�Pero donde empiezo?

Well I was born in La Junta, Colorado USA but I was brought up in the 9-1-6 within the most chingon state, Califas! Xicano to the bone, people. You better believe that I represent myself in any setting. As you should know it is a hot ass club and yes yes I get myself sweated there. On the real tip machismo is alive and coarsing through my veins. Currently I am seriously involved a fine woman who I call "Biggy Shorty" but is known as Chapina. Hi, babe, I'm missing you right about now. If it were not for my desire to take on a challenge and make it shine I would not have lived up to what it means to be a minority in the USA. I have always tried to maintain a close contact with my Mexican "latin" roots but lately it has taken me away from what I am, American.

I am a first generation Mexican-American and I am also, gracias a dios, the first en mi familia to go into the University system. I am in limbo somewhere in the middle of my third year at Princeton University and after two years of wading through all the courses within the Bachelor of Arts degree I finally went back to what I had originally gone to study there, Architecture. You can find out more about that in my chante. I want to study Landscape Architecture so that I can, ideally, work outside with my crew. The degree allows me to do this but the proffesion places a high demand on my time so I guess I will end up with and office job where I will spend countless hours drawing ideas someone else tells me to interpret and coherently display with my talent. Not that it would be all bad but I'd rather be outside. Sabes Nino Del Sol! Pero we are all children of the sun and hombre my dad had a bunch of offspring.

Let me tell you I come from a family of SEVENTEEN. En serio though it did help my dad, before he passed away, que descanse en paz, to have married four times. He was born on a ranchito aroung the modern day Acambaro, Guanajuato on June 6, 1922. Yes, 1922. That means he was born during the end of Mexican Revolution and a year before Pancho Villa, one of the Revolution's great general's, was assassinated. My dad began working almost as soon as he could walk. He would help my grandfather or rather his step-father, which corresponds to my step-grandfather (I guess), sell the firewood they collected in the mountains as well as the charcoal he made in his kiln. Once, while making charcoal, their occured an incident where he had almost been burned to death when he was walking across the top of the kiln over the burning wood that was being made in to charcoal. Had my step-grandfather not been there, along with God, to pull my father out of the searing flames he might of died, much less been saved without any signs of major burn.

I am sure that you wondering about this step-father business. Como dije my dad was born in 1922; at the end of what history documents as the Mexican Revolution. Nothing much changed except that supposedly there were to be free elections and a redistributionment of land so as to create an equality between the classes and to destroy the Hacienda. However, the haciendados still remained in power for some time. Well one of those pinche--I probably shouldn't call the man that seeing as if not for him I wouldn't have even been a thought within my father's mind when he looked at my mom--uno de ellos saw my grandmother when she was coming back from the river and, as my father put it, took advantage of her, but you understand what happened, and if you don't it means she was raped. As a result of this ungoodly act my father was born. And yes I know what that means; my father was the bastard son of a pinche haciendado. But no it gets more fucked up. When my dad was about 4 or 5 that man, my grandfather came to my grandparents home and told mi abuelitos that he knew that my dad had been born and he wanted to take care of his blood, so he was to go to work for him. He wasn't to live with him but he was to work for him. So my dad's first paying job was at around 4 or 5 and it was for his biological father who didn't really give a shit for him except that he carried his blood. My dad would take his five cent per month wage and give it to his mom. Think about it though my father was getting paid in centavos when in today's Mexican economy people are dealing in the thousands of pesos.

Don't think that my father recieved special treatment if anything I am sure he got it worse simply because he was related to the pinche patron. If my father were to have recieved special treatment because then his wife would more than likely have gotten pissed, back then the towns were small enough to act like a close knit family so she would know about any mention of his other kids. Her kids might even get involved and torment my father, but they didn't or at worst my father didn't allow it. This story is getting long and for me to even begin to tell you my dad's life experience's it would be longer.

I would have writen a book for him but I started that idea too late. My dad was first married when he was 19 and his wife was 16. With her he had my half-sister Chela, my half-brother Xavier, my other half-sisters Carmen and Marta and my two half-brothers Ismael and Gaston. She passed away, I don't remember the exact date. After her death, I'm not sure how long after, he married a woman by the name of Elsie. She died while giving birth, along with a baby boy, who would have been called, Trinidad, after my father. Again I don't know how long afterward it was until he remarried. The woman he married then was a woman by the name of Elisa Pedraza. She lives in Morelia, Michoacan; I have been able to meet her and we have become friends. She is a teacher in Michoacan and with her my father had my half-sister Silvia "TiTi", and my half-brother Miguel "NeNe". He ended up divorcing her, I think, although after he passed away I found a letter which from her which gave mention that he had not. Anyway, he met my mother, who also had kids, fell in love and married her. Those half-brothers are Antonio, Filiberto, Isabel, my half-sister, and Jorge. However with my mother they had my sister Elsie, me (Sabino), and my brother Steve. The age spread between the oldest living sibling is 54 to 18 years old. If you counted the names you will not have ended up with seventeen but with fifteen. The two missing are Kata, a girl who died at age five because she ate too many candies from my dad's candy business and raw eggs. Also because the doctors', being as helpful as they could be to a person not of the right class, took forever and she died in my father's arms. The other was a baby boy who died when the girl who was taking care of him somehow dropped him and he hit his head on the corner of a table and so died from the injury. But this is still so little of my dad's past.

My father, Jose--Jose being the pronombre which all males had to have entered on their birth certificate to signify that they were male-- Trinidad Anaya Hernandez passed away in 1995 and he lived to be 72 years old. He was a walking history, people, and I miss him a chingo. I don't mean to preach but I will. I know what I lost but it seems that a lot of people do not learn about the past through the eyes of their parents. I tried but I when my father passed away I was only 18 years old and only then really realized just how much I had truly had lost. I had attempted to learn all I could from mi papa when he had been alive but their is only so much I could put into words. I mean how could I ask a question, any question, if I haven't been exposed to the issue. Don't get me wrong I come from Califas so I know what's up and that means that I did ask a lot of questions but now I am older and I have been exposed to many sides of a lot of new things while at the University. Which means that now I have many questions but I do not have my father to ask them to. I'm sorry if you do not like what I have written here pero it is my page and I choose to honor my father by letting everyone know that I miss him and not just for all the knowledge which he still could have given to me but just for being mi papa. Te quiero y te recuerdo apa y descanse en paz.

Original inception date for this document was Tuesday, December 30, 1997 19:13