Justin Favela interview, May 16, 2019: transcript

i AN INTERVIEW WITH JUSTIN FAVELA An Oral History Conducted by Monserrath Hernández Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada Oral History Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ©Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2018 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV – University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcribers: Kristin Hicks, Maribel Estrada Calderón, Nathalie Martinez, Rodrigo Vazquez, Elsa Lopez Editors and Project Assistants: Laurents Bañuelos-Benitez, Maribel Estrada Calderón, Monserrath Hernández, Elsa Lopez, Nathalie Martinez, Rodrigo Vazquez iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader’s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iv PREFACE During this oral history, native Las Vegan, Justin Favela enthusiastically reminisces about growing up on the “east side off of Lamb and Vegas Valley...there used to be a movie theater. Between the movie theater and our apartment building, there was an untouched desert. That’s what I used to love about Vegas back in the nineties… (the) patches of desert everywhere with so many animals and nature. It was crazy. Me and my brothers would just go and play in the desert and look for rabbits.” As always, Justin, AKA Favy-Fav to his fans, nimbly traverses whatever topic is prompted. Not surprisingly, Favela provides insights about what he refers to as the caste system he is part of, how skin color makes a difference in social hierarchies, and his personal evaluations of the litany of terms such as Latinx, Latino/a, Hispanic etc. No matter the label, he always returns to the value of his family, especially his grandmothers; one is Guatemalan and the other Mexican. Today he is dressed in his signature attire—a red jacket over a black and white skeleton motif t-shirt and shares the story of how this look became his. There is a lilting joy to his story. He is grateful for every opportunity, friendship, and mentor he has encountered thus far in his slightly over 30-years of living. He was born in 1986. v Favela dwells in a candid universe where pop culture, gender, ethnicity, history, and Latinidad comingle. He seamlessly moves from talking of his personal artistic expressions to his insightful banter about how they inhabit the two podcast series he has created and hosts: 1) “Latinos Who Lunch” is a collaboration between Favy-Fav and Babelito (Dr. Emmanuel Ortega) ; and 2) “The Art People,” where he interviews artists from Las Vegas and his travels around the world. ABOVE: Justin ‘Favy-Fav’ Favela with members of the Latinx Voices Oral History team: (L-R) Elsa Lopez, Maribel Estrada Calderón, Justin, Monserrath Hernández, and Nathalie Martínez. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Justin Favela May 16, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Monserrath Hernández, et. al. Preface…………………………………………………………………………………………..iv Lists his personal identifier preferences: Latino or Latinx; also Mexican American and Guatemalan American; queer artist, a person of color, and white-passing. Expands on the use of white-passing and being a light-skinned Latino; Afro-Latinidad; social hierarchy; pros and cons of the term “Latinx”. Talks about his family history, a blend of Guatemalan and Mexican; parents work at casino/hotels; some of the family lived in government housing (28th Street and Charleston) others settled in Naked City (where Stratosphere was built); Freedom Park picnics; Christian Evangelicals and Catholics. Impact of PBS programming on his youth; playing outside with his brothers Brandon and Edgar Lima. Moved often and attended several schools, and difficulty making friends, being a shy kid……………………………………………………………….1 – 6 Speaks about early art forms—doodling, collages, dioramas; channeled his early creativity into music, was in Las Vegas High School and UNLV bands. His evolution from music to history to fine arts during college years; Professor Colin Loader; difficulty explaining to his family of his change to art. List jobs he held during that time: Chrysalis group homes, Liberace Foundation, Neon Museum etc…………………………………………………………………………….7 – 11 Memories of holidays and fondness of both his grandmothers. Immigration story of his father’s Mexican side; grandfather was in the Braceros program, worked field of California; how he is related to Javier Barejas, owner of Lindo Michoacan restaurants; mom’s family included housekeepers and bartenders; migration from Guatemala due to dangers, lure of life in Las Vegas and the American Dream…………………………………………………………………..12 – 15 Describes growing up with parents who worked in hospitality industry; recalls employee party at Harrah’s when the Muppet characters showed up; mentions Dunes, Sahara; 3-D cinema scope projection at Caesars, led to his interest in museum work. Concept of attracting kids to the Strip. Influence on his cultural thinking of Culinary Union members in family in his youth; his perception vii of Las Vegas as “real” rather than “fake.” Describes “The Read” and “Throwing Shade” podcasts, which would influence his future podcast series with Emmanuel Ortega, aka Babelito, “Latinos Who Lunch.”…………………………………………………………………………...