Poverty sets a reduced price on crime.
-Sebastian Roch Nicolas Chamfort

Can't I just skip this whole story thing? Ain't exactly pretty for me to think over everything. It's changed a hell of a lot and I guess I have too. But hell, I guess I'll give it a shot anyway. I'll probably skip over some things, but that's the way it is cause some things I just don't wanna talk about. I know ya understand, just like to always make myself totally clear.

Like maybe most of the gang members, I grew up poor. Broken home, too. My mom ditched when I was eight, left my dad with me and my younger brother. No offense to him, he tried but he just wasn't cut out for single parenthood. We pretty much ran wild and when he was ten, my brother just plain ran away. I stuck around, though I stuck mostly to the streets, not seein' my old man so much. Ain't so overly proud to say it, but I got in with the wrong crowd and did some not so nice things. Guess it's a story people've heard a million times before. But sometimes there just don't seem like anywhere else to go.

Oh, did I mention that bad crowd was led by Miguel? Yep, in his less saintly days. I always liked him though, he was good to those who were good to him. Me and him got real tight for awhile there but, well, fate wasn't meant that way and when he shot Carmellina and left the gang, I felt betrayed. And started hatin' him. Don't no more, but then... wasn't nobody I hated more. Did all I could to work against him, too.

Went on that way for awhile, years even. As he worked on gettin' himself better, I was gettin' worse. And then came the time that the gang and me surrounded the place Miguel and some of those people from Tandraia were. We was gonna do some real damage but, well, it ain't real clear in my mind but Lina used her charm on me. And pulled me in and I ain't sure how it happened but I ended up joinin' up with that side after awhile. No charm no more, just wanted to start changin' my life.

Weird how things work since I joined up with Las Panteras, right under Miguel. He had me pretty high in rank in the gang quick cause he knew I could handle it. Guess ya know what all we been doin' and goin' through. It was real weird workin' with Miguel again at first, but then it felt totally right. Guess I'll always have feelin's for him, that kinda thing don't go away so easy for me. But he's with who he belongs with, I can see that just by lookin' at the two of 'em. And hell, don't think me and a relationship was meant to be anyway. Got more important things to do than that shit. Maybe someday. Way in the future. Maybe.

One of the most fashionable notions of our times is that social problems like poverty and oppression breed wars. Most wars, however, are started by well-fed people with time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances.
-Thomas Sowell

People who are much too sensitive to demand of cripples that they run races ask of the poor that they get up and act just like everyone else in the society.
-Michael Harrington