How Antonio Chico survived the battle of Juárez

Antonio Chico was a bombastic, colorful, one-eyed Andaluzian bullfighter—a brute of a man, showing down the Juárez bulls at the time of Madero's insurrection.

 “Once he got drunk and lost his glass eye. He came sober Saturday. What was he to do? He could not appear next day without an eye—a bullfighter without an eye would be disgraceful and the impresario would dismiss him. So he sneaked into Don Simon’s little jewelry store and, snatching a glass eye from a whole tray of them in the window, ran for all he was worth. But next day all the toreros laughed and laughed and Antonio Chico sputtered with anger and chagrin when he looked in the mirror, for one of his eyes was a bright blue and the other a dark brown."

After spending the first day of the battle of Juárez among the insurrectos, journalist Timothy Turner crossed over to El Paso, caught an hour of sleep and then headed back for Juárez, arriving at the international bridge around dawn.   There was a general clamor, parties of Americans observing from roof tops, and a chaos of Mexicans fleeing the fighting.   On the bridge, Turner ran into Antonio Chico, running with the refugees.

 “Shame! [cried Turner] ..a brave toreador like you running away like that.”

“Señor mio,” he said as he turned to me with that comic gravity only the Spanish have, “there are only two things in the world I am afraid of, bullets and work” (balazos y trabajo.) Bullets, Bottles and Gardenias

Thus Antonio Chico survived the battle of Juárez.