Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [172]
When he was earning millions in the early Eighties, Duran helped his family. Whether paying their electric bills or helping to buy a house for grandmother Ceferina, he knew that he was in a special position and felt responsible to spread the wealth. However, many have noted that the fighter would buy drinks and steaks for the manzanillos before he would consider helping his family and close friends.
“After winning the championship, he started opening some businesses. A grocery store, then a boutique, and he then bought a couple of buildings. He did not buy any more, he just kept these things,” said Vargas. “He did not want to go on with this. He bought a car, a big screen for movies because he likes movies very much, and that is about all. He also bought a piece of land with cows around here. He contacted me and asked me to go and take care of those cows. But in the meantime he got me a job at INTEL, the telephone company, so I did not go there. He talked personally with the manager there and succeeded in getting me a job. I worked there twenty-two years. Till today I am thankful to him for this job. I retired after working there.”
Vargas is one of the few family members who didn’t charge Duran with not doing more with his money. Although Vargas left his mother, Duran continued to help his stepfather. “One day Justiniano [Vargas’s son] was stabbed. Fula was around, and he was taken to hospital,” Vargas recalled. “They had a kiosk and a couple of criminals tried to rob him and stabbed him. He had to be urgently operated on because his stomach was badly damaged. And Duran paid for it all. I was once in the hospital myself and Duran paid for the operation. I had to be operated on several times because of a cyst but the operations had not been properly done. So Duran talked to Eleta in order to find a place where I could be operated on properly. I was sent to San Fernando. I got in on a Sunday, and on Monday I had already undergone surgery. He paid five hundred dollars for my stay there. So I can say nothing bad about him, for he always helped me out whenever I was in trouble.”
Vargas also staunchly defends Felicidad. He claims he would sometimes go to casinos with her and “she would never lose. On the contrary, she would always win two or three hundred dollars. People used to say she was wasting his money at the casino but since I would go with her and be present, I saw she did not waste the money as people liked to say. I do not believe it was her who spent the money. After winning her money, she would say, ‘Let’s go home.’ And we would go back home.”
Toti Samaniego, Roberto’s older brother, also defends Felicidad. “If he is married to his wife and he decides to give her money, then she may spend it on whatever she likes, right?” he said. “If he knew that she would go to the casino, did he give her money? This is the way he was. He did not care about the money. He would just give it away for her to do whatever she pleased. And since she lacked nothing at all, what could she do with the money? She would just go into the casino and use it all there.”
Living with a woman in Nuevo Arreglan, in a house that Roberto bought for him twenty-five years ago, Toti has had little contact with his family over the years. He has the impish quality of a cartoon character and emotion resonates on his large face. He doesn’t look like his brother and the world seems already to have passed him by. His smile is sad and his wrinkles suggest a lifelong struggle. He survives with an energy touched by exasperation.
Duran’s uncle Moises was an accomplished folk singer, but it is Toti’s voice that the family raves about. While money flashed signs of freedom and autonomy for Roberto, it didn’t affect his brother. Although Toti currently lives a twenty-five-minute cab ride from Duran’s home, it is in a community way off the beaten path. He has no phone and to find him visitors travel through a thick forested area and