The fight was raging, and the vato could not get the upper hand.
It had started because he’d decided he wasn’t gonna take being called Cácaro anymore. His hatred of the nickname had grown and grown over the years until it finally erupted into manifest rage. Only violence could soothe him now.
His face wasn’t really pockmarked. The nickname had stuck when he contracted the measles as a young boy. Sure, white spots had bloomed all over his body, but his skin healed a few months later. It only left a little discoloration and almost imperceptible blemishes on his arms and face. But since he was the first kid to get the measles, the raza called him El Cácaro when the little pustules covering his face had started to scab. They kept calling him Cácaro even after they themselves broke out with the measles.
He let the moniker slide because his childhood was filled with other distractions, but he came to regret it later in life. It was if the name made people see what didn’t really exist. He began to reject the moniker in high school. His protests were thoughtful at first, but the nickname proved implacable. As time went by and friends and kin— sometimes even strangers— kept calling him Cácaro, his patience wore out.
One day he walked out of the movie house with his girlfriend, and an old elementary school chum he hadn’t seen in years walked up to him, smiled and called him Cácaro to his face.
“We used to call him El Cácaro in school cuz his pockmarks,” he told the vato’s girlfriend playfully.
The girlfriend didn’t smile back and turned to her date expecting him to protest as usual.
This time, the vato didn’t say anything. He lunged at his detractor without warning.
As the two young men were tussling, a pack of the vato’s friends saw the huato and rushed to check it out. As they waded through the crowd that had formed around the fight, they saw their friend was struggling.
Wanting to encourage him, they began to cheer him on.
“Órale Cácaro! You can beat him, Cácaro,” they yelled in support.
“Give him fregasos, Cácaro!”
Their loud exhortations caused both the vato and his opponent to pause and step back from each other.
The vato, now in tears, turned to the friends who were rooting for him, looked up and drew in a long unsteady breath.
“That’s the pinche bronco, vatos!,” he screamed.
