Montevideo—27 days in the barrio (Humerous and Historical Accounts from Uruguay)

Before leaving for Uruguay I contacted a friend of a friend of a friend of my dads in order to find some volunteer work there, hoping to do something interesting and worthwhile while practicing my Spanish. Enrique said he had just the place for me. I could come work in a cultural center called Tangó, teaching English as well as helping organize and chaperone trips to the country where the inner city kids would get to see new things, have discussions, do art, learn to windsurf. In short “cambia de lugar, cambia de mente.” The kids, according to Enrique, needed to get out of the stifling red-light neighborhood where pasta basa, a form of crack, was consuming the lives of many of the youth, leading to crime and despair. What was needed was an “intercambia cultural” to help the kids broaden their minds by experiencing other people from other places doing other things. Coming as I did from a distant country with a different native language, I fit naturally into this goal.

It sounded great.

I met up with Enrique the day I arrived in Montevideo. He was a wiry, subtly flamboyant thirty-four-year old with a closely shaved head to conceal his balding. I stayed with him a couple nights in the capital before we headed out to Punta del Este, the most famous beach resort town in Uruguay which attracts tourists not only from Uruguay but also Argentina and Brazil. But the kids never showed up. You see, there was “una problema” with getting together enough money to bring the kids out. Enrique still didn’t have the sponsors he needed. It was going to happen a few days later, next week, well, the week after that—but in the meantime if you’d like to come to Punta del Este with me again….

Enrique was very nice, very generous—he let me stay at his parent’s house and eat their food, prepared by their Maid Olga, who must have been in her seventies and wouldn’t let me do anything myself except compliment her cooking. Enrique had an incredible ability to assume his plans would work, and not to bother letting on to anyone else involved (such as myself) that they were in reality highly unlikely to come together. Claudia, the friend of the friend of my dad’s who had introduced me to Enrique, had warned me of this, but I didn’t realize the full extent of his skill.

So after waiting for the project to come together for a couple of weeks I was forced to find another place to stay: Enrique’s parents were coming back and were unaware that their son had been hosting a strange foreigner in their home. So I eagerly left for the more appealing prospect of living and helping out in the cultural center Tangó, of which Enrique was in charge. By now I had learned that it was not actually currently a cultural center, but hopefully it would be one again soon, and I could help get it back on its feet and such, and teach English. It never got going again while I was there, and there was no need for English, but it was an enriching stay all the same.

I was given the back room, where I slept until the mildew gave me bronchitis and clogged up my ears, forcing me out onto the dirty couch or the floor in the main walkway toward the front. Though Tangó was not currently a functioning cultural center, it was not vacant. During the interim certain families who had no other place to be were allowed to stay there and keep the place from being looted or turned into a drug hideout. Having lots of people around was quite to my liking, as I had gotten very bored watching TV in Enrique’s parent’s house and having the occasional struggling conversation with Olga, who was a bit hard of hearing and had more trouble than most understanding my Spanish.

“¿Como? ¡¡¿Como?!! ¡¿Que Dijiste hijo?!”

“¡Me gusta tus frijoles!”

“Te gusta todo.”

“Casi todo.”



Two families lived in Tangó, together with a single man and a teenager whose mother is crazy. Rosanna and Neri had two kids, while Graciella and Leo had three (and Graciella was very pregnant with a fourth). Also sharing the house were two dogs, a disheveled parrot, a mouse, and a chicken that died after a few weeks of being off the farm, not to mention hundreds of ants and cockroaches and flies and a few mosquitoes at night. Along with the regular screaming of Rosanna (who seemed to be screaming whenever her mouth was open) was added the barking of the dogs (or yelping, whenever the dogs failed to interpret Rosanna’s orders and she employed the more direct and equally ineffective method of hitting the animals). To add further to the ruckus were the three TV’s and the radio. As Leo once told me,

“If you’re done watching TV, just leave it on, it’s turned on more time than it’s turned off.”

