Film icon Danny Trejo’s start is nothing like his finish
Icon Danny Trejo on his path from prison boxer to ‘Machete’ star
by Wilbert Torre
Danny Trejo is the actor best known as “Machete” — the Mexican man with the scary face and a tattoo of Adelita, the revolutionary woman, on his chest. Born in California to Mexican American parents, Trejo often played the roles of mean characters in movies and the TV series, “From Dusk Till Dawn,” directed by Robert Rodriguez and written by Quentin Tarantino. He also starred in “Heat” alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. And, more recently, as a cartel member in “Breaking Bad.”
Trejo has often said, “It isn’t about the start, it’s all about the finish.” It’s a simple idea, but one with the power and clarity to express the complex journeys some make toward realizing the American Dream, overcoming political, social, and economic adversity in the land of opportunity.
Trejo’s story began in the Echo Park neighborhood in Los Angeles, long before it became a bastion for hipsters. His father was a construction worker, his mother a dedicated housewife. The family soon moved to Pacoima, in the northeastern corner of the San Fernando Valley.
“Because of California’s long tenure under Mexico’s rule, many people of Mexican descent had been living in the Pacoima area for years,” reports the Pacoima Historical Society. However, in the early 1900s, “Mexico was experiencing a major conflict between its government and the powerful Catholic Church. This would lead to the ‘Cristero War,’ which led to one of the first significant Mexican migrations into California.”
Many Mexican families settled in Pacoima, which is derived from “Pacoinga Village,” meaning “the beginning,” as it was called by the Tataviam tribe, the proud indigenous founders, also known as “the people who face the sun.”
The village was a mix of Mexican and black communities who arrived in the village in 1951 when land developers launched a campaign to attract African Americans to a new housing project named after the famous heavyweight boxer Joe Louis.
Born on May 16, 1944, Trejo was 8 years old the first time he smoked weed. Four years later, he became aware of the joys of heroin after watching one of his uncle's experiments.
“When I was 12 years old, my life took a detour when I started hanging out with Uncle Gilbert, my dad’s youngest brother,” Trejo recalls in his book, “Trejo’s Tacos: Recipes and Stories from L.A.”
“He was my hero. He taught me how to box, and it turned out I was a natural,” he writes. “He was also the guy who got me into drugs and robbing people. We were literal partners in crime. It got to the point where you weren’t quite sure if you robbed people to support your drug habit or did drugs to support your robbery habit.”
He once stabbed a sailor with the edge of a broken bottle. He remembers his yellow shirt turning red after the fight. Trejo “was 15 when he was first busted,” Amos Barshad writes on Grantland. “Quickly, he moved from juvie to the more stringent California Youth Authority. At 23, he hit the big time. He’d sold a dealer 4 ounces of heroin, $30,000 worth — only it was bags of sugar, selectively dabbed on the openings with the real stuff. The buyer was an undercover federal agent. Trejo was shipped to San Quentin, but not before stashing about $15,000 worth of the drug money in his mother’s backyard.”
Inside the juvenile center, Trejo remembers, Mexican Americans were organized, and afterward they created street gangs. Besides running illegal businesses, they also dedicated themselves to protecting families with Mexican roots.
After several prison stints from the age of 15 to 21, Trejo tried to become a boxer, but he was rejected by the California Boxing Commission due to his criminal record. He started a gardening business and worked for fight clubs organized in bars. He took knockouts for $500.
A little background helps to understand the full meaning of Trejo’s adage, “It isn’t about the start, it’s all about the finish.” Trejo was robbing supermarkets and restaurants with his uncle Gilbert, but he never joined the Mexican mafia. “I knew I didn’t want to commit my life to somebody else or a gang,” he said in a 2019 interview with VladTV. The boxing he learned from his uncle helped him avoid joining a gang in prison. He became a sort of celebrity in prison since he was the lightweight and welterweight champion wherever he was booked.
He knew, he said, something better would show up for him.
He was put in solitary confinement after attacking a prison guard. He prayed for a change in his life. He wanted to get sober, and he did it in jail. He walked out of prison, avoiding death row on three charges related to riots inside the institution.
