as we laid there in our beds: each other. I distinctly recall going to sleep that

112 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street morning with a big smile on my face.

Chapter Fifteen

Bibi and I quickly became an item. Over the next couple of weeks I found myself increasingly rushing my way through my workday in the office so I could leave early and go see her. We spent lots of time together—sometimes going out with others, sometimes enjoying private time—and soon I was introduced to her family and her friends. We became inseparable.

As I look back and sift through my memories, I can see, beyond all shadow of a doubt, that Bibi was my first real girlfriend. There’d been others of course, but there was no comparison to my relationship with Bibi, this was pure, unadulterated, real puppy love. The real thing.

Those who’ve experienced puppy love know how all consuming it can be—it consumes the mind, consumes the body and it consumes all of your time. It sure did consume much of mine. It wasn’t long before it began to tell on my work routine. Puppy love or not, economics didn’t care: the business and my responsibilities ground forward without respite. Responsibilities continued to pile on with the business; soon I barely had time to sleep. My routine was split between work, finishing my studies and Bibi. Soon it became a 36-hour day that I was trying to cram into 24. The responsibility for the company, my education and my relationship with Bibi was getting to me. I felt constant pressure to make sure everything moved forward in the right way—eventually each component of my day exerted pressure against the other components, until

113 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street eventually I wasn’t enjoying any of them. This was all new territory for me and it became clear that something had to give. I was pushing myself just to get through the day and ultimately, deep down inside, I had the simple desires most other teenaged boys had—hang out, go to concerts, play guitar, and go to the mall or the movies with Bibi.

In the next couple of months, two new habits began to grow: I found myself drinking more and spending a lot of money. Bibi was not altogether happy about these changes in my personality and made it very clear to that some of my new “friends” were not positive influences.

Many of them were wealthy Americans and a few Europeans as well, young entrepreneurs, or sons and daughters of the international jet-set that had resources and connections. Although I fell in with this crowd and adopted many of their external habits, there was one great difference: they could spend tons of money without having to worry about it. This was obviously not the case with me. I spent and spent, picking up enormous tabs—often for people I barely knew.

As this went on, week after week, it began to tell; I was soon falling short on some of my financial obligations, I had to delay paying commissions and fell behind on some of the invoices as well. And while El Mono was prepared to take in the changes taking place within me with an amused, quiet manner, this irresponsibility with money was just not something he was going to tolerate for very long. He was flat out angry and disappointed with me, and rightfully so. It wouldn’t be long until this had unfortunate results for me.

It wasn’t unusual for me and the whole sales crew to be taken out for drinks and a lush meal by either a business associate, a high society friend of ours, or even El Mono himself.

During these get-togethers, we would blow off steam, recount war stories, pick on one another, flirt with girls; the usual escapades of young men.

One Friday night, after making my round of collections, the entire team of about twenty

114 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street sales reps and I were hanging out at an expensive nightspot that had an excellent kitchen. Our host—the man who had brought us there—was an associate of mine, an American connection I had made a couple of weeks before. He had plugged me in with some high-end clients that I used for distribution of our products.

It was his idea to take us all to this nightspot. Very few of us had even heard of the place, let alone been there. First we drank at the bar and eventually moved over to a couple of tables we pushed together. As the night wore on, it occurred to me that our “host” was nowhere to be found. I’d vaguely recalled him mentioning that he saw somebody he wanted to speak to about something or other and excused himself to their table.

I thought nothing of it—I initially assumed he would be returning, to ultimately pick up the huge tab we were running up, thinking we were being treated to a fancy joint like this. But it soon became clear, after the crowds thinned out a bit as the night wore on, that he was nowhere to be found. He’d left without saying goodbye. At his empty seat was the equivalent of a few dollars, just about enough to cover his portion of the bill before he left.

We all kept a blind eye to his disappearance. I kept the food and the booze flowing. I knew I had that big fat wad of weekly collections money sitting faithfully in my pocket. Round after round was called for an increasingly sloshed, unthinking crowd of salespeople. At the end of the night, yours truly was forced to pay the bill. The blinders I wore for the second half of the night concerning how much the tab was fell away as I peeled off the vast majority of money that was supposed to go to the company, and to El Mono, to pay our tab.

As instances like this started to accumulate as my first year in the company moved along, it wasn’t long before I began to suffer the personal wrath of El Mono. The young, responsible young man he’d originally gone into business with was transforming before his eyes into a

115 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street foolhardy, hard-drinking party animal who didn’t seem to give a crap about company finances.

And since company finances were El Mono’s finances, it wasn’t long before I wound up deep in debt to the company and forced out of my partnership with the philosophical American.

But, if my partnership with el Mono was going to be dissolved, it would not be for lack of trying on my end. I fought tooth and nail, tried with all my might to hold this proud first brainchild of mine together, seeking a way to rectify my financial problem with my American partner while maintaining my stake in the company.

Want to meet an interesting bunch of characters within a very short time? Arrange for yourself a set of interviews with those who call or consider themselves to be “investors.” Put out a call. “Call” is an excellent word, perfectly appropriate as it conjures up images of a casting director trying to fill up a play or a film with real characters.

Real characters you will meet; make no mistake. A full and entertaining array will answer the call—I learned this as a young man trying to salvage my position with el Mono and I continue to bear witness to this today as an award-winning entrepreneur.

All this—and more—you are sure to meet: People with little to no money pretending they possess a fortune; people who possess outrageous fortunes pretending they have little to no money; people with tons of investment experience with absolutely no business sense whatsoever; people with no investment experience with keenest business and negotiating sense; excessively wealthy souls with awful hygiene with a wardrobe cheaper than the one I possessed after running away from home as a boy; those with most meager of means who nonetheless take great pride in themselves and present themselves with tremendous class and dignity.

116 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street It’s not totally uncommon, during an investor meeting, to suddenly find your potential investor seeking to pitch you on an idea. Entrepreneurs, in other words, posing as investors and using the meeting to develop new contacts with like minded souls . . . and wasting your time entirely in the process.

It was under the guise of the above-mentioned call for investors—which I had, as mentioned, put out as a bit of a last-ditch effort to salvage my financial end in the cosmetics company—that I met one of the most colorful (and ultimately, tragic) characters that I’d ever encountered in my entire life.

Pippo, as he was known, was more than just a character. Pippo was a dozen characters rolled into one—he was a whole novel rolled into one. Pippo could have been the brainchild of the English writer Charles Dickens, if Charles Dickens got a little meaner, a little leaner and a little more psychotically down and dirty.

Back then, during my first business venture, I didn’t have quite the discerning eye when it came to picking out false investors and time-wasters. Pippo was also, I must admit, quite the smooth hustler when he wanted to be, able to put up an easy and convincing front of polish and success, giving off just the right hints of loose cash and the good life via (false) tales of travel, luxury items and the like.

Pippo contacted me on my office phone and informed me that he had heard through some of his associates that I was seeking investors—he pretended to be related to one of the executives who ran one of the distributors el Mono and I purchased wholesale cosmetics from. In reality, he—at that time—simply slummed in a crash pad shared by a bunch of struggling young men, one of whom was a salesman at my company who knew I was setting meetings with wealthy men. Apparently, Pippo smelled a mark in me . . . he soon learned otherwise.

117 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street I had set our meeting up in my office. Pippo’s technique was to seemingly start off subtle— which he did. Then, if he couldn’t make any progress, he would throw his cards down on the table and go for broke with every offer he could possibly muster up or invent on the spot—which he did. After his fourth attempt to try to get me to purchase this or that (undoubtedly stolen) luxury item . . . like a hot car, hijacked Italian suits, a shipping palette of video games in the box, etc., I finally—amusedly—informed him I was just one very thin rung above him on the social ladder, having just escaped the same kind of garages and crash pads he was sleeping in.

Eventually, a strange sort of friendship bloomed between Pippo and I. Looking back on it now, Pippo, I think, represented what I could have or would have turned into had I cared just a little less about myself; had a little less vision about my future; nourished a little bit less on the pride instilled in me by key members of my family and other positive examples in my youth. I felt an unusual, parallel aspect of kinship with this strange and even dangerous guy.

As my business with el Mono finally and irrevocably collapsed, and as I mixed more with the guys at street level again, I began to see more and more of Pippo. You couldn’t miss him.

Colorful and one of a kind, Pippo was a real character. There were many guys of Pippo’s stripe making their way through the streets of Medellin—in every city, in fact—and yet, Pippo was one of the most brazen of the bunch. He was relentlessly buying and selling merchandise of any type, bicycles, clothes, books, electronics, etc. If he had no access to it, it didn’t matter— Pippo would find a way. You always knew: if you needed something, and you were willing to pay a little something for it, Pippo was the guy who could go out and get it for you.

Pippo and I were like night and day. He was older than I was, in his late 20s he looked more like 35, never held down a legitimate, “above-board” job and he never went to school. He wasn’t even interested in these conceits. He could always be seen stalking around town, dressed

118 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street like a teenager, keeping an eye out for a mark that he could make a buck off of. Pippo was always measuring the possibilities; carefully eyeing his interlocutor for the amount of use that person could be put to for him, then or in the future. Pippo had obviously misread me initially, he saw as someone who was either a soft touch for acquiring goods or services via his unusual schemes or interested in investing in them.

Pippo had heard from a couple of people in Los Alpes that I was involved in a business venture with a gringo; I guess he thought I was a “deal maker” like him, which was not true at all. From time to time, before my venture with El Mono completely dissolved, I’d find Pippo waiting for me after work, seeking to propose some garden variety of “business deal.” If that wouldn’t stick, and he hadn’t flat out asked to borrow money yet, he’d broaden his horizons and propose absolutely anything—so long as it included himself and an opportunity to come between some poor soul and their money. One day, he came to the office late at night, as I was about to leave “Parce,” he’d hiss in a conspiring whisper. “I know this lady whose husband moved to the US and is in need of quick cash; she’s willing to sell us her husband’s car for half of what it’s worth; let’s buy it and then resell it!”

This was his kind of rap—typical Pippo-rigamarole—and not where I wanted to be heading in life whatsoever.

I went along with Pippo on one of his business ventures, which involved a mutual acquaintance of ours named Simon. Simon was very interested in motorcycles at that point in time and had his eye on one particular make and model. Pippo had presented himself, apparently, as a walking one-man premium motorbike dealer, one who happened to miraculously have access to the precise make and model that Simon was seeking and at a price almost impossible to

119 Holguin believe.

Dreaming Of Hope Street

“You will see, my friend,” Pippo declared to Simon as we walked through the streets of Medellin, “that nobody can even come close to giving a deal as good as ol’ Pippo.”

“Are you sure that you know the model that I’m looking for?” Simon asked. “It’s a very high end bike and not offered by your typical middle of the road bike shop.”

“Model schmodel. Easy as pie, Simon. Easy. Don’t worry. You leave it to Pippo, Simon,” Pippo said, referring to himself in the third person. “He wouldn’t waste your time.”

The motorcycle that Simon was interested in was a limited edition Harley Davidson; a collector’s item, something not terribly common in the streets of Colombia. I was curious to see how Pippo would deliver on this “business deal.”

We followed Pippo through the city streets for a while, wondering where he was leading us.

“Where are we walking to now, Pippo?” Simon asked “We’re gonna go see the bike that you‘re gonna buy,” Pippo said. “You’re gonna fall in love with this bike, man.”

Simon and I walked beside Pippo for a bit longer, both of us looking around the upscale residential neighborhood we had slowly meandered into. Pippo seemed to be constantly on the alert, scanning the surroundings with a hi-sensitivity inner-radar that he masked with the most casual and nonchalant look on his face. As for myself, I was vaguely beginning to sense the outcome and watching it all come together with amusement.

Suddenly, Pippo’s body jerked to a complete stop and his features sprang to renewed life.

“Aha!” he exclaimed, his arm extending out to a pointing index finger, which angled out towards a long driveway snaking up to a lovely middle class house nearby. “This is the bike

120 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street you’re looking for, correct?”

Simon squinted and leaned in, pushing his spectacles up his nose. His face brightened as he was confronted with a prime example of his dream bike.

“Indeed!” Simon blurted. “Yes! Yes, that’s the one.” He turned towards me, “She’s a beauty, isn’t she Ederman?”

“She sure is,” I said, nodding. “Even though I like Italian bikes better.”

Pippo pushed his chest out and folded his arms proudly.

“You like this bike, eh?”

“I sure do, Pippo,” Simon said. “Can you get one like this for the price I asked?”

Pippo looked casually down at one of his fingers, picking at a split fingernail for a bit to draw out the moment.

“This is actually perfect, seeing this one here like this, right now,” he announced. “We don’t have to keep walking all the way over to the shop where the actual bike is stored.” He looked up from his fingers, flicking his eyes onto Simon, “I can get you one in even better shape than this one. It’s in my friend’s shop.”

Suddenly Pippo took a step towards Simon and placed an index finger on his chest.

“Can you get the money tonight, parce?”

“I told you that I can. If the bike is like you say—in better shape than this—I’ll definitely take it tonight for the price we discussed yesterday.”

“Listo. You come to Pippo’s place tonight at eight and I’ll have the bike for you then.”

Simon lit up like a Christmas tree, “What a great deal—I’ll be there.”

Although not the collector of motorcycles that I am today, I knew a moderate deal about them back then and knew what to look for to mark a particular make and model. I knew what to

121 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street look for in a custom engine, custom brakes, custom anything and the bike that Pippo had shown us, as an “example” of the make and model of the “actual” bike that he would deliver to Simon, was anything but a stock version of that particular edition. The owner had added custom mirrors, tailpipes and had a gorgeous trim stenciled on it, which was far from factory standard. This bike was so personalized that there was no chance that Pippo’s friend had one exactly like it.

When the moment came for the exchange, I nearly choked on the chewing gum I was jawing at the time. Pippo was proudly standing behind the exact bike we saw in that driveway earlier that day. I could instantly recognize the mirrors, the tailpipes and the trim. My eyes shot up to Pippo’s, who locked eyes with me, silently warning me to stay cool. I passed a look over to Simon, who was simply too riveted by the prospect of laying his hands on the bike of his dreams, in mint condition and at an absurdly low price.

I stayed out of the whole affair. It wasn’t my responsibility to get in the middle of a potentially volatile situation like this; if I opened my mouth and vented my suspicion (which Pippo would, of course, deny) and suggested that this bike was simply the one we’d seen earlier stolen from that very property, Pippo would get angry, and so might Simon. I would wind up the bad guy. If Simon went ahead and took the bike (which he did) and the police discovered the true nature of the bike’s disposition while in Simon’s hands, and they took action, I could potentially be blamed. So I kept my mouth shut and allowed responsibilities to remain where they belonged in this typical Pippo drama, on the main players themselves.

Ultimately, people see what they want to see—and in this case I think Simon genuinely saw a different bike from the one we’d seen earlier. The fact that it was missing plates, was cleaner and shinier, in his mind formed the idea: same model, different bike. He happily rode off with a key that Pippo—I still don’t know where he got it from, unless he switched out the

122 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street ignition on the bike—handed over to him that started the bike perfectly.

I never knew if the bike was ultimately recovered for its rightful owner by the police and taken from Simon. Changes were slowly taking place in my life which were going to remove me from a lot of the company I’d been keeping over this time and place me in a whole new environment. But one thing I do know was that Pippo’s entrepreneurial “spirit” would ultimately have an effect on him—a profound effect. Pippo, the colorful, jaunty, ever on-the-move salesman of the crazy local black market was found gunned down in a Medellin park, having conducted one deal too many. If there’s an afterlife, I have no doubt he’s hustling the gatekeepers for an extra share of nether worldly currency.

But that would come later. For the time being, I found Pippo to be a fascinating, highly engaging character who was stimulating company. Especially for a young guy like me, who was, little by little, coming further and further out of his shell, Pippo’s outgoing, colorful nature could be fascinating. And, to be frank, he was just a flat out fun guy to hang around with at times, so long as my wallet was carefully tucked away out of sight.

123 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter Sixteen

The end of my very first business venture, which I had entered into with Mike, a.k.a. El Mono, the stylish young businessman from California, was undoubtedly coming at any given moment. I sensed this over the course of these grey, monotonous workweeks, since I couldn’t make up the deep hole of red ink that I had dug for myself versus my rightful end of the company.

I wasn’t going to go down easy. I could feel El Mono—who had gone a bit more silent, a bit more distant—watching me, observing me, keyed in for any sign of “investor interest” as a result of my meetings . . . hoping, as I was, for something a little bit more financially significant than the crazy maneuverings of a fraud like Pippo.

During this period of relative quiet on his end, I could see him growing blanker, more and more remote. I could feel the wheels turning in his mind. It seemed that, whenever he was closest to making a decision, he would go completely emotionless and pokerfaced . . . then nothing would happen. The silence on my partner’s end unnerved me. More time would go by. I nervously began to entertain the idea that Mike truly believed that I was so integral to the heart and soul of his business plans, or that he at least had gotten so used to having me around, that he really didn’t want to part ways with me.

124 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street The truth was, with the money I was normally being paid and the expenses I required, I constituted nothing but a drain on Mike’s profit margin. Let’s face it—the money all came from him. I had become, through my irresponsibility and lack of control, a barrier between his investment and its rightful profits.

And yet: Mike knew that the concept and the execution of the idea that set the cycles of these profits in motion were attributable to me and only me.

In the end, that’s nothing but sentiment, of course, especially if I was now nothing but red ink—and sentiment can be like oil and water when it comes to business. Any businessman knows that; I learned that myself over the years. But between two honest guys, sentiment has symbolic value that, at times at least, must at least run its course. Most decent entrepreneurs try very hard to blend common decency with a pragmatic approach to finance. Be a good man, do what you can for your employees within reason, but don’t run a charity organization without tax free status!

So el Mono, basically a decent guy, stretched out our endgame—hoping against hope that I might find a way out of the mess I’d made. That way out, unfortunately, was never found by me.

The mess of red ink remained a mess and this company would not even get to see me reach the age of seventeen. My Californian amigo was going to have to provide that way out of the company for me.

The axe finally fell one afternoon after I held a sales meeting with the team. A territory which we hadn’t covered in quite a time was going to be blanketed with our sales staff, who would be touting a new line of high quality anti-aging cream that was all the rage in America. It promised to be a nice sales campaign with lots of potential and I pumped up the team, gave them the

125 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street general marketing spiel, laid out the routes for each salesman on a big map tacked to the wall of our meeting room, gave them starter kits for the new product line and sent them on their way, full of energy and excitement.

Returning to my office, I noticed that someone was sitting in the chair opposite my desk—I could see his head through the glass window in my door before I even entered. Opening the door, my stomach leapt up into my teeth—it was el Mono.

For him to come into my office and sit submissively as a guest in my office—my office, not his office . . . which is where we gathered at all times for serious matters—I knew something out of the ordinary was about to happen. I could feel it.

As I came in and looked down into his pinched, tight face, I had a pretty good idea that something unpleasant was about to happen. And it didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out what; specifically that ‘something’ was likely going to be. We both knew that all efforts to raise cash had failed. Even personal sources couldn’t make a dent in the pile of red ink. Nothing compared to what I owed.

“What’s happening, Mike?” I asked, nonchalantly, trying to squash my pounding heartbeat down into my stomach, trying to play it off natural and calm.

“Ederman, my friend, we have to talk,” said El Mono. He had that air of philosophical depth to his voice that signaled that the talk was going to be neither light nor easy. From that point forward, I pretty much knew what was coming.

I stayed near him, on his side of the desk and sat upon his side of the desk.

“Sure Mike,” I said, “Of course. What’s up?”

126 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “No, no, no,” he said. “Please, you can,” he gestured over to my office chair, “you can just sit down in your regular seat.” He laughed nervously and waved a hand through the air. “Get comfortable.”

I made my way around the desk and sat down.

“Okay,” I said, dropping down into my chair. “What’s happening?”

Mike took a deep breath, held it for a beat, and let it out with a rush and a sag of the shoulders.

“Eder,” he began, biting his lip and looking down at his knee, crossed over the other, and started picking at some nonexistent lint on his slacks. “You have to know, before I go any further here, how much I appreciate all the work you’ve put into our operation here. I have to admit— you were pretty much the brains behind this whole thing. You came to me and dropped a nice little opportunity on my lap, and you came up with it all on your own.”

I smiled humbly and looked at him with mock disagreement.

“Well, now, we know that’s not completely true, Mike,” I said. “I mean, come on. I couldn’t have done any of this without your know how, without your business sense, without your connections, your sense of the law, of the big picture.”

Mono waved his hand through the air.

“That’s nothing. That’s just a starting point that anybody comes to a business venture with. If you don’t know the big picture, if you have no connections; if you have no idea of the big picture, you are not going to get anywhere in the business world.” Mono paused and shifted his tone to a new sense of finality.

127 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “Nope. A very big part of this was you, and Eder. . . because you have these kind of smarts, and because you have this kind of business talent, I’m not going to beat around the bush here with you. I don’t want to give you a snow job or a bunch of bullshit. . .”

El Mono gave me one of those deep searching looks that he tended to give when he was going even deeper in his thought track, likely to make some pronouncement about growing old, about human nature, etc.

“Mike, I’d never want you to hold back,” I said, trying to sound firm and masculine.

“Of course not.”

“Ederman, you know—surely you must know—that I have to let you go. You’ve gotten in so deep over your head here and with you sitting around here with your own office you’ve turned into pure overhead. There’s almost no way that you can negate this debt you have versus the company and it’s really put me, here, in a spot.”

I lowered my eyes and nodded, fiddling with a fingernail that had begun to peel on one of my thumbs.

“I’ve tried and tried and tried to figure out a way to make this thing work, man,” he said—as if I didn’t know that, as if I wasn’t walking around on eggshells over the past weeks— “I tried to figure something out, hoping something would come to me. I sat by, saying nothing for a long time, hoping that maybe something would come to you and you would present it to me to solve this thing.”

“Mike,” I complained at everything in the world except El Mono, “I tried. I tried and tried. I held so many meetings. I tried to generate some cash by speaking with some venture capital guys. Quote unquote venture capital guys, anyway. I mean.” I shot a sour look at nobody and nothing in particular. “I am not sure how it is in the US, but this isn’t exactly Wall Street.

128 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Investors in small, door to door, direct marketing companies aren’t exactly everywhere you look here in this town. I was lucky I found you, actually.”

“No Eder, that wasn’t luck. It was pure skill,” Mike announced firmly. He stuck his index finger right out and pointed directly between my eyes. “Pure skill, precisely because of the fact that guys like me are few and far between. And let me clue you in on a little secret here, my dear Ederman…” He leaned forward and stuck a hand to one side of his mouth as though he were about to tell me a great big, childlike secret.

“I don’t usually go around sinking thousands of dollars into runaway dropout Colombian street kids because they think they have this or that bright idea,” he said. “It’s eh, typically not ‘my way,’ so to speak.”

I sensed that I should feel hugely proud—but somehow I felt microscopically small.

“Thank you, Mike. Truly,” was all I managed to say.

“No Eder,” he said. “I don’t want your thanks, because I have to do something truly shitty here, now. You know I have to cut you loose and you know that this really sucks.” He sat up and leaned forward in his chair and went on. “You know you came in here a real businessman, a young man of exceptional talent and organizational skill way ahead of your age group, but for a while there, when things went as good as I knew they would, you turned into what my friends up in the States thought you were—some wild, teenaged, street kid. Running around blowing money, partying, getting drunk, treating money like it had no value. And what bothers me the most is—now that I’m so far behind the eight ball with you trying to balance out your net worth to the company—you’ve straightened yourself out again. Quickly. You’re blazing through school doing your thing, getting yourself back on track, turning into what I knew you

129 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street would. And now I have no choice but to let you go. Now of all times. Because we’re stuck against the wall. Red ink or black ink in six months. I have a choice. And the choice is you. . . ” Mike slumped back in his seat, fiddling with his pants again, sweeping away nonexistent flecks of lint with irritated pops of his finger. He exhaled loudly and shook his head, waiting for me to say something.

Having withstood that complimentary teardown, I felt a lump tightening in my adam’s apple.

El Mono’s compliments about my alleged talent and innate abilities somehow stung worse than if he had told me I was the most talentless piece of crap that should never go near an office ever again in my entire life. I felt like I had let the whole world down and the weight had just come crashing down on my shoulders. There and then, I almost wished I was a total goof-off who had come into the company with no expectations and had left with even less.

“I’m really sorry, Mike,” I stammered. “I—I really. . . ” “I’m sorry too, buddy,” he said. He looked into my eyes and read the pain that was flashing through them. “I’m not gonna lay it on very heavy. I can see what you’re feeling. And hey—I was much crazier than you were when I was that age. There’s nothing wrong with going a little nuts like you did. It’s just money. The biggest pain in the ass in the world—money.

“You’re a good guy, Eder, and fun to have around. And listen,” he said, lightening up, “Don’t take it so hard. So this didn’t work—big deal! You’re eventually going to do better things than this rinky dink little company. Focus on your schooling; get your education.

Focus more on your future. We all fail at something sometimes, the important thing is that you learn your lesson and keep moving forward. Failure is only final if you give up.”

“As for what you’re leaving behind you here, this is what I propose,” he said, looking at me in the eye. “I know you can’t pay me all the money you owe me. I consider you my friend

130 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street and I always looked out for you. This is what we do: I am going to take the commissions I owe you, the bonus I was going to pay you, and take away the percentage of the company I had offered you and we can call it even. What do you think? Do you want to shake on that one?”

I looked up at El Mono as he held his hand out, knowing he was doing me a gigantic favor out of affection and sympathy. All I could do was lunge awkwardly forward and shake his hand back. I was choking down my emotions to keep them in check and—frankly—I could barely speak. I knew, considering the thousands and thousands of dollars that el Mono could have held hard against me, that this was an enormous break and I probably didn’t deserve it.

Usually, especially down there in Colombia, things are very different when it comes to debts outstanding. When money is owed and there’s no way to pay it back, violence is the best way to teach someone to take responsibility and pay their debts.

“Mike, man,” I said, regaining myself. “I really want to thank you for everything,” I thumped back against the desk, feeling as if I had just run a triathlon

and

was

completely exhausted, spiritually and physically. “I’m sorry for this. But thanks for taking the chance, thanks for believing in me. And hey,” I jibed, thumbing him in the shoulder, managing a tiny touch of upbeat sarcasm—“at least the company didn’t fail. In the big picture, you made money, at least—right?”

Mike stood up.

“And that, my young friend,” he announced, whapping me on the back, “is why I have no problem calling everything even. And keep in touch, buddy—I want to know where you land in the future. It will be intriguing, I have no doubt.”

“Thank you for everything,” is all I could manage to say without breaking down.

I walked out of that office for the last time, feeling relieved but also incredibly sad. I had worked

131 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street so hard to build this business and I blew it. This, I thought, was my big chance.

Chapter Seventeen

Some time had passed since the disintegration of my venture with Mono and, while taking care of some affairs in the city, I bumped suddenly into El Flaco, one of the old sales reps who worked for JP back when I was working for him. It had been a good little while since I had seen Flaco, especially during my more prosperous days with Mono, but he was someone I would bump into from time to time as we both shared many acquaintances, not only in the world of door to door cosmetic sales, but also among the characters of the city streets.

Flaco had never come over to my venture with El Mono—nobody from my old company had.

When I had first struck out on my first business venture, I knew the business would be in direct competition with JP’s efforts—stealing his sales reps, even if they wanted to come over with me, would have made me feel a little uncomfortable. But, over the period of time that I worked with Mono, I was always happy to see Flaco or any of the old gang from the JP days.

There are bad apples in any bunch, but for the most part I liked the majority of the crew—most of them were just hungry, struggling kids like me, usually victims of some garden variety of unfortunate circumstance, trying to do something above-board, trying not to get sucked into the desperate, dangerous—yet strangely seductive and easy—criminal underworld of

132 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street the Medellin streets. Some of the teens who drifted through that grim underbelly of the streets looked at us working kids like we were squares, being taken advantage of for mere peanuts. It was no different than a teenaged drug dealer working the streets of NYC, making thousands of dollars a week, looking down his nose at the kids working in McDonald’s or some other minimum-wage paying chain store, stuck wearing what he considered to be some cornball uniform, being yelled at by customers and taking next to nothing home at the end of the long, heavy work-week.

But there was a big difference between most of the kids who worked for JP in Medellin—or in a fast-food joint in NYC—and the criminals hustling who laughed at our low pay and long hours: we lived past the age of twenty-one, we stayed out of prison and we gained valuable experience that could be put to use later. No employer would ever see a bullet-point on a youngperson’s resume for Drug Pushing and say to themselves, “This young person has learned the rigors of hanging in there and doing hard work. He has made the good choice—he prefers the pain of Discipline, versus the pain of Later Regret.”

It is true that, for a while there, after the pain of my severance from my venture with Mono, I tended to avoid anybody connected with that business whatsoever—be they from JP or from the business that Mike kept on running in my absence. For a time I had no desire to remind myself of, and relive the hurt and shame of my loss of position in the company that I had helped create.

Thus it was quite some time before I allowed myself to even venture into the general vicinity of the street of its home office, or talk to any of the old sales people.

But my bump-up into Flaco was sudden and basically unavoidable. There was no time to divert myself—by the time I realized I was in the vicinity of an old co-worker, we were already facing each other straight-on, suddenly locked eye-to-eye across less than a yard of sidewalk.

