Mexico was never politically stable. It drifted through the years after Spanish
conquest from Monarchy to quasi-Democracy, but always with a strong culture of
graft and corruption by which a few became obscenely wealthy while the majority
existed on the edge of starvation. Many
abortive “revolutions” through the years merely served to tighten the hold of
the powerful while diminishing the power of the impoverished. It was a country ripe for Communism.
Juan Rodriguez was born into that poverty in a small village
outside Guerrero in Coahuila. At the age
of 8 his father died at the hands of a local Cartel and an uncle took him east
across the border into Texas, to pick vegetables in the valley. Juan didn’t make much, but his uncle
confiscated what he did and sent it back to Guerrero to Olivia, Juan’s
mother. Those meager earnings, along
with what she could make in a local cantina were all she had to support herself
and Juan’s six siblings. It was a hard
life.
Juan and his uncle had entered the U.S. illegally, but to
them it wasn’t a matter of the law, it was survival. You did what you had to do to provide for
your family. Contacts in Texas provided
them with identities in exchange for about half of their first week of earnings
and they lived with a group of other workers in a small, rundown house on the
outskirts of Edinburg. Juan was
sometimes abused by the other men in the group, but he endured because he
didn’t know any better.
Life was hard and the work was hard, but at such a young age
there were few choices. It was an age
when he should be in school and playing with other children, but it was not to
be.
Each day Juan would go out with the men to pick
vegetables. They were paid based on
quantity, not on the number of hours they put into the job. Juan’s share was small because he couldn’t
pick as much as the older men. His uncle
took what he earned anyway.
In such conditions a friendly face and the semblance of
caring were attractive to the wise-beyond-his-years youngster. It was into that need that Rigo Carrales
stepped. He began to protect Juan from
the most egregious of the abuses perpetrated by some of the more hardened men
who lived with them in the common housing.
Rigo was part of a radical organization gaining popularity
among the young of Mexico and the southern United States. Their goal was to overthrow the Mexican
government and replace it with a Socialist one.
Rigo was one of the more effective recruiters of the quickly growing
movement and Juan was a prime candidate….
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