Traveler
(Part III: New York)

            The famous open ticket my mother had insisted on buying for Lalo is what got him to New York. We were just a short time away from returning to Mexico, but Lalo’s best friend, Jorge, was living in Manhattan at the time and had also spoken to him and convinced him NYC was the place to be, musically speaking. After a brief period with us, Lalo rented an apartment in SoHo and moved there with a whole bunch of things my mom gave him to start off with and a plethora of giant roaches he told me he learned to scare off by stomping his feet before turning on the lights so he wouldn’t have to see them scamper away. He also told me there was an old LP nailed high up on one of the walls. There seemed to be a hole behind it, but he never got up the courage to take down the record and see what was there.

             One of the first day jobs he got was as a dish washer. Apparently, he was so incredibly good at this he was actually “pilfered” by another restaurant with offers of higher pay. At night, he played music in a punk rock group at the famous CBGB during the time when The Ramones, Patti Smith and the B52’s were playing there. At some point, someone in Patti Smith’s group approached him and asked if he would play for them, but Lalo panicked and said he wasn’t good enough. I remember his talking with my mom about it but although she told him to go for it, he didn’t feel he could.

            In New York, Lalo lived many of his now classical “adventures”; things that could only possibly happen to him. One night, for example, he was out walking very late at night when some guys came out of an alley, switchblades out. Lalo raised his hands and told the guys to take what they wanted. One of them said something to another…in Spanish! Immediately, Lalo began to speak in Spanish too, telling the guys he was from Mexico.  Naturally, they instantly put their weapons away and escorted him back to his own neighborhood, telling him to watch out for himself and to be careful where he went at night.

            Lalo’s apartment was on the “border” of Little Italy. It was incredible to see how the neighborhood changed by just crossing a street. On Lalo’s side, everything was dirty, grungy, old. On the other side, everything was clean, the streets were swept and I remember even the fire hydrants were painted green, white and red. One night, when Lalo was getting to his apartment after playing a gig, he was surprised to see a crowd gathered at the foot of his building together with fire trucks and patrol cars. When he asked what had happened, he was informed that there had been a fire; his apartment, and only his apartment, had been torched! He stood there among the crowd, stunned. All of a sudden, someone came up behind him and shoved something into his hand. He turned around to see who it had been, but he didn’t catch sight of the person. When he looked down, he saw all his papers: passports, id, birth certificate, everything. Evidently, someone gave the order to burn his things, but had the odd courtesy of saving his important documents. When I asked him much later who he thought it had been, or what reason they had had to do it, he told me he had always suspected it was someone from Little Italy, but that he really and truly had no idea of who it had been or why. Could it have been a case of mistaken identity? Was there something valuable hidden behind the mysterious LP? And who called my mother in Mexico to tell her there had been a fire hours before we heard from Lalo? None of these questions were ever answered.

            Lalo must have experienced many other things during his time in New York, but those he kept to himself. I know there was a point during his time there where he literally had no money and had to live in “Alphabet City”, a neighborhood of Manhattan which, at that time, had incredibly dangerous areas and empty buildings where people squatted and illegal activities were rampant.

            He stayed in NYC only one or two years. On his way down to Mexico for a visit, he stopped at Davenport, Iowa. There, Mimi, our grandmother, offered to put him through college if he stayed with her, which started a new phase in his journeys.

Susana Olivares Bari

Viajante
(Parte III: Nueva York)

            El famoso boleto abierto que mi mamá había insistido en comprarle a Lalo es lo que lo llevó a Nueva York. Faltaba poco tiempo para que regresáramos a México, pero el mejor amigo de Lalo, Jorge, estaba viviendo en Manhattan en ese momento y también había hablado con él y lo había convencido que la Ciudad de Nueva York era el lugar en el que debía estar, musicalmente hablando. Después de un corto tiempo con nosotras, Lalo rentó un departamento en SoHo y se mudó allí con un montón de cosas que mi mamá le dio para arrancar y una plétora de cucarachas gigantes

Traveler
(Part II: Paris)

            In the summer of 1976, my mother no longer knew what to do about Lalo’s problems. She had already sent him to live with my father as well as with my grandmother to see if someone other than she could manage to help Lalo. Neither of these experiments had worked out. Lalo had come back home to live with us but was still getting into trouble regularly; so much so that my mother had had to make good on her promise to ground him in Mexico while I went to Davenport, Iowa in the US to spend the holidays with my mother’s family.  It was during this time that a painter friend of the family, who was living in Paris, suggested to my mother that she send him to France with her. There, she said, he would learn to stand on his own two feet, get away from the “negative influences” his friends in Mexico represented, and finally face up to reality.

