Tamale Pete
by C. W. (Bill) Smith.
Illustration by Gary Oliver.
P
edro Castillo would be a hero in
any world. Disabled at an early
age, his was a life of pain and
hard work. With his deformed spine,
he could have begged on the streets of
Sanderson or sought a handout from
the county. The county judges in the
early days of Terrell County often
wrote a check on county funds and qui-
etly presented it to poor folks truly in
need.
Pedro Castillo would have none of
that. Instead, he chose the hard road of
self-reliance and entrepreneurship to
make his way in the world. In the
8
Cenizo
process he became a shining icon and
an example of perseverance. Actually
the word...disabled...did not fit him at
all.
Pedro Castillo y Olivares was born
at La Hacienda Santa Rita, a working
ranch in San Luis Potosí, México, on
January 31, 1879.
Injured in a fall from a horse at age
seven, he spent two years on crutches
and suffered throughout his life from a
severely deformed back. His disability
prevented him from doing regular cow-
boy work so he could not follow in his
father’s and brothers' footsteps. There
First Quarter 2016
was not much he could do on a ranch
in the way of labor and there was no
one to show him anything else.
In 1894, at age 15, he entered the
U.S. at Eagle Pass, Texas, and made
his way to Del Rio where he spent two
years working on the street selling
bread.
In 1896 God smiled on young Pedro
when Sanderson rancher Charles
Downie crossed his path. A self-made
man himself, Downie looked with sym-
pathy on the tiny, hunch-backed
teenager who was hawking his large
load of bread around the streets of Del
Rio. Downie offered Pedro a job at his
ranch at Sanderson, a three-month try-
out to see what he could do. Downie
even paid Pedro’s train fare from Del
Rio to Sanderson. He would work for
three months as a household domestic
for $12 per month.
In those three months, the family
quickly came to love Pedro’s personali-
ty, sense of humor and his soft-spoken
demeanor. As a result his stay was
extended for 14 years. He became a
valued and beloved employee at the
Downie Ranch headquarters.
In those years, Mrs. Downie taught
Pedro to cook, a fateful event that
enabled him to support himself and his
family through the years. He never
sought, nor was he ever forced by cir-
cumstance, to take public assistance at
any point in his life.
As majordomo for the Downies, he
not only did the cooking and cleaning
for the family, more importantly, he
learned to keep the ranch commissary
supplied for its large staff of sheep-
herders and cowboys. Overseeing the
logistics of supply and demand in an
enterprise that employed a large crew
and ran thousands of head of sheep was
no mean feat.
It was a happy arrangement until
1913, when Cupid shot Castillo with
his amorous arrow and he fell in love