133 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street It was on a particularly boiling hot South American afternoon, the two of us found ourselves suddenly downing two refreshing granizados—the Colombian version of the American sweet ice—from a vendor on the side of the road.

I fought the impulse to depart quickly with this or that lame excuse. As mentioned, I had always liked El Flaco, and enough time had gone by since my leaving the business whereby the pain of separation had pretty much disappeared—to some degree the unfortunate side effect of a childhood spent saying an endless melody of goodbyes. Rub a spot on your hands or feet enough times and you develop calluses to toughen up the spot for next time. Rub a part of your emotions enough times and you toughen up your feelings versus next time.

As the impulse to split the scene and avoid the interaction with Flaco disappeared, a certain inquisitiveness took its place. Although I remained forward thinking, and strained to the utmost to not look backward—and thus avoid turning into your perennial pillar of salt—I would be disingenuous if I said that my unexpected meeting of Flaco didn’t make me curious concerning my old tenure with JP. I was always dying to know if JP made any direct changes to his strategy or product line after I left and formed my own company.

So I asked.

“At first it was like nothing happened. We kept moving right along and working and selling basically the same amounts as always. But after you guys got up and running, something happened that screwed JP up big time. It was really tough for a little while there, Eder,” Flaco said. “JP was starting to feel the competition a little bit and so he was looking real hard for something that would give him some kind of competitive edge. He decided that he was going to get this American shampoo and conditioner for women with colored hair that was becoming popular and offer it at a great price. So he managed to get his hands on a big load of it somehow.

134 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street I think he spent more on that stuff than any other product line before or after. It was really good stuff—I gave some to my girlfriend and she still uses it.”

“So what happened?” I asked, although I had a pretty good idea where this was heading. His description of the product was ringing up memories in my head . . . “‘What happened,’?” Flaco mimicked with a kindly laugh. “That stuff sat in JP’s garage for freaking ever, man! Don’t you remember that stuff? You had beaten him to the punch!

Everywhere we went, every good female target who always bought good amounts of cosmetics from us had already been sold by you and your crew. I think you guys had the brainstorm to sell that stuff and began hitting the turf hawking that product about two months before JP took inventory on it.”

I remembered that campaign very easily. That was the result of my first brainstorm with Mono on a new product from America, our first unknown quantity. Prior to that, at the beginning of my time with Mono and the new company, I had stuck with products that I already had taken orders for and had already done reasonably well on, back during my time with JP. At first we stuck to the products that I knew I could sell—my goal was to simply cut out the middleman that JP represented, while handling proven sellers for inventory. That hair care product line was my first move to increase the profile of our product line, to make it seem a little more upscale, since American women were idolized by so many around the world.

Our campaign for that product was a great success, giving me the impetus to continue along these lines, innovating more new products from America into our distribution . . . concluding with that anti-aging cream that represented my final strategic push within the company.

“Yes, yes,” I said. “I remember now . . . although I had no idea that JP had the same idea to sell that stuff.”

135 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Flaco looked at me like I had flat-out lied to him. He peered at me across a crooked distance, his face slightly screwed up.

“Are you serious?” he croaked. “I mean, that was the main thing that led to all the crazy trouble between you and JP.” “‘Crazy trouble between me and JP’?” I asked. I shook my head and blinked as though shaking off a thousand flies. “What are you talking about?”

Flaco busted out laughing.

“Ederman, it’s me, man. Flaco,” he emphasized. “That stuff is history now. You don’t have to hide it from me anymore.”

I squinted and looked off to the side, confused.

“I never really had much trouble with JP,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. I meant it. “He once approached me and told me to back off a little bit, but that was the end of it.”

Flaco looked at me long and hard, searching me out. Slowly but surely I could see that, whatever it was that he was referencing, he realized that I was clueless as to what it was.

Flaco was nowhere near an unintelligent fellow. He could sense the profundity of my reaction—he could see how oblivious I was. His expression morphed from disbelief to one of complete awe.

“Wow, Eder,” he said, truly amazed—amazed about something that I was still in the dark about. “That’s incredible. You really had no idea about what happened to JP? About him being laid out and put in the hospital for a month?!”

I rocked backward as though I had been thumped in the temple with a high powered fast-ball.

“In that what??? Hospital?” I gasped. “What the hell are you talking about?”

136 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “Wow, man. I can tell you one thing for sure, Eder,” my old associate announced to me. “El Mono must have really liked you a lot, man, to keep this all from you.” We had been walking for a while, and now we paused near a small cluster of trees near a large traffic intersection, sat down on some park benches by a large thoroughfare and rested while we finished our granizados.

Flaco went on talking.

“Okay,” Flaco began, looking uneasy. “I’m gonna fill you in on some wild stuff, here, man— but I want you to swear to me that you will keep all of this to yourself. I mean it, Eder—swear to me you won’t repeat any of this to anyone.” Clearly he was betraying somebody else’s confidence with some of what he was about to unload. “Even if we never see each other again.

Put your hand up and swear. . . ” I nodded and put my right hand up in the air, dying from curiosity to hear this tale, as Flaco continued…

“First and foremost—you already know,” Flaco began, “that when you struck up your arrangement with El Mono, he—” meaning JP—“wasn’t happy at all. I mean he really was not happy. He thought you had a mighty big pair of brass cojones.”

Flaco paused for effect, and then continued.

“JP was talking all kinds of crazy shit during that time,” he went on. “He was acting just like he was some kind of gangster right out of The Godfather, and that you and El Mono had stepped illegally on his turf. Mind you,” he said, leaning in for emphasis. “He really did suffer. His sales really did go down—this is even before the American shampoo campaign.” Flaco cleared his throat, tipped his head inquisitively, and asked:

137 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “You mentioned he approached you and told you to back off. Did he threaten you—I mean for real, really threaten you? Where he warned you to stop stepping on his toes?”

“Actually,” I said, “I guess so—I guess you could call it that. Yes, he did. I was coming out of the grocery store near my apartment. He got out of his car right outside of the store as I was coming out. The whole thing looked so staged to me. But yes—he read me the riot act and demanded I take my sales operation elsewhere.”

“Did he threaten you?”

“Maybe it was implied. I mean, I really didn’t take it all that seriously. Why?” Flaco raised an eyebrow and peered crookedly at me in vague disbelief. Apparently he figured that I knew what was coming next . . . but I truly had no idea where he was going with this story.

To me JP was just a sad old predator who happily preyed on poor kids—on the weak. I never thought of him as a threat to anybody who had their affairs in order . . . not outside his tiny little sphere of underage employees.

Flaco nodded and laughed with deep implications. He raised an eyebrow and shook a finger at me.

“Hmm! You don’t know how close you really came, Eder,” he said, long and low. “That old man wasn’t messing around at all. After the fiasco with him getting stuck with all that shampoo that he had loaded up on, he lost it. I think he gave you a week or something like that.” He paused and lifted his chin. “You told Mono about JP warning you like that, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “As a laugh, kind of. As a way of letting him know how good we were doing versus the competition. Why?” “Do you remember Otto? Big burly guy? Worked for you for a while? Right around that time?”

138 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “Yes,” I replied. Although he didn’t last all that long, you couldn’t forget Otto. The guy was built like a refrigerator. “Sure I remember him.”

“Well, Otto was good friends with one of JP’s sons from way back. Long story short, Otto and El Mono became tight there for a little while—the two of them, between Mono’s connections and Otto keeping tabs, they had a line directly into JP’s inner circle. I mean, they practically knew what the old boy was going to do before he even frigging thought of it.

“They got word that JP was going to make good his threat on you and teach both you and El Mono a lesson. I mean, JP was completely out of his mind at this point and getting seriously desperate because he wasn’t making even half the money he used to. I think he was going to grab you on your way home from work one day—the word was he was going to send someone to break your legs . . . and by doing this send a message to El Mono.

“Well, Mono was not having any of this, I guess. One thing JP and his people learned about Mono,” Flaco said, his face going grim as he tipped his head then nodded philosophically, “is that he ain’t no wimpy, blond, preppy boy afraid to get down and dirty if he gets pushed around by some Colombians.” He smiled, impressed with the memory. “You must have really been his boy, Eder, lemme tell you. That man must have really liked you and he went right to friggin’ bat for you. Once he heard JP was about to strike, he swore Otto to secrecy and put a small team together that turned the tables on JP before he had a chance to strike. They grabbed him three blocks from his house, walked him politely down an alley and into an abandoned warehouse— and proceeded to beat the living crap out of the guy. They warned him to take his hard knocks like a man and that if he’d like to go crying to the police he was welcome to go right ahead. I think they even told him they would drive him to the station. They had witnesses, they said, to his threats and his plans to break your legs.

139 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “Apparently JP was too proud to take his licks lying down. He kept trying to fight back, going for loose bricks laying around the torn up floor and even trying to swing a piece of two by four— I mean these guys really had to lay this guy out to finally shut him the hell up and end the damned thing without turning him into a corpse right there.

“He wound up in the hospital for about a month. He had a concussion and a broken leg. But one thing I can say in JP’s credit,” Flaco nodded, impressed, “is he never went to the police.

He told the hospital that he got into a bar fight that escalated and refused to talk about it. He knew nobody believed his story but he completely didn’t care. For a while all I knew was that the boss got hurt and he had his wife come to the office and hand out the inventory and assignments for a while.”

I sat there stunned! All of this had gone on behind my back and I never knew one iota of it throughout the entire balance of my tenure with El Mono.

“That’s exactly what’s so amazing to me,” Flaco declared. “I guess El Mono, I mean—didn’t want you touched or distracted at all. I just can’t believe that he kept it from you so well that to this day you really had no idea.”

I sat there in silence for a while, draining the dregs of my granizado and shaking my head very softly in wonderment. As it all began to sink in and take root, I finally managed to speak again.

“May I ask one question?” I inquired.

“Maybe.”

“I just wanted to ask how you knew. I mean, does everyone else working for JP know about this too?”

140 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “No,” Flaco replied. “I know from piecing things together from inside the company, a little piece here and a little piece there—I mean, first and foremost you gotta know that before any of this actually went down, JP was badmouthing you all the time in our meetings, talking about how we had to crush you and Mono before you got up and running. But aside from that,” he continued, then paused, measuring the implications of a thought, “I picked up the rest of this from Otto. Otto is my brother’s brother-in-law. I got to know him after seeing him at family functions, and then seeing him out on the field working the same turf for a while. He turned out to be the clock of Mono’s little operation, letting him know when the time was up and it was time to hit JP. Mike gave Otto a nice handful of money and had him put into another job at another company before any of this happened, so he wouldn’t be around when the whole thing went down. So he wouldn’t be exposed to any danger, so JP wouldn’t suspect him.”

We sat there awhile in silence, while I absorbed the details of the amazing tale. As it sunk in—and as it continued to sink in as the years went by—my appreciation and affection for Mike, AKA El Mono, and the time and experience spent and gained via my venture with him, could only grow.

The conversation eventually drifted elsewhere. After some more small talk and general catching up, I shook hands with my old friend Flaco . . . glad—very glad—that we had bumped into one another and even more glad that I had stopped to spend the extended time with him.

Through that chance encounter, my regard for my time with Mike shifted from one of ambivalent pride, to one of absolute positivity. Never again would I harbor any bitterness versus the memory of my first business venture—despite the sad outcome—and I never, ever would possibly dare to have a single atom’s worth of doubt vis a vis the good intentions of my very first partner. My

141 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street freshman business effort could not have been endeavored with a better partner in the entire world.

Chapter Eighteen

Having finished what was the equivalent of high school in the US after much effort and dedication, I was ready for my next challenge. This, of course, was a significant milestone for any young man, but doubly so for me, considering I had no home family life or parental guidance, and I, not even yet seventeen, was working all the time. But I was proudly watching my hard work paying off—I was learning the profound lesson about persistence in the face of fatigue, and the rewards lying at the end of successfully and regularly overcoming the instinct to be lazy. Little by little every day, bit by bit, every week of every month, persisting, persisting, plugging away, not giving myself a rest or shortcut, and the results could be profound. Dreams, I realized, do come true this way. These are the signs that line the byways that lead to Hope Street.

Once I finally received my diploma, it didn’t take me long to set about fulfilling my next goal: enrolling in the University of Antioquia, which I had always wanted to attend. It was my favorite university in Colombia. Antioquia is a public research University based in the city of

142 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Medellin. As far as colleges go, it’s the second largest in Colombia, with more than 35,000 students enrolled at any given time and multiple campuses across the city.

The main campus, which I attended, is located in the northern part of the city. The “UdeA”, (which is how we Colombians, especially in Medellin, always referred to it), was, and still is, a very liberal university. Back in those days, in the 1970’s and 80’s, there were hordes of young adults who constituted the most progressive sect of Colombian youth culture. Many of them were flat out hippies. Protests and mass demonstrations erupted with regularity. They could sprout up over just about anything—protests at UdeA were a common occurrence.

Another great benefit that sprang from my attending the UdeA was the fact that the college was a staging ground for a great majority of the concerts and public events that passed through Medellin. I felt very involved and socially connected to the pulse of, not only my native city and country, but the world as well. Not only could I see, and get great discounts for, some of my favorite rock bands, but also I could attend major cultural events, which were always being held on campus. One day there could be an institution/organizationally-sponsored event promoting, for instance, saving the earth, the whales, the rainforests; the next day there could be an extremely radical group running a highly vocal and rowdy protest seeking to overthrow the current corrupt government to replace it with socialism, communism, conservatism, utilitarianism, vegetarianism, Buddhism … there was no shortage of isms on that campus, to be sure.

Most of my friends attended la UdeA—this as opposed to, for example, other Colombian schools like Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana or the Universidad de Medellin. Both of those are private schools, schools that were completely out of the question for me because of their comparatively high tuition fees.

143 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street But it was no loss to me. “La UdeA” was a fantastic school, always remaining on the cutting edge via cultural events that made it a real-time social and academic incubator, with amazingly advanced research programs for the liberal arts, the sciences and other fields. In most areas of study and culture in general, Antioquia was among the cream of the educational institutions in all of Latin America. For this reason, my inability to attend any of the aforementioned high-priced private schools represented no loss to me whatsoever. There was nothing in terms of quality or curriculum that I could have acquired at one of those private schools that was not on the roster and available to me in utmost quality at my chosen school.

Universidad de Antioquia was my first choice and I couldn’t have been happier attending classes there. In between working and going to classes, I attended quite a good number of concerts, recitals and gallery events, owing to the fact that a large number of my friends were involved in music, writing, or art. I did unfortunately have to turn down invitations from these friends to participate in some of these concerts as a guitar player myself, mostly because I had to spend so much time working and studying. There just weren’t enough hours in the day for me.

This stage of my life was quite a challenge. Dating Bibi, having some form of social life with friends, working and attending classes—all this was both a great experience as well as a challenging juggling act. Laying out my day in advance and making sure I ticked off all of my bullet points of productivity, always keeping a continued focus on the dashboard of my mind’s eye to insure I was not only staying on the path I was carving out for myself, while also engaging in habits that would grow my abilities and improve my skills—I did all of this daily and by routine.

I purposely took as many classes as I could feasibly handle, in order to get the fastest jump on life, to leave as much time and space for me to find my niche and make my way in it. It

144 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street was indeed difficult—it was no easy ride—but I succeeded.

The process was overwhelming and exhausting, but the excitement running underneath my sense of progress at this point was palpable. My workload was enormous and my social life remained lively.

Sensing that my destiny resided in the realm of business and marketing, I took business and marketing as my main subjects. I knew I wanted to run my own business and I felt marketing, management and sales were the keys to making any future businesses of mine successful. Since I didn’t have a real job, and working the door to door sales of cosmetics was out of the question after leaving El Mono and still having a bad taste in my mouth regarding JP, I decided to start looking for a different kind of job that was somehow related to my skill set, sales to be exact.

I answered an ad in the newspaper for an insurance sales job. It wasn’t something I necessarily thought myself supremely cut out for, nor did it represent the pinnacle of my dreams at the time. But I headed out to the interview I’d secured for myself because it was something. It was in the field of sales and, at the bare minimum, I saw a good opportunity to spread my wings a little wider and broaden my horizons in terms of experience.

When I went to the interview, I quickly realized that it would be a fabulous job to have. I realized just as quickly that I didn’t have anywhere near the proper qualifications for such a job.

The more I learned about the position, the more I wanted the job. And yet, the more I learned about the position, the more I realized that the qualifications were firmly beyond my grasp, at least at that point in time. Suramericana de Seguros, which was the company I was applying for, was at that time the largest insurance company in Colombia. Without question, it was a great place to be privileged to work, but as I sat there in the interview, learning more about the nature

145 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street of the position and the company, I kept sinking lower and lower into my seat.

After running down some of the aspects of the position, my interviewer, a polite but somewhat aloof middle aged man named Rodrigo Fernandez, let me sit there in my chair in silence for a bit. All the way on the other side of his expansive oak desk Mr. Fernandez sat, cross-referencing a number of documents spread out before him. Here and there he’d look over my application, picking it up as though it were a harmlessly inappropriate item, peering wearily at me over the rims of his glasses with a vaguely pitying, but somehow affectionate look in his eyes. Then he cleared his throat.

“You understand, of course, Eder—I can call you Eder?—” “Please do,” “You understand of course, Eder, that first and foremost we require all of our representatives to possess a college degree, yes?”

My heart sunk in my chest while I lifted my chin, showing no embarrassment. “Yes, I understand.”

“You uh,” he cleared his throat again; his voice seemed to be coming down at me from their ceiling. “You understand, also, that we require each representative to have earned a formal license to sell insurance. You know this of course,” he pronounced, more a statement than a question, as if it were impossible that I could have walked into his office without being armed with this foreknowledge.

“Yes,” I nodded, lying. “Of course I did.”

“Good,” he said, pressing his glasses up over the bridge of his nose and peering severely down at my application once again. “Then I’m sure you’re also aware that on top of these two prerequisites we prefer that our applicants possess some experience in selling financial

146 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street products.”

This final line was delivered with an affectionate condescension, as though from teacher to a troublesome, but well-meaning, student. Clearly, Mr. Fernandez could see from my application that I had earned none of the required qualifications.

“Yes I do,” I lied again.

“So you,” he paused, as though the coming statement was perfectly impossible, “have all of the aforementioned?” he asked, his eyes returning to the employment application in his possession, darting to and fro along its bylines, seeking out the information pertaining to these qualifications which he must have missed. He traced the lines of text on the document with an index finger, running from top to bottom with lightning speed, until he finally gave up. His hand went limp, and turned inquiringly palm side up.

“I’m not seeing any references here for, for example, your license, your experience, your. . . ” “No, uh—yes,” I stammered. “I mean. . . What I meant to say is. . . ” “Yes,” he said, trying to encourage me along while I found my conversational footing.

“Go on.”

“Well, the point is,” I began again, this time more firmly, “I’m just starting college now, and I have a good amount of sales experience already. I’ve been selling for a good long time now; in fact it’s all I know and what I’m doing is investigating my options and, eh, seeing what’s out there.” I cleared my throat. “So to speak.”

Mr. Fernandez looked down blankly, pursing his lips over the faintest hint of a smile. He looked back up at me over the rims of his wire glasses.

“I see,” he said. “’Seeing what’s out there.’ I think I have just been interviewed by you,”

147 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street he announced playfully. “I hope I have come through with flying colors.” He smiled, made a very deliberate show of pushing my application over to the side and folded his two hands before him. “I think,” he continued, “that this is a very smart idea, Eder. Very, very smart indeed. A young man should know all of his options ahead of time and investigate all of his opportunities. I can see from looking at your application that you do indeed have sales experience and this is a very good thing.” He nodded to himself, and repeated the line as though someone had raised an objection. “A very good thing, indeed. I hope that we here at Suramericana de Seguros have earned your interest during this interview,” he said playfully, standing up now. “I would very much be interested in meeting with you again, Eder, when you have finished your school and gotten your certificate—I certainly would indeed.” He wrinkled his eyebrows and put a finger to his chin, as though he had just caught a grievous error: “That is, of course, if you are interested in us,” he said. “Will you come and see me then, Eder?”

I smiled, blushing, feeling the fun the old man was having with me, yet at the same time filling up with the goodwill that flowed from him.

“Yes, of course,” I said brightly.

“Good!” he announced, coming around the desk, his arm extended. “It’s all arranged then. You will call me then, and no later.”

“Yessir,” I said, shaking hands with him.

He escorted me out of his office with a gentle push.

Despite what I had learned about the position from Mr. Fernandez, I wasn’t prepared to give up just yet. I was so excited about the idea of getting dressed up to the nines and selling a product that didn’t require me to carry a heavy bag of retail goods while knocking on every door

148 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street under the sun. I kept wracking my brains over and over again, day and night, pondering the seemingly impenetrable mystery of how I could break into this line of business, despite the fact that I didn’t have the aforementioned qualifications.

I made the rounds of most of the local offices and eventually, on one of these inquiring visits, came into contact with a gentleman who was an account executive for Suramericana. His name was Sergio Restrepo. Sergio was a natural born salesman who possessed an uncanny ability to instantly build rapport with complete strangers and he seemed to have an innate talent for selling insurance.

Sergio was always dressed to perfection, and, like all born salesmen, had a smile on his face all the time. When in public, he never seemed to have a care in the world—Sergio had mastered the art of controlling his angst, never showing his dark side to the public, managing his cares and his woes in a time and space that were 100% private.

For this reason, people gravitated to Sergio, appreciating the lightness of his persona, the freshness of his conversation and the magnetism that he radiated. I was no exception. We became friends straightaway and the feelings of affection were mutual; he very strongly felt that I would be a valuable adjunct to his business. Sergio recognized in me the proper work ethic and the level of sophistication that would provide a compliment to his insurance sales operation; he saw in me someone who he would want onboard to help him grow his business.

Sergio was an excellent role model for me, particularly via those aspects of my professional front, which still required polish. My mode of dress was not particularly the most appropriate. I usually could be seen going about my business decked out in jeans with boots and a T-shirt. Not just any T-shirts, for that matter, but T-shirts of my favorite bands, like Metallica, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, etc‌

149 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street My hair was also somewhat on the long and straggly side; truth be told, at this time, I wore it in a mullet style (yikes) and I usually sported a small zircon stud earring (since I couldn’t afford a diamond). These physical attributes of “front” needed cleaning up—along with the final piece of the puzzle: the way I spoke.

Even though I was quite well-read, and spoke with a very broad, perhaps even brainy, vocabulary, I was so used to living in the streets that my conversations were always sprinkled with street lingo: Parce (dude), sizas (slang for yes), filo (hunger), etc., words like these had been firmly hammered into my conversational speech pattern and needed to be weeded out.

These were certainly not the kind of words that a successful insurance salesman used when out there making his rounds among educated, middle-class clients.

Sergio was great—he saw through these qualities straight into the heart of my potential and he invested in me. He straightaway gave me a small advance to buy a long sleeve shirt, a pair of slacks and a pair of cheap but nice looking shoes. He also made me cut my hair, which I admit, was something I wasn’t too happy about.

Once I became presentable, Sergio agreed to teach me the ins and outs of selling insurance. He showed me the ropes concerning how to handle myself on a sales call and how to handle prospects, my paperwork and, of course, the product itself. In no time at all, he was sending me to lots of appointments to sell insurance on his behalf.

Sergio was pleased. I learned quickly and, according to him, did an amazing job working only part-time. I would go to homes, usually after an appointment had been previously set, calmly and rhythmically run through his sales presentation, according to a pace based on certain psychological factors that he and I had determined from our interaction with the prospect, and try to get them to buy life insurance. In some cases (primarily in the most affluent neighborhoods)

150 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street we also sold home and/or car insurance.

How, you may ask, was I able to conduct these kinds of sales for Suramericana, when I have already established for you that Suramericana requires all of their insurance representatives to obtain a license before selling their policies? Ah, but obstacles like this were just made to be vaulted by clever minds.

What we did was this: I would go out to the prospect and pitch them on the product. I would close the deal, obtaining the consumer’s signature on the contracts. I would then bring this paperwork back to Sergio and have him sign all the agreements; this way, the signature of a licensed sales representative was on every contract per Suramericana’s requirements.

Sergio paid me a small commission on all my sales. He loved this arrangement. This ultimately worked so well for him that he eventually recruited more and more students to do this for him, allowing him to earn incredible commissions and win contest after contest for sales achievement within the company.

As I was starting up with Sergio, I moved back to Belen. I no longer had the income level I once had when running my little cosmetics company. So, I started staying at Betto’s for the time being. While in Belen, I made an important decision; I decided to pay a visit to my sister and my grandmother.

I started asking around about my family and learned from the lady at the grocery store that things had improved after I left. Apparently, my mom was now working and trying to put her life together. I also heard that Wilson had played an important role in helping her get clean and was involved in helping raise my little sister.

Knowing that my mother was working in the afternoons, I steeled my nerves and decided to go over to my grandma’s. I’d thought about this over and over again, running the scenario

151 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street through my mind again and again, wondering what it would be like to see them again after more than 2 years without seeing them.

Chapter Nineteen

I found myself at the door of the house I once called home and rang the bell. I stood there on the front steps, breathing in and breathing out, keeping my nerves under control, shaking for fear of the unknown, not knowing what kind of reaction I was going to get from within.

Grandma’s house had a balcony—usually, when ringing the bell, you would hang there, waiting and looking up, waiting for someone to appear in the balcony above you to see who was at the door before they would open up. As I stood there waiting, fidgeting from nerves, the first thing I saw was my sister Monica’s little head popping out from between the balcony railings.

She instantly started screaming for joy when she saw me.

“It’s my big brother, Grandma! It’s him! He’s here, he’s come back home!!!” she squealed in delight, her voice high and loud enough to penetrate through to the catacombs of Rome.

Grandma opened the door, a wise smile on her face, and greeted me with a fiercely tight

152 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street hug. Good Lord was I excited to see her. Monica jumped on me as though I were a gigantic teddy bear, her arms clawing around me as if to envelop and fold in the sum of my substance so she could put it away and keep it for her own, never to depart again. I felt mixed emotions, standing there—I felt a tremendous upwelling of powerful emotion, yet it also felt strange to be there.

“You look like a skeleton,” my grandmother whispered.

“Oh, Grandma,” I said, waving off the comment with a smile. Yet I knew what she said was absolutely true. I had lost a lot of weight indeed since beginning my odyssey out there, living in the streets. Food was not the most reliable and common thing to come by.

After we all hugged and kissed a thousand times, and they took my jacket, we retreated to the living room and sat down to speak for a while. I could feel my grandma’s eyes weighing me carefully as she asked me how was I doing, if I was going to school, and where was I living. I had to lie to her and tell her everything was fine; I told her I was living downtown in a nice apartment with a friend so she wouldn’t worry.

“It’s a beautiful apartment,” I said. “I’m selling a lot and making excellent commissions, we have our own separate bedrooms, a TV, a kitchen—it’s very nice.” Essentially, what I was describing was the apartment I had just come out of—and lost—via my venture with El Mono.

This element of truth allowed me to gracefully illustrate, for their mind’s eyes, the apartment and its environs, elaborating its luxurious details without a hitch or a pause.

We spoke for quite a while, and for a few moments there I almost forgot that I’d ever been away. My grandmother offered me Merienda, which is a tradition in Medellin; it is usually hot chocolate served with cheese, bread and bunuelos or pandequeso; sort of an afternoon snack between lunch and dinner. I ate while they filled me in on all the recent goings-on, about my

153 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street mother (more on that shortly) and her job and my other relatives.

There was both a sense of warmth, as well as a sense of distance. Although it was familiar and comfortable to be there, the hard reality was that I had been gone, and for quite a while. This was irrevocable. The fact remained, for my grandmother, that after I had left, her life with my mother had settled into a semblance of peace and normalcy, at least at times. There were no more eruptions of violence—my mother wouldn’t dare have harmed Monica the way she did me, at least in terms of physical violence. A sense of routine reigned in the household now, an element of equanimity for my grandmother and a return to the chaos of former times was not something she was particularly anxious to return to.

When it came time to say goodbye to the both of them, Grandma made it clear that I could come by anytime I wanted to. “Come and visit anytime,” she said.

There was a message cloaked in that statement, one that I picked up on immediately.

Visit, she said, any time that you like.

There would be no invitations to return home—I was no prodigal son returning to his homestead, which received him with open arms. I didn’t say anything out loud, but I could see in my grandma’s eyes that deep down inside, in a perfect world, she would more than welcome my return. But that would be in a perfect world—a world where my mother could keep her peace and no fighting would erupt.

We were, of course, not living in that perfect world and so there would be no invitations to return; the status quo for my grandmother meant at least a semblance of a normal life and some harmony in her house. She didn’t want me living there anymore because things were better now that Mom was working, had settled into a routine and there was not much drama.

It was a tough moment for me, though I kept my emotions bound up inside. On the

154 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street outside, I kept the visit a cheerful one. I watched as grandma made it clear to Monica that she could not tell her mother I had come to visit. While watching my sister make her pact of silence with Grandma, I couldn’t help but wonder—is it me who caused all that drama at home in the past? Was I to blame for all the angst and all the violence? I went to hug Grandma Ines before leaving and couldn’t resist mouthing my suspicions. I had to ask—at least to find out what she thought on the matter.

“Grandma, tell me,” I asked. “Is life better here now that I am gone?”

