FIRST CONTACTS
Argentina was beating Mexico 2-0 in the Qatar World Cup, and as the match ended, in just ten minutes, I organized everything necessary to move. It was an escape; I owed two months of rent, and for any landlord, that is unforgivable. To make matters worse, the owner of the apartment lived just two houses away. First, I made sure his truck wasn’t on the curb, and only then did I call the freight guy. My mother thought it would be a normal, organized move; it was nothing like that. I rushed her and I rushed myself—ten minutes—otherwise, I’d have to give explanations. Besides, I knew where we were going and she didn’t. She thought all our belongings would fit in the new place; they didn’t. It was just a three-by-three-meter room made of stone slabs, with an old, rusted tin roof barely two meters high. I shouted at her what had to be left behind, as she didn’t realize the urgency. The tables and chairs aren’t coming. Her double bed is staying behind. The washing machine stays behind—nothing but the double mattress, my bed (which she would later use while I slept on the floor), and bags of clothes. The TV, four hundred books (without the shelves), and anything that fit in a box. Nothing more. Oh, and we took the stove; my plan was to trade it for a fan, since summer was coming and I knew the heat there would be infernal. Since the stove was for piped gas and I didn’t have money for propane tanks or to change the nozzles: goodbye, stove. Regardless, I stuffed the cat into a bag (because I would never again abandon an animal for being poor) to take her with us, and goodbye, apartment.
When we arrived, everyone was out on the curb; it was the beginning of the heat season. About eight adults lived on the lot, each in their own little room, along with six children. Now, my mother and I were joining them. Also, when we arrived, there was the crew that revolved around the Chef, drawn to him by gravity or charisma. Their faces were strange, hard, ugly—not friendly at all. But I thought: “Well, the Chef is wearing a shirt from his job at the municipality; nothing will happen, otherwise he wouldn’t work there.” I was worried about my mother more than anything. Everyone behaved perfectly that first day—and they always did—but we are talking about that specific day. They helped me unload everything from the truck and get it into my little room; they greeted me; everything was relatively normal. The Chef pulled me aside and explained: “We are humble here, but we are all family. Everyone who lives here is related. We’re just humble, that’s all.” Was he apologizing? This Chef was the perfect bio-type, a prosecutor’s dream. Chubby, dark-skinned, hair cut Daddy Yankee style, with a “bad guy” face that looked intentional. He spoke almost shouting, and his hands flew up every time he talked. That first night, I imagined that while we slept, they would break in and take photos with our heads resting on their guns—delirious things—but the municipality t-shirt reassured me. I’m an idiot.
Today, from a distance, even with all the bad moods and “deficiencies” regarding the non-existent rules of coexistence I’ve had to swallow over these years, everyone, to a greater or lesser extent, offered me a kind of apology in those first contacts. An apology for the humility of the place, for having to live that way. People to whom the illegality of an act is largely indifferent were apologizing for being humble. For having to share a bathroom, for using a mere curtain as a bathroom door. For every habit they sensed was foreign or strange to me, for everything that might seem unpleasant: their apologies. And the first one to do it was the same man who is today condemned, the one whose sentence everyone applauds for being a criminal. I don’t want to fall into romanticism or the poetic atmosphere my strange head might create, but this Chef—a maker of armed robberies—apologized to a complete stranger entering his world for the humility of it. An important point to highlight: he never committed a violent crime against the average individual. Whenever he used violence, it was to rob another transa. And it makes me think: How did he harm society? Yes, here, far from the center and those progressive bars with sky-high prices, drugs act differently, and they truly ruin lives. But I didn’t see how, I don’t see how, drugs—for poor people, consumed by poor people—become a public health problem, and therefore a state expense, and thus a crime against the state or administration. In any case, what it is, is a suicide in life. Corporeal. I assure you that no fisura—no hopeless addict—becomes a health problem; at most, it will be a debate over where to bury them later. But they won’t generate health expenses while they live. I will elaborate on this later.
In those early moments that turned into months, I learned some of the rules around here. Rule one: never look or try to be curious about anything. Don’t ask questions. And don’t act like a tough guy because you’re going to have to back it up. These are, if you will, the wildest parts of the rules. But I started to become interested in this Chef, his way of being. A joker, a companion, someone who cared. He always made sure the “Grandmother,” the oldest lady living on the lot, was comfortable. Before putting floors in his own house, he put them in the Grandmother’s, perhaps to stop the dampness; he finished a wall for her; he worried that the electricity bills and food costs were covered, that no one went hungry.
I was dragging a problem when I moved here. I had sold a refrigerator and the guy who bought it turned out to be the brother of one of the biggest traffickers in Venado. He pulled up in his imported car one day, stepped out with a threatening tone, and headed for my little room. It was the worst thing he could have done, because the Chef, being in the “same business,” knew him and stood up for me. Only weeks after meeting me. To make a long story short, this “mobster”—just because he was the brother of someone—left with teary eyes and never bothered me again. Every time we crossed paths after that, he simply turned his head the other way.
Another thing that surprised me was seeing that the concern for the family’s well-being was the same as everyone else’s. No matter your economic status, the worry you have for your family is the same, whether you are the director of a bank or the one dreaming of robbing it. Of course, what breaks that is drug addiction. And in that profile of the lost addict, we find the first heart of the matter, considering what the addict is willing to do to get more drugs. And this heart of the matter is pure irony: the one who uses drugs—willing to commit any crime to get more—is not the guilty one in the eyes of the law. Consumption falls within the private sphere. But the one who sells it? He is. This is a barrier, a kind of moral edge where something must be justified—always by the state, of course.
Returning to the thread: we have a guy who commits crimes, the Chef. In those first months of my stay, I suspected it, but I didn’t quite know how. As I was saying, we have for you a “criminal” who should be in prison, because according to you, they should all die. A criminal who has the same worries, who goes to bed thinking about how to reach his goal in the same way you do—the origin and the core are the same, only the mechanics change. A great father; a husband who looks after his wife, ensuring she is well, that she starts a nail business; making sure the “nona” of the lot is comfortable; that the other kids eat and study. Someone who brings the dogs in during winter because they cry from the cold; someone who doesn’t impose like a tyrant through strength and violence.
After four months, I moved in with my current partner. Women have habits that men overlook; we will always be lost boys who don’t quite know what to do, whereas women are strong and decisive. My partner and the Chef’s wife clashed constantly. If I wasn’t thrown out on the street, it was because of my intervention with my partner and the Chef’s with his. He told his partner that we were good people, and she understood. You can’t ask for smiles if you don’t give them first; you sow the seed of what you want to see. Dialogue was always an option for conflict resolution; otherwise, I would have moved out long ago.
We have before us a man with a big heart, who could be any neighbor, the best neighbor, or a normal neighbor—sometimes noisy, sometimes a hero. But all qualities of a “citizen” are lost upon choosing to be a criminal; he lost them all. Why? Do we rip out the flower if it hurts someone with its thorns? Or do we accept its uniqueness along with its roughness? Who wins when we search for the diaphanous figure of the exemplary man or woman?