Chiko Mendez

Chiko Mendez BIO 2022 Chiko arrived in New York only months old; where by the age of ten; he'd taken tap, guitar, trumpet lessons and English was embedded as his first language. In the fall of his tenth birthday he traveled back to his hometown where he lived for several years. Though life was tough and his family poor, his priority was to finish school first, amidst of which he became one with the culture, dialect & lifestyle as they moved throughout Central America. As a child he'd help his mother organize weekend excursions known as "veladas": an earliest form of theatre production popular throughout the mountains where there was no electricity and almost everything was hand-made.. Chiko drew and cut the admission tickets and sold them for a nickel each. The stage was a bed of rock and sand and the curtain was a bed sheet strung across two trees with twine. Playing baseball, writing songs & poems, riding horses and hitchhiking across town barefooted with a 3-string guitar to perfor