Grandma looked at me with a wizened, tired smile and said, “Not really. Your mama is still your mama,” she looked down and shrugged her shoulders in helplessness. “She still goes a bit crazy and, from time to time, she even tries to unleash her anger on little Monica. The only difference is that Monica is still little and doesn’t fight back, so there’s nobody to argue with her or defy her. Monica just keeps quiet and your mama just kind of forgets about it. It also helps that now she has a job and spends a great deal of time outside the house.” She lowered her chin and looked into my eyes deeply. “Eder,” she said firmly, “you are not responsible for your mother’s behavior. You were an innocent, small boy and had nothing to do with her problems, which continue to this day, even in your absence.”

Visualizing this scenario all too well, I gathered Monica up in my arms and gave her a huge hug; I kissed the both of them and went on my way.

***

***

I was just shy of 17 years old and I was still uncertain about my future. Between working, going to school and trying to have some form of social life with friends like Simon, Pippo, and

155 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Betto, I was hardly devoting the necessary time to my relationship with Bibi and we began to drift apart. She “decided” we should take some time apart and rethink our relationship. I wasn’t too happy with this idea but what choice did I have?

At the same time, my arrangement with Sergio wasn’t satisfying any longer. I was working excessive hours for a small override on each sale that I closed. I already knew from my venture with El Mono—versus my very first job selling cosmetics door to door—how little of the actual commission I was getting paid. I was, again, low man on the totem pole and it was getting disheartening. Even though I was one of the top guys within Sergio’s stable of “sales assistants,” he had—after seeing how much extra money he could make by hiring guys like me—hired a bevy of similar young men to do the same thing. Thus, I was no longer the singular discovery for him that represented a new and unique route to extra money. There were plenty of other young guys on the streets of Medellin, hungry, aspiring, seeking work, willing to take whatever they could get to scrape together a meal at the end of the day. Despite my skills, my experience—for my age, at least—my sense of culture and education versus the rest of my lot, I was just another assistant in the pool of young reps who worked for Sergio.

To make matters worse, Suramericana was beginning to take a close—a very close—look at Sergio’s sales operation. His numbers astounded the company, remaining so consistently high from month to month. The interest in his numbers from on high within the company was informal at best, nothing too serious, at least not yet, but Sergio was smart enough to know that he was under the microscope. There didn’t seem to be anything illegal about his arrangement, so long that he could feasibly claim that we were mere messengers picking up signed documents on his behalf, but I have no doubt that the powers-that-be would have been none too pleased to discover that under-aged boys were going out and closing deals for all forms of their premium

156 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street term life, auto and homeowner’s insurance. Sergio had to cool it—and thus so did my ability to work a sufficient amount of time for him whereby I could close enough deals to put a decent amount of money in my pocket each week.

My relationship with Pippo was deteriorating as well. I’d been privy to a number of his scams and the repercussions of them were closing in on him. In one case, he’d sold a beautiful Italian leather jacket, which originally belonged to a local guy that I knew—named Stefan—to a mutual friend of ours, named Roberto.

One day, while Roberto and I were having a cup of coffee in a local sandwich shop, he was spotted by Stefan. Stefan had worked for me briefly during my venture with El Mono. He shot right into the shop and walked up to the both of us. As it turned out, Stefan could prove instantly and on the spot that the jacket was his simply by turning the lapel inside out and pointing to an ink stain which had come from a leaking pen he’d stored in the inside pocket under a year ago.

Roberto was no slouch in the tough-guy department but he was still no match for Stefan.

I couldn’t, in fact, believe that Pippo would be crazy enough to steal something from a guy like Stefan. So when Stefan ordered Roberto to hand over the jacket there and then, there was only the tiniest protest from Roberto: “But I paid $80,000 pesos (the equivalent of forty dollars) for this jacket!”

“That’s not my problem, Roberto,” Stefan announced. “I suggest you take that up with whomever you got it from.”

“I got it from Pippo,” Roberto said bitterly, rolling the jacket off himself as he stood up from his seat. “He said it was his.”

“Yeah, well,” Stefan crowed happily, taking the jacket from Roberto, “You know how

157 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street that piece of shit operates. Go and get your money back from him. As a matter of fact, I’ll help you if you like.”

And so it went, the two of them left the sandwich shop together, Roberto without a jacket, Stefan with two. I heard, later on, that they found Pippo sleeping in a grotty old garage in the back seat of an abandoned car. The two of them confronted him with the jacket, Stefan showing Pippo the ink stains, and they both proceeded to pummel Pippo into the ground, taking turns slapping him around and kicking him across the garage.

Somehow, Pippo got it into his head that I was the man responsible—me, Eder. That I was the one who had alerted Stefan to the fact that Pippo had stolen his jacket and sold it to Roberto. He simply couldn’t accept that Stefan could look through a diner-window and recognize his own stolen leather jacket with someone else’s frame inhabiting it.

Of course I had done no such thing. But this made no difference to Pippo, whom I heard was going about town with a broken nose (a token of his brush with Stefan and Roberto) vowing revenge on me. Once, while I was taking a nap over at a friend’s apartment, Pippo happened in.

He didn’t stay very long and I only found out that he was there and left before I awoke because my friend told me.

When I did awake, however, my watch was gone. Pippo, who had arrived to pick up a screwdriver he was borrowing from our friend (God only knows what he was going to use it for), had obviously lifted it off the end table near where I was sleeping when our friend left the room to retrieve the tool.

We all knew he had stolen it, although there was never any proof. He, of course, wouldn’t have been foolish enough to wear it outdoors. Certainly he had sold it to someone far removed from our group of locals, to make sure no one noticed it.

158 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street I was livid—this was the second injustice heaped on me in a very short time by Pippo, towards whom I had shown nothing but fidelity. I had been nothing but completely loyal to him, enjoying his wacky ways, his wild manner of dressing and speaking; I found huge entertainment in his apparent fearlessness. Now, despite my loyalty and friendship, he was blaming me for the results of his reckless actions—and on top of that, using his anger towards me as justification to steal from me, to try to get even (and no doubt make a buck on top of it).

I was through with that guy—I wanted nothing more to do with him. I put the word out— tell Pippo we’re finished. Never again; no handouts, no free meals, no friendship, nothing. There was no real implicit threat of violence in the statement—I was not a violent person by any means—but I didn’t want there to be any mistake about how pissed off I was at Pippo.

I knew there was no point in confronting him and asking for the watch back—I also knew it was long gone by now, irretrievable. I had to write it off as the cost of taking into my intimate circle of acquaintances a genuine, legitimate, hustler and thief.

About two weeks after this, during one of my last meetings with Bibi, we decided to go for a long walk and discuss our current relationship. We were strolling down one of the main thoroughfares in Medellin. Up ahead, in one of the local parks that dotted the city, a crowd was gathering, assembling in a tight circle around something that had caught everyone’s attention.

Getting closer, I could see that someone was lying on the pavement, while in the distance I noticed the growing sound of police sirens. Bibi got there before I did, poking her head between a pair of shoulders to peer into the midst of the semicircle that had formed. Suddenly she jerked her head away and out of the ring of spectators, a horrified look on her face.

“What is it?” I asked her, seeing how disturbed she was.

She threw a hand limply over in the general direction of all the people and let it flop

159 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street against her side. She put a hand on her stomach and hunched a bit as though she’d just taken a punch to the gut.

“Look for yourself,” she said quietly.

It was Pippo, gunned down. His body was riddled with bullets—there was no question but that the young man was dead. Someone had made sure he’d have no possibility of survival.

An extended magazine of bullets had been emptied into him, judging from all the casings littering the ground and all the holes spangling his broken body.

Staring at him there, his eyes open wide in horror, his body flopped on the ground in the random pose of panic in which he landed, one leg folded under himself, a pool of blood expanding beneath him by the moment, I lost my sense of rage at Pippo. I saw just another fallen member of my group of street kids. I thought about the toll of hunger, scarcity of work and awful family units broken to pieces. I had a vague sense of reflection on all of the qualities we have innately within in us, on which we learn to find our modes of survival. When I say I just didn’t have it in me to be a person like Pippo, I truly meant it. I didn’t have those qualities. And so, standing there, I had a vague sense of wonder whether Pippo had it in him to be a person like me—deliberate, industrious, studious, concentrated, able to combat his negative impulses to some degree—knowing the insanity of his early youth, his lack of home life, etc.

Of course I could not then, nor could I now, answer that question—that “nature versus nurture” question about the essence of life and human behavior—but I do know that spending the first half of my life around so many broken down youths like Pippo has created in me the desire to help, whenever and however I can, those unfortunate individuals who are having a difficult time rising out of circumstances of extreme poverty and misfortune.

It was time for me to make a change. I could see that there was no way of moving

160 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street forward with the way things were going, so I started seeking other venues to move my life along towards greener pastures. I started thinking hard about my future and what routes were available to me that might allow me to acquire the best possible version of it. The first thing that came to my mind was calling my father, who was living in New York.

Chapter Twenty

I hadn’t spoken to my dad in over 10 years—he and I had lost touch with each other all those years ago when Mom took me away from him and brought me to my grandma’s house. As an entity, my father had dissolved over the past decade into a vague and distant memory. It took quite a bit of research, speaking to many people from my dad’s side of the family, speaking to relatives, to friends, to friends of relatives, until finally, after a great amount of legwork, I got the magic sequence of digits: my father’s phone number.

I must confess—this was a phone call that required a healthy dose of courage. This simple, singular phone call was in itself far more nerve-racking for me than the entire in-person impromptu visit I made to my grandmother. I sat running through and rehearsing the conversation in my head, holding the phone in one hand and the piece of paper in the other, trying to muster the courage, waiting for some kind of inner-cue that never came.

Finally, I got fed up with the whole process of rehearsing and re-rehearsing this in mind, I

161 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street went downtown and walked into a small “Cabina de llamadas,” which are local businesses located downtown that provide long distance calling services to other countries. I was given a small booth with a chair where you can sit and chat; I sat down and just picked up the phone and called him without thinking, going for it. I could only hope that the final outcome would result in him lending me some kind of a hand in life. I was down and I needed help.

“Hello?”

“Papa?”

“Who’s this?”

“It’s Eder, Dad,” I said. My voice was shaking but I tried to smooth it over and sound as normal as I could.

“Eder?” he gasped.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s me, Eder.”

There was a long silence on the line. I could hear him breathing, contemplating the many blank years of silence between this call and the last time we spoke—without the sound of his respiration there, in that moment I would not have known he was still there.

Finally he spoke up.

“How are you, son?” He didn’t sound particularly overcome with emotion, but he didn’t sound angry either.

“I’m good, I’m okay, dad. How about you?”

“I am ok, working as usual . . . and you?”

“I’m fine, dad, I’m fine,” I said. Then I thought better of it, not wanting to lie about my circumstances the way I did with Grandma Ines, as it would defeat my whole purpose in calling him. “Well,” I corrected, “I’m. . . I guess I’m sort of just so-so.”

162 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “So-so, huh?” he asked.

“Yeah, I mean,” I began, wanting to tell him some good things, so he wouldn’t think I’d been down on the skids all this time. I also found that, the more I spoke, the less nervous I became. “I was doing very well there for a while. I got into sales, dad. I was selling first for this company; selling cosmetics, like American type cosmetics door to door. Then a friend of mine and I, we put together our own company, doing the same thing, only we bought our own products ourselves, wholesale, and hired a staff of guys to sell retail for us door to door. You make so much more money when you do it that way, but I guess you could figure that out anyway. I mean, that’s pretty obvious. Anyway, I was doing great there for a while; I had a beautiful apartment downtown and everything.”

There was a bit of a stretched out silence. I could hear my old man thinking.

“Cosmetics, huh?”

I cleared my throat.

“Yeah, uh—yes. Cosmetics.”

“Uh huh.”

More silence.

“And I um, I got my high school diploma and started putting myself through college.

The company sort of went downhill after a while.” I kept talking, as I discovered that his silence seemed to signify something, which I couldn’t put my finger on just yet, but it was making me uncomfortable. “The partnership dissolved, we started sort of losing money and all,” I went on.

“So I went on a bunch of interviews and eventually I sort of fell into selling insurance—I was doing that for a while and—” “Insurance, huh?”

163 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Again, this odd, loaded silence from him.

“E-er, yes,” I said. “Selling insurance. Life insurance.”

“So that’s what they call it nowadays, hmmm?”

I had no clue what he meant.

“What they call…” I repeated. “What?”

“Mmh-hmm,” I cleared my throat.

“I’m sorry, dad, I’m a little confused. What they call…?”

“Oh come on now, Eder,” he snapped firmly. “I heard all about what you’ve been doing out there on the streets and how you make your money!”

I was stunned into total silence, not having any idea what in God’s name he was talking about. Yet, as we talked on, an icy hand gripped my stomach and was twisting it into a knot as the implications of what he was saying began to grow increasingly clear.

“Dad, I really don’t know what you mean,” I said, a sick feeling coming over me. “But please, go ahead and tell me what you have heard.”

“You’re telling me that everything you’ve said is true? About your work?”

“Of course it’s true, Dad,” I said. “I swear it.”

I went on some more, telling him about my venture with Sergio, about my interview with the insurance company, my lack of a license and the arrangement we’d worked out between us of delivering client-signed agreements to him for his signature after my closing the prospect.

Something in my voice, the apparent sincerity and level of detail of my explanations got through to him, finally.

His voice softened a bit and he spoke to me like he used to in the old days. What I didn't

164 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street realize was that my mother had been communicating with him over the years, since I had left her, and she had filled his head with details about me doing drugs and stealing, living in the streets. Her motivation, of course, was for her to look like the sober, righteous person in the situation, for me to be the drug abuser and not her. And it also created a scenario whereby I would have to be pressured to come back home and contribute financially.

Through my relentless inquiries about my father, Mom had construed that I would be reaching out to him and further painted this dark, fictional picture of my activities as a criminal out on the streets. She wanted him to send me home for my own well-being and protection and she wanted my dad to also send her money for my well being; for clothes, food, doctor, all the costly items involved in my imminent “rehabilitation”—whereas, in reality, her plan was to use this

money

to

maintain

her

illicit

addictions

and

questionable

lifestyle.

With this red herring somewhat—only somewhat—out of the way, I told my father the naked truth of my circumstances—“Dad, I don’t have a steady job right now. Things are tough.”

“I don’t understand it, Eder,” he said, with an unforgiving certainty grounding his voice with iron nails. “You had a place to live—a roof and shelter, a place to sleep. Why on earth did you ever leave there in the first place? I know your mother was not always an easy person to get along with, but how can the street be better?”

The feelings that drove the answer to that question were very clear and easy, but expressing it properly with clear words that my father could understand was a little bit more complex.

“Well,” I thought—and then it suddenly came to me. He left. He couldn’t handle it. He had to leave. The two of us, despite our two different vantage points, one of husband and the other of young son, were essentially of the same mind when it came to the prospect of long-term living with Cecilia. Neither of us was able to do it, I guess, from what I knew and had heard. The only

165 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street difference was: who was the victim, which in this case was me.

“There is so much that I could tell you, Dad,” I continued. “There is so much that I could say.

And there is so much that I could express to you when it came to the prospect of taking on the terrible risk of the street, especially when you are freeing yourself from the endless emotional trouble, all the endless insecurity and fear of living with Mom. This insecurity and fear is all on top of the straight, simple physical dangers that those fears were a part of. Dad, I have been beaten, stabbed, given a concussion, had my ribs broken, sent to the hospital, been covered in my own blood from her beatings—all this as an innocent child who did absolutely nothing at all.

There wasn’t one time I could think of where I even deserved to be spanked, let alone beaten to within an inch of my life.

“You know, one time she had a great thing going with a very generous, good, loving man who was ready to marry her. He took us in. He sent me to a great private school and treated Mom like gold. She didn’t need anything in life. She didn’t want for a single thing in the world. Well, guess what? He couldn’t live with her either—a big part of what caused him to be fed up was that he was so horrified at how she mistreated me for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Dad, this was a great guy who was, like, revolted that these vicious, totally criminal assaults on an innocent child were going on under his roof. He couldn’t live with it. I know it pained him to send me out from under his watchful eye—he protected me quite a bit from her while we lived there . . . those were some very nice days indeed—but he simply had to throw his hands up and say, “This is beyond my control and I have to let it go. I just can’t have this in my life.”

“I’m just another in the string of people who got to the point that they couldn’t take it any longer. If he couldn’t stand the pain of just watching what was being done to me, and cut himself loose from Cecilia because of it, then for sure I had the right to cut loose too, eventually—I was

166 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street the one who was actually bearing the brunt of all that crap. Tired of being scared of being killed, Dad. Finally tired of getting scars on my head, tired of being terrified of even opening my mouth because I could never predict what might set her off. Tired of seeing my own blood.

“Yeah,” I went on—it all kept spilling out of me in a great flood of bottled-up emotions that had never verbally been expressed to him. “It’s true: You’re right: I put myself in a lotta risk, skipping out onto the street like that. There’s no doubt about it. But there’s no doubt about the fact that I felt a huge weight being lifted off of me when I got the hell away from her. I may not have slept on the greatest beds in the world during those days, but I tell you I slept there as my own man. I was free. I breathed clean air that didn’t stick and weigh on me. No more heaviness.

Free from fear and worry. Poor, yes—but lighthearted. I could sleep without fear of waking up at three a.m. and having her glaring at me from the edge of the bed, drunk or stoned and deciding whether or not to beat me, just for the hell of it.” I stopped for a minute, trying to keep my bitterness in check.

“Some trade-off’s are not the best ones in the world, Dad. But this one, I have to say,” I paused for effect, “Was worth it.”

My father was very quiet on the other end. Stifled breathing. Then I heard him clear his throat softly.

“Okay, son,” he said gently, after a very long, loaded, sad silence. There, in the softness of those two words, was an acknowledgement of the tragedy that the two of us had witnessed with my mother, a recognition of the painful truth that knit our tiny, now-broken family unit together.

Perhaps he had originally never truly guessed at the truth of my experience with Cecilia after he exited my life with her. Perhaps he was told second-hand here or there, or maybe guessed on his own, but never stopped to ponder the reality of it—just thought of the fuzzy, unthought-of goings

167 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street on in some other household way off to the side while he kept himself occupied working and reinventing his own romantic life.

I could feel that my explanation had made the reality of my past situation, and all my suffering, real for him, even if for just that moment. Perhaps it reignited some old, buried traumas via the familiar ring of the stories of my mother during her most troubled times. And it shook him—again, even if for just that moment. It was there in the total neutrality, the lack of any masculinity or fatherly sternness, in that “Okay, son.”

We hung there, listening to each other breathe for a moment or two. That moment of silence represented the scales of truth, the scales of belief, swinging—in the mind of my father—away from Cecilia and towards me in my favor. And, with that, came the re-emergence of my father, as though a door were swinging open along with the tipping of those scales, bit by bit, back into my life.

That now established in front of the two of us, real-time kicked in again . . . the stoical, proud man that my father usually was reappeared on the other line. His masculine, commanding demeanor once more inhabited his voice as he began the process of dropping me a lifeline.

“I’m going to look into a few things, I’m going to talk to a few people.” he began, his voice deep and booming. “I know it’s been hard for you—there are some things you’ve done that I understand and there are some things that you’ve done that I definitely don’t approve of. You say that your mother was making up all of that stuff about drugs and all that other stuff is just lies. I truly hope that that’s true,” he said, ominously, now apparently not wanting to come off as though he’d been completely won over by me. He needed to maintain some visible doubt—this gave him a reason to maintain a firm hand, even if he no longer believed a single iota of my mother’s ridiculous stories.

168 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “None of it is true, Dad, I swear—” “We’ll get to that,” he interrupted, wanting to skip over the topic. “Let’s not worry about that now. I just want you to know that what I am not going to do is let you stay around out there on the streets running around with crazy people . . . and send you any money while you live like that. So forget it—that’s out of the question.

“What I’m thinking is getting you out of there altogether. Get you off of the streets for good and put you on a different road.” He cleared his throat and spoke firmly for emphasis. “It’s the only way I’m willing to do this. I’m thinking about bringing you out to stay with a very good woman who is my girlfriend at the present time. She lives in a nice house in a nice area.

Understand? If you’re willing to get out of there and off the streets then I’ll help you start living normal again. Otherwise, forget it.

“So it’s up to you. It’s the only way I’m going to help,” he insisted. “And even so, I can’t make you any promises. I have to have a conversation with her first and explain the situation, it is then up to you to prove to us that what you are saying is true. You see? But again, I’ll only help if you say goodbye to that crazy mess you’re in right now.”

I mused to myself as he went on exaggerating and making it sound as though I was murdering people for money out on the streets. But underneath it all, I could hear the caring and the genuine concern for my welfare—getting his girlfriend to accept me, an unknown seventeen-year-old, into her household, was no minor undertaking; it was quite a substantial modification to the routines of his regular life . . . especially since (as it turned out) I would be living with her while he was away in the USA working.

I accepted—and told him so, thanking him profoundly. It was a lifeline indeed. A new start.

Although I had to do this according to his rules—his way or the highway, essentially—I really

169 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street didn’t have all that to hold me there in Medellin. No money, virtually no prospects or happiness.

Also, registering deep within the fabric of my inner mind, I subconsciously registered the fact that I was reigniting my relationship with a close blood relative . . . who happened to reside in, and lived with a wonderful woman who also seasonally resided in, the land that never failed to inhabit my dreams at night, the subject of my never-ending long-distance love-affair—the United States of America.

Chapter Twenty One

My father had a girlfriend named Maria, whom he lived with in New York City. They had been together for a couple of years. She was Colombian also, born and raised in Armenia— not the country, but the city in central Colombia. She, like my father, had been previously married. Maria had two kids of her own from this previous relationship. She adhered to a cyclical routine whereby she would spend approximately a year or so in NYC, working, and then would move back to Colombia for roughly six months to be with her family. Then she would return to New York and begin the whole process again.

She had an extremely beautiful home back in Armenia, in which she lived with both of her children and her mother. Into this beautiful home and routine I went, according to the command of my father. The agreement was for me to move in with them and work while I was there, providing for my room and board and generally contributing to the household.

These were the only parameters under which he was willing to help me financially. There

170 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street was quite simply no other alternative. I had cast just enough doubt on my mother’s awful stories to allow my father to take me in to his girlfriend’s household, but the stories maintained just enough of a hold on his imagination that he would, under no circumstances, send me any significant amounts of cash to use as I pleased. Since I didn’t really have much of a choice, I decided to move to Armenia and live with Maria and her family.

On the day of my departure, prior to saying goodbye to Betto and leaving his household, having already completed my packing, I slipped out of the house and made my way into town to take care of one piece of unfinished business.

There was no question about the fact that Bibi and I were no longer much of an item. Truth be told, we really didn’t speak to each other all that much any longer—certainly not as much as those heady early days.

There was no getting around the fact that Bibi and I had drifted apart quite a bit.

It was during that period that I avoided her even more. It seemed to turn into a strange sort of game of chicken, both of us pretending not to want to see the other, to see who would crack first.

Perhaps I was hoping that she would miss me so much that she would eventually come running back to me, wanting to reignite our relationship.

But there seemed to be no end to the ‘game.’ There were even rumors going around that Bibi was seeing another guy from Los Alpes. In my heart of hearts, I knew—if she were seeing another man—I couldn’t entirely blame her. Our relationship seemed to have simply been allowed to run out of gas owing to external factors, whereas—in retrospect it seemed, at least— just a little effort and reassurance, and an extra dose of romance, could have put us right back on track.

But it just didn’t happen that way. There were just so many disappointments and pressures on

171 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street me at this time, so many fears of the future; so many challenges that popped up in my path day after day that required my attention, the whole relationship seemed to wink out like a dying star.

In the end, it just wasn’t meant to be.

And yet—there was no denying the impact of those early, intoxicating days of romance and pleasure. Like a perfume that rubs off on you, and is pleasantly detectable even the next morning, my time with Bibi was very sweet and impacting and wasn’t entirely out of my system . . . and I had a pretty good feeling that the same was probably true for her.

I quietly rang her up on her home number early that morning of my departure and asked her if I could see her for an early lunch. At first, stung by my recent avoidances of her, she claimed a busy schedule. Finally I told her what was going on—things had moved so quickly with my father’s plans for me at Maria’s house, that she had no clue that I was leaving—and she, after going quiet for a moment, agreed to meet with me.

We met at a small, family run cafeteria that we used to like going to for weekend brunches.

They made fantastic eggs and homemade pandequesos, along with a variety of Colombian specialties.

As we greeted each other, my stomach and heart swelled—she looked absolutely beautiful.

More beautiful than ever, it seemed to me. Bibi’s beauty was very natural: she needed very little makeup—her thick, long, beautiful dark hair, her wide, almost oriental eyes, her fine, slender nose, her full mouth, all of it captured me that morning just as it had the very first time I laid eyes on her.

“Well, honey,” she said, a slight touch of sadness in her voice but sounding very hopeful for the possibilities in my future. “I guess I knew all along that something had to be going on with you. You just never seemed the same after what happened with el Mono.”

172 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t communicating like I should have. I don’t blame you for being angry with me.”

“I just wish you would have trusted me more,” she said, sipping on a cup of steaming espresso and hot milk—classic Café con Leche. “The money thing didn’t bother me as much as you think it did. I’m not a rich girl either. What bothered me was that you almost cut me out completely when things got a little crazy.”

I sighed and shook my head.

“I know,” I said. “It’s pride. It can be a little self-destructive at times.”

“That’s like my Dad,” she said, dunking a donut into her coffee. “When he got laid off from his work, he would never come home. He would spite her over and over again, staying out late with his friends, drowning his sorrows. It seems to be a very “guy” thing to do. Anyhow,” she said, changing gears in her voice, taking a sip and patting the top of the table to start a new chapter in the conversation. “Tell me why and where you’re going—you said Armenia? Why Armenia?”

I ran down for her the details, explaining all that happened recently to trigger these changes in my life. Bibi sat there attentively, giving mute testimony to her quality as a very kind human being in that she bore no ill-will, listened with an entirely supportive and sympathetic demeanor, and not once betrayed the slightest hint of artificiality. Despite the distance that had come between us, she was still 100% genuine and entirely sincere. As I completed outlining the details of my current adventure, she hung there silently for a moment, then reached forward and patted one of my hands that were resting on the table besides a coffee cup.

“Well,” she said. “I guess all I can say is that I wish you a lot of luck, Eder.” She smiled, then patted my hand again and gave my forearm a little playful pinch. “Or shall I say, Ederman?”

173 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street I took her hand in mine and brought my other hand up to sandwich Bibi’s in both of mine.

“Thanks,” I said. I kissed the top of her knuckles and rubbed her hand gently and set it back on the table. “You’re so sweet.”

“Oh stop,” she said—same as ever. Bibi always blushed when complimented straight on. “I just am who I am.”

“Well, regardless of what happens,” I said. “I just want to say that I am glad that I got to have the time that I did with you.”

“Me too, Eder,” she said, a light, sweet sadness creeping into her voice—a touch of nostalgia for the puppy love that we shared over that grand time. “Me too.”

I thought about asking her, just for the record, whether or not it was true that she was seeing some guy in Los Alpes—but I decided not to spoil it. I no longer had any right to do so, anyway.

She belonged to the world again—not to me. If she had slipped away and into another man’s arms, a good portion of the blame laid right there with nobody else but me. Thus I left the question unanswered.

We shared some more small talk—what she was doing now with her life, what she was planning . . . what my plans were for the future, and my ultimate hopes for reaching the USA. As the conversation slackened and I noticed the time—it was getting late, and we both had to get moving—I knew in my heart that this was the last time I was ever going to see my first, real, authentic love. A small little bubble of anxiety bloomed in my abdomen.

“Well,” I said, looking at my watch.

“I know,” she said, her eyes flicking up at a wall clock. “It’s late. I have to get back home.”

I signaled to the waitress, who deposited the check beside my coffee cup.

“Of course, I’ll keep in touch,” I said to Bibi. “Once I get settled, I’ll give you a call . . . you

174 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street know. See how you’re doing and everything.”

Bibiana’s eyes widened with a polite enthusiasm that somehow lacked—for the first time during this entire conversation—sincerity. Somehow, we both already knew that we would never speak again, that these promises to keep in touch would be overtaken by the rhythms of life, with new experiences coming over the horizon and into our separate worlds, forcing all of the old people, places and things into the distant land of memory and nostalgia.

“Yes!” she said. “Please do. I want to hear how you’re doing. I want to hear about the next chapter in Ederman’s life.” She smiled, playfully referring to me as if I were a famous superhero.

“I know for sure that it will be interesting. You have so much energy. I know you will get where you want to go.”

I paid the check and finally the two of us were out in the front of the café.

“Well,” she said awkwardly. She shrugged and smiled with a little touch of sadness. “This is it.”

Rather than a romantic kiss, Bibi and I embraced in the tightest, warmest hug, one of the nicest embraces of my life.

“You take care of yourself, Bibi,” I said into the hair on the side of her head. She kissed me behind my ear, her head still over my shoulder while wrapped in the hug.

“You too,” she said. Finally we released each other. She clasped both of my hands in hers.

“You too,” she repeated. She nodded, gave my hands a squeeze, let go and blew me a kiss across the short distance.

Then she turned and walked away. And that was that—the girl whom I (truth be told) still loved a good bit had walked out of my life forever . . . I just had too much to do, too much to set in order in my life to chain her to me. And so, after having forced myself to let her go, bit by bit

175 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street over the past weeks, I finally—there, in front of that tiny café in Los Alpes—watched her detach from me forever.