Every once in a while the bedraggled parrot Coca went into a fit of screeching for no apparent reason. Perhaps the ants on its piece of soggy bread had reached an unacceptable level, but whatever the cause, Rosanna would inevitably begin a level of screeching rivaling the parrot.

“¡Coca, Coca! ¿Estas loca, Coca? ¡¡Coca estas loca!!”

Thankfully the mouse and the dead chicken kept respectfully silent.

Tangó was a place without regular meal times or bedtimes or incomes. I contributed to buying food and ate with Leo and Graciella and their three kids Matias, Maikol, and Nicol. At most the family only had one cooked meal a day, which could come at any time between 10pm and 2am. Plain white bread from a local panaderia was the only food eaten for breakfast and lunch. However, the midday meal didn’t really exist—the kids would simply grab some bread to eat when they got hungry—and breakfast consisted mainly of cigarettes and mate: a tea-like drink that is consumed more per capita in Uruguay than anywhere else in the world, meticulously prepared, and drunk ritually as a communal activity. There is always one server who prepares the drink for the whole circle, filling the mate gourd to the brim with hierba (herb), and soaking it with steaming hot water from a thermos. The mate gourd is passed to the first in the circle who sips the bitter liquid through the bombilla, a metal straw with a kind of sieve at the bottom that strains the hierba from the drink. Once finished, the gourd is passed back to the server to be refilled with hot water for the next in the circle.

Leo was a small man with a wrinkled leathery face, a shock of fine thinning hair, and smiling eyes. He worked tirelessly on whatever job he could get ahold of, whether doing temporary construction, shipping goods across town, or collecting the garbage. Once he spent hours taking the bus out of town to a construction job that would last a few days, only to find out when he got there that there was no food or shelter or advance pay, so he was forced to forfeit the job and come back home.


Feb 18th

¡Bush, no rompa la pelota, America Latina, se ve y no se toca!

Only a few blocks from Tangó a young man gives me a slip of paper while I sit waiting for my friend Gabriel in la plaza Cagancha, known commonly as la plaza Libertad, though I’m not sure why. There is a statue raised on a pillar in the center of the street crossing the plaza. Graffiti are scrawled across the stone face below it: “Justicio y Castigo” “No + Silencio” “No + Comission.” The cryptic political messages take on clearer meaning when I realize that “+” in Spanish is “mas.” The scrawled letters tell a story of a population shocked by economic hardship, acutely aware of the importance politics plays in each person’s life. Children bathe in the public fountain, the cell phone company CTI Movil literally drums for attention on the corner with a gang of face-painted Candombe drummers waving flags and beating their instruments. Across the street a man plays a pan flute accompanied by background music from a CD: Andrea Botticelli, Let it be, and Imagine. I like the selection.
On my way here I passed many people begging on the street. Others, who managed to scrape together something to sell, were offering ice-cream bars or roasted nuts or cards or trinkets of some kind. Others handed out leaflets advertising various items. The most striking of these was a slip that read: “Nuevo Hot Night Streapers para ellos y para ellas, Reallity Lesbian show” written with a clear effort to properly spell our improperly phonetic language. It is disturbingly revealing to notice the English words adopted into Latin American Spanish: “Hot Night” “Strippers” “Reality” “Show” “Barman” “Shopping” “Ad” “Big Sale” “Notebook” “Cellular” “Discman”—not to mention all the English brand names and business chains to be seen everywhere. Watching advertisements on TV, it becomes clear that English sells.

Now I look at the slip of paper in my hand. It says that the boy’s family doesn’t have work and he’s asking for help. When he returns to collect the papers for reuse I hand him back the slip without any money. As the boy walks away I look up the one word I didn’t understand: “sordo.” The boy was also deaf.

I can’t help but remember the Texan I saw in one of the upscale restaurants downtown. He had come to Uruguay to go pigeon hunting. When my friend told him she was here learning about the economic hardships of the country, he said, “I don’t understand what you mean. I don’t see poverty anywhere.” He must attribute the countless beggars to lack of self-discipline rather than to economic forces outside their control, because the poverty is impossible not to see. People ask for money right outside the very restaurant he was eating at.


