Primitivo “Primo” Orozco

History

Primitivo Orozco was born on 10 June 1914 in Atotoniquillo, Jalisco, to Felix Orozco, an alfalfa farmer, and Teresa Vega. He grew up in the Sector Reforma and Sector Libertad neighborhoods of Guadalajara and finished the eighth grade. At sixteen he went to work in Juan Araganara’s workshop, where a cobbler taught him the trade. He worked in several more workshops and eventually ran his own business with six employees, taking orders from towns outside Guadalajara. In July 1942 he volunteered for the Mexican army, where he may have risen to sergeant.

In the summer of 1949 he moved to Mercedes, Texas, to work for Zeferino Rios’s company, Rios Boots of Mercedes, which the Handbook of Texas calls the oldest boot shop in the state. On 29 January 1951 he married Aurora Estrada, a dress-shop clerk in Mercedes.

In the early 1950s Hallettsville boot-shop owner Pete McKenzie came to Mercedes looking for bootmakers, and the Orozcos moved to South Central Texas. After short jobs with McKenzie and with Guadalupe Ochoa in Cuero, Orozco worked in 1953 for Hugh V. Smith’s Kenedy Boot Shop, for Bohne’s Boot Shop of Cuero, and for Pete McKenzie’s boot shop in Yoakum. He began a long career at Bohne’s around 1954, worked again for Smith in 1955, and also worked for Thigpen’s boot shop in Cuero and, in 1970, for Western Leather Goods, Inc. of Yoakum, later known as Tex-Tan.

He made boots, wallets, and belts, mostly in cowhide, repaired shoes and boots, and also built boots in a workshop at home. Friends called him “Maestro.” He died of complications of diabetes at his home on 4 October 1989 and is buried in Hillside Cemetery in Cuero.

Sources

• Cynthia E. Orozco, “Orozco, Primitivo [Primo],” Handbook of Texas Online, 16 April 2019