Less than an hour later I was back at Betto’s, making another round of goodbyes to a very good friend; another close friend who I had no idea when—or if—I would ever see again.

On my way back to Betto’s, I had stopped at the bank to retrieve a small amount of travel money that Maria—my father’s girlfriend with whom I would be staying—had wired to me.

“Parce,” Betto said as I walked in the front door, tapping his watch like a concerned mother.

“My God, don’t you see the time? You barely got an hour to get on your bus! What the hell you gonna do? You’re never gonna make it now—” I walked up to Betto and put my hand on his shoulder and raised the palm of the other.

“Betto, Betto,—it’s okay, my friend,” I said, calming his frantic pronouncements. “I have cab fare from my stepmother. I’ll get there in plenty of time. Don’t worry.” I pulled out the small wad of money. “See. All is well.”

“Thank heaven. I was like, ‘This guy is never gonna make this bus! No chance in hell!’”

What a character Betto was—and what a good guy. Where I would have been without good ol Betto during those hectic, crazy days, I simply cannot say. Betto singlehandedly helped to stabilize what were some of my most unstable and worrisome times. Without his help, things could have looked a lot different—I mean very different.

My gratitude to Betto was enormous—unlike Bibi, whom I sensed I would never speak to again, and thus set aside a substantial amount of what I knew would be my final time with her, I knew there was no way I could leave Betto behind altogether. I had a real friend here and knew that we would maintain at least some degree of contact as time moved forward. Betto is what you

176 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street would call “good people,” and with all his help and concern he was not somebody I could cast aside without a second thought.

“Listen, Betto,” I said, looking for my bags. “I just want to thank you for all your help.”

“Looking for your bags?” he interrupted.

“Yeah.”

“They’re by the front door waiting for you. You walked right by them.”

That was pure Betto. I smiled, and grabbed a few loose ends from a small table near the bed where I slept. Finally the two of us were at the front door. It was time for me to get moving for the bus station.

“You can grab a cab by the stand around the corner. Have a safe trip.”

I nodded and clasped his palm in a firm, whack of a handshake.

“Thank you, man,” I said. I wrapped him lightly in the chest with my knuckles. I shook my head soulfully. “I just can’t say enough about you, man. I can’t even tell you how much—” “—Then don’t,” said, talking right over all of that. A naturally generous guy, Betto had no tolerance for thanks. He didn’t want to hear them—he wasn’t interested in thanks, racking up favors, savoring the gratitude he created in others like many terminal networkers and politicians.

Thus, the second you tried to lightly thank him for anything, he’d step all over your words and change the subject. “Just ring me up when you get there safe. I’ll spread the word here for you and let everybody know you’re cool out there.” Suddenly he remembered something. “By the way, did you go see your grandmother and your sister? Or did you just go see Bibi?”

Betto was referring to the fact that I was flirting with the idea of going to see Ines and my sister, Monica, to say goodbye for the immediate future. I thought it would be kind of nice to see them one more time before departing for the suburban reaches of Armenia.

177 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street But the reality of the situation was that the encounter would be too painful for me—too emotional, too many conflicting feelings. I was under a time constraint to get many things done before my departure and the pain of that particular visit would have thrown a wrench into everything. I decided to put my visit to Grandma Inez on the shelf for the time being.

“Just Bibi,” I said flatly. “Too much baggage attached to the other thing.” Now at the front door, I looked down at my suitcase. “Speaking of baggage . . .”

I hoisted my belongings up and turned to face Betto.

“Okay, my friend,” I said. I smiled at my buddy. “You take care. I’ll chat with you soon.”

“Be safe, Eder,” he said. “Good luck.”

With that, I was off to Armenia.

As I sat on that bus, I couldn’t help but feel anxiety and sadness leaving Medellin. I had never been anywhere else in my life, this was all I knew and, as terrible as my life had been there, it was still my beloved city and I didn’t know if I was ever coming back.

178 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter Twenty Two

Armenia was about 150 miles from Medellin; it is located in the center of Colombia, right between Medellin and Bogota. It is a relatively small city, compared to Medellin, with a population of only around 250,000. Living in Armenia was very different; it provided me with a different view of the world. Here, people were nicer, more down to earth, and everyone knew each other, it was a nice change of pace for me.

As I had turned 17 recently, and had finished high school, I had to confront an issue that all Colombian youths have to at this time in their lives; the military draft. I was required to serve in the military for 2 years. This was mandatory.

I was none too enthusiastic about this prospect. Colombia, as history will remember, was not the most peaceful place on the globe during that time. This was the age of the dominance of the drug cartels—specifically in this case of the Medellin cartel, headed by the notorious Pablo Escobar. My biggest fear was that I would be sent to fight the militia and end up being killed like

179 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street many other young Colombian men. I had already lost many friends who had been killed by local militias while living in the streets; this was a very common occurrence during this time in Colombia. The police and the militias were in a constant state of war and this war had many casualties that had no part on this.

Thankfully, Maria had many connections in Armenia, with the military specifically; her ex-husband was a general in the army. She made a couple of phone calls, then arranged for my father to send a gift to the general, which then would set up the inevitability of our imminent receipt of a small return favor; talk about being extremely lucky, and thankful. I went to the medical exam and—big surprise—I was determined to be generally unfit to serve in the army. I was learning that having friends in high places could be very helpful.

In this and many other ways, Maria was a very interesting woman. I could see the reasons for my father’s attraction to Maria revealed day by day. She was attractive, intelligent, spirited and very resilient. She’d had an incredibly difficult, very strict Catholic upbringing, growing up under many rules and parental pressures, in a home devoid of self-expression and affection. Her parents were excessively tough and, in turn, she was equally demanding of her own children.

Having someone like me, who enjoyed listening to bands like Metallica, Slayer and Led Zeppelin was far from ideal for her. As time went on, and I integrated the best I could into their household, I could see Maria struggling daily with the idea having me around, despite the fact that I was a genuinely good person who essentially got along with everybody and made no trouble. Just by nature of, for example, my musical tastes, she likely worried that I would be a bad influence for her own children—an exaggerated fear to be sure.

Living with my father’s girlfriend, therefore, became a bit more complicated than I had anticipated. She had many rules—she flat out expected me to cut my hair every two weeks, to

180 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street dress in a conservative, almost formal way. I was essentially forced to go to church on Sundays.

After the boundless—albeit tragic—freedoms of life out on the streets over all those years, it was without question a challenge to adjust to these new moral and behavioral constraints. I soon realized that I more than likely was not going to be able to stay at Maria’s house for too long.

We just had too many disagreements regarding too many things, things that were just a part of my

every

day

life.

Maria had a daughter named Claudia, who was about 14 at the time. Claudia quickly took a liking to me because I was more open-minded than her brother, Jorge, a little wilder, a little rougher around the edges, a little more worldly. To a young girl, I was simply far more fun to have as a big brother. According to her mother’s strictures, Claudia had to be supervised all the time and I was more than happy to go places with her. I used to take her to the movies, facilitated her spending additional time with her friends, which made Maria happy.

Claudia and I became fast friends quickly, good friends. Jorge, Claudia’s big brother, and I didn’t spend a lot of time with one another. We had very little in common—he was essentially what you would call your typical spoiled brat. This was no accident of fate—Maria treated him, as is common with many Colombian mothers and their oldest boys, with regal deference. When we were all at the dinner table or lounging around the television, there was never any doubt who was the king of that household: Jorge. He was a bit younger than me, just around 16 at the time.

Perhaps because of his being spoiled and pampered by his mother, perhaps because his ego couldn’t stand any attention being drawn from him over to me, or perhaps it was due to all of these circumstances combined, everything turned into a competition with him. Even with something as simple as his sister Claudia’s friendship; he quickly started feeling extremely

181 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street jealous of me and we clashed on many separate occasions. He grew bitter towards her and even became abusive towards Claudia from time to time—something that, once I picked up on it, would

never

allow

to

happen,

at

least

in

my

presence.

On one occasion, Claudia had asked Jorge to go to a party with her. Jorge didn't want to go, but he would be willing to attend with her if she would give him some money. Rather than go along with that, Claudia came to me and asked me if I would accompany her, which I instantly agreed to do.

This caused a tremendously negative reaction from Jorge and he went to hit his sister. I stepped in between them and he and I ended up fighting over the situation. After a brief outburst of violence we both caught hold of ourselves—me, out of respect for the household, and not wanting to hurt Jorge. Fighting was something I had no great taste for.

When Maria found out, she decided that I was literally physically abusing Jorge and immediately told me I would have to start looking for a new place to live. Despite the fact that she’d said this on several occasions upon any sort of dust-up whatsoever, this was a disturbing threat to have to digest repeatedly, coming as it did via this kind of day to day routine at Maria’s house. I always kept a firm grip on the fact that I was not really a part of the family, so I could watch myself and not be blindsided: anything I did carried much greater consequences, and I could be tossed out on the street with very little guilt on Maria’s part. Even though I was okay with the idea of moving, it was a precarious existence; just another byway on the long, winding road

towards

Hope

Street.

I didn’t like the breezes that were blowing around my staying with Maria, so I immediately started looking for another place to live. I had made some friends while I was in Armenia. After a relatively short period of asking around, I finally heard of a room for rent not

182 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street very far from Maria’s.

The renter was an elderly woman by the name of Isabel. She was an aging mother who lived in a reasonably sized house with her family, which included her young son who had seemed to have completely lost his mind from the use of hallucinogenic drugs.

This son’s name was Arsecio but everyone called him Checho—what a tale one could tell about Checho. The things Checho did were enough to fill up an entire bookcase worth of volumes. His was a greatly entertaining, yet at its heart, very sad, story.

Checho began his life as an exceptionally intelligent young boy who always excelled in everything he did—academic subjects in school, creative endeavors, even sports. His talents knew no bounds. Somewhere, however, Checho was introduced to the use of drugs, which he began taking without restraint and in incredible abundance. Checho would eat magic mushrooms and LSD in what were reputed to be monstrous quantities. Slowly but surely, and after a pileup of unfortunate “bad trips,” Checho fried his brain completely and seemed to go permanently over the

deep

end.

Checho, who was about my age, had already been in and out of several mental hospitals by the time that I was introduced to him. Checho didn’t really process ideas and information in the same way most of us do. Because of all the drugs that he had done, Checho would, at any moment and without any warning, get lost in fantasies—flashbacks and hallucinations which could completely take hold of him and send his mind far out into left field. Checho truly lived in an entirely different world than the rest of us.

The rest of the family, Isabel’s husband and daughter, lived there as well. I looked at the situation square on and I had no hesitation: I decided to rent a room in that house to maintain good relations with my dad and Maria, as my father had agreed to continue helping me

183 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street financially as long as I was supervised by Maria. I was going from pompous, snooty, arrogant Jorge, to wild Checho. Boy was I in for one fun ride!

Living with Checho was like a never-ending Nickelodeon cartoon—fun, wild and endlessly interesting. I took to him instantly. We quickly became good friends. His mother loved me to death because I was the only person who was a true friend to her poor son.

To me, I looked at it this way: who cares if he was truly crazy? Who cares if he’s truly been in and out of the psych ward? I just liked being around Checho for the guy that he was.

Checho was a good guy, a genuinely good guy, so he’d made a few bad choices in life and was a touch

crazy?

Aren’t

we

all,

to

some

degree?

The people who had known Checho as a boy and observed his decline, judged him hard.

They regarded him with the severest form of disapproval usually reserved by the bourgeoisie for drooling, urban alcoholic bums.

Isabel initially tried to blot out the entire experience of her son’s existence as a reject, a social castaway, by having him committed to an institution. While he was there she wouldn’t have to witness Checho’s interaction with others, and observe the pain of his being shunned by his former friends and relatives. Unfortunately, after each trip to the mental hospital he came back worse and worse. Rather than detoxify him and finding a regimen that might lead him back to mental health, they simply pumped him full of drugs, making him a complete zombie.

After I rented a room in their home, Checho was the closest thing I had to a real, true close friend in Armenia. He and I spent lots of time together, and, truly caring for his well-being, I urged his mother not to send him to the psychiatric hospital anymore.

This appeal worked—I guess she knew deep down that these visits weren’t doing Checho any good and she only needed the slightest, caring push to cease sending him there. She

184 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street committed to keeping her son around the love and care of the household and family and we started building a circle of tight friends around us. This had a good effect on Checho. We would spend time together, lots of time together, watching movies, throwing little get togethers with friends—generally hanging out with one another at Checho’s house and having a truly fun time.

It was, in retrospect, a very good time in my life. I was living peacefully, taking part time computer classes and suddenly making lots of new friends. My father was still sending money to Maria to take care of my basic necessities. The money just barely managed to cover expenses, to feed me and to buy my clothes while I was looking for a job in Armenia, but I didn't really have much luck in that department. It just goes to show that you don’t need to be a wealthy man to enjoy yourself. All you need are people around you who care about you, good friends and family.

Living with Checho was quite an experience, there was something unexpected happening all the time. On one occasion, Checho spent hours on the phone speaking in complete and total gibberish, which he claimed, upon our natural inquiry, was English. Finally he hung up the receiver at approximately 2 am and told his mom: “Mom, tomorrow I have a very important friend coming over from Hollywood; you need to decorate and clean the house. Please also make a birthday cake for my friend; he is coming to celebrate his birthday with us.”

Isabel obliged and got up at 5 am to clean, decorate and cook. She even went to the extent of purchasing wine and other items from the supermarket. We all sat around with rapt anticipation for this big blast of a birthday party.

When Checho left at around 7 am to go to the airport to pick up his guest, everything was perfect at the house. The food was ready. The wine was ready. The cake was ready. The floors and furniture were buffed to a high shine.

185 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Finally, Checho came back at 8pm from the airport, exceedingly upset and obviously disappointed. When we asked him what had happened, his reply was: “Fuck Michael Jackson, he told me he was going to spend his birthday in my house and left me waiting all day at the airport, you should’ve seen everyone I asked at the airport if Michael Jackson had arrived. They thought I was crazy. I am never speaking to him again!”

Another time, I woke up in the morning to what were several women knocking on the door.

They were from the neighborhood and they came to complain to Isabel.

“Isabel, Checho is in the window naked!”

Checho claimed that he could very easily read people's minds so, even though these women complained about seeing him naked, in their mind—he knew—they wanted to see him.

So he was just trying to please everyone and give them what they wanted.

On a different morning, Checho woke me up early, as I open my eyes and cleared away the cobwebs of sleep; I realized that I was staring at a man the color of a tangerine. Checho had colored his hair and eyebrows orange and his mouth was moving a thousand miles an hour, firing off unintelligible vowels and consonants at warp speed. I tried desperately to comprehend what he was saying, but I quickly realized it was all gibberish. Then he disappeared from the room completely, leaving me there, wondering if it were all part of some mad dream.

Later on, I received a phone call from Checho, informing me that he had moved to Germany and that the person I saw in the morning was nothing less than his twin brother, Bruce, who had just arrived from Germany. They were, Checho said on the line, doing a sort of exchange student program. All week long, the entire household would only encounter “Bruce,” not Checho. We all played along as “Bruce” would spit and burble his faux German at light speed, which was pure gibberish (like the lingo on the Michael Jackson telephone call). As

186 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street suddenly as he became Bruce, he went back to Checho—he dyed his hair back to normal, announcing to all of us that he had been in Germany for about a month and asked about his twin brother, Bruce, how we had interacted with him and what kind of things we’d done with him, and

so

on.

But my favorite memory of Checho was when we decided to get him a job in a cafeteria. He went to the cafeteria and he lasted all of one day on the job—he was fired during his first day of work. When we went back to speak to the man who hired him and ask him why he had fired Checho, he had this story to tell: “That guy is crazy!” he pleaded, his eyes wide with disbelief. “He stood in the cafeteria, in the middle of the line when everybody was asking him for something to drink and he just froze there, staring at people with a blank look in his face. Instead of serving them he just stood there frozen, looking like a statue, and he didn’t move until the shift was over, even after we fired

him!”

We went back and asked Checho about this incident. We told them what the man had

said

to

us;

his

story

was

very

different,

but

much

more

entertaining:

“You don't understand. I went there, alright. I went to the cafeteria perfectly willing and able to do this job. But when I stood there and looked at what I expected, based on everything you people had told me about the job, would be a line of human people, I quickly realized they weren't people, they were penguins. Penguins, Eder, penguins. I stood there for a minute and thought to myself—Wait a minute, penguins don't drink Coca-Cola. This is a trick. I shouldn't serve them.”

Over the next couple of months I had a pretty normal routine; go to class, come home, spend time with Checho and a couple of our friends. And I would report to Maria’s house at least

187 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street once a day too, so she could make sure I wasn’t doing anything illegal and was living in accordance with her rules, this way she could report back to my dad and he would, in turn, continue supporting me. Soon I realized that I needed to do something more dramatic to change my life and I realized that I did not really want to stay in Colombia, my dream was to come to the US.

Chapter Twenty Three

One thing I knew beyond all shadow of a doubt was that, despite the amount of fun I was having living with Checho and bearing witness to all of his antics, there was no future for me there. This went both for that household as well as in Armenia. In fact it applied to Colombia altogether. I always knew this whole arrangement eventually would wind up a mere stepping stone en route to bigger and better things, and so when things started deteriorating with Maria, I found myself once again lacking any sense of a real home base and realized I had to start looking for something else to do with myself. I needed to get on the road to self-improvement. I had moved to Armenia at seventeen years of age and spent nearly two years there. I would soon be a man—it was time for me to start hacking out a man’s life for myself and get to the place where I was going to be one.

My dream was to move to the United States and create a brighter future, a far better future than that which could ever be available to me in Colombia. Beyond the vastness of all the

188 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street career opportunities that existed for me in the United States, the fact was that I just didn't want to live in Colombia anymore. I had seen what life there could be like. The example presented by, not only my family and street friends, but the average lower class Colombian in general, made me want no part of what possibly waited for me as a citizen of my homeland. I wanted to move to the US and build a different life; I had no appetite to replicate the lifestyle and backbreaking life-trajectory of those whom I observed in the streets or, even worse, the type of life my mother had.

Owing to the friction of my situation with Maria, there was really only one person for me to start working on to initiate the process of my possibly moving to the US: my father. He was, after all, living in the United States, periodically but very regularly, with Maria. In short, he was the only person I knew who lived in my dream country and there was nobody else for me to speak to who had a connection to my desired destination.

Knowing this, I set down to it—I opened my first round of conversations with him on the subject. My first initiative began with me trying to help my father understand that my life in Colombia had no future. I opened up to him, basically laying the essence of my life all the way out on the line for him. There was no emotional con in this—I was determined to get out of not only Armenia, but Colombia and South America altogether, and I could not have been more sincere. The idea of remaining in those environs literally made me shudder—I had a vision of myself, my future, of seeing results of my daily toils—reasonable results and fair compensation for my labors, which I knew would hardly be available to me in South America. I felt America in my blood; I felt a destiny for myself, a shape and a certain tenor to my future, none of which was in harmony with the tone of Colombia.

189 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street “Dad, you know—it’s a curious thing,” I said, speaking as honestly and sincerely as I

could. “It’s an impulse within me that I often think about. I mean, I’ve watched these feelings about my place in life grow within me over the years and sort of felt that they were a little unusual for a kid my age. It was almost like I could step outside of myself and observe myself the way I would look at and think about another person.

“Maybe some of it comes from you,” I said. “This urge within me to want to go up to the States to carve out my future. It may be possible that there is some influence there. But I think it’s probably a lot bigger than that. I have an impulse within me that looks for a way out of unpleasant things. If I’m in the middle of something lousy, first thing I do is look for a path out of there. Once I find that path, then I know what I have to do: I have to get my feet on that path and put one foot in front of the other. Then I’ll get someplace better.

“I mean, life is a very precious thing,” I said, the words coming out almost on autopilot. “It’s a journey, isn’t it? It’s incredible to me the way some people waste it without even caring about it. It’s like you’re on a highway in a car and you have a good amount of gas. You can drive around in circles in the same spot until you run out of gas and conk out—or, you can pay no attention whatsoever to where you’re going and risk going to an even worse spot from where you started . . . or you can pull out a map and plan your journey.

“If you see a place on that map that is better from any other place you can go on that highway,” I said, “Why on earth wouldn’t you at least try and go there? Why on earth would you want to stay where you are going around in circles, or just throw your chips up in the air not caring and hope fate lands you in a good spot?

“Please understand,” I continued, “That this is not the reckless daydream of some star struck kid looking to go party and be some kind of American butterfly. I know that the road will not be

190 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street easy, I know that a lot of people who do go up there wind up miserable and disappointed, I know that sometimes the opportunities can be tough to come by and the obstacles can be gigantic.”

“I wonder about that,” my father jumped in. “I wonder if you truly understand how easy it is to wind up completely stranded with nothing. A stranger in a strange land where nobody cares about you. If you truly understand the bigotry of life up here for people like us, how it is for the negro people, for Chinese people, for people who are not white and are not born in this country.”

My father was not speaking from lack of experience. He knew first hand. He had been to America: I hadn’t. He had experienced the difficulties of its recessions, its inflations, the fluctuations of its job markets, the tricky byways of its economy’s seasons. I hadn’t. He had encountered, as a thickly accented Colombian trying to make his way in a primarily non-Latino country, prejudices, aversions, difficulties presented by those who pull the strings of power and prefer their “own kind.” He had experienced the kind of jobs available to immigrants from South America—more backbreaking labor, more grinding poverty and more ghetto living. For many of us, immigrants from third world countries, the USA could be a place just like Colombia, with naught but an extra dose of loneliness owing to the absence of one’s family.

This mattered to me not a bit.

“I understand all of that, Dad,” I said. “But at least out there there’s a chance to rise up out of that kind of backbreaking labor. There is just something about life down here in Colombia— even though I am a Colombian through and through, and I am proud of my heritage and my people, when it comes to me—me, Eder Holguin—when it comes to me here now, to my prospects, when it comes to where I want to try to make my way in the world, where I see the kind of possibilities that represent the kind of rewards that I find really worthwhile, I see it in America. Wherever I go, I am going to work hard. That goes without saying.

191 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “If I work hard down here in Colombia, maybe I’ll get to be a supervisor or a manager in a factory or something. Maybe I’ll make it to the middle class—maybe if things really go well I can make it up to the upper middle class in Colombia . . . which to me really isn’t saying all that much. At least the way things are going now, with all the militias, with all the turmoil, with all the dangers lurking out there.

“But in America, I just know there is a place for me. I tell you here and now—I’ve got to get there. Rock bottom is the same wherever you go. The danger is the same everywhere. America isn’t special in terms of poverty.

“But—I know that the sky is the limit in America. It is very special in America when it comes to opportunity. I have this vision; I see it crystal clear—this vision moving through the years along a particular path in America.

“And aside from all of that, I just feel a pull coming from there. A destiny. I just don’t know how else to explain it. Just being there in the world of all my favorite films, all the great books, all the great music and culture that really gets to me deep down inside. It speaks my language, Pop. I know it sounds strange since I’m just learning English, but that’s not the language I mean.

I don’t know how else to say it to you, Dad—I just feel like it is going to be home. I know it. I know so many people who go there to make money over the season—take advantage of the American economy—and then they come back home to Colombia, wherever they’re from.

“I can tell you for sure—that won’t be me. I can make you a promise, right here. . . Right here, right now. You won’t see me flip flop. America is in my bone marrow. You won’t see me apologizing in two years for wasting your time and begging for a plane fare back to Colombia.

Not going to happen, Pop. I swear to you.” I paused and capped off my statement.

“Everything in my life,” I declared, “has been leading up to this. I just have to do it. It’s my

192 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street destiny.”

My father hung there a moment. Finally he spoke up.

“Yes, but Eder, if you fail, at least down there you have people you can turn to. Like Maria and me.”

I chuckled just a little bit. Obviously, he didn’t believe that I had survived living in the streets of Medellin for almost 2 years.

“I don’t see what’s so funny about what I said, son.” His voice firmed up. “This is serious business. This is life itself, you know?”

“Dad?” “Yes, son?”

“You’re out there in the USA right now. You’ll be there for me.”

He couldn’t bat that one away easily.

I never lost heart throughout the conversation—somewhere running underneath all of this was a sense that I could bring him around to my point of view if I proved to him that I was serious, truly understood the repercussions of my leaving, and was prepared to logistically work this through from start to finish and not allow it to turn into a big disaster. In other words, he needed to see that I had thought this through as a man.

For my father, this was serious business indeed. Ultimately, in his heart of hearts, New York was merely a place that allowed him to escape from all the pain he had endured in Colombia; his failed marriage, his lost child, the periodic lunacy of my mother. It was a place where he could start anew with a clean slate and not be surrounded by his alcoholic friends. It was not for him, by any means, a land of plenty or grand success—but he had made a life for himself. And that life was working. Which was not too far away from what I was trying to

193 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street accomplish, a new beginning away from all the pain and suffering I was to leave behind.

The plan that my father ultimately came up with was something I am firmly convinced was—at least partly—based on his own past ambitions and on the lies that my mother told him about me. Yes, my father soon relented and agreed to have me come to the US. His idea, he announced, was one that would make me for life and set my bright future in stone: I would come to the United States and join the Marines!

He felt certain that the military was the place for me. Obviously my dreams couldn’t have been farther away from his. Indeed, I had plenty of professional ideas about laying my foundation in sales and marketing—but moreover and most importantly, my youthful and exuberant dreams of playing guitar, being in a band and exploring all my creativity in other ways were just as important and exciting. When I got to the US, I wanted to leave no stone unturned. I wanted to do it all. I had my own ideas. My mouth said, “Yes,” to my father, but my heart said, “No Way!”

194 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter Twenty Four

It took some time and a lot of back and forth, but eventually, by the time I had resided in Armenia for two full years, I—past eighteen years of age now—managed to convince my dad that moving to the US could provide me with a better future. Our conversations were always about how hard life in the US was for immigrants and how he thought I would not be able to make it living here. He obviously didn’t understand or didn’t really believe my stories of how I had been living in the streets for the last couple of years. “How can it be worse than that?”

As it stood, I couldn’t rely on the legal initiatives available to my dad; my father at this point was only a US resident and not yet a citizen. So, the process for him to become a citizen, and then file a petition for me to move to the United States, would probably have taken anywhere from 4 to 5 years. This was an excruciatingly long time—an unbearable wait—and this was provided everything worked out correctly. I quite simply wasn't willing to wait that long.

The best option I could come up with was to submit to my father the following

195 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street proposition: ask him to send me an invitation letter wherein he would suggest that I come to New York to visit him for a couple of months. I figured once I was there in the States, I could figure out a way to apply for adjustment of status. I decided that the thing to do was simply to get myself to my destination. Once I was there, I thought, everything would work itself out. It had to.

I was determined to find a way.

Sound a touch naïve? Of course it does—obviously this was not the case and this was not how it worked, not even close. But, young innocent lad that I was at the time, I duly had my father write the letter, which then arrived by post. I called the Embassy in Bogota and made my appointment; I waited a couple of weeks until my appointment date, I then took that letter, dressed up in my very best suit, and took a bus from Armenia to Bogota, making wishes for good luck along the whole trip. I was wound up with butterflies and hoped for the best.

I arrived in Bogota after that long 7-hour trip, according to my schedule, albeit without an awful lot of money. I nonetheless had to quickly find a place to stay—all I could find with my limited budget was some shady, rundown hotel in the lousy part of downtown. I spent the night staring at the ceiling in the smelly room, tracing the path of spiders and waterbugs crawling across the walls and ceiling, hearing the voices of lost souls in rooms on all sides of me drifting in and out in bitter arguments over money, drugs, alcohol, paid sex, etc. I tried to get away for a breath of fresh air and a walk—and promptly found myself being importuned by the local fufurufas (prostitutes), some of mysterious gender and preference (if they had any), as they walked up and down the street waiting for their Johns, or periodically turning in their takes to their

pimps.

Running on very few hours of fitful sleep, I got up with the sunrise, showered, shaved,

196 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street steamed my suit in the hot bathroom to remove any wrinkles and put myself together as sharplooking as possible. I left the hotel bright and early that morning, and, armed with my letter, made my way to the US Embassy, determined to sell them on the idea of them providing me with a visa.

Arriving on time for my appointment, I walked through the atrium, past all the guards and into the welcome area. After showing my identification to the receptionist, and informing her of the purpose of my visit which I’d prearranged via telephone with their administration, she— after a quick confirmation on the extension phone—rose to walk me back through a few hallways to ultimately point me to a huge line of people waiting to be interviewed.

There were probably 100 people in line with lots of paperwork, bank statements, financial records, etc… Suddenly, I felt completely unprepared.

After standing in line for more than 2 hours, and hearing story after story of how and why they deny you a visa, as well as everyone’s reason of why they wanted to travel to the US, I finally got to the window. In the window I was greeted by one of the councilors, a middle-aged man dressed in a nice suit and tie, who projected a kindly, professorial front. He leaned forward to the window and greeted me.

“Pleased to meet you, Mister Holguin, pleased to meet you,” he said in perfect Spanish— despite his Anglo appearance—in a tone that was both warm, yet at the same time strangely detached from the whole affair. It seemed, as time went on, that he had been through these kinds of proceedings so many times that he could quickly reduce the legal aspects down to their most basic elements, easily identifying their essence and coming to the embassy’s preferred decision with such little effort, that he moved on autopilot. Listening and performing his duties to the fullest, while at the same time, somewhere far off in the deepest recesses of his mind, working on

197 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street more pressing affairs, which required the greater share of his brainpower. He spoke again, “Very good, very good,” he said absently, looking down and glancing through several papers in front of him. He seemed to find a file that he was looking for, paused, and studied it for a moment, squinting his eyes. His momentary silence gave one the feeling that he was reading your whole life story, with all of its deepest, darkest secrets.