Feb 20th

¡El pueblo, unido, no mas sera vencido!

In Uruguay males kiss each other in greeting just the same as women and women, or women and men.

Kids sell fake roses everywhere, like poverty tokens—no one wants the flowers. One young boy was very thankful to receive the leftovers of our meal.

No matter where they go or what they are doing, almost everyone seems to be carrying a thermos under their arm and a mate gourd in their hand.

One day I was stunned to realize why people are more attractive down here: they aren’t fat! There are a lot more pregnant women, but that is beautiful in its own way.

Horse-drawn carts carry cardboard and other recycling among the cars and buses that drive as if the lines on the road are merely decorations, and the traffic signals only suggestions. Cars honk in warning that they themselves are about to do something wrong, more often than to reprimand the mistake of another, so WATCH OUT!


Feb 21st

If you drink cold water or tap water after eating tortas fritas, the grease will lump up in your stomach and can be very harmful.



The rain pummels down on the corrugated steel roof of Tangó. Five kids and Graciella gather around the counter talking animatedly as they make tortas fritas—pounding the dough, balling it up, and rolling it out into circles with small holes in the centers to prevent the torta from inflating like a balloon while frying. This is so much nicer than sitting in Enrique’s house watching TV and having his maid Olga cook me really good food and do everything for me, making me feel utterly useless. The fry bread—flour and grease deep-fried in grease—may not taste as good as Olga’s meals, but the company and atmosphere and conversation are so much more fulfilling than good-tasting food.

Feb 23rd

¡Oe, oe-oe-oe, Frente, Frente! ¡Oe, oe-oe-oe, Frente Frente!

I just got robbed. I was a bit of a dufus. A young woman asked me for money and since she was from my neighborhood and knew some of the people I’m staying with, that put me off guard. I want to get to know the people here, so I spoke with her as we walked a bit, trying to explain why I wouldn’t just give her money. I realize now that such explaining is useless, but she was a vecina so I thought I’d get to know her a bit. Mistake. She led me to an empty corner where two guys snuck up on us while she distracted me. One said, “Mueva o te mato,” “Move or I’ll kill you,” and he poked something into my ribs that he had under his shirt. I felt it with my hand and I’m pretty sure it was his finger. I think guns are too expensive for most of the people in this neighborhood, though I really don’t know. I decided it wasn’t worth risking my life over $20 so I let them empty my pockets. They quickly grabbed the cash from my wallet, pulling out my credit card and ID to search through every pocket.

“¿Donde está el documento? ¡El documento! ¿Donde está?”

“No lo tengo. ¡No tengo nada!” I replied as they continued to demand my passport.

I was worried they’d take my credit card and I’d have to go to the trouble of canceling it, but once they gave up on the passport they dropped everything but the cash on the sidewalk and took off down the street, glancing over their shoulders as they hurried away. The neighbor girl made some lame excuses as I replaced the cards in my wallet. “Adios” I said, and set off in the opposite direction, glad the thieves hadn’t searched my backpack.

I might have been able to get away without them taking anything, but trying to resist didn’t seem worth it. Who knows if they would hold a grudge against the uppity Yankee living in their neighborhood? It would have been interesting though, to see what would happen trying to be reasonable with thieves: “I’m not going to let go of my money and you don’t want to hurt anyone for 20 bucks so let’s go our separate ways.” Or shifting attention somehow: “Oh look here come the police” or “Oh I know you, didn’t we meet before? Yes I think so, you helped me on the bus.” It was certainly harder to think of something to say in my second language. I won’t carry money in my wallet anymore, just enough tucked into my hat to buy lunch for the day. All in all it was a cheap price to pay for an authentic mugging.


* * * * *
When I first arrived in Uruguay I was fortunate to be able to do research and logistics in exchange for participating in a delegation of 13 US citizens to Uruguay. Besides making national television by staging an impromptu protest of Bush’s inauguration in front of the US embassy, our delegation met with numerous human rights organizations, a professor and ex-Tupamero who had been imprisoned for 12 years during the dictatorship, and members of the new Frente Amplio government scheduled to take power March 1st.

