Chapter 5

Life had not been easy for Jorge Guerrillero, although it had not been as difficult or as desperate as it had been for many of his friends and acquaintances. His primary problem had been frustration. Frustration and bitterness about his difficulty keeping a job despite the fact that he was a rarity among the lower middle class, a college graduate.

Jorge Guerrillero had been an outstanding student all of his life. Luckily his teachers had recognized his talent, helping and encouraging him every step along the way. His parents also realized that his intelligence was way above the norm and sacrificed all that they could so that their son might succeed and do better than they had. His father had died when Jorge was seventeen years old, succumbing from the infection that invaded his body after he had been injured in a landslide while trying to clear some land for the man who owned the property his family sharecropped. He died trying to earn an extra ten dollars for his family. Before he died, Jorge's father made him promise that he would continue his education and become a teacher so that he would be able to help others extricate themselves from the situation in which they found themselves. This Jorge tried to do.

All Jorge Guerrillero ever wanted to do was teach, but his political activities kept getting him into trouble. He had been a loyal member of P.R.I., the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the party that had ruled Mexico since the 1920s. He had attended the rallies and worked for the election of its candidates. He had to if he wanted to teach. And in the beginning he had believed all of the rhetoric about making life better for the common people in Mexico.

But then he began rocking the boat. He saw the blatant corruption and greed that permeated the entire governmental structure in his small town and that he later discovered was rampant throughout Mexico, and he objected to it. He saw the political leaders becoming rich through graft, bribery and extortion while children of their constituents were starving. He read about a former President of Mexico taking millions of dollars out of the country and placing it in Swiss, U.S. and other foreign banks while children in his class had difficulties learning how to read and write because they were suffering from brain damage caused by malnutrition after the prices of basic foodstuffs doubled over the period of just several months.

Mexico. A country with many natural resources including gold and oil. Mexico. A country that was nearly $250 billion in debt, mainly to U.S. banks. Because of that debt, inflation soared and the Mexican government was forced to impose austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund before they would allow Mexico to borrow more money. The newly borrowed money was to be used to keep from being declared in default on the old debt, which was now increased by the new borrowing to pay the interest on the newly enlarged old debt. The austerity measures were designed to hold down government spending and cutting demand for imported goods in order to improve the country's cash flow situation.

Unfortunately, the austerity measures were felt most by the poor, whose lives became even more miserable and desperate than they had been before. This deplorable situation was to worsen, affecting a steadily growing proportion of the middle class, as the world-wide depression caused the international economy to deteriorate.

Jorge Guerrillero saw what was happening. The more he saw, the more angry he became. He finally reached the point where he refused to take it anymore.

Jorge Guerrillero rocked the boat.

Naively, he gave evidence to the local prosecutor that the principal of his school had been receiving kickbacks from publishers and skimming money from practically every account handled by the school. Not realizing the extent of the local corruption in his area, he had not kept a copy of the evidence he had produced for the prosecutor. Outraged after months of foot-dragging in the prosecutor's office, Jorge began to receive information that the prosecutor had been cut in on some of the principal's ill-gotten gains.

Jorge then went to the federal Interior Ministry with his charges. The next day Jorge was summoned to the principal's office and summarily fired for slandering the principal.

Incensed, Jorge then decided to go public with the information and the evidence that he had. But there were problems there as well. His village was fairly remote and widespread and the five television sets there were not able to receive television signals very well. The village was not big enough or rich enough to have its own radio or television station. His emotional, incisive letters to the local newspaper went unanswered and unpublished. He should have known. The owner of the newspaper was the brother-in-law of the textbook publisher.

His attempts to incite the local population were met for the most part by apathy, indifference and the comment, "but what can we do? We can't fight these people because they are too powerful. If we try, we will not be able to work because they own all of the businesses in the village. Then we will surely starve."

Then came the threats to the lives of Jorge, his mother and his sister. Still Jorge would not be intimidated.

Until that terrible night that forced him to flee for his life. He and his sister were talking with their mother in her tiny wood and thatch house. Suddenly an object came flying through the open front window of the house. The impact of the explosion from the firebomb threw Jorge through the half-open back door of the house. He was knocked unconscious for a few minutes from the force of the blast and from hitting the ground hard after flying out of the house.

His mother and his sister didn't have a chance. They were both cremated alive in the inferno that engulfed their tiny house and transformed it into a pile of cinders within minutes.

Jorge regained consciousness as what was left of the frame of the house collapsed. He searched in vain for his mother and his sister, but they had been sitting in front of the wall opposite the window through which the firebomb had been thrown. There was no way they could have survived. Jorge swore that he would enact vengeance on the murderers of his mother and his sister.

But that would have to wait. He would have to survive if he was going to fulfill his oath. Most importantly, he knew that if he was to survive, he would have to leave the village. So Jorge Guerrillero did what so many of his countrymen were doing. He moved to Mexico City.

That had been five years earlier. For a short time he had been able to teach in public schools in Mexico City, but word of his dismissal eventually reached his superiors and Jorge found himself out of work again.

He was unemployed for several months, taking odd jobs when he could, and his financial situation was becoming increasingly precarious. Finally one of his friends told him about a position that was opening up with one of the private charities. He would be teaching again - this time teenagers from the poorest barrios of Mexico City. Here he saw first hand the terrible conditions in which these people were forced to live.

Here he also met the woman who would affect his life more than anyone else would for the rest of his life.

Steve Stone was a product of a broken home in which neither of his parents appeared to have taken much of an interest in him. Actually that was only half true. His mother worked an average of ten to twelve hours a day to support him after his father had abandoned him when he was five years old. Barely literate with only a ninth grade education, his mother had become pregnant when she was only sixteen years old, and did the honorable thing, marrying Steve's father.

Steve's father had been seventeen when Steve was born, and after five years of marriage, he split after a horrendous argument with his wife. He realized that his temper was very explosive, and rather than taking a chance that he might completely lose control and physically strike his wife, he felt that he should leave. He would never see his wife again, having given her a non-contested divorce, and would not see his son again until Steve had been included as part of the lead story on the network news.

Steve Stone grew up being shuttled between sitters as his mother struggled to support herself and her son. She worked full time as a maid at a motel, and picked up whatever side jobs she could find. Needless to say, Steve's mother was not able to give him the time that he needed in order to give him the guidance that that he required. It was not until he was seventeen years old, that he was given some guidance from a caring adult that he needed in order to stay out of trouble.