            My mother decided it was worth a try; she bought Lalo an open two-way ticket in case he needed to come back home, and arranged things with my father so that he’d send Lalo’s share of the child support to him in Paris.

            After a short time in our painter friend’s home, Lalo started living on his own. At first, everything worked out pretty well. He got a tiny apartment that was actually too expensive because it had a private bathroom, took French classes and studied music at the Conservatoire de Paris. Later that same year, though, Mexico had the first of many future devaluations.  All of a sudden, Lalo’s money was reduced to half of what he was getting. He got rid of the nice apartment, rented a garret room in a building where he shared a bathroom with the rest of the inhabitants of his floor, and started trying to make ends meet. Because he couldn’t get a formal job, he began to play the violin in the Paris Metro.

            During his time in France, he also got a chance to travel to other places in Europe. One of the ones he told me about was a trip to Amsterdam. Pot was decriminalized in the Netherlands that year, so Lalo thought this was his chance to buy some. On his way back to Paris, the train stopped at the border and an inspector got on. Naturally, he was caught trying to smuggle the pot in but, luckily, because it was such a small amount, they only confiscated it and let him back into France. He told me those were some of the tensest moments in his life; he thought he might wind up in jail or banned from France, where he had all of his things, including the round-trip plane ticket.

            One afternoon in the summer of 1977, around the time my mother and I were getting ready to come back to Mexico after having lived in the States for about a year, the phone rang. When I picked it up, I heard Lalo’s voice on the other end. He asked if my mother was home, I said no, and he said he’d call back later. When my mom got home, she was amazed, shocked and angry all at the same time. “What do you mean he said he’d call back later? He’s in Paris and doesn’t have a dime! How’s he going to call back?” But, sure enough, he did call back later. He had been taught by another foreigner how to “trick” the public phone boxes into letting him call anywhere in the world for as long as he wanted for the price of a local call. He and my mother talked for hours, while he told her all about his life there and described the sunrise over the city. It was then that he decided to go to New York.

Susana Olivares Bari

Viajante

(Parte II: París)

            En el verano de 1976, mi mamá ya no sabía qué hacer con los problemas de Lalo. Ya lo había mandado a vivir con mi papá así como con mi abuela para ver si alguien distinto a ella podía lograr ayudar a Lalo. Ninguno de estos experimentos había funcionado. Lalo había regresado a vivir con nosotros pero aún se metía en problemas

Traveler

(Part I: The Acapulco Hilton Experience)

        It would seem that one of the things Lalo was born to do was travel. He is one of the persons I’ve known who has travelled the most. Not in terms of number of times, but in terms of the types of places he visited and the experiences he lived there. At his funeral, one of the things I said about him was that again, as usual, there was Lalo, going away to some exotic place none of us had gone to.

        As a baby and little boy, he travelled to the US with my mother on several occasions. They’d go up before the holidays and my father would catch up to them; later, they’d all come back down together.
        Here in Mexico, we would all frequently travel to different places for the weekends. I recall the drives over to Cuernavaca, a famous vacation spot we’d very often go to which was only about an hour away from the city. I remember the typical warnings about going to the bathroom because my father insisted he wouldn’t be stopping on the highway; the endless are-we-there-yets and the final amazing excitement at actually arriving, always when you least expected it. We’d go already dressed in our swim suits, some clothes thrown over them, to be able to peel the top layer away and run to the pool.
        Later, during his adolescence, Lalo would get away to other places in Mexico, like when he’d go to Acapulco with Carlos and his father or with other friends. Acapulco was, and still is, an incredibly popular destination for Mexico City dwellers because of its relative closeness; in those days, it was about six hours away by car or bus. On one of those occasions, Lalo had THE Acapulco Hilton Experience.
        Basically, what he told me was this. At some point during the early 70’s, he and some friends had gone over to Acapulco for some holiday or long weekend. One night, they decided to drop some acid, go out to the beach, and trip out watching the stars. After a while, they started back to wherever they were staying.  As they walked next to the surf, a little group of local hoodlums came up and cut them off.
        It was late and the beach was deserted. They knew they were in trouble because they really had nowhere to go. On the left was the sea; on the right, the beachfront areas of the different hotels, none of which they were staying at; ahead of them, their assailants. Still wired from the acid, they decided to charge.
        As they ran at the little gang, one of them stepped forward and punched Lalo square in the face. He went down flat on his back but, incredibly, sprang back up on his feet like some sort of mechanical toy, screaming like a madman. Everyone was absolutely shocked! The guy who had punched Lalo turned tail and ran away, scared out of his wits. The others, equally amazed and seeing their friend’s reaction, immediately ran after him. Victory!!
        Lalo and his friends decided to take the safe course and walked up to the beachfront area of the hotel nearest them: it just happened to be the Acapulco Hilton. They sat at the poolside chairs for a while and from there, walked into the hotel, through the lobby and out onto the avenue.
        When he told me the story, Lalo kept laughing. “You should have seen the guys face! He couldn’t believe it! I was like an animated cartoon! Nobody could believe it!”
        To him, the experience was iconic of his youth, of the times, of our country. To me, it is also like a sort of time bubble where I can still see his laughing face.

