Beyond the locked door to the decaying remains of the East End's most notorious cantina and brothel is darkness. It is a world invisible to cars whizzing past on Telephone Road. In the beam of a hefty flashlight, it looks frozen in time from when it was raided by federal authorities and finally shut down in There are some Latino music group posters on the wall.
A juke box sits in the middle of the floor amid a scattering of empty beer bottles. It is like so many dive bars, if one didn't know to look for the secret doors and hallways that enabled this place to make so much money for so long. It is actually three buildings cobbled together and veiled in changing walls, doorways and business names. An opening that is no more than 2 feet by 2 feet leads from the cantina to what would appear to be an adjacent business.
It is a large room with a stairway as large as it is filthy. There is a painting of Mexico's patron saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe, on one wall. A scantily clad beer model on another. The stairs climb to a brothel area where for years, women and girls who had been smuggled to Houston from Mexico were forced into sexual slavery. They were locked away. Told if they tried to escape or did not perform for customers, they and their families back home would be killed.
Rooms are hidden around nearly every corner. Most of them are no wider than 8 feet, some much less. Some can be locked from the outside and don't even have a door knob. Naked light bulbs hang from the ceiling. With each turn there seems to be another room. And each time it is the same over and over again.
Condom wrappers litter the floor. Wads of gum stick to the walls. A large rusty hoop earring lies on the floor of one room. A pair of pink panties stretches over a chair in another. In a room where the youngest and newest of the girls were locked away for VIP customers, stickers for a once-popular Mexican teen musical group are still stuck to a full-length mirror. On a nearby table is a stack of black plastic party hats, and a "Happy New Year" banner still hangs on the wall.
