Felix Character Analysis

One of Ray’s oldest friends, Primo’s cousin, Candy’s abusive husband, Esperanza and Luis’s brother, and the founder of the Game Room. He ignores the business side of the Game Room, preferring to build up his ego and sleep with teenaged addicts in exchange for crack. When Felix ends up in jail, Candy sells the crackhouse to Ray, which is how Primo ends up running it. He meets Candy when they are teenagers, and then gang-rapes her, gets her pregnant, and marries her. For years, he beats her severely almost every day, trying to force her to remain dependent on him in order to solidify his position as the head of the household. Twice, Candy finds him sleeping with her sister and attacks him—the second time, fed up with his years of abuse and infidelity, she shoots him. While Felix is in jail, Candy becomes one of East Harlem’s most respected dealers, doing his job better than he ever could. However, during this time, their children Junior and Jackie get involved in the darkest aspects of street culture. After Felix gets out of prison, he turns himself around: he starts treating Candy with respect, and he begins working in off-the-books construction jobs. His story exemplifies the paradox of gender relations in El Barrio—Bourgois suggests that the men of El Barrio violently insist on leading their households even though women are the only ones who do anything in the household, due to men’s irresponsibility and inability to find stable work. For Bourgois, this is a product of traditional Puerto Rican rural gender ideology struggling to adapt to the urban environment and service-oriented labor market of New York.