For the past 170 years Uruguay has been locked in the grip of two-party rule, broken only by the dictatorship from 1973-85. Now in the recent 2004 elections a third party, el Frente Amplio won the presidency and majorities in both cameras of the legislature—an incredible time of social change! The blue white and red of the Frente are everywhere—banners hung in windows, messages painted on buildings, or fluttering ribbons tied in the branches that arch over many of the streets throughout Montevideo—set there by the cautious and passionately hopeful pueblo. El Frente Amplio is a very unusual coalition of many smaller political parties with very different backgrounds and concerns, yet each has seen the overarching necessity to come together for positive change. This understanding has allied such disparate groups as the Christian Democrats with the Marxist parties of Socialism and Communism, as well as the political wing of the Tupameros (a one-time insurgency movement that arose in 1968 and became famous around the world by utilizing “Robinhood” tactics to gain the support of the people and expose the corruption of the entrenched politicians). The Frente Amplio has worked tirelessly over the past twenty years in a democratic groundswell to offer a choice other than the two entrenched parties, the Colorados and the Blancos. Now, finally, and to the amazement of many of the newly elected officials, beginning March 1st they will actually be the government!
* * * * *


Feb 25th

El bombillo mata todo.



I played basketball with the kids today, five of us against this one kid. Incidentally we won. Now I’m sitting outside Tangó. There are always people out on the pateonal—the walking street. They are mainly people from the neighborhood, crouched in their doorways sipping at their mate gourds, or sitting on the benches drinking mate, or standing drinking mate. Earlier I turned down an offering of mate because I have a cold and didn’t want to spread it, but Leo replied,

“No importa! The mate straw kills everything.”

The Comparsa of Candombe, a form of drumming and dance integral to the culture of African descendants in Uruguay, are also here readying their drums and costumes for the night’s competition, faces painted with wild glittery designs. In Uruguay Carnaval lasts all of February, longer than anywhere else!

In a doorway a few houses up I met a ten-year-old neighbor boy also named Matias. He had scars all over him. He asked me where I got my scar on my arm, and I told him that it was from a nail that had scraped me. Then he told me about his. He had a scab on his belly that he got a few days ago diving into the ocean. He had a big scar on his shaved head where no hair grew, that he got in Tangó when a kid threw a ping pong paddle at him. But his worst was when he broke the Tibia and Fibula in his right leg on the edge of a marble step. Luckily he was able to get an operation and his leg is fine now.

A few blocks up the street there was a long line of people wrapped around the corner and on down the cross street. A boy was waiting by the stop sign, dressed in his school tunic.

“¿Que estan esperando? ¿Trabajo?” I asked, knowing how many unemployed there are in Uruguay.

“No, estan esperando hacer divorcios.”

I had seen a similar line early in the morning on another block and assumed they were waiting to apply for a job. Apparently there is high demand for the divorce business in Uruguay.

Some men came with glass to put in Tangó’s sunroof, which currently has only a frame to hold the glass. Today it was a rainroof, so they had to wait until Monday, when it will hopefully be dry enough to glue the glass in.

At 2:30 AM I was sitting outside on the bench with Graciella. Along came a man who looked very similar to one of the men who robbed me. He said he wanted to sell things to the people living in Tangó. Graciella told him everyone was asleep, and after he left she asked me if he was the one who robbed me. I said I couldn’t be sure. She said “Ojo El!” Watch out, he steals stuff and sells it on the street. I wonder if he wanted to enter Tangó to look for my stuff.


Feb 28th

¡Y-ya-oe, y-ya-oe, el presidente Tabaré! ¡Y-ya-oe, y-ya-oe, el presidente Tabaré!

It is one day before Tabaré Vasquez becomes president. Today the same person who probably robbed me ran up onto the patio of Tangó and climbed up on the corrugated roof, making a racket that scared the kids as he evidently evaded someone whom he had just robbed. When he jumped back down he had a bucket in his hand. His name is Fe, meaning faith. It’s unnerving that everyone knows he robs—even from the people in his own barrio—and yet it continues.