Susana Olivares Bari

Viajante

(Parte I: LA Experiencia del Hilton de Acapulco)

            Parecería que una de las cosas para las que nació Lalo fue viajar. Es una de las personas que conozco que más ha viajado. No en términos del número de veces, sino en términos del tipo de lugares que visitaba y las experiencias que allí vivía. Durante sus funerales, una de las cosas que dije de él era que, de nuevo, allí estaba Lalo, yéndose a algún lugar exótico al que ninguno de nosotros había ido.

Anoche soñé con Lalo. Era uno de esos sueños extraños, oscuros, que me ha dado por soñar en los últimos años. Lalo estaba muy serio y me decía: “Tengo que decirte algo muy importante”. El contenido de su mensaje concernía a esas luchas morales que uno tiene siempre. Debo hacer esto, debo comportarme así, debo permitir tal o cual cosa. La mayor parte de lo que me dijo lo olvidé al momento de despertar. Así son los sueños. No puedo evitar que los años de estudiar psicología afecten mi análisis del contenido onírico. Es, como diría el mismo Freud, un simple cumplimiento del deseo. Una figura cercana que ha ido a un plano superior de existencia, regresa de entre los muertos para darme una guía moral. Obvio. El mensaje simplemente me da permiso para hacer lo que de principio quería hacer (pero ahora con autorización desde el cielo). ¡Vaya! Pero la otra parte del sueño es más vital para mí. Después, Lalo estaba acostado en su cama, como antes de morir, y yo me hincaba a su lado y empezaba a llorar a mares, disculpándome por no haber sabido hablar con él. Por no haber tenido el valor de decirle la pena que me abrumaba, por temor a que me rechazara o se enojara conmigo. Lo que más lamento de ello, y lo que me hace llorar hasta ahora, es que no pude ser yo misma con él. El resentimiento es contra mí y contra él, por no querer hablar del tema de su enfermedad o de su muerte, aunque fuera egoísta de mi parte. No hay remedio ya para eso. Ya no es posible sentarme de nuevo al borde de su cama y, en lugar de fingir que leo alguna cosa y que sólo le hago compañía, decirle cuán incrédula estaba –y estoy– de que tuviera cáncer. Que lo extraño, que hace falta, que la vida cambió para siempre y que me niego a aceptarlo. También aquí el sueño me cumple un deseo. Puedo llorar a su lado y disculparme por mi cobardía. Te extraño mucho Lalo y siempre lo haré. Ese lugar común sobre el hueco que deja la gente al partir es demasiado real. Casi puede uno meter la mano y dejarse devorar por ese vórtice oscuro, ese hoyo negro, que desde el momento de ocurrir una muerte nos acompaña todo el tiempo. Ya no estás, ya no existes y hay un vacío en el espacio. Una imagen borrosa donde antes había color. La devastación del nuevo paisaje hace imposible olvidar lo que ha ocurrido. Querido Lalo, ya que las palabras me fallan de nuevo, déjame robarle la inspiración a Sabines para expresar mi dolor, aunque te enojes:

Déjame reposar,
aflojar los músculos del corazón
y poner a dormitar el alma
para poder hablar,
para poder recordar estos días,
los más largos del tiempo.
“Algo sobre la muerte del Mayor Sabines”, Parte I, 1973

Gloria Padilla Sierra

Last night I dreamt of Lalo. It was one of those strange, dark dreams that I’ve taken to have over the past few years. Lalo was very serious and he said, “I have something very important to tell you.” The content of his message had to do with one of those moral struggles one constantly has. I must do this, I must behave in this way, I must allow this or that. Most