I originally posted this image under the title “Latin King with Knife.” Since then, I have been contacted by the man’s widow. She told me that he died of esophageal cancer in 2003. I met and photographed this man frequently and he always had a cigarette dangling from his lips. Back in the 1970s, the tobacco industry was still disputing the link between cigarette smoking and cancer. I wonder if the course of his life would have been different had he never taken up smoking. My guess is that he died in his late forties.