Finally, he plopped a palm down on top of the form, whatever it was, and jerked his chin up into the air to glance at me. A delayed smile lit up his features, seeming to arise from some private joke, which he was sharing with nobody but himself.

“My name is Harold Douglas,” he said cheerfully. “I will be conducting your interview today and will be happy to answer any questions you may have.” He paused and hung there for a minute, a puffy smile dangling there on his face as though he was anticipating some grand reaction from me. I quite frankly had no clue how to react to what he’d just previously said, which struck me as slightly kitschy.

“That’s, that’s great,” I declared. “Have you been doing this for a long time?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.

“In a way, yes,” he answered carefully. “I mean, I’ve been involved in the administration of politics and cultural affairs for the better part of my professional life,” he said. “If that’s what you mean. . . If that answers your question, that is.”

“Yes, that’s,” I said, a little off-put. “That’s pretty much it.”

“So tell me, Mr. Holguin,” he said. “What’s your reason for requesting a visa to travel to the Unites States?”

I cleared my throat. “Well Mister Douglas,” I began. “My eh, my father lives and works in New York, and uh, it’s, well. . .” I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s pretty simple: I just haven’t

198 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street seen him in a very long time and I, you know, we really would love to see each other.”

“A visit, in other words,” he said, his eyes drifting down onto the papers on his desk. His eyes drifted up to the screen of an early model computer, a primitive behemoth of those older days, which took up a huge portion of his desk. He gazed at the screen concernedly, his fingers tapping together at light speed.

“Yes,” I said. “A visit.”

Suddenly Douglas’s fingers stopped tapping. His eyes darted over to mine and locked onto me. He seemed to be trying to peer through me, searching out secrets within me with laser eyes bearing into the private side of my mind, to locate my deepest intentions for my travel to the states.

“You’re a very young man.”

“Yessir,” I said. “Be eighteen soon.”

Suddenly Douglas looked at me carefully. He pointed at me.

“That’s very young indeed. Which leads me to my next point—what’s to say that you won’t wind up liking it so much over there that you might not just stay in the US with your father? Can you guarantee that won’t happen?”

My stomach flooded with adrenaline: the man had just seemed to virtually read my plans out of the inner sanctum of my mind’s eye without any warning whatsoever.

“I certainly can guarantee that,” I said, my heart up in my teeth. “My future here in Colombia is assured. I’ve been finishing school and working and have lots of plans. I have no need to leave this country for a place where I really don’t know anybody, or even speak the language. My whole world is right here in Colombia—always has been, always will be.”

199 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “Yes, your application for a visa looks very difficult, Mister Holguin. Very gloomy indeed. We’ve taken a look at your background here and there doesn’t actually seem to be quite as much holding you here as you allege. Your work hasn’t been quite so steady here. You’re not in school now. And you’ve been released from your military requirement. So there’s nothing telling us that you might not just decide that the USA, up with your father, is the place for you.”

“It won’t, I know it,” I pronounced solemnly, lying through my teeth. “I’m a total Colombian, through and through.”

Douglas looked at me sadly.

“I’d like to believe you, Mister Holguin,” he strummed, his voice oozing like soothing honey. “Really I would. You look like a one hundred percent decent young fellow. But I’m afraid there are certain aspects to your case that just do not permit me to approve this visa permit, if you’d like, you can come back in 6 months and apply again.”

I was crushed—suddenly he unloaded his decision on me like a pile of bricks, with no warning and with a merciless air of finality.

“Just … like that? Any particular reason?”

He leaned towards the window and looked at me directly in the eye.

“I wish there was something that I could do here for you, son. I mean it when I tell you that I do. Believe me, you’re not the only one. This kind of thing happens all the time. When there’s no preexisting pattern of visitation from the beginning, when the traveler has no financial ties or consistent, decades long bond with family in his starting place, it makes it very difficult for the state department to believe that there isn’t any risk of the person staying in the states beyond the permitted time, to try and make a home there. It would help if we were all mind readers,” he said softly. “Then we could read the true intentions of everyone who applied for this

200 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street kind of thing. But we have to be careful and guard against all forms of illegal entry. You understand I wouldn’t be doing my job if I wasn’t careful that way.”

“Sure,” I said. “I just don’t understand why I can’t do something as simple as going to see my dad,” I declared innocently.

“He can always come see you, son,” he said solemnly, “He can always come see you.”

There was no point in further conversation. The more we went back and forth, the more I saw that the man’s hands were—he claimed—tied. The interview, I soon discovered, was over.

Back to the drawing board.

I went to the bus station and boarded the bus back to Armenia, it took all my energy and mental focus not to breakdown and cry for the next seven hours. It was one of the longest bus rides of my life. I was so depressed; I think I could have just lain in bed for an entire month.

Some creative thinking was in order—one thing I knew was that following the route I previously imagined would get me to the states—that of following the formal process of applying for a visitation visa via the consulate of the USA—was not likely to bear me any fruit. As far as official government procedure was concerned, I was welcome to apply for another visa after a period of six to eight months had elapsed, with a very strong likelihood of it being denied as it already had been. After all, what would have changed in my situation that would cause them to change

their

minds?

So I was forced to begin thinking “outside the box” as they say. Initially, when the thought of making the USA my next destination entered my head, my first idea was to think of those within my social periphery who resided in the States—and try to arrange permission to visit.

201 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Now that the formalities to arrange that had failed, I began to expand the breadth of my strategy. I’d exhausted the grand total of the one person (my father) I could legally arrange to visit in the States, so now my thoughts shifted towards those who might be leaving my home environs of Colombia for destinations near the States. I thought that if I could just get close to them, I could somehow find my way across the border.

The answer, it turned out, came to me in the form of a letter that was sitting in the mail waiting for me at Maria’s house when I returned from Bogota. Although, still technically living with Checho’s family, all mail was still received in my name at Maria’s address. Checho’s residence always had the temporary feel of a way station rather than a permanent residence, so I never bothered to formally go about changing my mailing address. As the two locations were nearby one another, within walking distance as a matter of fact, this represented no inconvenience.

I had kept in written correspondence with a few friends of mine back in Medellin. One, a classmate of mine from the Universidad days—named Rafael Lopez—was a gifted bass player, chess whiz and all around good guy. Rafael was one of those classmates I clicked with instantaneously. He had a long, rectangular head with deep acne scars and ears which stuck out on either side like gigantic, ever vigilant satellite dishes; adding to the unusual image he presented, Rafael was already halfway bald before his eighteenth birthday.

Rafael was nonetheless immensely popular and was rarely without a girlfriend. This was undoubtedly because—aside from the fact that he was in a great band, which played bars and clubs about town regularly—of the charismatic personality he possessed, which was light, free of egotism, and armed with a wicked sense of humor. This amusing side to Rafael jibed perfectly with my own sensibility—and he also had one of those infectious laughs that could put you on

202 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street the floor in total hysterics. Rafael was, quite simply, a blast to be around.

Since the two of us had so many mutual interests, and because he and the band he played with enjoyed it greatly when I would sit in with them (on electric guitar) from time to time, he was one of the friends whom I kept in correspondence with after I left Medellin. I was, simply by nature of my love for music, and appreciation for their skills and playing style, keen to keep up on the progress of his band. Rafael’s group was beginning to make a name for themselves, not only in Colombia and South America in general, but in Central America as well.

His letter, which I read eagerly at Maria’s kitchen table, caught me up on the going’s-on with some of the old crowd in Medellin; Bibi (met a new guy who he thought was all wrong for her), Stefan (working in an auto assembly plant), etc. Coming to the subject of his band, he mentioned that he was going to be performing at a nice-sized music festival up in Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico’s capital, an annual event that drew large crowds where some of the bigger acts performed as well.

After performing at the capital festival, they were going to embark upon a two-week swing through some of the mid-size clubs and bars that dotted Mexico’s urban centers. They had logistically arranged the gigging schedule in a north-to-south orientation, whereby each gig brought them closer to home, until finally, upon completion of the final gig, it was a short flight back home to Colombia.

203 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter Twenty Five

This set me to thinking— Mexico! You could take a bus from the capital and cross over the border into the USA! Mexico! What could be more ideal? If I could not finagle my way over the border into the United States from there, I might as well give up all hope.

I put down the serendipitous letter, went into a private bedroom with a telephone and raised Rafael. After an exchange of pleasantries, and catching him up on my recent efforts aiming at getting into the United States, I told him of the idea that struck me after reading his letter. I asked him about the possibility of my “joining” the band in one form or another and going on the road with them to Mexico—not a real position within the band, but one that appeared to be so; musician, roadie, sound tech, anything. This would give me a legitimate reason to exit Colombia and enter Mexico. From there I could find my way into the States.

“Hey hermano,” he said (he always called me brother), without any hesitation. “That’s totally alright with me. Only problem is we have a manager now and he takes care of all that. All

204 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street the expenses, travel tickets, getting visas, all that stuff, you know? I couldn’t put you down to be in the band on my own without Señor Lopez—that’s the manager—kicking my butt for acting without his approval.”

“Of course you know,” I replied, “That I wouldn’t expect anyone to pay my expenses, meals, travel tickets, visa fees, everything. I also want it understood that I plan on compensating whoever goes through the effort of making this happen for me.” I paused and cleared my throat.

“You know what I mean? I’d be very grateful and I will definitely express my gratitude, if you get my drift?”

“Hey,” he laughed, completely on my side in the matter. “I get your drift, I’m with ya, I’m with ya. Believe me, if it were me, I wouldn’t ask or accept a thing from ya. I’ll always appreciate the way you helped me pass my finals last year,” he said, referring to a period where I showed him a method of studying that helped him pass a class that he was in serious danger of failing. “But I will say, in the case of Mister Lopez, that this may just be necessary, a little palmgrease here and there, entendes?”

“Of course, man,” I said.

I could hear, during a period of silence, the wheels turning in Rafael’s mind. Finally he spoke up: “I’ll speak to Lopez, and also let the band know what’s going on here. I’m going to try to get you in so that you can travel as our supposed rhythm guitar player. When you get a message from Maria that I called and said, “The band is ready to go,” that means it’s okay for you to go ahead and call Lopez, that he’s okay with the idea, that I spoke with him and everything is cool.

If you get a message, uh, that I called saying, “Bibi isn’t feeling too well,” that means Lopez is no good on the idea and I couldn’t sell him on it and that we’ll have to think up something else.

205 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Just call me if you get that message. You sure you just don’t want me to call you either way over at Checho’s?”

“I would, but half the time when Checho takes the call I never get the message. He either scares the callers off, or writes the wrong thing down and whatnot.”

“I understand,” he said. “Okay, Ederman. Remember what I said?”

“Yes,” I replied, cracking up at the cloak and dagger feel of it all. ‘The Band is ready to go,’ means to call Lopez at the number you just gave me. ‘Bibi isn’t feeling well,’ means to get in touch with you because Lopez isn’t too hot on the plan.”

“Bien,” he replied. “Okay, lemme go now, I’d better get on this right away. We’re going to be flying out of here in just about a month. We hafta get moving on this.”

“Hey man,” I said warmly. “Thanks a lot—I really appreciate this.” I meant it.

“No problem,” he said. “Okay brother. Keep your ears open for the band or for Bibi.”

In the forthcoming period of time, I had my ears opened wide for any telephone messages that had been left for me in Maria’s home and constantly made myself available to the members of that household so that any messages could be passed without delay. I obsessed over receiving that call for the next week or so, asking several times a day and coming in and out of Maria’s house, always pretending I needed something or making up a random reason to visit.

It wasn’t long before I found out whether or not it was the band, or sickly Bibi.

As it happened, the call from Rafael took a couple more days to come than I had expected. By the second week, I was getting antsy, as I knew from what my friend had told me that they would be going on the road in the very near future. All this had to be planned and wrapped up quickly if it was to work with any sense of plan and believability.

In the meantime, partly to stay well-prepared and partly to keep myself occupied during

206 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street this period of anticipation, I started getting my belongings in order, so I’d be ready to travel when the time came. I also contacted my father in New York, to let him know what these new plans were and how—and when—they would unfold if they were successful.

My father, an honest man with no special taste for deception and cheating, wasn’t the biggest fan of this plan. I myself, truth by told, was not the biggest fan of this plan either. But it was all I had.

Believe me, I had no special innate desire to fling myself against the wind and hope against hope that the spinning wheel of fortune would click into a perfect spot and provide me with a fate that protected me from danger along the entire route through Nogales... And I certainly had no desire to come to America illegally—and thus as an illegal scrambling across the border on my belly in the quiet dead of night.

I never pictured my arrival in the USA taking place with fireworks and a welcoming ticker tape parade down Broadway. I never had any fool’s thoughts that it would be quick, easy, or super-simple to arrange.

But I certainly would have chosen a cleaner and more above-board method of finally getting here, were there other options available to me.

But there simply weren’t any other routes open to me—and there was nothing I could do about it. As much as I understood—sympathized even—with my father’s distaste for the air of lies and illegality that were starting to cloud over the mechanics of this great and epic journey of mine, there was nothing I could do about the fact that this was all I had.

I wasn’t about to let go of this chance. I had set these wheels in motion and they were rolling me towards the most important move I knew I would be making over the course of my entire youthful life. To me, the ends more than justified the means.

207 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street I’m not the kind of individual who tends to quit anything I start—and despite the unpleasant factors starting to flavor this venture; I have to say the excitement was palpable. I was just in the range of nineteen years of age now and the flood of youthful vigor had me on fire with the energy of anticipation. There were times over the coming days when I had to pinch myself with joy and self-awareness. Like the anxiety ridden day-long—perhaps weeklong—preparations a young man might have for one of the most looked-forward to dates of his life, envisioning himself soon to be wrapping his arms around the girl he’d been aiming for, so did I have increasing pangs of excitement, of a wonderful restless, nervous acknowledgement that I was doing it. . . I was on the direct road to finally get to America, soon! If all went well, I would be in there in a very short while.

This genuine joy and enthusiasm for the endgame made it all worthwhile. I embarked on this venture—as mentioned—dismayed at the modicum of lies and the dipping of my toes into the world of border criminals, into the world of illegal border crossings, but I was prepared to do it all nonetheless.

The truth is that there was virtually nothing that could make the venture not worth it as far as I was concerned. I was ready to face any consequence, pay any fine, receive any reprimand, face any repercussion, to achieve my goal. Such was my sense of mission and destiny.

To the band and the embassy folk, a musician touring Mexico; to my father, a soon-to-be marine; to myself, quite simply, a soon-to-be American, eager to get on with things: these are the varied faces I wore over those wild crazy days of nervous travel and great change.

I don’t advocate breaking the law of any country. I recommend following the laws and policies of whatever land you might find yourself within. Sooner or later, however, each man and woman will find him or her self amidst a moment where the forces of his life reach a point of

208 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street critical mass, where something simply has to give . . . and to those souls I can only say: Reach for your dreams. Don’t allow the droll repetition and often suppressive tactics of the world discourage you from the wildest mission you can think of for yourself. And if, in order to achieve something very positive, very constructive and very acceptable to all around you, you find yourself having to—just that once—stretch the rules ever so slightly . . . and if you in your deepest heart of hearts can do nothing else but that very positive and constructive thing and you must stretch those rules just that once. . . Then stretch those rules if you absolutely must. But make it right afterwards. Set your honesty in order before the world and make it your mission to always make it worthwhile in the end, for all time thereafter.

These were the feelings and sense of promise I carried with me on my journey to the USA.

But my father wasn’t living in the world of my inspiration. He was especially unnerved by the concept of my being deposited in Mexico with few cemented plans and no prearranged assistance in getting across the border. I tried to reassure him by telling him that I did indeed have a plan to get over the border, that some of my friends in the rock band had a relative who lived in Nogales, next to the border and that they would assist me in my enterprise of crossing over into the US—none of which was true.

He gave in—he really had no choice in the matter since there was no way, if the band agreed to take me along with them to Mexico, I was going to back out of the whole idea. I was going to give it a shot, my best shot. If I failed to make it to the United States, it wouldn’t be for lack of trying.

My father once again repeated what turned into a mantra as I made my way along the byways that took me from South, to Central, and then finally into North America: “Once you get

209 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street here, it’s either the Marines, or you’re on your own.”

That, as we already know, was fine with me. He could think whatever he wanted to think.

The call from Rafael finally came on the morning of the third day after my first conversation with him. Coincidentally, I was at Maria’s when the call came in so there was no real need for him to leave any coded message for me, but he spoke to me in code anyhow. .

“Hello?” I asked, my heart pounding. “What’s up Rafael?”

“Hey brother, how is everything?” he asked. “Good, I hope.”

“Yes, yes,” I replied hastily. “I’m fine, just fine. What’s up?”

“Ah! Yes, that’s right,” he blurted, as though he’d just been reminded of something he’d

forgotten to mention—trying to toy with me and my obvious sense of anticipation. “Yes, yes— Ederman, guess what? The band is ready to go and you, my friend, are coming with us. Call Lopez today. He needs some of your personal info to write on the itinerary and applications.”

My heart leapt into my throat with a sense of gleeful excitement. I am going! I thought nervously. It’s happening!

“That’s fantastic,” I said, my voice tight with emotion. “What did he say?”

“Well it took some time, working on Lopez,” Rafael replied. “It’s not even like the guy cares very much. He just didn’t want to be bothered with the hassle of changing the paperwork and the travel itinerary—you know, all the official stuff he has to prepare and have ready for the federales.”

“But he’s okay with it now?”

“Uh, yeah, he’s okay with it now,” he replied, a little hesitantly. “He’s um, he was wanting a little bit of dinero, if you know what I mean. For his troubles. He don’t know you from Adam and don’t give a flying booty where you go or where you live. So he needed a little, eh,

210 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street incentive.”

I chewed my lip for a moment and thought. Then I named an amount of money.

“Don’t even worry about that,” he said. “I took care of him for now. We need to go over everything you have once you get back here in Medellin, to make sure you have enough to get up to New York after you cross the border.”

“Oh my God, Rafael,” I said. “You know I’m going to pay you back. That’s no big deal.

How much did you give him?”

Rafael laughed slyly. “Do me a favor and don’t worry about that right now,” he said.

“When you’re big and famous in a couple of years in New York, you can pay me back then. The important thing right now is for you to wrap up out there in Armenia and get your ass over here in Medellin. Come over out to my house in a day or two. We need to create some documents for you for the band, we need to take a picture of you to put it on the documents and get you all packed in with us. We’re leaving in two weeks.”

“Wow, Rafi, this is awesome dude,” I exclaimed. “We’re really going through with this. I can’t thank you enough, man. Really I can’t.”

“Hey, man, if it weren’t for you I wouldn’t have passed my finals that time. I’d still be in school. I’m glad to do this.” Suddenly he grew serious, “There is a guy I’m going to send you to once you get here who will take care of all the band documents. These will be the band ID, brochures with the band’s schedule and a couple of other minor things, just in case they ask you at the embassy—save some of your ‘palm-grease’ budget for him. He’s a real tightwad and a bit of a jerk. A friend of Lopez’s.”

“Okay.”

“Alright, Ederman,” he said. “Anything comes up I need to know, please call me. And

211 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street call Lopez now. And when you get here—please no later than the day after tomorrow—call me; like from the bus station. I’ll go pick you up and bring you here. Make it in the morning if possible. We’ll take care of everything with the docs and get on the road to Bogota. We go to the Mexican Embassy there and from there we head to the airport for the flight after we get our visas.”

“Sounds good.”

The next couple of days were a whirlwind of packing, getting a small budget of cash from my father—Maria kicked in a bit as well—and, when the time came, saying goodbye to everyone.

Saying farewell to Maria and her family was interesting—Jorge seemed, surprisingly, somewhat affected. Not glassy-eyed, not touched in any deeply profound way, but lacking in any emotional armor: he was quite uncomfortable and, after shaking my hand tightly, awkwardly gave me a hug when it came time for the final farewell.

Claudia on the other hand was openly sad that she was losing me as a pal. A genuine bond of friendship had formed between the two of us—not really of brother and sister but of real, true pals. Although I hadn’t been in the household as of late—after my departure to go live with Checho—I still did pop around enough here and there; picking up money wired from my father, grabbing some items I had packed in their closets, or simply visiting for a meal or a movie around the television. Enough of a bond maintained so that she felt the loss of my leaving visibly.

Of that family unit, however, it was Maria’s goodbye which surprised me the most.

Whereupon I initially thought that she would be thrilled to see me going (owing to my personal style that clashed with her preconceived notions of how a young man should look and behave,

212 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street and also because of my clashes with Jorge), she seemed vaguely angry that I was leaving, and, though she wasn’t openly weeping, her eyes visibly watered up.

“This whole thing is too dangerous,” she said, her maternal instincts rising to the surface.

“It’s crazy.” She looked at the floor, chewing on her lip and holding something back. “I can’t understand how life has put you in these circumstances. You should have your family, your parents . . . it’s all. . .” She shook her head in melancholic bewilderment. “Ridiculous. No young boy should drift around like this on his own.” She looked up and palmed the side of my cheek, then fixed my collar, then some hairs on my head to fix the part in the middle. “I wish you at least would have waited to try one more time to get a visa to see your father the correct way.”

I watched her face sag into a sort of weak blankness of expression, as though she recognized the futility of raising an objection against my plans, which were firm and irrevocable.

I smiled at her.

“Thank you very, very much for taking me in when you did,” I said. “And for all you’ve done for me since. And I’m very sorry for any disruption I may have caused.” I nodded to the three of them. “Thank you to each of you. I’m really grateful.”

“Good luck, Eder,” Jorge and Claudia said in unison.

Maria gave me a hug and kissed the top of my head.

“Be safe,” she said, and walked me to the door. And that was that.

My last stop before leaving Armenia for good was, of course, Checho’s. I’d deliberately left my suitcases there after grabbing the last of my things from Maria’s. I didn’t know how Checho was going to react, or if he’d even acknowledge the fact that I was leaving, so I wanted to leave that wildcard for last. Then I’d take a taxi over to the Armenia bus station with my little

213 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street bundle of possessions.

When I arrived at the house, Checho, who was sitting in front of the television in the living room (which the front foyer opened out into), immediately picked up the phone and began murmuring into it as soon as I appeared—rambling in his rapid-fire gibberish that I’d heard him use so many times before. His tone, however, sounded angry, almost threatening.

When I got to the kitchen for a quick drink of soda before grabbing my bags and embarking on this final rounds of goodbyes, I heard the phone slam down into its cradle, and then the screen door to the backyard slam.

As I went to my room and gathered my suitcase and bag together, Checho’s sister, Yolanda, walked into the room along with his mother, Isabel.

“Hey, Eder,” Isabel said softly in her little singsong voice of surrender. “Just about ready?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. Suddenly a curse shot around the house from out back. ‘What’s up with Checho today? He seems pretty annoyed about something.”

Yolanda gave out a little laugh.

“Annoyed, just a bit, yes,” she agreed. “He’s on one hell of a roll, wow! He’s been saying—get this—that you’re an impostor, that the government has an impostor program that takes people for a ride. That they send people over to certain people’s houses for espionage purposes. He also said that if you were for real, you would stay here.”

I laughed, thinking of his twin brother scenario from a few weeks ago.

“He thinks the real me has been kidnapped?”

“I dunno—I think so . . . well, I actually can’t figure it out. I can’t figure out if he thinks that you’ve been replaced by somebody, midway into your time here, or that you were an

214 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street imposter all along. He’s been jumping on the phone claiming to be talking to the real you all day.”

I let that one sink in.

“Wow.” Isabel chimed in.

“Eder, he just doesn’t want to face that you’re leaving. You’re the only real true friend he’s known in years,” she said in that disarming little voice of hers. “You’re the only one who stuck by him and treated him like a regular, normal person, after all his problems began. He may not have let on very much, but he’s gotten very attached to you. He’s just not taking this very well.”

“I’ll go talk to him.”

Yolanda chuckled. “I don’t know if you’ll have much luck,” she said.

I walked to the screen door in the back and stepped out on the top step leading to the backyard.

Checho was sitting on the middle wooden step that led off of the porch into the yard.

“Checho,” I said, squinting into the sun which was beginning to set in the rear of the house. “It’s me. I heard about what you—” In one fluid move, Checho turned to look at me from the corner of his eye and rose to casually walk away from me, keeping his back to me. He wandered out into the backyard to a row of hedges that lined one side of its circumference.

The silent treatment. This wasn’t good—I was already pressed for time and what, to me, was my most significant goodbye in Armenia wasn’t coming off at all.

“Hey Checho, man,” I said, trotting over to him. “It’s me—” The closer I came towards him, the further away from me he drifted, as though we were

215 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street improper ends of two magnets trying to connect. I stopped and let my arms flop down to my sides and sighed loudly.

“Well, listen,” I began. “If you don’t want to talk to me, that’s fine, but I just wanted to say a few things to you before I go. I wanted to thank you for taking me in, man, and for being my friend. I really liked hanging out with you; you’re the only guy I could really relate to.

You’re one wild son of a bitch, but you’re one hell of a friend. Don’t ever let them put you back in that place again. I know you won’t. To me, you’re the only sane motherfucker in this whole town.” I could tell he was hearing me, listening to me, despite the fact that he was fiddling with some leaves on a nearby bush. “I plan on keeping in touch with you,” I said. “I hope you’ll keep in touch too, man.” I waited a few seconds and looked at my watch. “I hafta go Checho. . . Shake hands?”

He wasn’t having it. He just hung there with his back to me, immobile; I let him have his space. Finally I turned.

“Take care, Checho.”

As I closed the door behind me in the house, I could see him slyly turn halfway to follow my path indoors with his eyes, yet as he noticed me observing the turn of his head towards me, he snapped back the other way with his vision.

Nonetheless, I didn’t give up hope until I’d left the premises; as I made my farewells with Isabel and Yolanda, I kept my ears peeled for the sound of the back door opening, in the hopes that he might come in for a handshake at the last moment, but it didn’t happen.

After making my way down the front steps of the house, and down into the street to make the short walk over to the Armenia bus station, bags in hand, I turned—halfway down the block—to wave at the two women who stood there on the front stoop of the old house, waving

216 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street and watching me leave. It was then that I saw Checho, standing beside the house next to a rose bush, peeking at me, following my progress down the block.

I turned and waved to him; he just nodded resignedly and loped quietly back to the rear of the house, seemingly dragging the loneliness of his former existence into the backyard with him, and, sadly, into the future.

Chapter Twenty Six

I arrived at the bus station, and after being picked up by Rafael, we headed over to his house—in the evening, rather than the following morning, which he had indicated would be the latest possible time for my arrival wherein the plan could go off easy and without rush or hitch.

We made our greetings, ate and went right to sleep after a quick hello to Rafael’s family.

I slept fitfully, my mind constantly working and reworking the scheme we were implementing, rehearsing the false reality of it —that I was a band member traveling with them—until it was as psychologically concrete as possible. I memorized the band’s itinerary, past history, set list—all the things that I would be expected to know as a part of this outfit. I’d never broken the law in my life and wasn’t comfortable with the idea of lying to the Mexican council at the embassy in Bogota, but I felt that I had no choice.

The following morning, Rafael brought me over to Lopez’s business associate, a printerphotographer who made a living by typesetting local newspapers, coupon packs, mailers,

217 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street business cards and the like. He created a band touring identification, granting me full access to the entire tour and all its upcoming environs; backstage, rehearsals, tour bus, etc. He also, after taking my personal details, added my photo and info to a series of documents that Lopez would have to present to any federal officials (embassy, border/customs, etc) that the band would encounter along their path of travel. It was just simple paperwork that would let anyone know I was part of the band.

With all these details, and the dispensing of palm-grease out of the way, the band and I packed up for the road trip to Bogota; from there we would apply for our visas, Lopez had already made an appointment for the band and—provided everything went off without a hitch— we would subsequently fly to Mexico from the Bogota airport.

To say the road trip was a tight squeeze would be the understatement of the year; we traveled in the band’s equipment bus, used for local gigging, which was simply a minivan-style truck which not only had to accommodate the six of us, but all of the band’s equipment as well.

No air-conditioning, six sweaty guys in near-equatorial sun—needless to say, tempers easily flared up.

We arrived in Bogota after a 10-hour drive, in the early morning the following day. The band and I checked into a local hotel, somewhat of a step up from the prostitute-infested fleapit I stayed in not so long ago during my failed visa-attempt. It was not, however, a very tall step up, as the budget for the band did not permit any luxurious indulgence in high-class hotels.

The following morning, different members of the band and I rehearsed my upcoming interview in the Mexican Embassy; each member took turns throwing questions at me based on his own past experiences being interviewed by embassy staff members. They had all been through the process before, having played outside of Colombia a few times in various Latin

218 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street American music festivals and on tours. None had ever been turned down for a visa. We all concluded that the only potential stumbling block to the whole affair was my lack of any track record with the band—as they had played in Mexico before, the consulate could easily establish that they had traveled previously without me. We concluded that this wasn’t much cause for worry, as bands were constantly shifting personnel—members quit, got fired, went on hiatus, lineups were added to, etc. The only thing that could truly give up the goods on me was either a change in political climate, an inexplicably overzealous consul staff member, or—most importantly— a crack in my own demeanor.