….16 – 20 Discusses how he and Ortega, develop the content of their podcast series; pop culture; being FavyFav on the show; Virgen de Guadalupe episode, his religious perspectives, ABC’s of Latinidad, dream interview would be of Celia Cruz. Talks about his other podcast “The Art People Podcast” and a favorite interview of Irene Mata, a teacher, about the movie “Coco.” …….20 – 22 Focuses on influence of Las Vegas on his art and his current exhibit at the Barrick Museum. Mentions Black Mountain Institute, The Believer Fest. Working with piñata paper. His warm feelings about the east side of Las Vegas, growing up with friendships with white Mormons. Recalls an early episode of racism, but most of his classmates were brown kids; microaggressions; being followed around stores……………………………………………………………….23 – 26 His identity as “gay” and use of term “queer” more recently; how he chose to let his family members ask him about his identity; assuming a role to educate them, especially because of religious norms; acceptance and limits set within his family; his skin color; more about family ancestry as relates to skin color. Talks about visiting Guatemalan “motherland”; effect on his Spanish-speaking; family is from Gualán, Zacapa; visit’s impact on him…………..……...27 – 32 Talks about getting paid for his art; financial considerations; Francisco Donoso, Maria de los Ángeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Schneider Museum of Art in Oregon and doing an exhibit about the artist Magú; printmaking teaching position. First solo art show which was at the Clark County Government Center, used cardboard and Styrofoam and received national attention in the Wall Street Journal. Explores his parody selection process; referencing artwork from others; mentions his kupcoming show “Puente Nuevo” at the Amon Carter Museum in Ft. Worth and selecting pieces from Casimiro Castillo to reference. Influence of Babelito as an art historian. Provides narration notes for his current Barrick exhibit and thoughts for future exhibits such as “Justin Favela: All You Can Eat,” at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft [June-September 2019]. Reflects on his favorite show, in 2017, “Fridalandia” at Denver Art Museum. His participation in “Shonky: The Aesthetics of Awkwardness” in the UK in 2018 where he did a giant pile of nachos and being treated with high respect for his art, not his Latinidad……………33 – 39 viii Speaks of his gratitude to his mentors, his grandmothers, David Ryan, Aaron Sheppard, Krystal Ramirez. How his two podcasts create new relationships and inspirations. Story behind his signature look of the red jacket and skeleton designed t-shirt, mentions Thomas Willis, Mikayala Whitmore, listening to Janelle Monáe. Talks about being honored with Nevada Humanities Award in Carson City [2019] and getting a Fawn Douglas original artwork……………………….40 – 44 Talks about Latina drag queen Horrorchata, Festival in Bushwick, NY; Lady Quesa’dilla, meeting them because her was wearing his signature uniform; invited to DragCon. Discusses what “Latinidad” means to him: shaped by many factors; more about the term “Latinx”; “latine” as an alternative word. Importance of the Latinx Voices project. More about being an art teacher at the college level now……………………………………………………………………………45 – 50 List of Works and Exhibits by Justin Favela from 2011 – 2020……………………………51 – 52 ix x 1 Hello. My name is Monserrath Hernández. Today is May 16, 2019. We are at Special Collections inside the Reading Room, and I am with… Maribel Estrada Calderón. Nathalie Martinez. And Barbara Tabach. Today we will be interviewing Justin Favela. Justin, can you spell out your name for us? Yes. J-U-S-T-I-N, and then Favela, F-A-V-E-L-A. Justin, thank you so much for coming down and meeting us today. To start off, I want to ask you something that you talk about a lot: How do you identify? Broke. No. [All laughing] I identify as Latino, Latinx, depending on the situation, I’ll have to spell it out for people and identify as Mexican American and Guatemalan American. Yes, I identify as a lot of different things depending on the situation, so sometimes I have to identify as a queer artist, a person of color, or a white-passing Latino depending on where I am. Why do you say that—white-passing? I’ve been saying that a lot lately because my privilege as a light-skinned Latino has been brought to my attention and I think that the Latinx community doesn’t talk about that enough because the erasure of whiteness within the Latinx community is one of the biggest agents to the erasure of Afro-Latinidad, also. I’ve been thinking a lot about the word Latinx lately and how it’s great for a community, but it’s also really bad for the erasure of white Latinos and Afro-Latinos because there is a social hierarchy, there is a caste system in place that we all ignore. Unfortunately, the 2 term Latinx is also a tool of white supremacy. I see both sides to using the term, but I’m seeing what it does negatively more than positively. How did you become aware of this? Listening to black women because black women always have to do all of the labor when it comes to civil rights and the emotional labor for everybody, everybody in all communities. I listen to a lot of podcasts and this, of course, was brought