MEXICO CITY DISPATCHES

When I arrived in Brownsville in 1975, I became very good friends with the owners and staff of Blackbeards, a popular South Padre Island beer and hamburger joint. I played on their basketball team and participated in many of their parties. I always had a place to sleep. Puros gringos living the good life. Whenever they came to Brownsville with the intentions of eating and drinking in Matamoros, I was their guide. Just like we tore it up on the Island, we tore it up on the other side of the river. We were in our mid-twenties. There were no obstacles when spontaneity ruled the moment. The Matamoros I knew was the same Matamoros that Brownsville residents, particularly men, knew. There was Portales to the south, Boystown to the east and turning right off Sixth with the large Coca-Cola sign on the left, there were spots on Diagonal. In general we confined our activities to  Obregón  that took us past Garcia's and onward to the plaza. There w...

After a few days in Cuernavaca, Adela and I have returned to Mexico City where I plan to reside indefinitely. Ignacio and I were unofficial compadres. I took his second son  Cuauhtémoc  into the bathroom and baptized him with water from the toilet. Upon our return to Colonia Jardin Balbuena I went for a shave. In the old days there wasn't a week that I didn't cross to Matamoros for a shave. As I sat back in the chair with a hot towel wrapped around my face, the memories from those bygone days came flowing back. With a straight razor sharpened on a leather strap, the barber would foam my face two or three times, sweep the blade across the whiskers like a conductor leading an orchestra with his baton and then bring his performance to an end with a flourish by splashing alcohol on my tender skin. For an encore I would stop in the plaza for a shoeshine. I know that a person can't escape his or her problems, but I had to escape Brownsville for a well-deserv...

I had a daughter named Daniella who was born two months premature 30 years ago. She weighed three pounds and my first wife Dolores and I had every reason to believe that she would survive, but the germ-filled hospital precipitated a series of infections that killed her three months later. Her existence wasn't pointless. She taught me that life had no meaning without death. And I embraced her two older brothers David and Daniel with a renewed affection. It was a rollercoaster ride for my spouse and me. There were times when we were filled with hope, but for every step forward, she would fall three steps back. During one of those optimistic moments I commented that my baby was having a good day. "Take advantage of the good days," counseled the nurse. It has been a good day in Mexico City. I wrote in the morning. At noon I enrolled in a gym and hit the weights. Next store is a beauty salon staffed by three young ladies. I paid six dollars for a manicure. "May I hav...

I am sitting in the kitchen of my Mexico City residence listening to classic violin. It is 9:30 in the evening. Adela is cooking spaghetti. The high for tomorrow is 75; the low is 56. Earlier in the day we went to the Museum of Modern Art and admired the works of Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros, Kahlo, Tamayo and other lesser known but outstanding painters. The museum is located in Chapultepec Park. It is a green city although concrete reigns and traffic is heavy and dangerous. Pedestrians are without rights. In Colonia Jardin Balbuena, I have become a familiar figure at many restaurants since I generally eat out all three meals. I attend a four-story gym and I'm recognized as one of the regulars. I spend much of my free time in my bedroom, which has a large window that I can open to relish the breezes. I'm reading a collection of Herman Hesse short stories. He was my favorite author during my university days. He writes about despair, but he uses his depression to pen the most eloque...

If the sky is the limit for humanity in general, then diving into the black hole is the limit for a confessional writer. To be self-flagellating and masochistic, you must be brave and bold. Or maybe you are fooling yourself? You are on a kamikaze mission and you want to take down as many as possible before you self-destruct. As a journalist and an author, I am bound by court orders to refrain from discussing certain political and personal issues. I could be stripped of my pension, fined thousands and sent to prison. So much for free speech. So much for telling the real story. So much for writing my autobiography. For a writer of such little fame, my pen has been the sword that I have used on myself as I have dealt with the repercussions of my swash-buckling prose both at work and at home. As an unedited journalist and author, I can say that I have broken most of the rules. There are few sacred cows that I haven't milked. But it has cost me. It has cost me three ...

They call me the Father of Brownsville soccer. It's a compliment I don't deserve, but I accept the accolade. When I was young, I rolled with the seasons: football in the fall, basketball in the winter and baseball throughout the spring and summer. Soccer didn't exist for me. But as I sit in a bar near La Alameda watching the derby between Cruz Azul and  A mérica  in el Estadio Azteca, I realize that I have come full circle. When I began traveling in Mexico, I often found myself sitting in a bar, staring at the television and asking myself, "What kind of game is this? There is no scoring and the games end in ties." Thus my introduction to soccer. In my twenties I traveled regularly throughout Mexico and Central America. I attended games in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Guatemala City, Tegucigalpa, San Salvador and San José , Costa Rica. In an under-21 World Cup game between Mexico and Scotland at Estadio Azteca in which the latter prevailed, 1-0, the fans expressed the...