How to Be Brave

The following is adapted from Tafolla Toro.

When I was twelve, death paid my family a visit.

Tio Mongui was one of my mom’s fifteen siblings. He had a larger-than-life personality, and every time he walked into the room, everybody laughed a little harder and smiled a little bigger. My mom once told me that in all matters of macho toughness, her brother Mongui was the leader.

Although he left my life far too early, I learned a lot from him. I learned that we all need to find our own style as we walk through this world. Tio Mongui had a well-groomed mustache and wore cowboy boots and a cowboy hat in typical Laredo fashion. He was tall and took long, slow strides, as if to say, “I don’t have to hurry for anyone.”

I learned, too, that even in difficult circumstances it’s possible to carve out a niche in the world with ingenuity and audacity. Tio Mongui ran a successful bail bonds company. He was the first entrepreneur I knew and the first person I saw carrying a cell phone, back when cell phones were the size of bricks and only celebrities or very rich people could afford one. His brick of a cell phone hung like a pistol from his leather belt and swung back and forth as he walked.

I also learned that there are different ways to be brave, and that sometimes it takes enormous courage to be kind. Tio Mongui faced a difficult choice and made the decision to help a woman in need, and that decision cost him his life. This is how it went down.

Murdered for Saving a Life

The city of Laredo is split between Texas and Mexico; the border between the United States and Mexico is literally divided by the Rio Grande River. A man in Laredo, Texas, killed two brothers across the river in Mexico. The killer returned to the Texas side and the US authorities picked him up for stealing a car and put him in jail. He knew the family of the dead brothers would find him there and come to kill him.

The killer’s mother was my uncle’s neighbor. He was her third and only surviving son, so even though he was a killer, he was all she had. She went to my Tio Mongui and begged him to bail her son out of jail. My uncle was not stupid; he knew the other family was looking for this guy, but my uncle’s heart was bigger than his fear. When the sweet mother came and begged my uncle for help to keep her son alive, he didn’t know how to say no.

Even as a twelve-year-old, I knew he shouldn’t bail the guy out, but life is complicated. All of my memories of Laredo were of my loving, caring, and hospitable family. They cooked, they cleaned, they did whatever they could for their family, they would give you the shirt off their back. They would let you move into the back room if you didn’t have a place to stay. They were really loving, generous people.

I imagine this guy’s mom pleading to my uncle. I imagined her as one of my aunts or my grandma. I put myself in my uncle’s shoes and thought if one of my aunts or grandmas came begging and pleading, I would absolutely not be able to tell them no. The characters in Laredo were so pure, loving, and giving that you couldn’t say no to them, much less one that was begging, crying, and pleading for the life of her son.

When the family of the murdered brothers in Mexico learned that my uncle had posted the bail bond to free the killer, they said, “We’re gonna kill that guy, and one of his brothers, so they know what it feels like.” Word spread fast across the border between Mexico and Texas.

An Ocean of Tears

The family of the murdered brothers didn’t waste time carrying out their threat. I still remember the exact date I heard about Tio Mongui’s death.

On February 26, I got off the bus and walked toward my house as I did on most days after school. I was within three houses of mine when I saw people outside on the porch crying. I knew something was wrong. I ran up the front steps, asking, “What happened?” My brothers and mother repeated the same words simultaneously, “They killed Mongui. They murdered him. They shot him.”

My mom was hysterical. Her beloved brother had been murdered. Before that day, I had never known anyone who had died. That day I wished that I still didn’t. I wished that if I was going to know someone that had died it wouldn’t be someone in my family. And I wished most of all that it wasn’t someone that my mom loved so very much.

My uncle was having lunch with some relatives when he got a call to meet an acquaintance at the Civic Center parking lot, which is really close to my grandma’s house. When he drove up, the acquaintance got in the truck, pulled out a gun, and said, “We’re gonna go for a drive.”

The plan was to drive to the river and make my uncle call his brother to meet him at the river, and then both my uncles would be killed. On the way, my uncle intentionally crashed his truck into a fence, and the man shot my uncle six times, leaving him to bleed to death in the cab of his truck. My uncle managed to send a coded 911 message to his brother and save his life.

His brother, Vito, my other uncle, is a lawyer and was in court that day. As soon as he received the coded message, he ran out of the courtroom to help his brother, but it was too late. He received a call from the chief of police, who was a friend of his. The chief said, “They killed your brother. We need you to come identify the body.”

My Tio Vito identified the body for the police, then turned away and cried. The next day, the local newspaper ran a photo of Vito turning from the truck and that image is embedded in my memory to this day.

I was afraid of school and I was afraid of my neighborhood. Now, the reality that murder was not just something you saw in movies haunted me. For years to come, the memory of Tio Mongui would live on. At every family wedding the mariachis would play the classics. But every time they played the song El Rey, all my aunts would lose it and start crying. They would sing along, crying while holding their chests tight, and after they would tell us that it was Tio Mongui’s favorite song. El Rey means “The King.”

Channeling Grief into Courage

Until Tio Mongui was murdered, I didn’t know true grief. I saw a lot of violence, but my loving family kept me relatively safe. When I saw my Grandma Petra and all the tias in my family fall apart at Tio Mongui’s funeral, I was shocked. I’d never seen them behave that way.

As a child, I thought that being brave meant suppressing my emotions. It didn’t occur to me that I could grieve, even for seemingly small losses such as switching schools and being sad to leave behind loving friends and teachers.

Two of my favorite stories in the Old Testament are David and Goliath and the tale of three Hebrew children getting thrown in the fiery furnace.

What is bravery? Is it David running up to the giant and knocking him out with a slingshot? I don’t think so. The reason it’s not bravery is because when we read the story, we expect David to come out on top. I think bravery is the three Hebrew children saying, “We’re going to do the right thing even though we know we’re probably going to die.” Bravery is doing the right thing even when we know we might die.

Where in your life do you do the right thing even though it could hurt you? Where do you shy away from being brave? Where could you show more bravery?

Tio Mongui was one of the bravest people I’ve ever known. He knew that those brothers would want to hurt him, and he did the right thing anyway. He was trying to help a mother save her son, and it got him murdered, but he was going to do the right thing no matter the cost. Even in death, he taught me a lesson about bravery that I still remember decades later.

For more advice on being brave, you can find Tafolla Toro on Amazon.

Lorenzo Gomez III overcame his mental health obstacles to become a proud participant in the transformation of the city he loves—San Antonio. He’s the chairman of Geekdom, Texas’s largest coworking space, the cofounder of the 80/20 Foundation and Tech Bloc, and has served on the board of several non-profits, including SA2020 and City Education Partners. Lorenzo is honored to have spoken at several universities, including Texas State and UTSA, and cherishes the opportunity to connect with students as a speaker at local schools. He’s the author of The Cilantro Diaries, which quickly became a bestseller (and required reading at Texas A&M) when it was published in 2017.