Tom Wallace: You had a number of positive experiences in the US after you arrived in the Mariel boatlift, but eventually you wound up homeless.
Moisés: Right, I was living on the streets of Little Havana for a while. I lived under an overpass.
Tom: What kind of place was Little Havana at the time?
Moisés: [Laughs] Not a very good one. It was bad in those days, Tom. A very violent and dangerous place. It was the place where a lot of those guys from the Cuban prisons ended up. You know, Ariza prison, Boniato, Combinado del Este… There are a lot of prisons in Cuba. And these guys—they acted like they were still in prison. They still had that mentality. If they didn’t like somebody, they wanted to stab him, or beat him up, or kill him, just like they would have done in prison. It was dangerous.
Tom: So to be homeless there—
Moisés: Yeah, to be homeless in Little Havana in the ‘80s was really bad. I mean, if you could go inside and lock your door, at least that was something. But to be homeless… You just had to be right out there with everybody.
Tom: Why did you stay there?
Moisés: The same reason those bad guys stayed there. That was our community. We knew the language, the food, the customs. You know, that was Cuba. That was our place. You bump up against another person in the street, you bump up against Cuba. We didn’t come here because we hate Cuba. We love Cuba. But we hate what happened to Cuba. We wanted to be—we wanted to embrace Cuba. And Little Havana was Cuba, or as close as we could make it.
Tom: But was that place dangerous for you personally?
Moisés: Yes, of course. Tom—listen, I’m 5’5” and 125 pounds. What do you think? [Laughs] Yeah, some of those bad guys thought I would be easy to push around.
Tom: Were you?
Moisés: I mean, they were bigger than me, but I stood up for myself. As a teenager I studied boxing and martial arts, but just for sport, you know. Just for recreation. But, yeah, I could stand up for myself. But the streets were full of predators. It was like being in a pool with a bunch of sharks. In that time I was always, always, always alert. I always paid attention to everything that was going on around me. I knew who was walking across the street, what cars were driving by, what the guys on the corner were saying to each other, when somebody raised his voice, when there was somebody walking behind me... All the time. You had to know the temperature of the neighborhood at every moment if you were going to survive.
Tom: How did the experience of being homeless in that time and place change you?
Moisés: I was tough enough to take care of myself, but being there made me tougher. It was like—if you go to prison, you have to become tough so the others in there don’t take advantage of you. So, I had to deal with those bad guys and become more like them. I had to imitate the way they handled themselves. I just didn’t take nothing from nobody.
Tom: Was there a turning point at which you realized you were as tough as them, or was it a gradual change?
Moisés: Mmm… Yeah, gradual. But if I had to pick a single event… There was one night something happened.
Tom: Tell me about that.
Moisés: I was lying down trying to sleep, but I couldn’t sleep. It was hard to sleep in that place. And I could hear somebody coming up close to me from behind. I was laying on my side. So, I knew he was trying to do something, because why do you walk up on a homeless man sleeping under an overpass. He wasn’t coming to throw me a party. So I just pretended to be asleep until he got right up on me. Then I jumped up and turned around to grab him. Well, he had a gun pointed right at me, but I was in attack mode at that moment, so I just grabbed the gun from him.
Tom: You grabbed his gun?
Moisés: [Laughing] I grabbed it right out of his hand. He was trying to take whatever I had. Well, I didn’t have much, but I turned the gun on him and told him to give me what he had. I got fifteen dollars from him.
Tom: You took his gun and his money.
Moisés: Oh, yeah. I got him good. I went to a friend of mine who was homeless there and told him what happened and I said, “Come with me. I’m going to buy us something. We’re going to eat good tonight.” So, we went to a restaurant and ate. We felt very good.
Tom: Are you a badass?
Moisés: Now? No. At that time I transformed myself into a badass to survive. If you asked people from that time and place, “Was Moisés a badass?” They would tell you that I was. But now I just want to take care of my family. Now, if somebody tried to come into my home and hurt by kids or my wife—they’d find out they’re messing with the wrong guy. But I don’t think that way about the world around me anymore. I live in a nice, quiet neighborhood and I have good neighbors, and I just want my kids to be happy and have fun.
Tom: But back then you were that way out of necessity.
Moisés: Right. Now everything is about taking care of my family. Back then it was all about taking care of me.
Tom: And after you’d been homeless for a while, something happened.
Moisés: Yeah, I was just hanging out one day and a car came to a screeching stop right next to me. And I thought there was going to be some trouble. This guy jumps out of the car and yells my name. It took a minute, but I figured out it was an old friend of mine from Cuba. He didn’t like that I was living that way. He was shocked. So he said he knew somebody I could do some work for. And I could be making good money.
Tom: That must have sounded good to you at that moment.
Moisés: [Laughs] That sounded very good. I said, “Yeah, I want to make some money and get out of this situation." I was living by my wits from minute to minute. I was exhausted by all that stuff.
Tom: So who was the guy your friend introduced you to?
Moisés: He was a guy called Fabio—a Colombian guy. He was connected to the Medellin cartel. A big guy.
Tom: And your life changed pretty significantly at that point.
Moisés: Yeah. That was the beginning of something. That’s for sure.
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