Writer Carlos Birdie Ochoa was just 31 days old when his father was gunned down on San Antonio’s West Side, so he never knew him.
Six years later, he and his siblings were removed from his mother’s home by Child Protective Services. He has vivid memories of her holding a gun against her temple right before she was tackled by police and the children were taken.
“Godfather of the Westside” is the debut poetry collection by San Antonian Carlos Birdie Ochoa. (Carlos Birdie Ochoa)
An aunt and uncle in Amarillo eventually took Ochoa and some of his siblings in, and his mother wasn’t part of much of his childhood.
He got curious about both of them when he was about 16 and came back to San Antonio. He eventually spent some time with his mother, Josie, whom he described as a broken woman who never got the love she desperately wanted. And he started hearing stories about his dad, Ernest “The Godfather” Ybarra, from people who had known him, including family members Ochoa had never met.
People told him his father had a reputation on the West Side as someone to turn to for help. He was a tattoo artist and a boxer who also sold marijuana and, as Ochoa heard it, refused to pay a protection fee to gang members. That led to his murder.
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“My cousin, he was like, ‘You know who you are? Your dad was something big,’ ” Ochoa said. “I’m like, ‘I don’t know my father.’ The one I knew more was my mother and my mother had struggled.”
Over time, he started to piece together the story of his parents’ lives. And, about a year and a half ago, he began getting it down on paper, writing more than 100 poems telling about their lives and his own.
The pieces are collected in his debut poetry collection “Godfather of the West Side: Three Generations Deep – Poems of Blood Ties, Betrayal and Survival.” It is available on Amazon.
There are pieces about his father – “a bullet wrote the end before I learned his face” – and his mother – “She walked the Westside streets when no one else would, loved her children fiercely the best way she could.”
There also are poems about his own struggles. In “Boysville/Foster Care/Home,” Ochoa describes the years after he and his siblings were taken from their mother. He writes about the difficulty he had expressing himself, and how he learned, after his aunt and uncle in Amarillo took him in, that he could use a pen and paper to get his thoughts across.
He got to spend some time with his mother near the end of her life in 2019 and has never been able to shake something she said to him: “She told me, ‘Mijo, nobody ever knew my story,'” he said. “And when she said that, it broke me down. It told me I should be telling her story.”
He’s hoping that those who read the book who are struggling with their own issues will get a sense that they’re not alone and that their own stories have value. He also made it a point to include lists of mental health resources at the back of the book for those who might not know where to turn for help.
Ochoa, who works as a security guard, is also working on a crime novel that draws on his family’s stories. And he’s hoping that his writing will eventually generate enough revenue so he can create programs to help youngsters turn away from gangs.
“I think that’s the most important thing, to focus on the next generation,” he said.
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This article originally published at San Antonio poet recalls traumatic West Side childhood in debut collection.