THE KIDS IN CHAPULTEPEC PARK - PART 1 INTERVIEWS BY RODRIGO TEIE PHOTOS BY MARTHA ÁLVAREZ

Mexico City’s busiest park is host to all sorts of street performers, vendors, buskers, and hustlers. Our favorite group is this ragtag family of kids who dress up in bootleg costumes of famous characters.

LAURA [photo at left]: I am in charge of a couple of photo stands here in Chapultepec Park. We take pictures of children with their favorite characters from movies and TV. I’ve been working here for 15 years now. There’s no other way to get a spot to work—it is impossible to get a permit unless you have been doing it for a long time. My father has been taking pictures in Chapultepec for more than 30 years now, so it’s no problem for us.

Actually, he started the portrait business, and then he and my husband ran it for a long time. It was my idea to make the costumes. I sew them all myself. The first ones I made were Winnie the Pooh and Tigger. My family thought it wasn’t going to work, but I proved them wrong. Now we are doing very well. Some people are even envious of us. My husband’s family has burned my house to the ground three times. Literally, they went in, spilled gasoline everywhere, and set it on fire. The pricks.

Nowadays, I run the business. I am the one making money in my house. My husband, he helps with money for food and some basic stuff but he is always asking me for more. I know he spends it on things he shouldn’t, but I don’t really mind. He is a good man. He used to be quite a troublemaker when he was young, getting into all sorts of fights, carrying a knife, drugs, you know… I remember the first time I saw him I was walking down the street with my mother and I told her, “Look, mother, that is going to be your son-in-law.” He was so well built and handsome. Still is.

We have around 30 costumes. Spiderman is my favorite. Around 20 children work for us. We have boys and girls. The youngest one is 11 years old and the oldest one is around 20. We pay them a weekly salary, depending on the days they come, and they also get tips from customers. I try to help all the children that ask me for a job. Most of them really need it—they have dropped out of school or their parents neglect them. And I try to take special care of the ones with drug problems. I have a way of curing them. If I see that one of them is getting lost in drugs, then, out of the blue, I pack up the truck and I take them on tour to carnivals and fairs all over Mexico. I keep an eye on them all day and since we work until very late, like 3 or 4 AM, they don’t have the energy to try to run away or search for drugs.


Laura and some of her performers

Usually the poor kids that do drugs in Mexico City sniff glue, smoke weed, or do coke—around where I live you can get a little bag with a few grams of coke for 25 pesos [$2 US]. The city is not doing enough to put the drug dealers in jail, not even the ones preying on children. So if I find one of them taking drugs in front of the other kids, I don’t think about it twice. I fire them on the spot.

I think of all of them as my children. If you do the math, I have had hundreds and I loved all of them very much. I used to have two sons, you know? The youngest one, Eugenio, the one I loved the most, was murdered in an armed robbery. It’s not that I don’t like Victor, his brother, but it’s just that he was into drugs and bad relationships. He’s changed now. He helps me a lot with the business. He even has his own stand down the street. But it was his brother who taught me how to do things right. I would never break the law, for example, because Gugu—that’s what we called him—would’ve never approved. I miss him so much.

He had life insurance and I used that money to invest in a printer and a new camera. I also bought a real live lion with the money. You know the Xola subway station, not too far away from here? I bought it there. They sell all kinds of exotic animals in the subway, believe it or not. You just have to know who to ask. I called the lion Gugu de Malabú. He was my baby. I used to feed him milk from a baby bottle. I tried to get a permit to own him legally but I never could so I had to give him to the authorities. They took him to a zoo in Sonora. I was that lion’s mother. He never harmed me. He lived inside the house with us, like a puppy. He did destroy the living room once, but we still liked him. When I handed him over to the authorities, I told him, “If I lost the person I loved the most in my life, I have to be able to let you go too.”

I give thanks for having had a great son like mine. But also once a week I thank my other adopted children for their effort and for taking such good care of me. Let’s go and meet some of them...


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