to my attention by a black podcast called “Tea with Queen and J.” Now that I have these conversations more openly with people, it’s something that people are uncomfortable talking about, but black people have been knowing this and have been trying to tell us for a long time. That’s how I learned about this. Can you tell us a little bit about your family history, where your family is from and where you grew up? I was born and raised here in Las Vegas. My mom is Guatemalan and my dad is from Mexico. They both met here. My biological father, I should say, because I was raised by my stepfather who is also Guatemalan. I think my family came here in the early eighties, both sides of them. They’ve worked in the casinos my whole life; my mom still does and my stepfather still does. Where do they work? My mom works at the Palms and she has worked as a porter there since it opened. My stepfather has worked at the Luxor since before it opened. He was a runner or something; he would help with the construction of stuff, like the cleanup, and then he eventually got hired to be a porter there. Did they initially come to Las Vegas when they came to the U.S. or did they move from somewhere else? No, they both came straight to Vegas. They already had family and roots here. 3 What part of Las Vegas? East side and downtown. When you were growing up in those areas, what was that area like? What was the community like? My mom’s side, we were in government housing, actually, 28th Street between Charleston and Stewart. There are still a couple of the old-school projects there. They were very square, brick houses on 28th Street before. They literally had no design; they were just like shoe boxes with doors and windows on them. That’s where my grandma’s house was on my Guatemalan side. My Mexican side settled downtown in Naked City. They lived where the Stratosphere is today. It used to be called Vegas World back in the day, so they lived right by Vegas World before it was the Stratosphere. I think they razed the apartments to build the parking lot for the Stratosphere, where they were. They were on Philadelphia. All the streets there are named after states or cities. I think the only one standing is Wyoming at the end of Industrial. Yes, exactly. Growing up did you have any favorite family traditions or any favorite celebrations? Birthdays were always a big thing. We would always go to the park and have carne asadas. Which park? Freedom Park. I don’t think it’s called that anymore. MARIBEL: It is. Mojave and… Is it called Freedom Park still? Oh, okay. It’s on Mojave and Washington. We used to go there a lot. We would go to church every week and then go to eat. Which one? 4 My mom’s side, they were Christian Evangelicals, so their church was Iglesia Amigos on Ogden and Ninth, I think. The building is still there; it’s a Knights of Columbus Building. It is just like a little four-suite brick building. Then my dad’s side would go to Saint Anne’s on Maryland Parkway, the Catholic Church. Afterward, you mentioned, you would go eat. Where would you go to eat? We would usually go eat at the Sizzler on Bonanza and Eastern, the Pizza Hut on Nellis. Remember Pizza Hut was a sit-down restaurant back in the day? That was the best. I think it’s Bonanza and Nellis where there used to be one. Or we would go to a buffet. Circus Circus buffet was the cheapest, so on my dad’s side, we would always go to the Circus Circus buffet. I think it was three dollars to eat there. What year was this? This was the early nineties. When you were growing up, what was there to do for young kids? What did you do? When I was young, I just usually stayed inside and watched TV. Which shows would you watch? I love PBS, so everything on PBS from the kids’ shows to the adult shows, like cooking shows and NOVA. I watched all of it. PBS in Vegas used to have downtime in the middle of the day because nobody would be watching TV in the middle of the day. I want to make art about this. I’ve got to talk to the local PBS and see if they have the footage still. Say in the middle of the day they would have two hours of nothing to show on TV; they would play a helicopter shot, like a helicopter going over the entire Colorado River through the Grand Canyon and there was a countdown of when the next show would begin. In the corner there was a little clock with a 5 countdown. I would watch that. I would just watch it for the two hours until the next show came on. Did it ever make you want to go to the Grand Canyon? No, never. Never. I was like, I’ve seen it; I’ve seen it over and over again; I don’t need to see it again. My grandma was like, “There is something wrong with you. Why do you just watch that?