Reymundo Sanchez - My Bloody Life: The Making of a Latin King

My Bloody Life

The Making of a Latin King

Reymundo Sanchez

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sanchez, Reymundo

My bloody life : the making of a Latin King / Reymundo Sanchez. 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-55652-401-3

1. Sanchez, Remundo 2. Puerto RicansIllinoisChicagoBiography. 3.

ViolenceIllinoisChicago. 4. Chicago (Ill.)Social conditions20th

century. I. Title.

F548.9.P85 S26 2000

977.3110046872950092dc21

[B]

99-054261

Cover art and design: Frances Jetter
Interior design: Rattray Design

2000 by Reymundo Sanchez
All rights reserved

First edition
Published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
814 North Franklin Street
Chicago, Illinois 60610
ISBN 1-55652-401-3
eBook ISBN: 1-55652-739-X
Printed in the United States of America
5 4 3 2 1

For those who have tragically lost their lives due to
gang violence and for those who continue to live that lifestyle

My Bloody Life is by no means a justification for gang
involvement or gang crime. It is not an attempt to glorify
any one gang or its members actions. Nor is it intended in
any way as the confession of one persons crimes. My Bloody
Life is the story of a lifestyle and the destruction it creates.

Oh my friend let me apologize,

For not obstructing your path of wrong,

For not having my eyes open,

While I led you on a crazy route.

For letting you follow my misfortunes,

For sharing with you the drink of the devil,

For inhaling with you the smoke of hell,

For encouraging you to hurt, maim, and kill,

For making you laugh when you should have cried.

Oh my friend, oh how sorry I am,

For not shielding you,

For not being the one,

For letting you be unaware,

For watching you die in my arms.

Oh my friend will you ever forgive me,

for surviving, for living,

For being the one in whose arms you died.

1
La Familia

2
Chicago

3
Humboldt Park

4
The Beatings Begin

5
The Spanish Lords

6
Murder in the Hood

7
My Teacher Maria

8
No Paradise

9
No Home

10
Jenny

11
Lords of Nothing

12
Chi-West

13
Coward

14
Cant Be Normal Even If I Tried

15
First Kill

16
The Acceptable Difference

17
Officer Friendly

18
China

19
Back to the Hunting Grounds

20
Betrayed into a Coma

21
Madness

22
Rosie

23
Convenient Agreement

24
My Girl

25
Prove Myself Worthy

26
Rape

27
Crowned

28
Violence Rules

29
Madman

30
Losing Maplewood Park

31
My Rosie

32
Down Brother

33
Poor Rosie

34
Juni

35
Loca

36
Morena, R.I.P.

37
NRA? Luckys Death

38
Crazy Ways

39
Disciplined

40
No Lesson Learned

41
Spread the Violence

42
Enemies Near

43
Disowned

44
The Way It Is

45
Another Addiction

46
Close Call

47
The Law

48
Free?

49
Older Woman

50
Love Lost

51
Lesson Learned, Finally

52
Crownless

53
Tragedies Continue With or Without Me

A LTHOUGH THIS BOOK is based on the truth, the names of those involved and places where events occurred have been changed. The order of events has also been changed. However, all of these events did take place in the city of Chicago and the names of the gangs are real. I still have relatives who live in these gang-infested neighborhoods, so Ive made these changes to protect them.

My real name and age are not important. Ive written about everyday occurrences in the neighborhood I grew up in, a place where parents swap tragic tales about what Latino youths do to each other. Anybody who has been in or around a gang can tell a similar story, some even more tragic than mine. I choose to remain just another ex-gang member, one who opened his eyes in time to survive.

The point of this book is not merely to tell stories of gang life but to also provide some explanations for why kids join gangs and to point out that most kids are driven to gangs by adults, not by their peers or the dreaded white man who is blamed for every problem. I hope this book can save the life of at least one kid.

This book is also my attempt to make the brothers and sisters in gangs realize that the gang leaders are living the good life at their expense. Unfortunately, the people who need to hear this message the most will probably never read this book.

L ATINO GANG MEMBERS kill other Latinos as part of their daily routine, but instead of changing themselves they blame police harassment and discrimination for all their social ills. In the meantime the Latin Kings and other street gangs continue to grow. They victimize Latino families by giving kids a false sense of belongingsomething their parents fail to do. Police do nothing to create a feeling of trust within gang-infested communities, and so they remain part of the problem. There are police officers who genuinely care, but they number too few.

The gang problem has become a billion-dollar revolving-door industry for justice systems across the United States. The police, lawmakers, and attorneys profitno one stands to gain from a decline in gang crime except for those who live where gangs flourish.

People in these communities must wake up before its too late.

My Bloody Life

P UERTO R ICO , 1963. I was born in the back of a 1957 Chevy on the way to the hospital. I may have been born where I was conceived. Considering that my mother went into labor while sitting in the outhouse, being born in a car was not so bad. My father passed away when I was very young. I was almost five years old when he died. I dont have too many memories of him other than what my mother has told me and the personal memory of seeing him on his deathbed. I wish he could have been there to guide me through life, to give the advice that only ones father can give.

My mother was a young girl when she married my father. She was sixteen, he was seventy-four. He was a widower with six children, all older than my mother, and he had several grandchildren her age. His children resented my mother for being so young and marrying such an old man. To this day one of them still does not really accept my sisters and me as siblings.

I dont know much about my father. I never bothered to ask, but those who claim they knew him say he was a good man. Ill take their word for it I guess, but even Richard Nixon was considered a good man after he died. As you can expect from an old geezer marrying a teenager, my father died while my sisters and I were still very young. To me, the fact that a seventy-four-year-old man fathered three kids with a teenage girl is incredible. After my father passed away, my mother, still a young woman, remarried quickly. I dont remember my mothers courtship or ever meeting the man before she married him. Perhaps I was too young to remember or maybe she never stopped to think that what we thought of him was important. I do remember being beaten, almost tortured, by my aunt and cousins when my mother went away on her honeymoon. I guess I wasnt that young; after all, I do remember the pain.

We lived in a little hilltop village in central Puerto Rico. It was a village of farmers. Everybody lived off the land. My fathers family was from the city. I dont remember ever meeting any of them. The village where we lived was very tranquil. There was a great deal of undeveloped land. We played baseball in an open, grassy field where we would sometimes lose the ball in the tall grass. We played hide-and-seek in the woods, climbed trees for oranges and grapefruits, and picked guavas for snacks. Our family harvested coffee, rice, and various other fruits and vegetables. It was an easy-going life until my father died and my mother remarried and went on her secret honeymoon.