The House Of The Scorpion Characters

• Celia is the Big House cook and Matt’s caretaker. Celia is the mother figure in Matt's life, and protects him from the horrible truths about his purpose until the very end. They are separated when Matt flees to Aztlán, but meet again when Matt returns to claim Opium.

• El Patrón is a drug lord, born Matteo Alacrán, the ruler of Opium, and supposedly, the most powerful man in the world. He lived for 143 years by harvesting organs from his clones, the last of which (and the only one who lived) was Matt. The Aztlános call him the old vampire of Dreamland (a metonym for Opium). El Patrón is the only one protecting Matt from the people who do not like Matt, but Matt soon finds out that El patron only wants him for his organs. El Patrón has a heart attack when Matt is 14, and demands Matt to give him life in return for the life that he granted Matt. However, he is foiled by Celia, who reveals that she has been giving Matt carefully calculated doses of arsenic. These doses aren't potent to kill Matt, but arsenic tends to settle in the heart. El Patrón is so enraged by her treachery that he immediately has another heart attack and dies.

• María and Emilia are the only children of Mr. Mendoza, who is an influential US Senator. El Patrón, who likes making powerful friends, frequently invites him to stays in Opium; consequently, María spends a lot of time in the Big House. She's around Matt's age and is his only friend, aside from Celia and Tam Lin. She treats him well even when no one else will, and unlike everyone else, doesn't see him as a filthy abomination. As they get older, they eventually come to the realization that they love each other.

• The Lost Boys are a group of boys whose parents were captured by the "Farm Patrol" and most likely turned into eejits. These boys are kept in Keepers' compounds in Aztlán and forced to work incessantly and adhere to Marxist principles, while the Keepers get to kick back all day. Ton-Ton, Chacho and Fidelito are the Lost Boys who join forces with Matt and escape the Keepers with him.

• Alacráns is El Patrón's descendants. They include his grandson, Gustavo Alacrán, known to most as "El Viejo", his great-grandson Mr. Alacrán, and his great-great grandsons, Benito, Tom, and Steven.

• Mendozas is a US Senator, and his two daughters, María and Emilia. Mr. Mendoza is one of El Patrón's friends, and visits with his daughters frequently.

• Esperanza is Mr. Mendoza's former wife, and María and Emilia's mother. She walked out on them when María was five, and is the author of "A History of Opium", a book about the atrocities of Opium. A copy of this makes its way into Matt's hands through Tam Lin. From a page in the back of the book about the author, Matt deduces that Esperanza is politically powerful. When he's escaping Opium, Tam Lin orders him to seek out María in order to find her mother, Esperanza, who could probably help Matt.

• Eejits are illegal immigrants who have been caught by the Farm Patrol. They have computer chips inserted into their brains, which turns them into mindless, emotionless slaves. They are used to do simple tasks within the mansion and to harvest opium. Though most are captured illegal immigrants, some are people who angered El Patrón, such as Rosa, the maid that locked Matt in a room with sawdust and chicken wire and treated him brutally.

• Tam Lin is Matt's bodyguard and father figure. El Patron gives Matt a choice between Tam Lin and Daft Donald, his other bodyguard; Matt sees a "glint of friendliness" in Tam Lin's eyes and unhesitatingly chooses him. Matt quickly bonds with Tam Lin, who teaches Matt to climb treacherous rock-faces and live for days in the wild. Tam Lin is later called back to El Patrón's side and leaves Matt with a cache of supplies in the hopes that when El Patrón decides to take Matt's heart, for his own, Matt will escape over the Ajo Mountains into Aztlán to seek out the convent of Santa Clara where María lives and attends school. All of El Patrón's bodyguards are wanted criminals, and Tam Lin is no exception: he was a Scottish nationalist who laid a bomb for the British Prime Minister that somehow killed a bus full of children instead. As atonement, he drinks wine he knows El Patrón poisoned, along with all of the other Alacráns.

• Daft Donald is a mute bodyguard who works for El Patron. He was Tam Lin's accomplice in Tam Lin's little stint as a terrorist. During El Patrón's wake, when the poisoned wine is brought out, Tam Lin tells Daft Donald not to drink. Obviously, everyone dies but him, and he seals the burial chamber off with a dynamite explosion. Daft Donald is the one who informs Matt what happened to everybody when Matt returns to the Big House.