One night, a night like any other, Arturo slips under a restaurant table, grabs a chicken leg, and brandishing it like a flag, scoots off down an alley. When he finds some obscure nook, he sits down to have supper. A little dog watches him and licks its chops. Several times Arturo pushes it away, but the dog returns. They examine each other: The two are equals, sons of nobody, beaten, pure bone and grime. Arturo resigns himself and shares.
Since then they’ve gone together on winged feet, sharing the danger, the booty, and the lice. Arturo, who has never talked to anybody, opens up, and the little dog sleeps curled up at his feet.
One accursed day the police catch Arturo robbing buns and haul him to the Fifth Precinct for a tremendous beating. When, in time, Arturo returns to the street, all battered, the little dog is nowhere to be seen. Arturo runs back and forth, searching wildly everywhere, but it doesn’t appear. A lot of questions, and nothing. A lot of calling, and nothing. No one in the world is so alone as this child of seven who is alone on the streets of the city of Bogotá, hoarse from so much screaming.
(68 and 342)
1969: Any City
Someone
On a corner, by a red light, someone swallows fire, someone washes windshields, someone sells Kleenex, chewing gum, little flags, and dolls that make pee-pee. Someone listens to the horoscope on the radio, pleased that the stars are concerned about him. Walking between the tall buildings, someone would like to buy silence or air, but doesn’t have the cash. In a filthy barrio, amid swarms of flies above and armies of rats below, someone hires a woman for three minutes. In a whorehouse cell the raped becomes the rapist, better than making it with a donkey in the river. Someone talks to no one on the phone, after hanging up the receiver. Someone talks to no one in front of the TV set. Someone talks to no one in front of a one-armed bandit. Someone waters a pot of plastic flowers. Someone climbs on an empty bus, at dawn, and the bus stays empty.
1969: Rio de Janeiro
Expulsion from the Slums
They refuse to go. They have been the poorest of the poor in the countryside and now they’re the poorest in the city, always the last in line, people with cheap hands and dancing feet. Here, at least, they live near the places where they earn their bread. The inhabitants of Praia do Pinto and the other slums covering Rio de Janeiro’s mountains have turned stubborn. But the military has long eyed these tracts, highly salable and resalable and well-suited for speculation, and so the problem will be solved by means of an opportune fire. The firemen never turn up. Dawn is the hour of tears and cinders. After fire destroys the houses made of garbage, they sweep up the people like garbage and take them far away for dumping.
(340)
1969: Baixo Grande
A Castle of Garbage
Old man Gabriel dos Santos does what his dreams tell him to do. He dreams the same crazy dreams in Brazil that Antonio Gaudí dreamed decades ago in Catalonia, in far-off Barcelona, although old Gabriel has never heard of Gaudí or seen his works.
As soon as he awakes, old Gabriel starts modeling with his hands the marvels he sees in his dreams, before they get away from him. Thus he has built the House of the Flower. In it he lives, on the slope of a hill beaten by the ocean wind. From dream to dream, through the years, old Gabriel’s home keeps growing, this strange castle or beast of bright colors and sinuous forms, all made of garbage.
Old Gabriel, worker in the salt mines, never went to school, never watched television, never had money. He knows no rules, has no models. He plays around, in his own free style, with whatever leftovers the nearby city of Cabo Frío throws his way: fenders, headlights, splintered windows and smashed bottles, broken dishes, bits of old iron, chair legs, wheels …
(171)
1969: Arque Pass
The Last Stunt of Aviator Barrientos
Cardinal Maurer says that President Barrientos is like Saint Paul, because he roams the Bolivian countryside handing out truths. Barrientos also hands out money and soccer balls. He comes and goes, raining banknotes by helicopter. Gulf Oil gave the helicopter to Barrientos in exchange for the two billion dollars’ worth of gas and one billion of petroleum that Barrientos gave Gulf Oil.
On this same helicopter, Barrientos paraded with Che Guevara’s body tied to its skids through the skies of Bolivia. On this helicopter Barrientos arrives at Arque Pass on one of his incessant junkets, and as usual tosses money down on the campesinos; but on taking off, he collides with a wire fence and crashes against some rocks, burning himself alive. After burning so many pictures and books, fiery Barrientos dies cooked to a crisp in his helicopter, filled to the brim with banknotes that burn with him.
(16, 17, and 474)
1969: San Salvador and Tegucigalpa
Two Turbulent Soccer Matches
are played between Honduras and El Salvador. Ambulances remove the dead and wounded from the stands, while fans continue the stadium uproar in the streets.
Immediately, the two countries break relations. In Tegucigalpa, automobile windshields carry stickers that say: Honduran — grab a stick, be a man, kill a Sal-va-dor-e-an. In San Salvador, the newspapers urge the army to invade Honduras to teach those barbarians a lesson. Honduras expels Salvadoran campesinos, who are mostly unaware they are foreigners, having never seen an identity document. The Honduran government forces the Salvadorans to leave with nothing but what they have on, and then burns their shacks, describing the expulsion as “agrarian reform.” The government of San Salvador considers all Hondurans who live there to be spies.
War soon breaks out. The army of El Salvador crosses into Honduras and advances, machinegunning border villages.
(84, 125, and 396)
1969: San Salvador and Tegucigalpa
The Soccer War
pits as enemies two fragments of Central America, shreds of what was a single republic a century and a half ago.
Honduras, a small agrarian country, is dominated by big landlords.
El Salvador, a small agrarian country, is dominated by big landlords.
The campesinos of Honduras have neither land nor work.
The campesinos of El Salvador have neither land nor work.
In Honduras there is a military dictatorship born of a coup d’état.
In El Salvador there is a military dictatorship born of a coup d’état.
The general who governs Honduras was trained at the School of the Americas in Panama.
The general who governs El Salvador was trained at the School of the Americas in Panama.
From the United States come the weapons and advisers of the dictator of Honduras.
From the United States come the weapons and advisers of the dictator of El Salvador.
The dictator of Honduras accuses the dictator of El Salvador of being a Communist in the pay of Fidel Castro.
The dictator of El Salvador accuses the dictator of Honduras of being a Communist in the pay of Fidel Castro.
The war lasts one week. While war continues, the people of Honduras think their enemy is the people of El Salvador and the people of El Salvador think their enemy is the people of Honduras. They leave four thousand dead on the battlefields.