When the time came for the interview, I was pleased to discover that the embassy staff was tight on time that day. I stood in line, as I had done on my previous interview at the American Embassy.

The staff member, a senior embassy administrator, called me to the window, asked me for my passport and started asking questions.

“Have you traveled to Mexico before?” She asked.

“No ma’am, this is my first time” “Have you traveled abroad?” She looked at my directly in the eye as she continued asking questions.

“No, never left Colombia before,” I answered quickly.

“What is your reason for traveling to Mexico?”

“We are playing in a musical festival in Mexico city.”

“Do you have any form of ID from the band or a tour schedule?”

“Yes, I do.” I quickly handed her over our schedule, which included my picture and the

219 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street ID I had been given.

“Very well.” She looked over the schedule, looked at my ID and stamped my passport.

My questions were over.

Visa granted. Simple as that!

From there it was back to the hotel, to grab our belongings and then straight off to the Bogota airport.

The band’s flight tickets to Mexico were already secured—they were, of course, flying out regardless whether I got my visa or they bounced me out of the embassy on my butt. Lopez had already purchased a ticket for me, which was non-refundable and I was relieved that it would not go to waste.

In the days and hours leading up to our flight, I had been so preoccupied with my documents as well as my visa Q&A preparation with the band, that a small but crucial tidbit of information had gone relatively unconsidered—we were not going to touch down anywhere near our final destination. We were going to land in Mexico City: The band would then continue their tour south, as I would travel by bus to the border town of Nogales. I hadn’t really thought all that much about the significance of this seemingly trivial little detail. It wasn’t until after take-off, while we were up in the air heading for Mexico City, that I got the first foretaste of its implications.

I had been chitchatting with a nice old Mexican gentleman, whose name escapes me, next to whom I had been seated.

After a relatively dry, in fact boring, exchange of pleasantries between the two of us, the old man turned and raised an eyebrow once I finished telling him about the band and where we were going. I mentioned we were playing in several places in Mexico and moving north towards

220 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Nogales, which of course was just to get some information, as I was the only one traveling north.

“You’re Colombian, yes?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Hmph,” he chuckled quietly. He shook his head with his eyebrows high up on his forehead. He played with a bit of lint on his blazer. “If you’re going by bus, like you say, be prepared for a, eh, a few stops along the way from the Federales, my friend.”

I didn’t really press him. I knew the situation with my country and the fact that its highlands were a source of a huge percentage of the world’s coca crop at the time, that there was a high degree of suspicion between Latin American countries and that Pablo Escobar of the Medellin cartel had operations all up and down the Central American peninsula. I pictured a stop or two along the way, perhaps a call for documents, etcetera, but nothing particularly disconcerting.

The reality of this thirty plus hour journey, and all it entailed, would not become clear to me until the time came for the actual bus ride.

That time quickly came. We arrived without incident in Mexico City, passing through customs and acquiring our luggage quickly and efficiently.

We went over to the carrier counter where the band purchased their bus tickets to continue their journey south. I went to the bathroom and washed my face, as I prepared to say goodbye to the band. I stood in front of the mirror and realized how nervous I was, my hands were shaking and there was no going back at this point. I was in a strange country and knew that the rest of the trip would be up to me to stay strong and not break down. I went outside and was shocked by all the poor people at the airport asking for money. I looked around and saw young boys, a bit younger than me, asking for money. I guess Mexico wasn’t that different from

221 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Colombia; lots of poor people trying to do what was necessary to survive.

I went to say goodbye and thanked everyone for their help. “Good luck, Ederman, hope you make it and live a better life. Most importantly, don’t forget about us,” said Rafael as he hugged me.

I went to the currency exchange window at the airport and traded all my Colombian pesos for Mexican pesos, all their bills looked like monopoly money to me. I went to get a taxi and stopped by to give a couple of coins to a young kid.

He looked up and said, “That’s it, that’s all you’ve got?” I really didn’t know how much these coins were worth, but I could relate to him on a deeper level.

I took a couple of bills and gave them to him. “Go buy yourself some food.” He smiled and left running.

I stopped to ask a guard where I could find a taxi. The guard was a fat, overstuffed, mustachioed Mexican. He turned to look at me, slowly and with undisguised arrogance and slight contempt, “Colombian, right?”

“Yes. Could you tell me how to get a taxi or get to the bus station? I am kind of in a hurry.”

“Which destination?”

“I am going to Nogales. But I can’t afford an airline ticket there, I am traveling by bus.”

The guard had been chewing a toothpick, which he proceeded to roll about his mouth while looking at me up and down with slow, but rampant suspicion. He smiled a crooked, oily smile, smirking at something he was thinking to himself with a sly nod.

He sniffed.

222 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “You see that baggage sign over there?”

“Yes.” “Follow the signs,” he said, his thick barrel of an arm pointing down the hall, “until you see the restrooms. There’s a hallway there that cuts through the building and leads out to the side. That’s where all the taxis stop.” He cleared his throat, looking at me and my bags suspiciously, as though he might have seen one of the FBI’s ten most wanted criminals right here and potentially in custody.

“Thank you,” I said sourly, shooting the man a dry look.

As I walked along the direction he’d given me, I’d wondered aloud whether or not this was leading, not to the taxi area, but to some police trap or another, complete with strip search and never-ending interrogation. As I walked further from him, I could hear the plump gentleman speaking into his two-way radio. As I turned the corner he said would appear beyond the restrooms, and saw that there was indeed a hallway—at the end of which appeared the glint of taxis through a sliding glass door—I was relieved that I made it without interference. I stepped right into a taxi without a hitch.

Little did I know; the “fun” hadn’t even begun.

223 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter Twenty Seven

After arriving at the bus station, I quickly asked where I could buy tickets to Nogales.

“Going to the US?” was the common question.

“No, of course not, I am going to Nogales to meet my band. We are playing at a musical festival and I need to get there as soon as possible,” was my response every single time. I had it memorized quickly.

The ride from Mexico City to Nogales was a grindingly long trip of roughly 2,000 miles—well-nigh three long days packed into the single bus that I booked my passage through Mexico upon. Mind you, these are not the buses one likely thinks of nowadays when imagining a contemporary long-distance trip by bus in the States—plush, comfortable, air-conditioned coaches providing easy sleep, a self-cleaning restroom, relaxation and the latest Hollywood movies provided to divert one’s attention.

Rather, the bus I embarked on my cross-country trip in was more like a half broken-down

224 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street school bus with no air conditioning, no restroom, no movies, agonizingly flat, superuncomfortable seats which dug into the body’s posterior region with misrouted, broken seat springs, foam rubber which kept pouring from cuts in the ancient upholstery, a suspension system in desperate need of new shock-absorbers, thereby providing a ride with constant jumps and jolts over poorly maintained roads. After my first mere hour or two in this tightly packed, roasting hot, hard-bouncing vehicle, with my brains being hammered and rammed across all sides of the interior perimeter of my skull, I felt ready to vomit. Thankfully there was a rest stop coming up within the next hour.

Nonetheless, despite these poor creature comforts, I was off. I was on the road to making my final goal happen.

At the first rest stop I loaded up on low-budget eats, as the bus driver indicated to all of us passengers that it would be at least eight hours before we would reach the next stop where food would be available. He also advised us to use the rest room facilities there—the rest stop was simply a gas station bounded on one side by a small grocery store, on the other side by a small bus station with a single ticket window for a very small rural town whose name I can’t remember, but due to the relative closeness to Mexico City, it couldn’t have been very far from our starting point. My guess is that, heading westbound, for what would soon turn into a northbound, primarily coastal drive along the Pacific side of the country, we were—at that point—coming up on the outskirts of Morelia.

Walking into the little grocery store at the bus stop, I noticed the beginning of what seemed to me to be a pattern developing which would repeat itself with increasing frequency, boldness and intensity throughout the whole of the journey.

It seemed that the rest stop was full of folks—every other person you approached for this

225 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street or that reason (directions for the restroom, the cashier you paid for your munchies, the gas station attendant you passed on your way in to the rest area, the fat police officer sitting in a wicker chair under an umbrella, lazily smoking a cigar and sipping on a cold beer, even those folks who had no seeming business taking an interest in your affairs)—who seemed to, in an off-the-cuff manner, probe you for your travel destination and purpose. It was like this at each and every rest stop, with each encounter getting bolder, more importunate, rude and lecherous the closer we drew to Nogales.

I would soon have no doubt whatsoever that the entire route was spangled with immigration officers and undercover police—some posing as store owners, local people in plain clothes and some even, as I came to suspect, as passengers on the bus.

By the evening of the first day of driving, I was completely miserable. My body was wracked with cramps from sitting in one position for such a long time, which made it very difficult to sleep. Adding to the misery was the lack of a rest room. The best the bus driver could do was pull over to the side of the road when somebody made it absolutely clear that if he didn’t pull over to the side of the road—then and there, his schedule be damned—that the condition of the bus was going to suffer for it. Getting the picture, the driver would pull to the side of the roadway and those who needed to relieve themselves would trot hastily out into the desert brush to duck behind this tree or that bush to conduct their little emergency operation.

No one on the bus was immune from having to make use of these stops from time to time—the driver, having accepted the need for the stop, would step out of the confines of his seat to get some air, stretch his legs, smoke a cigarette, use natures “facilities,” drink coffee from a thermos he’d packed, or move around to get the blood flowing to the limbs again.

226 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Aside from the usual bodily complaints, I was very nervous about the whole trip. I had heard a lot of stories about thieves near the border waiting for people wanting to cross over to the US, as they knew they usually carry dollars to pay for a coyote to help them cross, which was my case.

By the beginning of our second day on the road, we arrived at sunrise at the station for the city of Tepic. Here our worn and exhausted bus driver stood and turned to us—he urged those of us who were continuing on to go out and stretch our legs, go into the air conditioned station to cool off, get some food and make use of the facilities. He then stepped out and disappeared after first insuring that the hot and worn vehicle got its tank refilled.

By this point, a genuine bathroom with soap and running hot water was like a blessing from heaven—this went for all of us, men and women, elderly and newborns (of which there were a couple on board for the long haul with their mothers), all hot and sweaty from the long sweltering ride and badly in need of a shower.

All the male passengers headed straight for the men’s room to wash up, shave in front of the mirror, change shirts and generally feel a little more human again. Hot and cool running water never felt so luxurious and indulgent; even there in that only moderately clean public restroom.

Tepic is a nice town—the little I saw of it, that is. It is, in fact, the capitol of the central part of Mexico. Lining the walls of the bus station and stores were photos and paintings of their inert volcano, Sanganguey, as well as posters promoting their local produce and commodities: sugar cane, tobacco, various equatorial fruits, etc. I can still recall the sweet, refreshing taste of the sliced pineapple I bought from a breakfast counter inside the station after washing up. After the miserable depravations of the ride thus far, the perfectly ripened, impeccably fresh pineapple

227 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street tasted like a gift from the heavens.

The food in Mexico had one common theme; most of it was extremely spicy. They have a thing for putting hot peppers and other hot condiments into everything. I was craving simpler fare—some plain, fresh eggs and bacon on a roll, hot coffee and some fresh, cold fruit. Rarely had I relished breakfast with such intense appreciation.

As a young man who had not traveled outside of the bounds of my native country, the next incident was to be the first in a series of hard knocks that began my grim education, outlining for me just how Colombians are looked upon by citizens of the world—even our Latin American neighbors.

Certainly I was not naïve to the fact of the danger lurking within my country owing to the action of the drug cartels, whose violent tendrils reached beyond the Colombian borders— remember, this was the era of Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel, which was at the peak of its power.

I knew enough about the ways of the world to understand that each country had its own underworld, its own towering figures of organized crime, that many countries around the world had deep political systems and crime lords and illicit groups with power that reached around the globe. Mexico had its own drug lords, as did Peru, the United States Mafia—with its reports, at that time only recently made famous in the news by the American Congressional assassination investigations, alleging its ties to the intelligence agencies of the US—not to mention all the organized criminal operations around Europe, Asia, etc.

But Colombians, it seems, will forever be perceived by some shortsighted individuals around the world, as a nation of drug makers and smugglers. They simply cannot manage to see

228 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street it otherwise.

In this they are greatly helped by the media. Movies and books—both fiction and nonfiction—from around the world proliferate, carrying messages that hammer home this negative, hugely exaggerated impression of Colombian life. Clear And Present Danger, Bedazzled, Blow, Scarface, Lord of War, Romancing the Stone—the list could go on and on, with the portrayal of Colombia to be little else than a haven for mindless violence, anarchy, cocaine and more cocaine. Yet the average Colombian is no more likely to be a gangster than the average American is likely to be a member of La Cosa Nostra. In Colombia, as anywhere else, those whose lives bring them into contact with gangsters are subject to the lure, the pressure and the temptation or threat that gangsters exert, and therefore come into their employ. Some resist, some succumb—it’s the same wherever you go. The typical, workaday Colombian has about as much of a natural inclination to work with and distribute cocaine as the average Israeli feels the need to associate his or herself with the black-market laboratory manufacture and distribution of Ecstasy/MDMA. The end result of the impressions garnered by the endless stream of books and movies coming out of the mainstream media (which uses Colombia as a backdrop any time a violent, drug-soaked background is required) is a vicious prejudice, which afflicts Colombians the world over. A terrible aversion to Colombians exists in Ecuador, where lynching and “necklacing” of Colombians and expulsions of Colombian children from schools simply owing to their origin occurs; Colombians are the targets of bias attacks throughout Europe, but particularly in France and Spain. There have been reports that Spanish paramedics refuse to provide care to Colombians in need of help from such attacks. And the police simply walk away from such incidents, rather than take the complaint of the victim.

229 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street It was here in the bus station of Tepic that I witnessed my first blatant instance of this kind of treatment. While finishing my pineapple and coffee, I heard a vague commotion up a bit and around the corner; the sounds were warped by the echo and the distance, but it was clear that a heated discussion was churning up—a full blown eruption of violence was imminent.

As I returned my food tray to the counter and began walking in the direction of the noise—which led to the exit that opened out onto where the bus was waiting—some of the voices began sounding strangely familiar. As I rounded a corner, another smaller food court came into view; in this court was a tiny, but apparently popular, Mexican breakfast and lunch counter.

I came closer to hear and see what was happening and realized that there was a little bit of a hubbub going on between a young man from my bus ride and some of the rowdy Mexican locals. The conversation was getting louder and louder as I approached—the scene was beginning to capture the attention of everybody within earshot.

The young man, a quiet, very polite and harmless guy with whom I had exchanged a few words here and there along the ride thus far, owing to the fact that we both realized the other was Colombian, was being antagonized by a group of municipal station workers who were sitting at a lunch table. Feeling safe in their superior numbers—there were four of them, versus the young Colombian—the station employees were openly taunting the young man, who was stepping away from a pay phone not far from the cafeteria rest area and just to the rear of the group’s lunch table.

The young man’s name was Dario—his last name is lost to the mists of time—and Dario had, I could quickly figure out via the nature of the conversation, just hung up the public pay phone and was now being subject to a very belligerent and bigoted form of eavesdropping and vicious

230 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street forward interpretation.

The conversation continued to escalate as I approached.

“I don’t see what business you have even paying attention to a single word I was saying,” Dario said. “And in the first place I was just on the phone with my mother, for your information, telling her where I was.”

A short, chubby, Mexican teen, with clumpy hair sticking up through a tennis-type visor and wearing the red polo shirt and black pants of a food court worker, replied: “Aw, shucks guys,” he cooed with fake sweetness, showing a mouth of crooked teeth as he smiled. “He was making nice with his mommy.”

“Isn’t that just sweet,” said another, a dark-skinned food court worker wearing the uniform of one of the most famous burger chains in the world. “He’s such a very good boy indeed!”

A tall, lanky guy in a municipal blue porter’s outfit—who appeared to have the dominant personality and seemed to be not only the leader of the group but the driving force behind this nasty little episode—spoke up, his long legs stretched out and tipping his chair way, way back onto its two rear legs, as he twirled a toothpick around his mouth.

“Yes, yes, yes,” the porter said. “They have twenty or thirty ‘mothers’, these sons of bitches.

They got one to call at every stop. One mother packs up the suitcase. One mother drives them to the station. Another mother meets them at the destination. And the other mother gives them the money for the eh, the friggin’ goods,” he sneered. “See what I mean?”

The overweight kid in red and black jumped back in.

“And don’t forget the mommy to pump in the ex lax if the balloons he swallowed get stuck up there,” he chirped. “Ex lax in the top and whack the goods out of the bottom!”

This got the rest of the group good, including a short, middle-aged lady in regular clothes,

231 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street smiling a mouthful of gold teeth but otherwise remaining silent. They all fell back or doubled over in their seats with hooting laughter, which they made no attempt to restrain.

Dario hung there a moment, taking the measure of the group. I have to say—disgusting moments like these are often not a very good barometer of human nature, but the way that Dario handled himself in this situation impressed me indeed.

Generally a quiet, well-mannered young man, simply trying to make his way in life, he was neither big and muscular, nor was he a skinny weakling. He was not particularly handsome, nor was he on the other hand noticeably visually unpleasant. Rather, he was one of millions of anonymous souls trying to make their way through this world with a minimum of trouble and angst . . . wanting only to survive among his fellow man with as small amount of friction as possible.

Finding himself suddenly stuck in this unsightly situation, however, Dario did not turn and depart with his tail between his legs. Rather than reply immediately to this last round of mockery and laughter—the group was suggesting, of course, that he was something along the lines of a Colombian drug mule shuttling drugs across the Americas in a suitcase liner or via swallowed balloons—he turned to face his interlocutors squarely and confidently, with the faintest of smiles . . . and without the slightest hint of fear.

He shook his head incredulously.

“You know,” he began, “People like you all kill me. You only have the guts to say things like this when you’ve got a whole bunch of friends with you. When we’re one-on-one I’m a nice Colombian traveler. When it’s me alone in front of a whole group, though—whoa! Look out! All of a sudden I’m a big drug smuggler. I have to laugh.”

The tall lanky guy in the blue porter’s outfit hung there motionless for a moment. Suddenly he

232 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street tipped back level in his chair, bringing the front to legs clacking down to the floor. He took the toothpick out of his mouth and flicked it off to the side as though it were a spent cigarette. He brushed himself off, as though he were a dusty cowboy just in from the plains, and arose from his seat. Suddenly, as though Dario were just an afterthought, he threw his chin in the young Colombian’s direction and challenged him.

“Hey, pal,” he snorted. “Don’t mind my friends here. We can just pretend they’re not here.”

He wiggled his fingers in front of him, directing Dario to advance in his direction. “Come on.

Don’t let ’em bother you. Why don’t you go for it?”

Dario laughed and shook his head.

“Easy to say, with them all sitting right there, just ready to jump in and help you.”

At this point I was making my way around the lunch table and coming around to Dario’s side.

Rather than duck out of the potential trouble, I at least wanted to be there to bear witness to the truth of this very unfortunate provocation and bigotry, in case a fight did break out and a report was made.

This was a risky proposition. I knew that I—an outsider like Dario—could get sucked into a very nasty situation here. If a fight did break out and the authorities were called, there would be little doubt as to where law enforcement sympathy would fall—and I could go down for the count along with Dario. Who knows . . . these kinds of provocations might have been regular and ongoing law enforcement tactics to create a feasible situation where—having drawn a “suspicious” traveler into a scenario where police attention would naturally follow—they could then be searched thoroughly with some reasonably passable veneer of Probable Cause.

Still, something told me in my gut that I should simply show myself as an impartial witness to the whole thing and then get Dario out of that poisonous situation as quickly as possible.

233 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street I came around past the pay phone and put my hand on Dario’s shoulder.

“Hey man,” I said. “Why even bother with this? Let’s get out of here. The bus is going to be splitting soon.”

Dario had registered my presence without unlocking his steely eyes from the porter, who was eyeing him back with a slow-rolling expression that dripped menace, huge insult and disgust with the very idea of The Foreigner.

Although Colombians at that particular time in world history did—thanks to the exploits of Pablo Escobar—enjoy a special notoriety in the minds of people around the globe, the mindset of this porter and his cohorts is of a kind which can be found anywhere and at any time by any traveler in the wrong place at the wrong time. No country has a lock on stupidity and thickheadedness. No race is safe from the backward thinking of the denizens of their neighbors, near and far. One need not do anything, say anything, look particularly noticeable, or walk outside of the most public place in the world to suddenly find one’s self confronted with racism and bigotry.

This kind of vitriol can suddenly be directed at you from anyone—station worker, low-wage food court employee, policeman, responsible housewife, wealthy diplomat, church reverend, caring family man, small child sneering at you from behind his loving parents. Anyone is fair game and can be targeted from the most unexpected of quarters.

This is a fact that would be revealed to me more than once along my crazy odyssey to the USA. “Oh, ho, ho!” the chubby restaurant worker croaked when I appeared. “His backup is here, Miguel! Better watch out and pat him down for an Uzi . . .”

I ignored this nonsense.

“Come on, Dario,” I said, trying to nudge him sideways and away from there with my hand

234 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street on his shoulder. “Forget this crap. Don’t stoop to their level.”

“Yeah,” he said, finally snapping out of his staring contest with the porter and laughing it off.

“This is pretty stupid.”

We tore ourselves away from the tense atmosphere of the cafeteria and began making our way down a corridor which led ultimately to the boarding area where the buses were lined up.

Dario and I tried our best to ignore the provocations from the group of Mexican station workers, who taunted us from behind, tossing insults at our backs.

We made our way back to the bus and Dario and I took our places in our seats feeling, despite the irritation of the momentary interlude of being pestered by the locals, refreshed and satisfied by the food and by the cleanup in the restroom. We felt ready for the next grueling arm of this long haul up to Nogales.

As we sat there, situating ourselves and packing our little sacks of food and drinks for the next day’s ride above and below our seats into whatever stowage area we could find, waiting for the rest of the passengers to pack in, we noticed the bus driver (who had by this time restarted the bus’s engine to warm it up in preparation of the renewed odyssey) get up from his seat and walk down the stairs—someone had beckoned to him from the outside.

Something fluttered inexplicably in my gut—call it intuition, call it common sense, call it simply the putting of two and two together based on the last thing I heard the hostile table of locals say after we left the cafeteria.

I watched the conversation proceed; every now and again I could see one of the men either cocking their heads sideways to peer briefly into the windows in the general vicinity of where we were seated, or jacking a thumb backwards in the same general direction. It didn’t seem to be any mystery that they were talking about somebody on the bus—and I didn’t have

235 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street any doubt that that somebody was us.

My hunch was proven right.

Chapter Twenty Eight

By now my stomach was tied in knots of rage, which I tamped down the best I could. I could read the situation like a book: the man who had called out the bus driver—I could tell by his bearing and the way he seemed to command the full attention and obedience of the driver— was a plainclothes law enforcement officer, the “Enrique” mentioned a moment earlier by his pals in the dining area of the station. And he was undoubtedly there to give us a hard time.

The bus driver disengaged from his conversation and walked over to the bus at the seeming command of “Enrique.” I saw him bend down and open the luggage compartment on the bus. Then he straightened up, gave a gesture of pause to the officer and stepped up onto the bus.

He discreetly walked down the aisle to where I and Dario were sitting beside one another.

He huddled in to speak to us in straightforward, private tones.

“You guys have to go outside and speak to a gentleman who is waiting for you. He’s one

236 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street of the federales, you know, so you have no choice.” He cocked his head in the direction of the window behind him and noticed the crewcutted, burly, mustachioed officer peering through the glass with irritation. “Look at him; he thinks we’re up to something over here. Listen, I don’t know if you are all up to something or not,” he continued. “I just do my job here and I don’t judge anybody. That’s not my job. And I know times are very hard.” He stepped back to clear the aisle so we could leave and gave us all sympathetic looks. “But be ready—he made me open the baggage compartment below . . . so he’s probably going to want to search your luggage.” He nodded weakly to each of us as we passed by him and walked up the aisle and past the curious eyes of the other passengers. “Good luck.”

“Will you hold the bus until this is all over?” I asked, looking at my watch. “This shouldn’t be long—we don’t have anything with us that we shouldn’t have. Believe me.”

The driver shrugged his shoulders, turning up the palms of his hands with a cock of the head. “I, er, I just can’t say,” he said apologetically. “It depends how long the whole thing lasts. I have to keep on schedule, you understand.”

“We understand,” Dario said, turning and walking up the aisle. “But don’t worry, this should be very quick.”

The two of us stood alongside of the bus, where the plainclothes officer waited for us. He smiled an oily, insinuating smile and came sauntering over to the group, nodding to us as a greeting.

“Gentlemen,” he announced cheerfully. “How do you all do? I need to let you know that I uh, I have gotten a complaint on you all from some of the people inside—it seems that you all almost up and jumped on a crowd of people doing nothing but sitting and eating breakfast. This is not good—this is not good at all. Generally we like it when foreigners who need to pass

237 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street through our nice little city do so with a minimum of disturbance. But I have it from several people, whose stories all coincide perfectly—” “—They’re lying, because they start—” began Dario, the well-built, take-no-prisoners kind of guy who spoke up defiantly against the threatening jeers of our tormentors when we were inside.

“—Now, now,” the officer interrupted, holding a palm out. “Now, now, now; you’ll get your chance to talk. “But first of all,” he went on. “Let me get a look at all of your passports and visa permits. This way I can get a line on who-all I’m speaking to, so we can be introduced first, and of course see to it that you’re all here legally. You can understand that I’m sure. My name is Detective Molina, incidentally,” As he collected our paperwork, he flashed us his badge for formality’s sake—and there it was, fulfilling the obvious: his first name was Enrique; chum of the guys inside.

The whole incident seemed to unfold like a stage play, with Dario and I ensnared in the proceedings like unwilling extras. The longer the charade went on, the easier I could predict the next act in the narrative.

As this trifling exchange of information continued, I kept trying to tell my story and how I was traveling to Nogales to meet the band. Dario was going on how he was provoked incessantly inside the station and that he merely verbally defended himself against the ongoing insults and verbal threats coming from the table of blue collar laborers. Unfortunately—and not surprisingly—Molina was completely uninterested in the story and kept interrupting and halting him in his tracks.

“Now, now, wait a minute,” the officer kept protesting, talking over our need to get the true story out. He put his hand on Dario’s shoulder. “Listen sir, listen to me.” He put his other

238 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street hand on his own chest and whapped it lightly a couple of times for emphasis. “I have a pretty good idea what happened back there. I know how those guys can be sometimes.”

I spoke up next. “If you know how they can be and you know what happened,” I asked, placing my hands on my hips and shaking my head. “Then why even bother us with this?”

“Because they made a complaint,” he answered. “Because other people saw the event, and when somebody makes a complaint, and there are witnesses, then an officer has no choice because it’s on the public record at that point.”

Suddenly two curious things happened: Molina’s voice went way down in volume . . . and I noticed a couple of faces from the table that was mocking us, peeking from behind a curtain in a gift shop window that fronted the embarkation point we were standing in at the moment. Enrique seemed to all of a sudden become our best friend in the world, with a low, sweet voice dripping with insinuating honey.

“Now listen guys,” he began—and with this I could sense the whole thing was coming to the point. “I really don’t know what you’re all up to, but we’re all sorta stuck in this thing. These things have a way of spiraling out of control—wait a moment,” and with this he peered to and fro, seeing the entire contents of the bus lined up against the windows, watching the whole thing unfold. Likewise at the bus station windows. Some had even come out of the door to listen in. He held his hands up like a traffic cop at the people in front of the station. “Now now, folks, listen— please,” he said loudly. “There’s nothing to see here. Go inside—that’s right, you heard me. Go inside and go about your business. This is none of your affair and you’re making these poor boys feel ill at ease.”

“Appreciate that,” I said.

“See guys?” Molina said. “I’m not your enemy here.” Again he peered up at the people in

239 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street the bus. “Uh, come with me a moment, walk with me just a bit.”

Suddenly, and for no clear reason, he led us to a shed over to the far edge and alongside the gas station side of the entire area.

“Okay,” he said, “we can talk better over here. Listen guys,” he went on, now completely out of earshot of anyone and everyone. “You guys seem like nice boys, especially versus a lot of the Colombians I see come through here. I know what their business is—you know what their business is too, I’m sure.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Dario.

Molina smiled wryly and nodded.

“Sure, you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about,” he said softly. “You’re totally unaware, you just landed from another planet—that’s fine with me. You don’t have a clue what goes on with your people day in and day out, inside and outside your country and this country and every other country. I understand.” He nodded and turned his mouth down at the corners. He waved a palm dismissively through the air. “Totally understand.”

Dario and I passed looks back and forth, not knowing whether to blow our tops or bust out laughing.

“Listen, sir, I’m uh, I’m not sure where you’re going with this,” I said. “But the driver is holding the bus up for us, and—” “—No idea, uh huh.” He nodded and smiled a gruesome, conspiratorial smile. “I have to say, you guys have great papers. The whole band angle is fantastic. Truly fantastic. I honestly salute whomever set this all up for you.” He leaned in, despite the fact that nobody could hear us.

“Listen guys,” he said, a tone of finality in his voice. “I want to go back to my usual business here. I have no doubt you guys want to go back you your usual, eh, you want to get back on that

240 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street bus and ride out of here unmolested. Am I right?”

“Of course!”

“And with your luggage unmolested—am I right?”

We both peered at one another quizzically. I could see where this was heading.

“Huh?” Molina rolled his eyes at the heavens.

