On Prosperity: El Dusty
Produced by Sergio C. Muñoz at Intelatin, LLC
This interview was produced by Sergio C. Muñoz at Intelatin, LLC. Originally distributed via the ZZK Records Newsletter. In June 2025, the U.S. Hispanic Business Council (USHBC) featured my interview with Dusty. Special thanks to Wil Dog of Ozomatli and to PBS Studios (KLCS) for their pilot feature on our effort for the financial wellness of musicians. Special thanks to Javier Palomarez & George Carrillo for their continued support. AMA: smunoz@intelatin.com
Author’s Note: I began working with Wil Dog of Ozomatli on all sorts of financial literacy ideas. He had taken a life of complete financial illiteracy and turned into an empire that was blossoming incredible financial assets. I was very curious how he was able to understand the financial contracts that he signed in his twenties and how he was able to purchase real estate and businesses that had become incredibly profitable. As you can hear in how he tells the story of his broken home, his multiple addictions and his bad decision making over a span of close to 30 years, it also included lots of love, his admirable ambitions, his tenacity and his great decision making over the same span of 30 years. Still, when I asked him if he would do it the same if he were to do it again, he would always tell me that he would be more like his friend Dusty in Corpus Christi. So, I asked him to introduce me to Dusty so I could hear his life story.
Sergio: Please describe your childhood home?
Mom and Dad were in the house when I was younger. I have an older brother and also a younger brother. I was born in Corpus Christi, my parents were born in Corpus, their family was born in Corpus … I even have a Great Uncle that annexed Corpus who has a statue on the shoreline. We’ve been here since the beginning. Captain Blas was from Spain but somewhere down the line, we had Portuguese lines but we don’t know how. It’s a mix of everything. My real name is Horacio Oliveira but my dad was a funny guy. Since I was born, he called me Dusty. I was Dusty at school.
Being from Corpus, the Chicano population is the majority but a lot of them don’t speak Spanish. In the South, the racism has always been active and our parents didn’t want us to speak English with an accent. From my generation down, our family stopped speaking Spanish.
In 1985, my father was hit by a postal truck and paralyzed from the neck down. I was five years old. We were a regular family living in the hood and my father was 36 at the time. He and my mom had just bought a new house. My mom became his caretaker. The ordeal of the lawsuits, the court, the therapies, we were all adapting and adjusting. My mom was a lighthearted person and so she pulled our family through that time. It was hard. My mom had a way of turning everything into good and it passed to me. I never questioned my father being in a wheelchair. In my own struggles, I think a lot about him and how difficult it was for him. First, in Vietnam and then through his accident.
Our house was/is a regular three bedroom white walled home on Violet Road with a big yard and lots of trees. Our house had a lot of privacy because it was next to a corn field so we didn’t have neighbors. My dad bought the house that way with that privacy in-mind.
Sergio: When did you begin to fantasize about prosperity and did you tie your vision to an image of a home?
I wanted ramps, trampolines, arcade games plus all the gear that I learned to use by being on the radio. I started working at the local radio station at 16 but at the age of 12, my brother stole some turntables from a trailer from a Quince. He told me not to touch them and as soon as he left, I started practicing and he became my manager and started getting me gigs. Around the same time, I also inherited an enormous vinyl collection and I really fell in love with music. When I graduated high school, I started touring with Baby Bash, Frankie J, Happy Perez, SPM, Kumbia Kings, all the Dopehouse artists. On the tour, I learned the business process of how to make a song and put it out. When Bash made it, it became way more commercial. I was his DJ on tour and then on the side, I thought, if he can do it, I can do it. We followed the process and the guidelines and I able to fit in to the culture of hip hop by being a producer who makes beats. I knew that I wanted to live in Corpus Christi near to my family, near my parents, near my brothers and I wanted to be able to produce my music in my home. I didn’t want to have to go to some other city like New York or Hollywood to someone else’s studio to make my music.
Sergio: What inspired your fantasy?
Tom Hanks in the movie, Big.
Sergio: What does your home look like present-day?
Through the years and all the time my father spent in hospitals and in recovery and with my mother as his caretaker, there was a payout that allowed me to inherit a ranch and some acreage in Corpus Christi. Since then, I have also been able to grow my own portfolio of assets with my brothers.
I live on the top floor of one of my buildings that spans the majority of a city block in downtown Corpus Christi. I started by renting one of the spaces in this building for $800 but when it came time for the previous owner to sell it, she helped me to buy it. My father advised me and my aunt Noela was very booksmart so she helped me too. I have had to deal so much with the bank that they have also taught me how to handle my finances. By the time I was 32 years old, me and my brothers were chipping in to help my parents and you can imagine how expensive it would be for them to pay for 24 hour hospitalization for four years straight. Throughout this process, I have educated myself a lot about finance and economic development in addition to real estate. My father and I talked a lot about all the opportunities. I remember I used to go to his bedside because he couldn’t go with me because he was paralyzed. We talked about all the goals we had together. He would teach me about leverage and I struggle with that concept still present-day but I am grateful to my father for what he tried to teach me. Now, we have just under a dozen LLCs that protect all of the assets in partnership with my brothers.
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