March 1st

¡Cuba si! ¡Yankees no! ¡Cuba si! ¡Yankees no!












For the inauguration of Tabaré Vazquez we walked all over the city today. The streets were filled with banners, songs, chants, and people. We saw Hugo Chavez only a few meters away as he went into his hotel. I also met the main architect of the Frente Amplio’s Emergency plan, and she spoke a bit about how it would come into effect and what it would do to relieve the most immediate needs of the people for basic food and shelter. We went back to the legislative palace and heard, but did not understand, Tabaré give his acceptance address—the speakers weren’t loud enough to reach us effectively even where we were standing near the front. It would have been intelligible if we had watched the event on TV, but I would have lost the electric atmosphere amongst el pueblo. The legislative palace was all lit up with colors, fireworks popped, and excited people pressing in on all sides made it even harder to hear the speech. There is much poverty in Uruguay, but also much hope.


* * * * *
Our US delegation to Uruguay spoke with the Frente’s vice secretary of foreign affairs, Belela Herrera, who told us that the US ambassador to Uruguay, Martin J. Silverstein, had already blatantly threatened to remove all US assistance to Uruguay’s military defense if the new government refused to sign an agreement exempting all US citizens in Uruguay from prosecution in the International Criminal Court. That would be deciding ahead of time that no US citizen would ever commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide. Herrera made it very clear to Silverstein that Uruguay would not agree to such an absurd request.

We also met with the Frente’s Minister of Defense, a woman in her seventies with long silvery hair. Though the decision is not fully hers, Asusena Berutti assured us that if she has her way Uruguay will no longer send their troops to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in Fort Benning, Georgia, formerly known as the School of the Americas. Seen by many organizations and individuals as the masthead of a group of institutions and policies promoting violations of human rights in Latin America in order to secure US domination, popular pressure in the US and abroad brought increasing awareness of the School of the Americas’ bad reputation. Referred to as the School of the Assassins by its opponents, the school was recently forced to euphemistically rename itself to WHISC us away with a flurry of drab and outwardly benign terms.

One of many dictatorships that swept Latin America during Operation Condor, a shadowy network of international cooperation between military regimes, Uruguay became the country with the most political prisoners per capita in the world. Even with—or perhaps because of—such a huge number of desaparecidos, Uruguay has hardly touched that painful past. The country is far behind the rest of Latin America in beginning to heal those wounds. “La ley de caducidad” commonly referred to as the impunity law, grants immunity from prosecution to all those involved in human rights violations during the dictatorship. Despite a small clause that says there will be a truth-finding mission into the disappearances, nothing has even been done to find out the basic facts of what happened. Sadly, this impunity law came to pass through a popular referendum during which those in power were disseminating propaganda and severely threatening all who would vote against the law. There is a tendency to view the law as the people’s word, and therefore unchangeable, but vice secretary of the interior, Jose Diaz told us optimistically that it was not the true voice of the people: “It is a law; laws can be changed.”

Despite fierce resistance by the powerful who might be implicated by investigations into Uruguay’s dark past, Tabaré began to carry out the fact-finding clause of the impunity law soon after taking power, as a first step towards healing the country’s wounds from the dictatorship years.
* * * * *


March 6th

If you drop a knife a man will visit the house; if you drop a fork a woman will visit There is still the question about what happens with the spoon.

I went to a feria, one of the many open-air markets every Sunday. In a side street a man had a table where he was switching a foam ball between three cups, and people were betting on which cup the ball ended up in. He would be really obvious about where a ball ended up, and then ask me. I pointed correctly, and he put 1,000 pesos ($40) in my hand, which is a lot of money in Uruguay. “Ganaste” they said with excitement, but I knew I certainly hadn’t, and if I held onto the money I would probably lose something quickly. I didn’t know the rules of the game.

“Que necesito hacer?” I asked, returning the money as quickly as possible.

