The donkey man

“Thirty pesos for a picture on the burro with your camera. Fifty with mine,” Juan Perez, 58, says patiently while the group of tourists tries to decide whether they want a picture with the donkey or not.

He has been standing there in the same corner in Viejo Vallarta almost every day for the last six years, letting tourist after tourist take pictures with his donkey. “He is my best friend,” says Juan and affectionately strokes the donkey behind its ears. ” His name is El Conejo, the rabbit.”

Juan came to Vallarta from San Juan de Abajo around 20 or 26 years ago; he´s not sure exactly when and says it´s because an angry woman hit him hard in the head with a bottle a couple of years ago. Since then he has trouble remembering things. “I´ve always had bad luck with women,” he says rubbing his hand over the bump on his head. “I´ve always lived by myself”. He has been working hard his entire life. Ever since his father met a new woman and left Juan’s mother alone with eight children. She died shortly after that. Juan was nine and had to grow up fast.

Juan used to be a brick baker, but the work was hard and the pay low so when he was offered to be an arriero, a donkey handler, and make a little more money, he jumped on the opportunity. He struggled hard with his donkeys bringing bricks, sand, and cement to the constructions in Vallarta. “They used to pay me one of those little gold coins for a trip,” he says. But then the modern world caught up with him and instead of using donkeys the companies started to transport their bricks, sand, and cement with trucks, and with the increased car traffic the authorities no longer welcomed animals in town. “Weeks passed and no job. I didn´t even have enough money to eat. I desperately needed to come up with something new. And then one day when I was standing with my donkeys on the bridge over there I saw tourists stopping to take pictures of me and my donkeys. Then I thought, this is something I can make some money out of”. So Juan got a friend to help him write a sign in English: “TAKE A PICTURE WITH MY LITTLE BURROW (sic). PRICE: WITH YOUR CAMERA 30 PESOS. 50 PESOS WITH MY CAMERA”. Business was good, but it turned out he had to buy a new donkey: “The other four were too wild for this. They were used to doing hard work and they were kicking and biting everybody. I couldn’t use them for this so I sold them and bought this one instead along with a saddle”.

El Conejo starts shaking his head. “He´s telling me has to go the river and pee,” says Juan. “We understand each other. He is the best friend I got. I never got married. It´s just me, El Conejo, and my dog,” Juan says and walks away with his dear friends El Conejo and the dog to the river.