Ray’s oldest friend and Felix’s cousin. Luis is a dealer and exceptionally violent crack addict who is married to Wanda before his long stint in jail—although he actually has 12 children with four different women, none of whom he ever sees. He abuses his wife Wanda and eventually ends up in prison. When he gets released, surprisingly, he quits crack and takes on legal (if informal) work alongside his cousin Primo.
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Luis Character Timeline in In Search of Respect
The timeline below shows where the character Luis appears in In Search of Respect. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1: Violating Apartheid In the United States
...“once raped an old male transient” along with his old best friend (and Primo’s cousin) Luis. In fact, Luis has just gotten arrested, and Ray is debating whether to kill him...
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Chapter 5: School Days: Learning to be a Better Criminal
...is “The Peer Group,” the subject of Bourgois’s next section. Older kids, including Ray and Luis, teach eleven-year-old Primo how to steal cars and radios from rich neighborhoods, especially the Upper...
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...explains that this was a common and profoundly troubling phenomenon in El Barrio: Ray and Luis coordinated gang rapes of teenage girls, and Primo and Caesar gladly participated in them. Bourgois...
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...to be raped. Caesar insists that women like being raped and “come back for more.” Luis apparently likes showing off in front of the other men, which confirms the “homoerotic dimension”...
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Chapter 6: Redrawing the Gender Line on the Street
...how Candy uses her newfound independence to help other women, like by trying to convince Luis’s wife Wanda to retaliate for his violence—he beats her up whenever she looks out the...
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Chapter 8: Vulnerable Fathers
...takes pride in living off his girlfriends’ income and setting them against each other, and Luis trades sex for crack. One young man, Pedro, celebrates women who prostitute themselves. Caesar’s cousin...
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...“Masculinity in Historical Crisis,” Bourgois notes that the older generation of dealers he befriended—namely, Ray, Luis, and Candy—follow the old jíbaro emphasis on having a large family (which was very helpful...
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...Primo and Caesar are “in their early twenties,” about 15 years younger than Ray and Luis, and think their grandparents were crazy to have so many kids. During that time back...
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...Candy says, “you pay for the whole package deal” (meaning supporting her whole family). Similarly, Luis tells his exes to have their new boyfriends “look out for my kids. Because they...
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Epilogue
...and living with Felix, who ostensibly no longer beats her, and has adopted two of Luis and his wife Wanda’s children. Felix works occasional construction jobs, but the family still receives...
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Luis is out of prison on probation and seems to be staying away from crack while...
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Epilogue 2003
...construction jobs. Their son Junior is in prison, and they briefly took foster children, but Luis’s sons (the first they took in) allegedly sexually abused the others.
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Luis has quit drugs, “to everyone’s surprise,” and is living with his girlfriend and two new...
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...shows up to chat with Esperanza’s reclusive daughter, and Bourgois learns that this man is Luis’s son, whom he had last met six years before, when “his father Luis has just...
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