“Put $40 down and if you guess right you win $80!”

“I won’t play, I’ll just watch.” I say against their persistent urges to throw down money. Of course they know I’m a foreigner. I watch for a while and usually I’m right about where the ball ends up. Then someone guesses wrong and two cups remain.
“Is it in this one or this one?” he says. Tilting each up slightly and obviously revealing which one the ball is in. He had done the same thing before and the person who guessed the obviously correct cup had won.

“I only have 100 pesos.” I say ($4.00). I knew where the ball was, and they were so insistent, that I gave in. They must have switched the ball while I looked down to get the money, because when I picked the cup where the ball had been shown way too obviously, there was no longer a ball. I wonder how many of the gamblers were in on the game, simply there to prime the audience into thinking they could win more easily. I never should have given in; they wouldn’t be there if the game didn’t work. Then I feel a slight tug on my backpack and turn around to see a man feigning a stretch with his hands in the air. The zipper of my pack is open. I take it off and pretend like I had accidentally left it open, also feigning ignorance of the would-be-thief while subtly checking to see if anything was taken. He didn’t get anything. I close my pack. Time to move on.
I’m now in the plaza by the National Library eating a tomato and crackers and cheese. An old woman walking her dog stops by where I am sitting.

“Oh,” She says. “I thought you had watermelon; how tasty that would be! Eat your tomato in peace.”

I wonder what she would have said if she had discovered I was eating watermelon?

I took a tour of the Teatro Solis. The richest people used to reserve the theatre’s balcony seats up front where they were at the worst angle to view the stage, but the best angle to be viewed by everyone else! They weren’t there to address the show, but to show their dress, not to see but to be seen. What a scene, beside the scene, quite obscene, part of the obscenery.
I met a 14-year-old girl today who asked me if there are many minors with children in the US. I didn’t realize until she told me that the 7-month-old baby in the stroller at her feet was hers.


March 7th

¡Bush, fascista, voz es un terrorista!

Last night I went on a bike ride with Ernesto, a thin multi-ethnic man in his thirties with high cheekbones and kind eyes who devotes much of his life to social work. We went to Aduana in “la ciudad vieja” to visit with some black families who make a living playing Candombe and making costumes for Carnaval. Their toilet is broken. It has no seat nor means of flushing—just a ceramic funnel to a hole in the ground. On the other hand, their shower is constantly running, it won’t turn off. Yet still the family has two working TV’s.

We continued on our bikes towards Ernesto’s house. He kept stopping and chatting with practically everyone we came across, regardless of whether or not he knew them. We stopped by a park to greet other people he knew. Ernesto was trying to help distribute condoms to them to prevent the spread of AIDS. After talking to one group we sat down on a bench where a 14-year-old kid had been sitting all alone. Whenever a car would go by he would get up and peer through the trees as if he were waiting for someone. Then he would sit back down again after the car passed. He doesn’t have family and sleeps in the park. He seemed like a normal kid. I learned later that he’s a prostitute so that he can make enough money to support his pasta base addiction. Ernesto told me that the kid gets better business because his penis is 22cm long. I don’t know how Ernesto learned that. He has a way of just talking with everyone and getting to know them and trying to help them at the same time. Finally at 5:00 AM we arrived at his house where I gratefully climbed the stairs and fell fast asleep on his brother’s floor.


March 12th

¡Hijo de puta! ¡Hijo de puta! (A chant directed at Martin J. Silverstein, the US ambassador to Uruguay)

Leo’s alarm clock just went off again. This morning the number of times has reached the double digits. The last couple days a guy named Marcos has taken me around the city. He’s very friendly. It seems he has nothing to do but spend time with me. He has a tattoo of a face on each shoulder, one mystical the other warrior-like. I went to see the women’s Candombe group with him and his friend Sebastian, and afterward we played pool. The next day Marcos spent the whole day with me, showing me around Montevideo some more. We walked out on the wharf and bought two fish from a fisherman for $1.00 each. The next day we cooked them on a wood-fire grill in Tangó, with potatoes, onions, peppers, garlic, parsley and oregano. Yesterday he took me around some more and I met his friends Diego and Victoria. I helped translate recipes for mixed drinks because Deigo is studying to be a barman. At night we went to a cyber café and listened to Radio Head and I translated lyrics for him. He told me that he used to be very sick—mentally depressed. He tried to commit suicide a few times. They gave him electroshock therapy and lots of drugs. Then he decided to quit the drugs and now he’s apparently doing great.

