Luz Arcos

Ages ago my Grandmother told me about members in her family being murdered over sour milk. It was one of the many stories she had told me. She never did tell me there was a corrida based on that story. Luz Arcos by Los Hermanos Chavarria was recorded  in San Antonio for Columbia,  April 1931. This is a version by Los Pingüinos Del Norte released in 2005.

Luciano Barrientes had sold Luz Arcos some milk. Arcos returned the milk because he said it was spoiled and was given his money back. Barrientos then told him he would not sell milk to Arcos ever again because he was insulted and Arcos had such trouble with it. Arcos would purchase milk from the Barrientos to re-sell. Because the milk had been spoiled he lost his business for the day. 

Arcos was married with three children and yet was after one of Barrientos' girls. This could be the real reason Luciano Barrientos didn't want to do business with him anymore.  Perhaps this is the real reason Barrientos did not want Arcos returning to the store.  No one really knows what made Luz Arcos so angry on December 25, 1928, but he left the store angry and returned with a gun and shot my Grandmother's great-uncle and then shot his two sons.

What followed was a sensationalistic trial and a spectacle that lasted twenty months. He was sentenced to life in prison but the Barrientos widows wanted him to receive the death penalty. When transferred from the Bexar county prison to Huntsville,  Arcos had an expensive, custom made suit created to arrive at Huntsville in style. He made the most out of his ill gotten fame. He would be arrogant, and at times, humble depending on the audience. The Mexican-American newspaper, La Prensa, followed the Luz Arcos story and even encouraged him to write his memoirs to keep their readers in suspense.  There was a fascination with this criminal who shot three men in the Barrientos family in cold blood. Arcos' wife and mother claimed he was mentally unstable and prone to violent outburst that he would not remember later. San Antonio society women were defending him, following the trend set by the wife of a notorious Texas lawyer. On November 7, 1930, he got the chair and that was the end of Arcos.

Listening to the song for the first time left me feeling rather creeped out. I asked my Grandmother if she had ever heard it. She said, "Of course, it was on RCA Victor"...by that I knew she meant a 78. The Barrientos family was left destitute after the death of the three men. The farm, dairy and store that Luciano had owned were gone before the stock market crashed in 1929. He had come a long way from the simple fruit stand he had along the street in Eagle Pass.