“Ay Dios mio,” he whispered and scratched his head. “Guys, you can get out of here, go free, no problem,” he began again. “Believe me when I tell you I’m in no mood to go busting through somebody’s luggage and inspecting each and every article with the dogs. There’s a way we can avoid all of this.” He leaned in and shot his eyebrows for effect. “You know how to make that happen, right?

Suddenly we both caught on to what I was sensing for a moment or two beforehand— that this man was trying to cultivate a payoff and was trying to lead up to it with as few words as possible.

“You want to see my newspaper?” the officer asked. He had it folded in half, and, after a quick glance in either direction, held it out to us, presumably so we could pretend to peruse it, slip a few bills into it, thank him for the peek at the soccer scores, and pass it back.

We—Dario and I—looked at one another concernedly, wondering how to handle this. We asked Molina if we could have a moment to confer with each other in private to talk this over.

“Go right ahead,” We stepped away to a distance of a few yards and smoked each other out for opinions.

Despite the fact that we were innocent of any wrongdoing, we knew that the cop could, probably, if he wanted to—really wanted to—make trouble for us, perhaps hold us up for days on trumped

241 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street up charges. No doubt the men from the cafeteria would be glad to falsify charges against us.

On the other hand, neither one of us had any sort of surplus budget for this kind of unanticipated, meaningless bribery. I knew I was going to need my money in Nogales to get help crossing the border; I also was going to need every penny for transportation and life in general once I got to the States—presuming I successfully made it to the States. Dario had small amounts of living expenses on him and was in no mood to surrender anything . . . especially not for the purpose of bribing somebody because we were completely innocent of drug smuggling.

We finally decided to have me go speak to him and try to get him off our backs, to tell him that we have no money, we’re not smugglers, and if he really wanted to, he was welcome to have at it turning our baggage upside down, etc. I elected to make the plea, owing to my sales background. I was used to calming irritated people down and speaking to a much wider variety of folks than Dario.

“Listen, sir,” I said, steeling my nerves and telling myself to, under all circumstances, remain calm as I returned to him alone. “You caught us a little off guard, I think, with that last bit.”

“I didn’t mean to,” he said. “Business is business, you understand. I can’t take risks for nothing.”

“What’s the risk, anyhow?” It was, I knew, a rhetorical question, but it would help get all the cards out on the table so that I could play them on the band’s behalf.

Molina looked at me like I was nuts. “What’s the risk?” he repeated. “The risk is that I set you guys free without checking you out completely, and you wind up catching a pinch either up a town or two, or up at either side of Nogales, and it comes back that I had you here and didn’t search you. That’s the risk.”

242 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street I gathered up all possible sincerity and tried my best to reassure him.

“Well, sir,” I replied. “There truly isn’t any risk. You can search our luggage. You can search us. We’re not smuggling anything. I swear to everything that’s holy—we’re not. And, tell you the truth, we know you don’t want to be bothered with wasting your time with something as boring as searching luggage that doesn’t have anything exciting in it, so we actually thought of giving you a few bucks for your troubles. But we really, truly just don’t have that kind of money with us. We’re really truly going up there to begin a tour of the region. You can call all of the locales. It’s all prearranged. You can come with us. We can even get you some tickets if you or your kids would like to come see some music,” I said, not caring if he actually accepted because I’d be long gone. Of course he didn’t accept. But I could see him go grim as the truth sunk in to him in spurts. I’d see him go apologetic looking, then stiffen up into mock anger then threaten to call our bluff, rising from his seat and going over to the stowage compartment on the bus.

We followed him over. I looked at the driver, who tossed me a look from the bus steps while tapping on his watch. I raised an index finger, saying, in effect, “Just another moment, trust me . . .”

I think Molina thought I’d panic and call him back to the side once he laid a finger on some of our luggage. Instead I offered to help him in identifying all of the pieces that were ours.

His last desperate ploy at calling our bluff was, after fiddling with one of our bags halfheartedly, and—seeing that this cultivated absolutely no fear in us—to threaten us with dogs and an x-ray machine to check our innards for, one would suppose, swallowed latex packages of contraband. But this had no visible effect on us and we even walked over to and held the door open for him to go inside and direct us to the dogs and the x-ray unit.

Several yards into the bus station, with him leading us to these interrogatory delights,

243 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Molina stopped, made like he had just noticed what time it was, then motioned for us to halt. He walked over to a bank of pay phones, made like he was making a call, hung up and returned to us.

“I just realized,” he said. “I can’t do this. I have to be in court in an hour. It’ll take too long to get the dogs to do a complete search and to get the x-ray results. Consider yourselves lucky.” He looked grumpily at me and then looked at Dario, clearly disappointed at walking away empty handed. “Go back to your bus.”

We quickly got back on the bus, thanked the driver and sat next to each other again.

“You owe me lunch,” I said with a smile on my face. “My name is Eder; they call me Ederman.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Dario is my name.” We looked at each other and smiled.

I found out Dario was going to Florida, apparently his brother lived there and he was moving there to live after many failed attempts at having a career in Cali.

Who knows how many folks have been lured into this cheap trap in this and other cities around the globe where illegal activity is suspected? I can’t answer this question, but I will say that this kind of provocation, which began with Dario in the cafeteria, designed for drawing the racially profiled individual into calling attention to them by defending themselves and their honor versus a united, alien crowd, is a shameful substitute for honest police detection of real criminals. Regardless, whether the goal is to catch a criminal or to make a few illicit dollars, the process is hugely unsightly no matter what angle one views it from.

That aside, we were back on the bus and on the road in just a moment after being sent on our way by the officer, to the incredulity of the passengers as well as the driver, who stared at us

244 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street wide-eyed as we strode back to our seats. There were similar events along the ride up to the borderlands, wherein at various other points, some other enterprising individual, like Molina, would detect our Colombian accents, pull us aside, search us or threaten to search us in hopes of receiving a bribe and ultimately walk away feeling defeated as the crushing realization hit home that there exist in this world honest Colombians not interested in cocaine smuggling.

The rest of the journey was filled with similar events—heat, discomfort, lack of sleep, no restrooms and abuse by bigoted citizenry—over the course of the next three days. This torturous ordeal took us all the way up the coast from Tepic through Mazatlan, to Culiacan, up past Navojoa and Ciudad Obregon. From there, we bore directly north to Hermosillo and thus straight up to Nogales.

It was there in Nogales that I passed from the road into the notorious dangers of a raucous border town—and into the sinister hands of the border species known as the Coyote.

245 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter Twenty Nine

The tension level and sense of excitement, manifested by occasional explosions of butterflies in the stomach, signaled that it was sinking in: the moment of truth was at hand. All the thoughts and dreams over the years, all the wondering how things would turn out when I finally took my shot at getting over the border, all the details concerning whether or not I could actually plug myself into the kinds of people who could get me into the United States—all of this was reaching the juncture of actual action. The time of sitting back and waiting for the terrain of South America and Mexico to scroll by until I finally reached the border, all the nervous anticipation, all of it was just about at an end.

Now would come the moment of truth: I was going to stiffen my back and set my jaw and prove to life and myself that I was equal to this undertaking . . . that I could meet this challenge head-on, that I could seize my fate at the point of no return and make it happen.

But now, first and foremost, I was completely exhausted by the cramped, never-ending ride of

246 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street constant discomfort. I needed rest very badly. I needed to tuck in for a good measure of rest and recuperation, to knock all the stiff joints and sore, cramped muscles out of my body, to give my mind the sleep it needed, so that I would be alert, keyed-in and on top of my game, capable of going toe-to-toe with the class of individual that would get me over that highly patrolled border, without getting ripped off or even slightly taken advantage of.

Dario was knocked out by the endless bus ride as well. He and I shared a cab ride into what appeared to be a moderately rough-and-tumble area of Nogales after getting some pointers to a cheap, somewhat seedy, but reasonably clean motel.

It was a typical two storey affair, five times as wide as it was tall, with an outer set of steps leading to a long narrow terraced walkway running from side to side, along the other side of which were the doors to all the rooms. Our worries about getting an available room were eased as we approached—a flickering neon sign stuttered the incomplete word “_ACANTE.” Missing V, the motel room would, versus that torment of a bus ride, represent a paradise of a pillowed bed in a room with functioning air conditioning.

Dario and I arrived at the ground floor office completely spent and virtually dazed. Anyone other than a front desk worker—used to seeing exhausted travelers like us—would have thought they were dealing with two drunken revelers swaggering in the depths of their cups. That’s how completely shot the two of us were.

The front desk agent, a bored, middle-aged woman in a checked housedress, her hair in curlers set beneath a tightly tied do-rag, looked up from what appeared to be an illustrated soap opera guide and registered our presence with a sleepy half-smile.

“Well, hello there,” she said, amused at our dispositions. She looked us up and down and peered off to the side at the luggage. “You guys look like you have had quite a long trip there.

247 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Am I right?”

I raised my eyebrows over my baggy eyes and nodded slowly.

“Oh-h-h-h yes,” I said. “You have no idea.”

She let out a blank little chuckle without any real conviction.

“Hah,” she snorted wryly. “You’d be surprised.”

A short woman, she stood up from behind her check-in desk and took the measure of our belongings.

“Is it just the two of you?”

“Yes,” Dario replied. “Same room, please.”

“Is that all of your belongings?”

“Yeah,” I replied.

The lady sat back down. I eyed her a little closely. Although her face was lined, marked with the challenges of life and time and its slow passage, I could see that she was an extremely attractive woman in her youth—she had large, beautiful, liquid eyes. Sadly, the light had almost gone completely out of them via the long stretch of a humdrum existence and the boredom of an unfulfilling routine . . . a fate I desperately sought to avoid via the very act of my checking in with her here in this hotel.

“Single or double room?”

“Single,” both Dario and I replied simultaneously.

She flicked her heavy lidded eyes up onto the both of us, amused at our unison pronouncement, and smiled faintly without really adjusting the contours of her face.

“Saving money, eh?” she asked conspiratorially, but sympathetically. Finally, she nodded over at Dario in the general vicinity of his hands, hanging limply at his sides.

248 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “Okay,” she said. “Let me see your papers, please.”

The two of us pulled out all of our identification and held them up. The clerk looked at us while chewing on her pen.

She hung there and searched both our faces, then spoke again.

“Why don’t you let me copy the names into the register from them?” she asked. She tipped her head sideways. “The Federales like to make a hard time for some of the people who put up here. Nogales can be, you know,”—she winked—“Funny. A lot of things going on here. But you two,” she nodded, her bottom lip pouting out approvingly as she looked us up and down as though trying out two athletes. “You two look like nice boys. The policia have been a big pain in the neck lately. But I will say you boys are okay—they will leave you alone in here.”

We handed over our identification. She laid the two documents out before her and copied the names out into the register. As she did so, I felt myself, as I watched her, sinking into her hypothetical past history, going through this check-in routine over and over again, trying to imagine her life—observing the tiny stone on her wedding ring, trying to envision the details of her life with her husband, perhaps her children, imagining what kind of family she had . . . then imagining all the way back to her youth as a teenaged beauty, full of dreams and plans, boiling with the fire of youthful energy. Then, watching all of that dissolve and disappear as time moved quickly forward—as it does for all of us, ultimately—to find her sitting here as a yawning front desk agent in a seedy hotel in a raucous border down.

I still remember the little name-clip she wore on her shirt—Matilde.

As she finished registering us in the little notebook that contained the names of all of her recent registrants, and as she reached out to hand back to the both of us our respective pieces of identification, she must have sensed the probing depth of my gaze. She met my gaze and almost

249 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street rocked ever so slightly back with a physical effect as she observed me observing her. Dario took his papers obliviously as I quietly tweezed mine from her fingers—now I could see that Matilde was studying me as closely as I had just been studying her. Holding my gaze, and without looking down, she spun the notebook below her one hundred and eighty degrees and pushed it forward across the desk.

“Sign,” she said, peering over to Dario and then back to me. She flipped her pen outward.

Dario leaned over and took the pen and signed the register. She looked down at him then back up at me, her eyes lighting up a bit with a light smile. As she handed us our keys, after we gave her the proper down payment for the room, and as we headed—bags in hand—out the front door to our room, we exchanged another vaguely empathetic look and smile. She followed me with her eyes as I walked with Dario out of the front door.

Moments like these will happen from time to time in life, where something mutual, something almost unidentifiable, but very important, is identified in another person in a flash. You may never see that person again in your entire life, but you’re likely to remember them always and they often reaffirm you on your path in life. Strangely, I will always remember Matilde and she did—in a way that I can’t fully explain—affirm me on my mission, there on that exhausted late afternoon in Nogales, Mexico.

Dario and I loped into our hotel room and we both immediately dropped our bags and conked out on opposite sides of the bed.

The cramped sleeping quarters mattered to me not one iota. I at last got some badly needed rest, free of bumping and engine noise, although it was a sleep laced with a strange phantasmagoria of lilting dreams filled with bus stations, desert roadside stops and everwatching, unsympathetic locals. Clearly, the road trip had stamped its impression very firmly on

250 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street my subconscious mind.

I woke up after a mere two hours sleep—at first I didn’t have the slightest clue where I was as the sky had darkened outside when I awoke and I had barely registered the look and feel of my room before flopping out to sleep. I sat up with a lurch, at first thinking I was on the bus and that we had been pulled over to the side of the road in the dark of the night. I relaxed as I realized there were no police, drug sniffing dogs, highway patrols, or the like.

I thought I would require more sleep than this, but—once awake—the thought simply seemed impossible. My mind was racing with the possibilities of my presence in the town and these possibilities ignited my sense of mission.

I cleared the cobwebs and swept away the rest of the cramps from the long bus ride by jumping into the shower. By the time I had half dried myself off, Dario was knocking on the door—he had woken up, filled with energy and longed for a refreshing shower himself.

We changed clothes and went to a local supermarket to buy “normal” food. I couldn’t eat anymore tacos or any spicy food for that matter. I bought sliced bread, ham and cheese and a 2liter bottle of coke. I went back to the motel to watch MTV videos and eat sandwiches.

“What’s your next move?” I asked Dario, as I was chewing on my ham sandwich.

“I need to find a coyote, I am not sure how, where to cross the border and—more importantly—what to do after you cross.”

“I know, me too,” I said. I grew amusedly philosophical for a moment. “You know, it’s funny.

On one hand, this is really damned exciting. I have been looking forward to making this move for—wow, God knows how long. I feel like my whole life has been leading up to this. But,” I went on, flicking a piece of dry crust into a small waste bin by the room’s end-table. “I have a very insecure feeling. I know this town is completely loco. I mean, I’m sure you’ve heard all of

251 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street the same stories. Crazy things happening all over the place here—gangsters, shysters, killers, drug pushers, kidnappers, my God. Who’s to say they’re not just going to take our money and dump our bodies into a ditch or something? How the heck are we going to guarantee we wind up finding the real deal? We both know this town is filled with so many phonies and hustlers taking advantage of people.”

Dario was nodding all along.

“It is a very funny feeling that I have inside of me,” he said. “On one hand I am so happy to be here and to be getting on with this business to make a new opportunity for myself. There is nothing else I want to do right now.” Then he smiled distantly and looked down at the glass of pop in his hand. “But on the other hand, I’d almost rather be anywhere else but doing this right now. I wish I could see into the future, or had a lie detector—so I could know who is going to tell us the truth out there and who is full of baloney.”

I nodded.

“I feel the same as you. I could never turn and walk away from this. But I sort of wish this were over and I was on the other side of the border, safe and sound. I wish it were next week or something, with me in New York.” I shrugged. “Oh well, all we can do is trust our instincts.

Most of these Mexicans don’t have anything on a lot of the street guys in Medellin that I have had to deal with all my life.”

Dario nodded wistfully, then reached down into the collar of his shirt and pulled out a chain with a small silver icon on it.

“This is what I know has been helping me,” he said. He brought the tiny figure up to his lips and kissed it reverently, then made the sign of the cross and placed it faithfully back inside of his shirt and over his heart. He patted his sternum. “Virgin Mary. She protects me everywhere I am;

252 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street you should say a prayer to her.”

I nodded respectfully. We sat there for a few more minutes, airing our sense of anxiety, each finding solace in the other’s open admission of insecurity. Somehow talking it out lessened the feeling of fear and sharpened our awareness for the tough tactics of self-preservation and bargaining that we both knew would be needed the second we stepped outside of that hotel room door and out into the town.

Talked out, and fueled by the sugar and calories of our little meal, we both realized the time for procrastination was over.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

Dario smiled and hit me with an Americanism—spoken in bad English—that caught me by surprise.

“Ready for Freddy,” he said.

I laughed and put the balance of our food and drink supplies into the little refrigerator.

“Okay man,” I said. I spoke back to him in an English line that I had picked up from watching American action films—“Let’s do this.”

“Yup, same here man. Let’s go and walk around and figure out what do to next.”

We got dressed and went outside; we looked around and didn’t know what to do. Where do you go to find a coyote? Who do you ask? We had no idea what we were doing and were obviously in way over our heads, but this was, for sure, the right place to be.

253 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter Thirty

Dario and I left the hotel and finally made our way into a very busy, crowded area of Nogales, the area that our instincts told us that the widest variety of ‘goods and services’ would likely be available. All manner of humanity was on display here—at least when it came to the middle and underclass. Whatever your need, no matter how strange or off color it might seem in another region of town, it seemed in this part of the city there would be somebody ready to fulfill that desire without batting an eyelash. What was taboo elsewhere was just another boring routine here in rundown, urban Nogales.

What the city seemed to be teeming with the most was the species of hustler known as the ‘steerer’ or ‘middler,’ looking to make a few pennies by putting buyer and seller together.

As we angled around the shops and byways of Nogales, this specimen of hawker approached us nonstop—at both ends of the criminal spectrum, it seems, human radar operates at its most effective. Non-criminals can spot full-time criminals with ease and full-time criminals can

254 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street instantly spot alien dabblers in the illicit, souls like Dario and I, unsure of where to go to get their needs fulfilled.

Everywhere we walked we had to bat these hustlers off of us like flies—they instantly sensed our uncertainty and our awkward manner of pretending to not be interested in anything at all while trying to tune in secretively to the rhythm of the streets. We obviously gave off a huge amount of radar waves that caused blips on the screens of hustlers in every shadowy corner and they sent all manner of middler to importune us and smoke out what it was we were looking for.

Dario and I simply played it cool for a while. The evening was young and rushing into anything would probably get us into trouble. We simply tried our best to ignore the ongoing parade of youngsters who timed their approach as we rounded every corner, turned down every alley, or stopped by any shop window.

For a time, the two of us drifted a bit through a few clothing outlets. Dario had a special affection for blue jeans and occupied himself with trying to find a good deal for later on. For my part, I window shopped the endless array of cowboy boots—I always liked cowboy boots—and entertained myself with the great variety on display. . . A result of the popular, heroic image of the Mexican cowboy.

Several times before finally making our deal with a local coyote crew, Dario and I came close to opening our mouths and confessing what it was we were there for. Every here and there a serious species of hustler—in that he didn’t immediately radiate “rip-off artist”—would approach us very casually and suggest that we might need “directions” to the USA. But we just weren’t ready in the pit of our stomachs yet. The timing and the middler just didn’t feel right.

Finally, we decided that the time for action had come. We had spent a good couple of hours wandering around and we were afraid that our prudence was slipping into carelessness—we were

255 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street starting to retrace our own steps and were risking becoming familiar faces by looping around the same shabby streets.

Finally, the moment arrived. A teenaged boy, a little younger than us, wearing a pair of sneakers and not as shabby as some of the street urchins who nagged us at every turn, sidled up to us at a shoe store window and warned us.

“Listen to me, fellas,” he said. “I can tell you ain’t really shopping. And believe me I know you ain’t from here. And if I can tell that, believe me when I say la policia can tell that too.” He took out a cigarette and lit it casually. “I swear on my mother you can trust me. What are you looking for? Over the border? Manteca? Perico? Chiquitas? Speak to me and don’t even bother saying you’re shopping for Levi’s. Then I’m gonna wonder if you’re working for the Federales…”

I looked at Dario. He looked down cautiously and shrugged his shoulders.

Suddenly it was up to me. . . but no words came.

“Five seconds,” he said. “Then you can take your chances with the bullshit and the riff raff.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. Something about the guy got to me. His voice. His caution. A sense that he had something for real on offer that he couldn’t keep putting out there in the open for a couple of wishy washy amateurs. “I might be willing to talk.”

“What do you need? Trust me,” he said, “I’m straight up and I work with good people. What do you need?”

Dario spoke up, not wanting to sit entirely on the sidelines.

“We might be looking for uh,” he paused. “Directions to the USA.” The guy nodded.

“Now you’re talking. That’s not a problem at all,” the guy said, happily. “If you have the

256 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street bread we can get you across whenever you want. It’s easy—believe me, it’s very easy. I’m going to put you in touch with somebody.”

Simple as that.

“Okay, we’re willing to talk,” I said at last. “See that taco joint over there—Lena’s? We’ll go sit down over there.” I pointed across the street and down the block a bit to a small luncheonette tucked into a recessed part of the block.

“Okay—give us ten or fifteen minutes. We’ll meet you there.”

The kid got up and left running. We went across the street and ordered some food; we sat there and looked at all the people passing by. Nogales is a small town with a lot of traffic; if you sat there for a while you could see people from all walks of life. It became an easy game to spot the foreigners; they were usually better dressed than the locals. To entertain ourselves, we played a game of trying to figure out where each person was from and what they were doing in Nogales.

“How about that one?” I asked Dario, while pointing at a tall, blond man.

“Hmmm, maybe from L.A. and probably looking for cocaine and Mexican hookers.”

We both laughed as the tall guy walked by.

After a couple of hours, the kid came back with a tall, skinny man wearing cowboy boots, jeans and a long sleeve shirt.

“You guys need a coyote?” was the first thing out of his mouth. Dario looked at me and I could tell he was trying to tell me not to say yes, I could see it in his eyes.

“No, we are just visiting Mexico; if we wanted to go to the US we would’ve asked for a US visa,” was the only thing I could think of when I said it.

“Why are you wasting my time?” he exclaimed, hitting the young boy over the head.

257 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “I swear, they told me they were looking for a coyote,” he said while rubbing his head.

“So what is it? Are you or are you not looking for my services?” he said, directing his attention to me.

“Relax, we are just curious. Neither one of us has ever been to the US, we are so close it seems like a cool adventure but we don’t want to get in trouble with the law, we are legally in this country and we want to keep it that way.”

He looked at me, looked at the boy and started laughing out loud. “Trouble with the law?

What law?” He kept laughing. “Look,” he continued, “Nobody gives a shit that you are here or that you want to cross the border. Most people who come to Nogales come here from the US to buy illegal drugs, guns, hookers and alcohol if you are underage. Guys like you only come here for one thing and that is to cross the border and find a life in the US, no shame in that.”

I made a gesture and invited him to sit down.

“Do you want something to drink, a cerveza maybe?” He nodded and we got him a beer.

As we sat there, our new friend, Grajales, went on explaining the whole process of what we needed to do and how he could not only get us across the border, but send us on our way to our final destinations. After a couple of cervezas, we felt more comfortable and started discussing money and logistics. We agreed on a price and he went on giving us specific instructions. He asked us to leave a note to the person at the front desk of the motel saying we needed a wake up call at 7 am and a taxi that would take us south.

“Make sure you do this, it will help you be up early for us to meet and the taxi is a way to throw off the federales in case they come looking for immigrants,” he said.

He told us to go through our baggage and remove anything at all that could tie us back to Colombia.

258 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “Take all your documents, including passports, and put them in an envelope. Give me the addresses of where you are going and I’ll make sure those papers are sent there.”

I was a bit hesitant and asked if we could go the post office with him to make sure this was done. He smiled and agreed.

“You don’t trust anyone; I can understand that.” He told us to remove any labels in our clothing that would say “Made in Colombia” and to throw away any religious items, books, magazines or anything at all that would prove we were from Colombia.

“To the gringos, is hard to tell where you are from. Here in Mexico, everyone knows you are not from around here and can easily guess your country of origin based on your accent. But gringos can’t tell,” he continued explaining his plan.

“If you get caught and deported to Colombia, chances are you are never going to make it back to Mexico, on the other hand, if a gringo catches you and sends you back to Mexico, I will make sure to help you cross again.” We nodded as he kept talking and decided the next morning was the time to do this.

“It’s been really quiet with la migra lately, we need to act now,” he explained.

He wrote down the name of the motel and said he would call in the morning before he came to pick us up.

“Make sure you follow my instructions,” he said before leaving.

That night, we went back to the motel to watch movies, eat more sandwiches and fantasize about living in the US. We spend a couple of hours doing everything Grajales had asked us to do and talked about our future plans. Almost there, I kept thinking while lying in my bed.

The next morning, the phone rang at around 7 am. I quickly picked up, “Hello, who is this?”

259 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “It’s Grajales, are you ready?” said the voice on the phone.

“I guess we are as ready as we can be.”

“Did you do what I told you yesterday?”

We both had gone through all our belongings and had thrown away a couple of magazines, old ID cards and everything that said Colombia in one way or another. We had also packed our passports, documents and other important papers and had them ready to be mailed as he had requested.

He came by in the car and picked us up; we drove for about 30 minutes and went inside the post office and mailed the packages to the US. We got back in the car and drove into a really ugly side of town. I could feel my heart accelerating quickly and felt as if it was going to explode. He turned around a corner and parked the car.

“Where’s my money?” he said in a firm tone of voice.

“You will get it on the other side; I can’t give you the money now so you can leave us here. That’s NOT going to happen.” I raised my voice.

I could see he was really annoyed but I meant it. What was stopping this stranger from taking our cash and leaving us there, without any documents?

“Ok, I understand this is scary. It’s not how I do business, but I like you guys. Here’s how this is going to go down; I am going to have someone cross you to the other side, you will wait for me on the other side and I’ll pick you up in the car.”

“What about our clothes, suitcases and everything else?” I asked.

“You can’t cross the border running with suitcases, dumbass.” He said as he laughed. “I will carry everything in the car and claim it is mine, this is why I asked you to give me your documents.”

260 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street I wasn’t too happy with this plan, but at least I figured we still had the money and he would need to come and pick us up.

He told us to get out of the car. We walked together for a couple of blocks and stopped in a tiny street. There were a couple of kids hanging out there.

“Boy, come here!” he yelled at one of the kids.

The boy approached the car; he was about 13 or 14 years old.

“Do you want to make some quick cash?” he asked the kid.

The kid nodded and put his hand out.

“What do I have to do?”

“Take these guys to ‘El Hueco’ and show them how to get across to the other side.” He took a couple of bills and gave them to the kid.

“I see you both on the other side!” he yelled out of the window as he drove away.

We followed the kid through the small streets until we got there. “El Hueco,” just as it sounds, was nothing more than a big hole in the tall metal fence that separates the US from Mexico.

The kid pointed to it and said: “Ok, now you have to go running through the hole and to the other side.” I looked at him as if this was a joke. Dario looked at me and we didn’t know what to do.

“That’s it. Let’s just run and get to the other side; I am sure Grajales will pick us up on the other side,” said Dario and just like that he was gone.

I took a deep breath and started running. I jumped on the top of the sidewalk and ran across the hole. Once I did that, I realized there was nothing on the other side; an empty space with guards looking from the main border where the cars were crossing. A couple of hundred

261 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street feet separated us from these guards and they were obviously aware of us crossing. I kept running and did not want to look back. All this time, all I could think was: What if they shoot at us?

I ran the whole way and all I could see in front of me was a McDonald’s. I ran as fast as I could and went inside the McDonald’s. Less than a minute later, Dario came in and we sat down. We didn’t know what to do; we just sat there, breathing heavy, as people kept looking at us.

I got up and ordered what I could read from their breakfast menu; we sat there and pretended nothing had just happened. A couple of minutes later, a border patrol came in and a couple of officers walked into the McDonald’s.

One of them came over to us and asked me, “Did you see anyone running over here?”

I looked up and, trying my best not to sound really foreign, I replied, “No, I did not see nobody running,” He then asked me, “Is he with you?” pointing at Dario.

“Yes sir. We came here together.” I kept looking at him, trying not to miss a word he said. So far so good, my little English was coming in handy.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“We are from Mexico, sir, Nogales.” He looked around and finally left. I felt my heart going back into my chest after this exchange. We sat there for at least 30 minutes not knowing what to do. After a while, I figured Grajales had left us there. I wanted to cry but I knew that wouldn’t help us, if anything, it would probably get us in trouble. There were a lot of strange looking people there and I did not want to look scared. I had heard all the stories about criminals hanging out on the border waiting for American tourists or people with money trying to cross the border, I was clearly part of the latter group and it seemed obvious to me.

262 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street After a couple of hours that went by extremely slowly, I finally had the courage to go outside and look for Grajales. As I walked by, a dark skinned, skinny, longhaired man came close and grabbed my hand.

“Nice watch, man, why don’t you take it off and we can avoid a big scene,” he said in a firm voice while holding my hand.

My mind was racing and I thought my heart was about to jump out of my chest. I lifted my head and looked him right in the eye.

“Parce, you don’t know you are messing with, you better let go of me, right now.” I tried my best to give him the worst look I could manage.

“Hey, man, are you deaf? I said let me go. You don’t know much about Colombians, do you?” I kept pushing my agenda and put on my best Colombian accent.

“Sorry, man, I didn’t realize you were here doing business, I thought you were one of those ‘mojados’ looking to cross the border.”