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I just want to see what happens, see where they end up.” Looking back why were you so attracted to PBS in particular? I think it was because my family was super religious, so it was the only thing I was allowed to watch. We didn’t really have cable. We had cable a couple of years, but I think it was the only thing—I would watch all the other TV shows, too. I love trash TV to this day. I would watch talk shows, also. I don’t know, I just love PBS. It was acceptable for me to watch that. If the adults weren’t paying attention, I would watch “Ricki Lake” and “Jenny Jones” and all that stuff. BARBARA: You had to be a Ricki Lake fan? I loved it. I loved it. But other than that, we would play outside a lot, me and my brothers. I remember we used to live on the east side off of Lamb and Vegas Valley. Between Vegas Valley and Sahara, there is an elementary school there next to the wash, but it used to be a movie theater. Between the movie theater and our apartment building, there was an untouched desert. That’s what I used to love about Vegas back in the nineties is that there was just patches of desert everywhere with so many animals and nature. It was crazy. Me and my brothers would just go and play in the desert and look for rabbits. What would you do with the rabbits? We would just chase them. We were never smart enough to catch them. Yes, we would play outside a lot and get in trouble for being in the desert too long. 6 Get in trouble with who? My mom because she was like, why don’t you play on the playground like regular kids? My brothers and I liked to go—we would also walk along the Flamingo Wash. Then my brothers got into skateboarding, and so they would skate on the wash, and I would just be like, “All right, bye. I’m going to go watch TV.” NATHALIE: How many brothers did you have? I have two younger brothers. What are their names? Brandon and Edgar Lima; their last name is Lima. Their dad is my stepfather. Where did you go to school? When I was little-little, we moved around a lot. I went to preschool and kindergarten at NALA, which I don’t know if that preschool still exists. I think it was for low-income Latino people. I would go there. Then I went to Robert Lunt Elementary, which is still there. Eastern and Bonanza, basically, Harris. Then I went to Will Beckley, which is on Desert Inn and McLeod. Then I went to Laura Dearing Elementary School, which was on Vegas Valley. Then I went to K.O. Knudson for middle school for a little bit and then they built a new school, Keller Middle School, and that’s where I went to middle school. Then I went to Las Vegas High School. How did you feel at the time about moving around so much? I didn’t like it. It was hard for me to make friends because I was actually a really shy kid in school. I didn’t really start making friends in school until middle school because I had a couple of cousins that went to my school, to Keller. I don’t know. I just kind of stayed to myself, which 7 is probably why I love doing things on my own, watching TV, not socializing. I think in middle school I was like, oh yes, I better start talking to people because it’s just not normal. At that time were you beginning to doodle and draw? I have never been a great drawer. But, yes, I would draw a lot. Doodle is the right word. I would doodle a lot. I would like to make a lot of collages back in the day. I would cut magazines out. I got in big trouble for cutting out…We had a really nice encyclopedia set with pictures in it and I started cutting out the animals and making dioramas. I liked making dioramas or I would catch bugs and make little environments for them, which makes sense now because I do installation art. I was making tiny installations even back then. My cousins would make fun of me for being creative, which is funny. If they find anything, “Oh, here is Justin, so creative, he made us a birthday card.” I’m like, “I made you a birthday card.” And they’re like, “Great. Thanks a lot.” Which is probably worth money now. I know, right? Shoot. I should get it back from them. So funny. I think I’ve always been creative. But then in middle school I joined band, and so then I kind of channeled all my creativity towards music. Even through high school I was in—actually through UNLV. I went to college at UNLV. The first couple of years I was here I was in the band program. What did you play? Sousaphone, tuba. I was low brass. How did you decide to do a fine arts major here at UNLV? Because I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. Honestly, if you can hold a tuba and not fall in the marching band, great, you get a scholarship. Literally that was me, trying not to fall and just trying not to pass out because I couldn’t breathe. After doing that for a couple of years—actually the last year I was in band, I had decided I liked history, so I was like, okay, I’m going to be a 8 secondary education history teacher. I just thought that would be the easiest thing. Then I took an art class as a humanities credit; I took a drawing class and I loved it. I just loved learning how to draw. It was from Wendy Kveck, who still teaches at UNLV. She is an incredible artist. She was like, “You’re really creative. You’re not the best drawer, but you could be good.” I took her advice and the next semester I took a design class and I loved it. Then I switched my major that semester, so I was two years into school. BARBARA: What did that feel like? Was it like an epiphany? It felt great because I didn’t like college, all the pre-reqs they make you take. I think the only class I loved was women’s studies, the initial class: Race, Class and Gender. That really opened my mind. But then the history classes they had me taking here, I’m like, I already know all this stuff. I was taking that Constitution class that’s about Nazis. I’m like, these white people need to stop teaching us about Nazis. We get it. Y’all are obsessed, okay. How are you tying this to the Nevada Constitution, I don’t know. But, all right, I get it. MARIBEL: It is U.S. and Nevada Constitution. I’m teaching it next semester. The same guy is probably teaching it, right? Dr. [Colin] Loader. Oh my God. He loves it. Oh my, you’re going to learn so much about the Weimar Republic, let me tell you. I took that class as a freshman and now I’m… I’m like, this is a stretch, but he does it. He’s able to do it. It’s a four-credit class, so I was like, great. I think we can make parallels with the current political environment. 