Later we went to a panaderia where Marcos’ dad works, and we helped him make pan dulces with ample amounts of dulce de leche. Marcos didn’t even wash his hands before starting work. He only did so after I asked him: “You’re not going to wash your hands?” At one point while we were working there was too much dulce de leche hanging off his pan dulce, so he bit off the excess before rolling it in the peanuts and putting it on the tray to be taken to the counter to sell. Perhaps a similar pan dulce was the cause of my coughing and wheezing over the past couple weeks.

Marcos told me that two people got in an argument on the corner last night. One of them drew a gun and shot it at the ground three times. Perhaps the people here have more guns than I would like to think. Though Uruguayans love their fireworks and always seem to be celebrating something, not all the explosions in the neighborhood are the effects of jubilation.


* * * * *
My trip to the Southern Cone of South America all began when I received a peace grant to attend the World Social Forum 2005, in Porto Alegre Brazil, along with a group of other Earlham College students and faculty. There were thousands of events at the WSF. It was a week of hot confusion trying to find the correct venue in a maze of clearly numbered canvas tents that were very out of order, often only to find that the speaker you hoped to hear was not there, or the venue had been changed, though now there’s someone from the audience talking in Portuguese about the loss of reality through the inescapable simulacra of the mass media! A talk by a British organization giving out misinformation about the Kyoto Protocol and why it should be stopped was completely frustrating. The categorical condemnation of Globalization, Free Trade, and Property Rights by nearly every attendee, many of whom had come together from all over the world, was an annoying oversimplification. And the “Fuck Bush” signs, usually with the ‘s’ changed into a swastika, became very tiresome—an approach that only plays into Bush’s good/evil duality of “you’re either with us or you’re against us,” branding the sign-bearers as terrorists in the eyes of the US, and preventing any chance of constructive dialogue on any topic. Yet despite all this, the youth camp—acres of tents packed side by side in the city park—was always a vibrant and lively place to be. Inspired by this aspect of the forum, my Economics professor came up with the idea to sell a T-shirt sporting one line on the front, the other on the back, reading:

“At the world Economic Forum you get screwed…”

“…at the World Social Forum you get laid.”

It was an interesting week indeed, and since I had nothing pressing to return to in the states I took the opportunity to travel south to Uruguay for a few months, and in this country I was awed by the powerful social change taking place.
* * * * *


March 13th

¡Oe, oe-oe-oe, Chavez, Chavez! ¡Oe, oe-oe-oe, Chavez, Chavez!

I met a kid from the US named Eric. I spotted him immediately with the same Lonely Planet tour book that I use. I invited him to go out to the biloches with Marcos and Sebastian and I. We had a good time. Hanging out together drinking wine on the street corner out of old plastic bottles was more fun than paying to get into a crowded night club so you could pay again to get drinks (there was no dancing). When I returned to Tangó, the door had been locked for the night. Unfortunately Neri had just fixed the lock (a cheap sliding bolt that you would see in a bathroom stall) by boring a deeper hole for the tiny bar to slide into. I didn’t want to wake anyone, and I figured there must be a way to get in besides breaking out one of the rickety windowpanes or sheets of plywood that covered the squares where the glass had broken out of the sill. I examined the door more closely near the lock and was surprised to find a quarter-sized hole there. I bent a stick and stuck it through the hole, managing to catch the handle of the bathroom lock and slowly slide it free. I walked in and locked the door behind me.


March 14th

When drinking tea in a glass, leave a spoon in the glass at all times to avoid breaking it.

