Leo Carillo

Prior to meeting up with me for drinks, Leo Carrillo had spent his Sunday afternoon drawing a cholita with a side ponytail. “It happens to everybody,” Leo said. “You get inspired by somebody or something, and you draw.”

Leo works as a day laborer, or jornalero, on the southern fringes of downtown Los Angeles. I met him over a year ago at a volunteer-run bicycle collective called BiciDigna. As we catch up over a Bud Light and a Tecate at a fundraiser in South Central for a friend’s surgery, Leo tells me it takes him about three days to finish a drawing. When he’s done, he shows it off to people he wants to impress–mostly women. Leo tells me they react giddily. He says he doesn’t intend to start a romantic relationship through his art, but it’s been a good way for him to start friendships.

A live cumbia band has showed up to support the fundraiser, and we can hear the music as we sit outside in a small garden in a far corner of the parking lot of a warehouse-turned-community event center. Leo sips his beer–beers are two for five bucks at the fundraiser–as he tells me about the mix of jobs (variado is how he describes their nature) he does as a day laborer.

One of his main sources of income comes from loading and unloading shipping containers in the downtown fashion district. The container gig, which involves handling rolls of fabric and women’s lingerie, comes around twice a week and pays $40 per person for each emptied or filled container. Working for a couple of hours with five or six other people, Leo manages to get through two containers per gig. “It’s fast money and it’s under the table,” he says.

He’s been able to land these regular gigs because he’s been a jornalero for so long and knows a lot of employers. Leo is 32, and he has worked as a day laborer since he was 18. “People tend to call you back,” he says, “’cause you’re young and strong, I guess.” It doesn’t hurt, he says, to be hard-working and honest.

When he graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in El Sereno, Leo taught himself how to hustle for daily work. Then he just kept doing it. Being a day laborer means taking on various jobs. One day you’re working at a container, another day at a warehouse, and still another day you might land a gig as management. Because Leo is an American citizen who speaks both English and Spanish, he gets offers–of better pay, better positions, or permanent job opportunities–that many other day laborers don’t. But he prefers not to tie himself to anything for too long.

Five chickens behind wire-mesh are clucking away as Leo tells me about his job at a trucking company that sent shipments to Chicago and New York. He worked there for 11 years part-time as a truck navigator, guiding truck drivers along freeways and roads to reach their destinations in different parts of the country. “After 11 years, you get to know the roads,” he says, as he remembers how he’d know which freeways and roads would be busy on which days and times. Because the job was seasonal and part-time, Leo kept loading and unloading containers in his off-time.

Despite all the time Leo spent guiding others to Chicago or New York, he’s never ventured out to such places himself. “I’ve been to Tijuana, for fun,” Leo says, when I ask him if he’s ever left L.A. “It was great,” he adds flatly, raising his Bud Light to an invisible toast. “I like L.A. Everything’s here for me, and I enjoy it.”

I ask Leo how dependably he can provide for himself. “I do well ’cause I don’t have no family, and I pay very little rent, and I try to avoid much expenses,” he says. He tries to avoid spending too much on food and clothing. Juanita’s downtown is a good place to get a free breakfast and lunch if you’re willing to wait. The food, which comes in a brown paper bag, typically includes a sandwich, a pastry, a fruit and maybe something to drink. “And the people there are great,” Leo says. “They’re not like, shady.”

I ask Leo what he means by “shady,” and Leo says it’s about behavior. At Juanita’s, a variety of people–“Hispanics and blacks, some white”–patiently wait their turn to get food. At other places, Leo says, customers are less orderly. “They just wanna be first,” Leo says. “They just wanna take over, ’cause they’re the majority.” He leaves the explanation at that.

While Leo is able to provide pretty well for himself, he lacks one thing: a stable relationship. He acknowledges that being a day laborer might be a drawback when you’re looking for a relationship, but he says it’s just about finding the right girl–one who’s not only interested in your pocketbook. The trouble is, not many women want a man without a car. “I can’t really take ’em home, so that means I’m lucked out,” he says.

If he wants to get lucky, Leo has to take his dates home on the bus, on foot, or maybe on a bike. “They don’t go for it, though, not even on my pulling cart,” he says, laughing. But not having a car also has some advantages: namely, sparing you from one more expense. “I’m free right now, I’m cool,” Leo says. He likes not having someone always hovering over him to do a job–that is, a boss. To him, the stability of a permanent job isn’t worth the loss of freedom.

“In life, it’s not always that job,” Leo says, referring to what he considers to be the misleading stability of a “permanent” job. “You’re gonna end up losing it at one point, or getting replaced, so you’re eventually gonna need another trade, and usually you end up afraid ’cause you don’t know something else. And myself, I’m not afraid.”