Mr. Muñoz, a violinist, was himself born in a barrio and passed through a núcleo.
He insisted that I come and meet him right away, in a barrio up the hill from my hotel.
In a barrio called Paunawa, Esmeraldo Alcantara, 42, was one of several frustrated jobless men collecting brush to sell for about 30 cents a bundle.
It opens in a barrio at the "wolf's mouth", where the asphalt and streetlights give out, with two peso-less youths butchering a cat for meat.
"For me, it is as if I had a new child," said Sergio Garcia, 50, who owns a photo shop in a barrio close to the Mexico City airport.
One line, the MiJOS, represent a tightly knit group of Latino children growing up in a barrio; another line, the Hoodrats, are his answer to the popular children's show "Rugrats".
In a Barrio context, he appears no more eccentric than the Irishman who greets him with a brandish of his Liquorish Allsort boxer shorts - "I think I'll be Soviet boyfriend tonight".
The boys were going to public school in a barrio close to ours.
She was born in a barrio of Santiago, and lived in poverty throughout her life, working as a seamstress from an early age.
Four blocks from where he stood, a fire had just broken out inside the ABC Daycare Center, in a barrio known as Y Griega.