There seems to be more and more arguing going on here every day. Last night there was more playing of Candombe, and we sat out in front of the steps of Tangó watching thieves run through the crowd on the corner where the drummers were performing. I didn’t understand all of the conversations around me, but most of them centered around the verb “tirar” “to shoot” and they weren’t talking about a basketball game.


March 15th

¡No mas silencio! ¡No mas silencio!

Today I saw a young kid smoking. He must have been eleven or twelve, though he looked aged beyond his years: in the wrinkles in his face and the maturity of his walk. It reminded me of meeting an old lady on my block who asked me for a light. When I told her I didn’t smoke, she replied,

“Your mom never taught you to smoke?” As if I lacked a necessary life skill.

Thank goodness no.

In Carnaval the people waving large silk banners enjoy swooping them inches above the heads of the people crowded on either side of the street to watch. I was amazed at how close they got—to the audience and each other—without clocking someone in the head. Later in the night my amazement waned as I watched one banner-waving enthusiast repeatedly smack the man behind him in the face.

I’m beginning to think that Rosanna is always shouting. It’s like she got stuck on shout mode. There are many varieties, but they all fit into category shout.

Cockroaches breed in the bed-frame of the bunk bed where Graciella’s three children sleep—Matias, the oldest, is on top, and Mikael and Nicol sleep together on the bottom. In another few months there will be a fourth! Graciella is very pregnant and doesn’t seem happy about having another child.


March 16th

You will be free from the ills of the toothache as long as throughout the entire year you never shave on a day that has an ‘r’ in it (Martes, Miercoles, y Viernes), except for the day Jesus died, on which you must shave. “It’s a superstition” Leo says, “But it works for me.”

I awake late at night on the floor in the hall near the front of Tangó. Something—the door, had banged wildly and now the dog London is whimpering. I’ve never heard him whimper like this before. I put my glasses on and sit up in my bed consisting of couch pillows and two wool blankets on the wood floor. I walk into the kitchen where the dog London is whimpering. No one is in the kitchen, and the doors remain shut. I peer outside to the patio but all remains silent. I return to bed.

Yet before I fall asleep the dog is whimpering again. I realize I never checked to see if any of the doors were unlocked. They could have been forced open and shut again. Neither did I look behind the counter to check if anyone was hiding there. Then I hear the slight creaking of footsteps and a shadow passes behind the kitchen door, protruding into the hall from behind the half-open door. London is whimpering louder now, and I catch the dull glint of something through the crack between the door and the doorframe near the floor. I cough, but the shadow remains still. Then, from where the huddled form is crouched, I hear the faint creaking noise of a pistol carefully being cocked. I can hear the hammer being raised ever so slowly, though my vision is blurry in the darkness even with my glasses. My heart is pounding as I hear the faint clicking noise again, barely perceptible. Between the hinges of the old door, there might be just enough space to fire through and shoot me in my bed of couch pillows. I remember the hardened resolve of the young men who mugged me, gaunt faces growing ever gaunter as they continued robbing in order to buy pasta base, a crack through which to escape, for a short time, the harsh realities that an “hijo de puta” Yankee could never understand. How presumptuous for a Yankee to come here to live!

I jump out of bed and shout aloud in one action.

“Leo! Graciella!” I yell at the top of my lungs, uttering the short name first so I can get at least one full name out before the first shot.

The house remains quiet. The shadow doesn’t move, still protruding from behind the door. I approach it and as I step into the kitchen the shadow’s owner comes into view: the dog London looks up at me from behind the door, whimpering plaintively.

It had been the dog all along. This time I check to make sure all the doors are locked, and I look behind the counter to make sure no one is there. The house remains quiet. Luckily I didn’t bother anyone with my shouts of distress. I go back to sleep, yet London continues to whine throughout the night.

The next day there is a large pile of dog poop on the tiled kitchen floor. It is finally clear what all the whimpering was about.


I experienced much of life that I am very insulated from where I live in Boulder Colorado, and I thank the many friends and acquaintances that enriched my life and helped me along the way during my travels.

© 2005 Mark Andreas