“No worries, just be careful. You don’t want to end up with a Colombian necktie.”

He finally let me go and I immediately looked at Dario, I could see he was more afraid than I was.

“That was freaking awesome, man,” Dario kept telling me as we walked away.

“What do we do now?” was my only reply.

263 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Chapter Thirty One

After walking gourd for a solid 30 minutes on US soil and not finding anything interesting other than a McDonald’s, a couple of bars, and two small cafeterias, we made our way near the main road by the border, this is where all the cars cross to the US. I figured Grajales would have to come this way. We sat there for a while and, finally, he showed up.

“Get in the car!” he yelled, stopping right next to us.

We quickly jumped in the car and he got on the highway. As we drove, I could not stop thinking how my life was going to change; a new country, new possibilities. I had dreamed of living in America since I was a kid and here I was, making my way into this new land. Not the way I had imagined, but nevertheless this was finally happening.

As we drove north from Tucson to Phoenix in his car, he kept making hand signals towards drivers coming the other way and they did the same.

“What are you doing?” I inquired.

264 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “I am making sure there are no bears ahead of us and I am letting them know we haven’t seen any bears on the way here, either,” was his only response.

Bears, what is he taking about? was the only thing I could think of.

“Bears, there are no bears in Arizona, are there?” I was truly puzzled.

“Ha ha, not real bears, man, immigration officers, ‘la migra’ get it?” He kept laughing at me.

I quickly learned that these coyotes transport illegal immigrants and give each other signals to make sure there are no “migra” officers on the road making surprise stops.

We drove for almost two hours until we finally got to Phoenix. I was tired, completely worn out from all the stress and adrenaline and also from the heat, I had never experienced 100 degrees before. After all, Medellin is normally at around 70 to 75 degrees all year round. We made a stop at a local motel and he signaled for us to stay in the car.

“I am going to get us a room; stay in the car.” Dario and I sat there and waited patiently.

Grajales showed a couple of minutes later and opened the trunk of his car. “Get all your stuff and follow me.”

We took our belongings and went to the second level with him. He opened the door and told us we were to stay there. “I need to make a couple of calls and make sure the coast is clear.

Get comfortable and watch TV, but whatever you do, DO NOT open the door or go outside.”

He was about to leave and then quickly turned around. “Before I leave, where’s my money?”

Dario and I looked at each other and remembered that this was the deal. We reached into our socks and pulled out all the US dollars we were carrying. We counted the money and paid him; we figured, We are already in the US. What’s the worst that can happen now? He counted the

265 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street money and smiled. “Don’t worry, tomorrow we’ll get up early and I’ll make sure to send you both to your destinations, welcome to America.”

After spending what seemed like an eternity in that room, talking about all the plans we had and going through every single channel in the TV, the sun began to go down and it was getting dark. I was so hungry; I could eat an entire cow.

“Let’s go and get some food. It’s like 7pm and we haven’t had anything to eat since that McDonald’s breakfast,” I insisted.

“No parce, Grajales said we needed to wait for him and told us not to leave the room.”

I got up, put my shoes on and went outside. I walked around the parking lot and there was nothing there. I could see a small place to eat across the highway but wasn’t sure how to cross to the other side. “All you can eat” their sign read. Hmmm, I wondered how that worked—you can eat everything, but how do they know how much to charge you? I kept thinking. As I was walking around the parking lot, I heard someone yelling.

“Hey, what do you think you are doing?” was all I heard. I looked back and it was Grajales. He came by and grabbed me by the arm. “Let’s go inside.”

We walked inside the room and he kept yelling at me. “Didn’t I tell you not to go outside?” he said loudly as he put his face right in front of mine.

“Ok, relax, man. Nothing happened, we were just hungry and wanted to find something to eat,” I said as I walked away.

“Let me make something clear to you two. You are both illegally in this country, if they find you without any papers, you WILL get deported. You understand?” We both nodded. “Get dressed; I am taking you to eat.”

266 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street We got up, got dressed and got in his car. I sat in the front with Grajales.

“What are you guys in the mood for; it’s on me this time. After all, you are my first customers of the month.”

I looked at him in the eye and the words just came out of my mouth.

“All you can eat. That’s what we want.” I looked at Dario. He nodded and agreed, not knowing what I was referring to.

We made our way to the all-you-can-eat buffet and ate like we had never eaten before. I still remember the feeling of being so full. The idea of filling your plates to the fullest and then going back for more seemed ridiculous for someone who had learned to go days without having a solid meal and was used to surviving on a piece of bread and water.

“Can you imagine opening one of these places in Medellin?” I asked at the table.

“Or in Cali,” added Dario.

“It won’t work, these types of places do not work in a place like Colombia,” said Grajales, quickly.

I thought about it for a minute and laughed thinking about the idea. I imagined old ladies coming in with plastic bags in their purses and filling them all the way to the top, kids coming in and hiding food in their pockets, inside their pants in plastic bags and finding many more creative ways to take as much as they could. Grajales was right; a business like this would be bankrupt in less than a month.

After our meal, we went back to the motel and discussed the plan for the next morning.

“I need you both to get plenty of sleep tonight, tomorrow is going to be a long day for both. I am going to get up early and make arrangements to get your airline tickets, then I’ll come by and

267 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street pick you up and send you on a shuttle to the airport. After that, you are on your own.” After that, he left.

I didn’t sleep that night at all, I tried to go to sleep and kept thinking about things going wrong and then I would try to imagine what my life would be like living in New York. I kept tossing and turning all night long, finally I fell asleep. I think I managed to get a solid 2 hours.

The morning came and we woke up early as we had been told. I got up at 7am, showered and got dressed. I wore my jeans, t-shirt and a baseball hat, trying to look no different from the American teenager. Dario was dressed in slacks and a white long sleeve shirt; he was older than me and looked the part. We packed and waited for Grajales to show up. 9am came and nothing. I was beginning to worry, wondering what had happened. Maybe something went wrong—maybe he changed his mind and went back to Mexico. By the time it was 11am, I was losing my head; I was really stressed out and didn’t know what to do. I went outside and looked for a payphone. I dialed the operator and said in my broken English that I needed to make a collect call. I gave the operator the number, which I had memorized. The phone rang on the other end.

“Hello?” a voice said on the line.

“Dad, it’s me,” I quickly said.

“Mr. Holguin, I have your son, Eder Holguin, on the line, this is a collect call. Do you accept the charges?” the operator said.

“Yes,” replied my dad. “Eder, where are you? Are you at the airport?” he asked.

“Dad, I am in Phoenix. Grajales left us in the motel and hasn’t returned since last night. I don’t know what to do.”

“Who’s Grajales?” he asked, puzzled.

268 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street “The coyote we hired to get us here.”

“What did he tell you to do?”

“He said to stay in the room and wait for him, not to go outside.”

“Do what he said then,” there was a brief pause, “if he doesn’t come back in a couple of hours, call me back and we will figure out what to do.”

I went back to the room and waited with Dario, I was hungry, upset and stressed out. At around 2pm he finally showed up, with a woman.

“Hey guys, sorry I’m late,” was the first thing that came out of his mouth.

“Where the hell have you been, man? I thought you had left us here.”

“I had to go back and pick up one more traveler.” He pointed at the woman who was just sitting there, looking at us. “This is Maria; she’s going to be traveling with you to New York.”

Maria came over and shook my hand. I shook her hand out of respect. I knew it wasn’t her fault, but I was truly angry.

“Come with me, I have something for you,” Grajales said while pointing at me. We went to the car and there were some paper bags. “Grab those and bring them to the room.” We went upstairs and I opened the bags. There was chicken, rice, beans, fried plantains and more. “Let’s have a nice late lunch together before we say goodbye,” Grajales said, as he opened all the food containers.

Dario quickly jumped and grabbed a paper plate. He filled the plate with everything he could and started eating like a man who has just discovered food for the first time.

We sat down and ate while discussing our plan. We were taking a shuttle to the airport and Grajales had already booked our flights. He handed each of us the tickets and gave us

269 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street receipts for the purchase, as we had to pay him back. I went to the bathroom and pulled the money from my secret ATM—my socks. I counted the money and realized that, after paying Grajales for the ticket and the shuttle, I only had $28 US dollars left. Oh well, I am sure I will start working right away when I get to NY. After all, my dad is not going to let me sit around and do nothing.

We settled all the paperwork and money matters and packed our stuff. We waited outside for about 20 minutes for the shuttle. When the shuttle arrived, we said goodbye to Grajales.

“Bye, Parce! Thank you for everything, I have heard a lot of stories about coyotes and I am glad we met you, you were a good guide sent to us.” I gave him a quick hug and got into the van.

Dario said his goodbyes and Maria did as well. We all got into the van and showed the driver our boarding passes.

The drive to the airport was a short one. We arrived at the airport and started looking around. We looked at our boarding passes and tried to figure out how to find our gates. Maria and I were departing at 7:30 pm while Dario was leaving much later than that, from a different gate, to Miami. We walked around the airport for a bit looking at all the stores and waited for our flight. I found a Pac-man video game and played for a while, I guess just trying to calm my nerves, since this was the only familiar thing in the whole place. After playing for a while, I grabbed a sandwich and a coke and sat there, just killing time, with a million thoughts running through my mind.

After a while I decided to call my dad again and tell him we were leaving at 7:30pm and would be

arriving

at

JFK

at

around

midnight.

“I won’t be at the airport, I have to work the night shift at the hotel tonight but I will make sure someone will be there to pick you up. I will ask your cousins, Mario or Carlos, to be

270 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street there,” were his only words.

I said goodbye to Dario and we hugged. I gave him my dad’s phone number in New York and told him to please make sure we stayed in touch. He promised to do so and we said our final goodbyes. Maria and I boarded the plane and left. I closed my eyes and finally slept like a baby.

I knew in my heart that things would be different from now on. I had found my way and it was up to me to make a better life for myself.

I slept like a stone through almost the entirety of the hours-long flight—a night-time arrival flight, in the general time vicinity of a red-eye. I awoke with a start to the total darkness of the plane, as the captain’s voice came over the Boeing 737’s PA system, announcing that we were in the process of descending to our final approach towards JFK International Airport in the NYC borough of Queens. He announced the local time and temperature so we could set our watches and get ready for the dramatic change in climate.

Just like in the hotel in Nogales after a deep nap, I, at first, hadn’t the slightest clue where I was—at first I panicked, thinking that I was still in the motel waiting for Grajales and that he hadn’t shown, or, worse, that I had overslept through his visit and missed my flight entirely.

Then I remembered where I was and relaxed. I had lately spent so much time on the road, had for so long gone without a permanent residence, that the feeling of waking up in my own bed, in my own room, in my own home was turning into a far-off memory.

As the plane descended through the cloud-cover at around five or six thousand feet towards its final approach to the runway, the world below came at last into view, dazzling me with the intensity of its glittering lights. We curved around through New York Harbor, passed Manhattan and over Brooklyn to finally line up with the airport in Queens. I could see the lights of the island of Manhattan, with all of its incredible skyscrapers—Empire State Building, World Trade

271 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street Center, Chrysler Building—and traffic arteries clogged with headlights even at this late hour. No other city in the world can really prepare you for the initial impact of the city of New York. It seemed, even in that obscure late night hour and from almost a mile in the air, a living, breathing thing, pumping out light, energy and movement with a density I’d never witnessed before. The force of the visual impact woke me the rest of the way up.

The moment of my arrival had just about come!

A great wave of joy and serenity passed through me as the reality of the sight sunk in. All the struggling, all the childhood dreaming, all the silent planning and hopes; all the aches, pain and sweating through Mexico, all the nervous conspiring with border hustlers, all the endless worry—all of it had finally and definitively added up to success. I was truly, actually, finally arriving in the land of my dreams. I was here—and nothing could take that away from me now.

Mission accomplished!

I arrived at JFK at around midnight. It was a cold February evening and I had never experienced temperatures like this before. I went from 100 degrees to 18 degrees in a couple of hours. As I walked towards the gate outside, I could see my uncle Wilson standing there. I hadn’t seen my uncle for more than 5 years. My dad had told me he moved to NY a couple of years ago but I hadn’t had any contact with him since I left to live in the streets. As I rounded the corner and came out of the gate from my flight, I saw him standing there, smiling at me. We recognized each other instantly. He had a big coat in his hands and was waiting faithfully for me.

“Pelao, how are you? How was your trip?” I had forgotten he always called me ‘Pelao,’ a nickname he had for me since I didn’t have a lot of hair when I was little.

“I am ok, flight was good. Man, it is cold,” was the only thing I could say, I was choked

272 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street up with emotion. We hugged and he handed me that heavy coat he was holding.

“You’re going to need this.”

“I think I am fine. It’s a bit cold but I should be ok.” I said, pretending it wasn’t a big deal.

“That’s because you are inside the airport, once we go outside, you’ll see how cold it really is.”

He was right. As soon as we stepped outside, the force of the cold air hit me like a brick wall and my spent, sleep-deprived and undernourished system reeled from the impact. I put on that heavy coat and I was still shaking like a leaf when we went to try and hail a taxi.

Huddled inside his oversized coat, I hung there, shivering, while my Uncle Wilson hailed a cab for the two of us. Meanwhile I marveled at the bustling, overflowing quality of the airport, even at this time of the night.

Another thing caught my attention immediately: the huge variety of souls on display there in that airport, even at that time of the night. Every color, every nationality, every class, every culture one could think of were massed in the various corners of the airport. Orientals, Arabs, Latinos, Russian accents, British accents, all manner of upper and lower class white and black Americans and Europeans, all were hustling to retrieve their bags, tickets, or taxis in a crazy crisscross of human traffic as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

My uncle finally secured a cab for us, and we jumped in, simply tossing my little bag of belongings on the seat between us. As we wound our way through the highway circuits of Queens towards the East River and Manhattan, I marveled at the bridges and the tall skyscrapers.

Seeing the whole scene from up at cloud level was one thing—that alone was enough to blow a newcomer’s mind. Seeing it at ground level and experiencing the proportional scale of it all was

273 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street another thing entirely. I was virtually speechless and hardly could pay attention to the small talk about my journey that my uncle and I engaged in during the ride. I was very familiar with NYC’s skyline but only in the movies; experiencing this up close and in person was a whole different story altogether.

After about a half-hour’s drive of some of the most unforgettable sightseeing of my entire life, the cab dropped us in the Upper West Side of Manhattan where my uncle Wilson lived. We went upstairs to his apartment and dropped off my luggage. There I met with my cousin Mario and his wife, my aunt Aura, and some friends of their whole group. It was a little gathering, designed to make me feel welcome—it signaled my absorption into a family unit. It said to me, “You will not be alone. We are here with you. We are your blood. You are one of us.”

The effect of this extremely warm welcome was profoundly moving to me. My happiness level continued to increase as I settled into the gathering and became acquainted with new faces and reacquainted with those who I knew from Colombia. The warmth within that apartment was genuine and very reassuring; they peppered me with questions about my trip, going wide-eyed over some of the details of the whole adventure. As their sympathy and hospitality sunk in, little by little, I finally felt a warmth in my heart and soul that I hadn’t felt in a good while: it took a wrenching trip away from my homeland, and it required dodging obstacles and danger in spades, but I had, I realized, found a real family again. This feeling of belonging to a sympathetic family group, which had eluded me for years in Colombia, had returned to my life, grounding me and helping secure my place in this new world of mine. It was a fantastic feeling that could only grow as time went on.

“Are you hungry?” my uncle asked, looking at me, wanting to christen the evening of my

274 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street arrival with a little trip to a restaurant.

“Yes, of course,” I said, smiling. “I am always hungry.”

Wilson turned to the rest of the group “Shall we all go to eat?”

“Yes!” they all replied in unison.

Since it was up to me to decide, they asked what I wanted to eat and my reply was simply: Pizza. I always wanted to try the real, American pizza and this was my chance.

We had a fantastic time and spent quite a night catching up. We all ate to the bursting point and they toasted my arrival in the States with wishes for happiness, love and prosperity. In between the merry-making, I had a chance to practice my English with Mario’s wife who didn’t speak much Spanish.

Finally, as the night crept into the wee hours of the morning, my uncle at last paid the check, all of us stuffed, full and glowing with good cheer and empathy for one another. One by one, out on the street in front of pizzeria, the various members of the group outside of Uncle Wilson’s family unit peeled off to say goodbye, until, at last—my face smeared from the lipstick of goodbye kisses—I found a comfortable couch back in his apartment and flopped out lengthwise.

Drowsy from a full stomach, a dizzy head and from the endless lack of a full night’s sleep, I proceeded to fall into the most restful, deep sleep.

As the morning began to pinken the light coming through the blinds, and while I was knocked completely out in that deepest of sleeps, I felt my body being shaken. The sensation mixed with my sleep and I dreamed that we were hitting turbulence on an airplane flight. My body, however, continued shaking—something was shaking me gently, softly, but firmly enough until my eyes

275 Holguin opened.

Dreaming Of Hope Street

“Wake up … wake up,” a voice was saying to me.

“Mphh,” I muttered, unintelligibly. “Hunh … what?” I rolled my head to the side to face the direction of the light. The shaking turned into a soft poking at my ribs, which tickled ever so slightly. I blinked rapidly, squinting in the increasing light of the room.

“Open your eyes, son,” the same voice repeated, a voice which became more familiar as I became more lucid.

It was my father. He had come over to Uncle Wilson’s apartment at the end of his overnight shift at a Brooklyn hotel. He was the organizing force behind all that went on since I’d arrived: the presence of my uncle at the airport, the spreading of the word among my relatives who greeted me and took me out to eat and the assurance of a place for me to rest my head until he was free from work and could come get me.

I faced him squarely in the same room, person to person, for the first time in a good number of years. I had not seen him since I was a small, meek child of ten. So much time and experience had passed since then—so much adventure, so much excitement and disappointment, so much ambition, love, danger, so much toil and sweat; so much hunger, so much sorrow, so much pain … much violence, much struggle, much longing.

Much can change between two souls who haven’t seen one another in such a long period of time. Life, work, love, the passage of time, grief, travel, all the pitfalls and all the triumphs—so much of this basic stuff-of-life had passed out of the sight and mind of one another.

And yet—much remains the same. Much of my father’s essential decency, his consistency, his belief in discipline had been implanted in me from the start, thus there was so much within the two of us that was mutual and instantly familiar, despite our differences and the time and

276 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street distance separating us over the years. As much as I had to get to know him all over again in certain ways, so did I, at the same time, instantly know him and feel him as my father.

I leapt right up off of the couch and threw my arms around him. He laughed and hummed an affectionate, reassuring tone while rocking me to and fro, patting me on the back and mussing my hair a bit with his hands. It was an enormously complicated feeling—one that is extremely difficult to put into words, even if I had a thousand pages and all the time in the world. But there was one thing about which there was no doubt whatsoever—I was very very happy to be there with him.

“Thank you so much for everything,” I said. There was simply no way I would have made it out of the back alleys and the desperation of my worst days in Medellin, no way that I would be standing there in that apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, in New York City, in the country that I had been longing to get to all of my life, had it not been for the man who held me in that affectionate embrace, on that frigidly cold February day roughly twenty years ago. He may have missed some of the most crucial years of my childhood and adolescence, but he helped light the fuse that rocketed me towards the greatest years of my life . . . and now that we were together, he would never be out of my life again.

All in all—I thought then and still think today—it was a tradeoff that wasn’t bad at all.

“Welcome to New York, son,” he said. He pushed me lightly back to take a good look at me.

He smiled and patted me on the shoulder as though he approved of how I had grown and filled out into a young man. “Let’s go eat—and then let’s go home.”

We went out to a local neighborhood diner and had some breakfast. For the first time ever, without the worrisome restriction of the telephone and the bane of long distance charges, I told

277 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street him the vast center chunk of the narrative I have just recounted for you, the reader, over the past two hundred pages or so.

I told him of the various stages spent with my mother after he left. I watched his face pinch at the corners and redden as I recounted in horrifying detail the ongoing, ever-escalating episodes of violence suffered at Cecilia’s hands. I told him of how she blew the finest opportunities for the two of us, of my trips to the hospital, my injuries, of my eventual fear of dying at her hands and my ultimate reaching a tipping point of terror whereby I simply could stand it no longer and fled from her in an act of simple self-preservation.

I watched, amused, as he sat there wide-eyed while I recounted my three-year odyssey out on the streets, described the entire cast of crazy characters, all of the places that I slummed, my eventual drift into sales via my drifting along with a cadre of street-kids selling cosmetics; I watched his eyebrows raise, impressed, as I outlined my first business venture with Michael a.k.a. El Mono, the blond American; watched him smile wryly at the dissolution via my end of that venture through excess and irresponsibility. I told him of Bibi, Pippo, of wild Checho, of solid and dependable Beto.

After the meal, while sipping coffee and preparing to pay the check, he asked me general questions about my trip through Mexico and Arizona, curious about how I secured various aspects of my trip across the border.

Finally, on the way back to his Manhattan apartment—he didn’t live very far from Uncle Wilson on Manhattan’s West Side—while driving in his car, my father spoke philosophically about the vast amount of extreme experiences I had encountered in a very short time.

“I’m proud of you, son,” he said. “You’ve been through an awful lot and you came out in one piece. And you’re a good and decent young man. Now is the time to stabilize, put down some

278 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street roots and get you set up here. Now is the time to make your future.”

I sat there, listening to his voice, and observing myself from above—as I have always been wont to do, assessing myself as though I were another person—and took the whole thing in as though it were a dream.

There I was, in a warm car, with a caring father and other relatives now prepared to help look out for me and my future in the greatest country in the world. It was like once again getting reacquainted not only with my father, but with a whole new way of life. As the streets scrolled by, and as I grew a bit drowsy from the full stomach and the warmth of the car’s heater, a piercing happiness washed over me.

No longer was I all alone in the world. No longer would I suffer hungry days and nights without having a soul to turn to. Never again would the streets present a better alternative to the prospect of life with family. Never again would the lost, the unfortunate, the homeless and the unwanted be my milieu. I belonged again. I was a participating member of a family again. I had to get used to a new fact of life—unexpected visits, hugs and kisses, instead of unexpected beatings, stabbings and hospital visits.

Yes, as my father and I navigated his car through the chilly, brightly sun-lit streets and avenues of Manhattan, a great flood of feeling broke and washed over me at last. I turned and looked out to the right side window of the passenger seat, a proud teenager coming out of some very tough times and not wanting to allow his father see the high state of emotion that had overcome him. The simple fact was all that toughness was no longer necessary—the world had, overnight, become a much gentler, kinder, more caring place.

It had taken great pain and effort . . . it had taken a very grim stretch of time running straight back to my exit of my mother’s household, way back just prior to my fifteenth birthday . . . it

279 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street had taken a heavy dose of danger, a huge amount of risk and guts, it had taken almost all of my resilience and fortitude, but I had at last made it. I had passed through a great, long, dark period of pain and suffering, but I had at last—at nineteen years of age—arrived at the destination toward which I had been striving for so very long a time, for nearly five hard years.

As I sat there, growing closer and closer to home, I knew that I would make it here in America. I had a supreme feeling of confidence that it all would work. I knew that this was real, that love, happiness and contentment were now permanently in reach. I knew it from what I saw written on the endless parade of street signs rolling past me—I gazed out the passenger side window and wiped a tear from an eye as I observed the real writing on each and every one of those signs: “Hope Street, Hope Street, Hope Street, Hope Street,” each and every one of them.

I had arrived. I was home.

280 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Epilogue

My first year in the US was not—nor did I ever dream it would be—easy. Settling in was a constant process of learning and adjusting. First and foremost, I had to deal with the most obvious barrier—that of language. Along with this came a whole new culture, an entirely different social setup, a whole new manner of going about the general process of working, living and participating in the affairs of one’s environment. There were no local militias openly dominating entire neighborhoods, brandishing semi-automatic weaponry without fear of law enforcement. There were no half-clothed children living in tin and concrete shacks out in the rural outskirts.

And, of course, there was the personal adjustment—of living with a family . . . tight-knit, caring, supportive, a loving unit. I had quite simply not experienced that kind of life in almost a full decade.

It wasn’t long before I steered my father gently away from the idea of my joining the marines.

I simply had no desire to do such a thing . . . and anyway I had no status of legal residence yet,

281 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street so military service was not even on the radar of the possible.

I worked relentlessly on becoming a functional speaker of English. There simply was no other alternative to me—without speaking the language there was no way I could ever rise above the realm of the menial, low-wage worker. And I frankly had not traveled such a great distance, suffered all the deprivations of the road and the underworld, simply to live the low class laborer existence that I could have easily had in Colombia.

So I worked—hard. The pain of discipline versus the pain of later regret: this is a general concept that served me very well during these times. I didn’t hear the phrase itself until many years later, but it epitomized the work ethic under which I labored diligently during those first years in the United States.

My father had a job working in a Brooklyn hotel and my Uncle Wilson worked as a handyman to some of the highest echelon power brokers in the publishing world: driver, house sitter, light carpentry, etc. I began taking tips and ideas from them and eventually went off in my own direction.

To start, I simply took whatever I could get. My English was not good at this point and thus I couldn’t expect much. I took low wage factory work—tough, back-breaking work, where I worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, all for minimum wage. It was grueling, extremely challenging work, the kind of work that could cause another man to question his future and his motivations in coming to the United States. But I didn’t flinch; I needed the money and it was better than living in the streets in sweltering, tropical Medellin.

For a time, I worked with my father at his Brooklyn hotel, taking a job as a porter, cleaning rooms. As my English improved, I switched to waiting tables—now able to communicate with the locals. With tips on good nights and holidays, I began to see more money, bit by bit.

282 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street

Finally, after a couple of years, and after acquiring my own apartment in Brooklyn, I had socked some money away in preparation of my next move. I had taken enough stock of the business culture of my New York surroundings whereby I felt reasonably confident to put myself out there in the market: it was time to have another go at a personal business venture—my first since my exit from my company with El Mono.

I had always planned to once again utilize my pre-existing skills and experience in the world of sales and marketing. After a little bit of study of the world of local and regional newspaper advertisement (at that time, before the big boom of the internet, a much higher circulation/dollarvalue enterprise) I opened and ran my own newspaper advertisement brokerage, buying and reselling ad space in some of the popular periodicals in the Brooklyn/Queens area. The little venture did well enough to move into the black, making enough self-sustaining profit that I sold it to a local group of investors who were interested in absorbing it into their own advertising operation.

Since then, I have continued to build my life brick by brick, step by step. This is on both the personal as well as the entrepreneurial realm. As the world of online began to skyrocket, with incredible amounts of money flowing into the new digital universe via investors all over the world, I began dipping my toes in the world of internet advertising, helping startups launch and taking pre-existing companies to higher marketing success.

It wasn’t long until I—just as I had with cosmetics and just as I did with newspaper ad inventory—felt confident enough with my knowledge of the industry to put together a business plan

and

struck

out

on

my

own.

.

283 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street I founded Iron Traffic, an online lead generation and advertising network that started with three employees in March of 2003 and was featured in the 2009 Inc 500 listing of fastest growing private companies in the US, with annual revenues eventually surpassing $8 million. I spent five years as Executive Manager for Equifax Marketing Services, where we concentrated on the special needs of market research companies. I have held various positions including Chief Revenue Officer in technology companies, as well as a variety of Vice Presidencies.

Now, several multimillion dollar companies and industry-wide awards later, I am involved in the evolution of Sports Marketing. I advise and work with athletes, brands via social media, display and mobile.

I have built and executed numerous online panel development platforms, including projects for internetsurveypanel.com, thenetpanel.com and ECNResearch.com.

With the significant increase in the nation’s Spanish-speaking population, as indicated by the 2010 census, I maintain a special interest in these emerging markets. Now, happily married with two beautiful daughters and a great career in online media, I am proud to admit that all of the experiences that make up this book—with all of their ups and downs, all the pains and woes, all the characters, both savory and unsavory—have helped me become the person I am today.

There are not many who occupy the upper rungs of corporate leadership in America who will proudly stand up and say, “I lived on the street for most of my teenaged years and spent a great deal of time starving with the outcasts of the world. I literally crawled on my belly through the dust to get to this country, accompanied by criminals and riff raff.”

I say this proudly because I can walk down any street in the Americas and empathize with just about anyone I see. I can sit down in any meeting room in any company, look out across an auditorium of employees and understand the plight of virtually all of them. I have occupied the

284 Holguin Dreaming Of Hope Street dirt below the lowest rung on the ladder and I have sat at the top of the ladder. I have dined in the finest bistros and I have picked out of garbage cans and starved.

My heart goes out to the countless souls who transit through that painful underworld of the less fortunate and—for any of a variety of reasons—do not make it out. I have been there. I know what they are going through. My heart goes out to abused children the world over—even, in a strange way, to those who are so disordered in their hearts and souls that they mistreat others. It sounds strange to have sympathy for this kind of evil, but making a forgiving peace has been necessary for me. I have since made peace with my mother and the healing of the wounds between us is a project that will no doubt last both of our lifetimes.

I appreciate every single experience and am grateful for having lived through all of them, for they taught me how to enjoy all my blessings with the fullness of my heart. Without having endured the things I did, I am not sure if I would so fully and completely savor every moment of my life now.

Most importantly, I appreciate your taking the time to hear my story. If it saves you one moment of pain or suffering, or inspires you, motivates you, or simply entertains you, then I count myself truly blessed.

This is what Hope Street is all about.

285 Holguin

Dreaming Of Hope Street