9 Oh, now it makes a lot of sense. See, back then I was like, this has nothing to do with anything, but now I see exactly where he was going. All right, Professor Loader, I got you. Anyway, I was trying to find what I loved. I don’t know. Art classes were the classes that I would never miss, and so I just started taking all of these art classes and then just taking the sciences and all the pre-req stuff during the summers so I didn’t have to worry about it during the semester. I loved being in school and art classes are three hours long twice a week if it’s a studio class. I just loved having a space to create things with people. It was cool. I think it was everything that I’m interested in now: creativity, community. I found my people in the art department. Some of my best friends are still people that I met in the BFA program at UNLV. I eventually got into the BFA program, which is an extra year. I was at UNLV for a long time, seven years. MARIBEL: You said that your family criticized you for being creative. What did they think when you switched majors to art? I lied to them. I told them that I was studying to be an art teacher, which, I guess, is not completely a lie because I am an art teacher now, but I didn’t study secondary education with an art emphasis, concentration. But I’m an art teacher now. I’m going to be teaching at a university this fall, Southern Oregon University. They hired me. I’ll be teaching an installation course and a printmaking course. I think my family, they’re just happy I was in college. Were you the first one? I think technically I am the first one to graduate with a degree, yes, from my family, yes. It’s a common theme with first-generation kids to lie to their parents about certain things that they feel like they wouldn’t understand. Why did you tell them that you were studying to be an art teacher? 10 Well, it’s still hard for me to express why I’m an artist now in English. People ask me, why are you an artist? I don’t really have a great answer right now. Just answering it now, it’s because it’s what I love doing; it’s because it’s all I can do. I don’t know. That’s not a great excuse. Then when it comes to stability, especially being from Las Vegas, why don’t you get a job—I had a job at a casino. Also, I also had a full-time job every year that I was in school because…I always do too much. What did you do? Oh my God, I did everything, every job you could imagine. When I first was going to school here, I was a roller coaster operator at the New York New York, my freshman year. I was only there for a year. Then I worked at the UNLV Bookstore for a while. Then I worked as a computer lab monitor for the art department. I worked as a substitute teacher for the Clark County School District; that was the worst job of my life. Why do you say that? Kids suck; that’s why, in middle school. I am very patient and I—oh, this was the transition. I also worked for a company that has group homes in town called Chrysalis. They are group homes for mentally disabled men. I was a caretaker for this house for years and eventually became the manager of the house and eventually became the auditor for the company, so I would drive around to check on everybody. That got to be too much. Then I was like, oh, if I can handle grown men with learning disabilities, I can handle middle schoolers, and then I was incorrect. I was a middle school teacher for a little bit; for a year I taught English and math because that’s what they need. I had so many jobs. I worked for the Liberace Foundation for a minute and then I worked for the Neon Museum full time for seven years. What did you do there? 11 When I was in school, I started off as a volunteer because I love the signs. As a volunteer I started training other volunteers to give the tour that I gave. The manager at the time, Melanie Coffee, she was the operations manager, and she was like, “Well, why don’t we just hire you and you can be the volunteer coordinator and head of the docent program?” Then that’s what I started doing for years. Then the institution just kept growing and I was there through the opening of the new iteration of the museum that it is now, which is with the La Concha’s entrance and the boneyard as it looks today. I think my last title at the museum was Programs Administrator, which meant nothing, which meant whatever we need you to do; that’s what we’re going to do. What is your favorite sign? My favorite sign, oh my God, probably the Stardust sign. I love the Stardust sign just because the scale is so massive. There are so many great