REQUIEM FOR "EL TOQUES," AN INSTITUTION ON 14TH STREET DIVES

By Juan Montoya

This last time around during a forced stay at the Cameron County Ruben Torres Detention Center in downtown Brownsville, I was asked by an inmate if I knew the whereabouts of "El Toques," a polio-stricken denizen of 14th Street bars who eked out a living giving people "toques" for $1.

You've seen them.
They are a favorite sport in Mexican bars where the battery-powered shock wires are slowly ratched up and more current is administered until the victim cries "Ya!?" and hopes to  withstand a higher level of current than his rivals.
I have never been an adherent to the sport, but those that are say that it does wonderful things from everything from curing acne to fine-tuning your circulatory and cardiovascular system.
El Toques lived in Matamorose and crossed over daily with his visa card to ply his wares. His "toque" box was a rudimentary makeshift one, not a fancy one like the one on the picture to the right. It fit easily in a shoebox and he often went back to Matamoros after leaving ti safeguarded with some of his friends on this side.
Virtually anyone who traveled in that ambiance knew El Toques." He would be seen limping along the sidewalks visiting each bar. He knew his customers and virtually all the help in those places.
"Quiubo padrino," he'd call out as he pandered to his customers trying to get on their better side. If not "padrino," it would be "comandante," or "jefe," to soften up the mark.
Many patrons would pay for the $1 "toques" and then throw in a tip to help him out. Toques was a likable guy and people felt sorry to see him trudging along on the outside balls of his feet as he limped along the street. What he gathered he dutifully took back home to give his woman and his family members.
It was only a matter of time before the local Border Patrol agents caught on to him "working" the bar circuit and took his visa. After that, toques would cross the river illegally and ply his wares under the radar.
That earned him an illegal reentry charge and he ended up as a federal prisoner at DCI, across Harrison from The Brownsville Herald.
When I ended up there, he was glad to see me and asked about his friends on the outside. There were other people there who knew him as well.
After he served his sentence he was deported to Matamoros and that's the last that was known about him until the news reached the street that he was no longer among the living.
He met his end when he went out of his home and – instead of staying away for a few hours as he expected – got back home too soon. Apparently, his common law mate had something else going and Toques returned to find her in flagrante delicto with her lover.
There were, apparently, recriminations and rough words spoken before the woman's lover pulled out a knife and stabbed Toques to death. The police section in El Bravo featured the gory blood-splattered scene as is often their wont.
And so ended the life of sad little Toques who – whether one agreed with it or not – labored his whole life with his polio affliction before his life ended after he got together with an unfaithful woman.