Danny Trejo is more than the ‘mean Chicano dude with tattoos’
WRITTEN BY WILBERT TORRE
Trejo was 25 when he got out of prison in 1969. He went back to his parents’ home and tried to adapt to life in the neighborhood where, years before, he had robbed houses. He thought about taking the garbage from people’s doors to the garbage truck, but the neighbors were afraid he would steal it. He continued loading garbage barrels, until, one day, an old man with arthritis, unable to load the garbage, gave him an elegant sack as a thank you. “Then I began to appreciate that the better you treat others, the more you receive and the better you do in life,” he said in the 2019 interview with VladTV.
He later applied for a job at a narcotics prevention center in Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles. It was the moment of Chicano culture, and the kids were wearing serapes and huaraches. Trejo showed up wearing a suit, and when it was suggested that he could be a liaison in the courthouse helping people in trouble, he remembered his time in jail. He then decided he would work as a counselor for recovering addicts.
It was the first job that, in addition to being a job, allowed him to help the community. After a few years of work, he landed his first role in a movie, perhaps in a way similar to the legend of the princes of Ceylon, in which three brothers go out in search of a particular object and instead return with other objects they have found by chance.
Halfway through the 1980s, Trejo received a call from one of the recovering addicts under his responsibility. He was working on the film “Runaway Train,” and he told Trejo that he was about to snort his stash of cocaine.
When Trejo arrived at the film site, a star was born in an unexpected way. Author and actor Edward Bunker was also on the set that day. He had met Trejo in prison and had seen him win boxing titles. So, when he saw Trejo, he asked him to star in the fight sequences with actor Eric Robles.
While in prison, Trejo used the boxing skills he learned from his uncle Gilbert to help him position himself with gangs that wanted him to join. Now, on the street, boxing had opened a door to what he thought could be a different life.
Thirty-five years later, Trejo has starred in dozens of films and even made a few documentaries: one about surviving in prison and another about his long and complicated rise from convict and addict to Hollywood star.
Along the way, he has supported ideas and projects related to countering the systemic problems that have historically affected the Mexican American community. He is also still a counselor for people recovering from addiction. He has promoted initiatives to support autistic children and is always thinking of new ways to reach those in the Hispanic community who need help.
“The biggest problem with young Latinos is that they are told they are worthless,” he said in the 2019 interview. “They are told they are stupid and dumb. When I go to juvenile hall, I see kids who feel like they’re outcasts and that they are no good. It’s up to us to get them back on track.”
Recently, Trejo and actor Edward James Olmos has created, along with the former governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson — all three of whom are of Mexican origin — a fund that will offer $150 and $300 checks to assist individuals and families in the neighborhoods of Dona Ana County in New Mexico.
Richardson had a close relationship with the people of Dona Ana County when he served as governor from 2003 to 2011. “The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on those neighborhoods, already struggling to survive, has been catastrophic,” Richardson stated.
Danny Trejo turned 77 on May 16. The celebration found him organizing efforts to help the Dona Ana community and delivering food to hospitals, the homeless, and the elderly.
Trejo remembered, in an interview with NPR’s “Fresh Air,” when a Chicana reporter, just out of college, asked him, “Don’t you feel you’re being stereotyped? … You always play the mean Chicano dude with tattoos.”
“I thought about it,” Trejo said, and he replied to the reporter: “I am the mean Chicano dude with tattoos.” He lifted his shirt and proudly displayed the tattoo of Adelita on his chest.
In everyday life, Trejo is the hero who appears out of nowhere to help a boy trapped in a van after a traffic accident in Los Angeles, or he’s serving tacos from the taqueria he owns in Los Angeles to homeless and hapless old men.
On his Twitter feed, in the comments under the video of a Univision interview in which he talks about quarantine, @velvetrotter, a Texan mother, left him this message:
“I love you, how you give back to your community! You are such a vision of love, community, and how people should not be labeled for what they have done in the past, but how they can progress in the future! Love to you!”
It isn’t about the start, Trejo says. It’s all about the finish.