ones, though. I think the Stardust, yes. Do you like the museum better at night or in the day? Well, when I was working there, you could only see it in the day, nothing lit up. I think during the day I still like it better because you can see all the signs. At night you can only see the ones that are lit up. One of the reasons I loved working at the Neon Museum was because I was just—I still am, but I used to be more of a super nostalgic person, and so a lot of those signs to me represented my childhood and the good old days. What does that even mean, right? Just to be around these massive sculptures was so awesome, just to see the construction. It was the amalgamation of all the things that I’m interested in—history, art, pop culture, advertising—all in one object. Then also to be able to tell our stories through the signage was really cool because I love storytelling. That probably also came from my family; we would just sit around and tell stories. I think that’s why I really loved working at the Neon Museum. 12 NATHALIE: What were some of those fond stories, most memorable stories that you remember hearing growing up? I don’t know; there’s just always a story. When we all get together for Thanksgiving or Christmas, families just tell the same stories and if somebody is there and it’s their special day, they always get into it—I was talking with my primo who used to cry all the time when he was a kid, so even now at family gatherings they start chanting, “quiere llorar, quiere llorar”. He is a grown ass, fifty-something-year-old man, but because he cried one time when he was ten, that’s his story. But I love talking to my grandmothers on both sides, Guatemalan side and Mexican side, about how things used to be back in the day. My grandmother loves to go into detail about how she used to garden in Guatemala and everything grew no matter what. She just goes into detail about how it was back in the day and how they got here. My Mexican grandma, she is also super creative. I like talking about food with her and just old traditions that don’t exist anymore and things like that. BARBARA: What do you know about your immigration story, your family heritage? On my dad’s side, on the Mexican side, I know that my grandfather was part of the Braceros program, so he came here when my dad was really little. He would work in the United States, in California on the orange farms. He would pick oranges. I think they would work all the way up the West Coast, so they would work in California all the way up to Washington in different orchards. It was like six months at a time, so he would work six months and then he would go back to Mexico to be with the family and to get my grandma pregnant and to have another child. In that six-month period, he had enough money to invest in the little town. They’re from Carreras, Durango, which is near Tepehuanes; it’s in the north. My grandfather has always kind 13 of been a businessman, and so he opened up his own ice cream shop in the town and then left his brother to run it when he was gone; it was called El Arbolito. Eventually my father and my uncles got old enough to work; they were adults or at least older teenagers. I think my dad, from what my grandma tells me, came up to work on the farms with my grandpa, and then eventually a family member got them into the restaurant industry in L.A. That’s when Las Vegas, in the eighties, was starting to have its second big boom because Vegas has always had booms, but the fifties was the first really big one and then the eighties was the one where my family started coming here. My grandfather, one of his first jobs in Vegas was at, I believe, Chapala’s Mexican Restaurant and he was also a dishwasher at the La Concha because they had a little coffee shop there. I think he started working here and my family came up, I think, on work visas. My grandma and my aunts, everybody moved up here. My aunts and my uncle, there’s five of them, so I have two aunts, two uncles and my dad on my mom’s side. They were old enough where they just had to finish high school when they got here, so they went to Las Vegas High School, now the academy. They finished there and everybody went to work in the casinos. My grandma, for example, and my aunts, they all were maids at the Dunes. My dad got into being a dealer, so he was a dealer at Binion’s Horseshoe; that was his last big casino job. My Uncle Rito became a waiter. Everybody was in the service industry somehow. Mom’s side, similar story. One of my aunts actually—have you guys talked to any of the people from Lindo Michoacan yet? Yes, Javier Barajas. Oh, okay. Well, let me tell you the real story. I was actually there for that interview. 14 Javier Barajas is my uncle, actually, through my mom’s side, through my Guatemalan side. I don’t know how they found each other, but my Tía Mary married Javier Barajas, and so my Tía Mary was with him when they opened Lindo Michoacan back in the day. My Tía Mary came out here and so did my Tía Beltsy who is no longer alive, and she married this white dude and was here working in the casinos back in, I believe, the early eighties, maybe even late seventies. That’s how we had connections to Las Vegas. My aunt was really smart, really charming and worked her way from bein