Tag: prison

Path to Prison: Part 8

CIVILIZED CRIMES

I have already stated that there are two “natural” crimes: homicide and rape. One might call it simplistic or overly positivist to end the list there, especially when the world looks more like a room in hell than a garden under a rainbow.

Consider this: living entails accepting an immensity of rules—thousands upon thousands of them. If I had to guess a number, we are ignorant of about 90% of them. Yet there they are: the criminal offenses, eager to fall upon any human being. Of course, the machinery of reducing a life is much simpler if the person receiving the weight of the load cannot afford a good lawyer.

To summarize: every crime that is not “natural” is a degeneration of the very walls—those thousands of rules—that the system imposes upon us. Does this absolve a person of their responsibility? Legally, no. Morally? We shall see.

Moments after leaving the womb, we begin to receive all kinds of labels and rights; we become “subjects of law.” Put simply: our lives immediately fall under the authority of law, and since nationality is specific, we live for the State. Of course, there is a “good” part: the mandatory care we receive. But all of this—especially the part regarding our humanity—is pure theory. Whether health care is of high or low quality depends on a government’s policies. The same goes for education, opportunities, growth, and the acquisition of a basic roof: it all depends on the government, the State.

Let this be clear: the need for laws, legislators, and controls is, in theory, humanistic. It is humanity trying to care for itself. It is the closest thing we have to collective human concern, and it is the best thing we have as a species—our greatest evolutionary action. The problem is that, unfortunately, the theory of rights and obligations is not applied with the certainty of a mathematical equation. No political framework survives a single day of reality.

Thus, at birth, our signature is already on a contract—the famous Social Contract. It is, of course, an imposition we never signed. I wouldn’t mind that imposition if there were no impunity for one of the parties. So, what does this have to do with “civilized crimes”?

Centuries ago, a criminal’s body was dismembered in the public square. Not much would have changed today, considering how people think, if it weren’t for criminal defense lawyers (and we should be truly grateful they exist). But things changed. There were multiple causes for this shift; one was to avoid riots that could escalate—family and friends of the mutilated man on the scaffold wanting to take the city (or the King’s head). As human sensitivity evolved, we got Beccaria’s treatise: On Crimes and Punishments. It theorized how to exercise justice without becoming a criminal in the process. The State could no longer project that image of itself.

Justice and punishment slowly evolved into what we have today. And a crucial part of this evolution is, for example, public health. It isn’t so much humanistic as it is productive: it is cheaper to heal an employee than to train a new one. The system becomes even more efficient if the employee pays for their own cure, comes to work sick, and keeps producing.

But what about the “civilized crimes”?

On one hand, we have a contract where the main unwritten rule is: we give you our lives and we obey the State in exchange for a variety of guaranteed rights. Is this fulfilled? Clearly not. And it is the State that fails. This failure strips the State of the moral authority to demand obedience to its laws, whatever they may be.

Look at this: criminal offenses—the crimes the State watches over so that no one commits them—increase year after year. They advance alongside technology, but they always advance. Rights do not. In fact, there is a global phenomenon where basic rights matter less and less. The State no longer feels obligated; or rather, it is no longer ashamed to admit that citizens cannot even begin to afford the rights that the State is supposed to safeguard.

Prohibitions continue to expand. Police forces are given greater authority, more reach. The reins are loosened for prosecutors—and let me be clear: no prosecutor has the intellect that their title suggests. A prosecutor is nothing more than a piranha with a manual for verifying human conduct. They even carry out raids without warrants signed by judges (this happens constantly in Argentina).

This evolutionary transformation created a mountain of crimes to kill off any kind of parallel organization and to annihilate any irreverence that threatens the State’s survival. Every State is a machine that is hard to stop. When it invents a “just” law, it gets intoxicated by its hunger for control and extends the penal reach to crush the pressure generated by economy and inequality. Moreover, it makes the social mass its debtor: IF YOU COMMIT A CRIME, YOUR DEBT IS TO SOCIETY. What a mask!

Therefore, the invention of any penal type that does not target a natural crime (murder, rape) is, over time, a form of State self-protection. Knowing this, let us return to the Chef. His siblings were raped; he was raped; he was exploited as a child. Why didn’t the State safeguard his rights? Why didn’t society do something? Do we not “tear our clothes” in mourning over injustice?

It’s a fairy tale. I ask: did the State fulfill its contract?

I saw so many hateful comments from strangers on social media when the news of the raid broke. I cannot understand or justify the existence of those people. Beyond what the Chef must pay legally: what does society demand? Ethics? Morality? I say it again: I watched them condemn a man using all the rules and all the muscle of a system into which he was never included, never invited. And let’s not forget: he was condemned for selling drugs to consumers within that system. But consumption is not a crime; it doesn’t scale into an organization that threatens power—it only threatens the consumer’s own life. And if we speak of ethics and morality: the individuals within the system, at every hierarchy, are the consumers of the most broken-down, slum-born dealer you can imagine.

This is also a farce. Do you know how many people in their 30s, 40s, or 50s scam their families, siblings, and parents economically and morally? Millions.

But here is my specific conclusion: the one who fires the first bullet is more guilty than the one justice condemns with fanfare. Beyond the ego-centrism of the State, those with the primary responsibility failed first: the parents.

Every mother or father who abandons a child delivers a problem to the world and condemns a soul. They are the ones who should be in prison. But we aren’t looking for justice; we are looking for propaganda. The perfect steps, the flashing cameras, so everyone can see the machinery working while an illiterate man reaches the final stop on this great path to prison.

Path to Prison: Part 7

THE NARCO-BANDIT

The Chef—the protagonist of this essay—is no wet cat caught in the rain. I imagine you’ve realized that by now. His particularity is this: if he loves you, he’d be willing to go to prison for killing for you. I mean this seriously. He wouldn’t hesitate to pull a gun and let happen whatever needs to happen. But let me clarify: when an average citizen pulls a weapon, we lose all our composure. The Chef, in those moments, was the exact opposite. If he doesn’t love you, or if you are his victim, any human word is wasted.

Ever since they locked him up—given the violence of the raid and the weight of the charges—it’s clear to me that drugs were the last thing they were looking for. In fact, they seemed angry to have only found that. It’s obvious they were after many things but could only prove one. Looking back at the previous paragraph, I find only one constant: extremism. Extremism in loyalty and affection; extremism in violence.

But when I think of the Chef—his situation, his life, his suffering, and his actions—I cannot help but see a brother. Different blood, same codes. And an uncomfortable question arises: Is the only difference between him and me a personal cowardice that always held me back? Trying to answer that would be a strike against the truth. But I am sure of one thing, an irony we all face: your family, or a large part of it, will eventually cast you aside. You won’t matter to them much at some point. And in that long, sustained moment, this man—the Chef—was the one who gave me the warmest “familial” support (aside from my mother, of course). To put it better, I’ll quote Gangs of New York: “It’s a funny feeling being under the dragon’s wing.” All that extremism that drives him is motivating, encouraging. I remember him saying things like: “You don’t know what you could become,” or “You have to keep going, fight for what’s yours.” Of course, we shouldn’t expect high-flown rhetoric, but the intention was there.

EXTREMISM. I return to that when I speak of him. His father abandoned him, among other impact forces I’ve already mentioned. There was never anything or anyone to soothe that extremism that hit his life every few years. Now he’s living through another one: prison.

Make no mistake: the “narco-bandit” is a dangerous figure. Dangerous for you, for me, for everyone. He isn’t the typical stupid dealer driven by women, lacking codes, ready to snitch on anyone, letting addicts into his room. But he isn’t dangerous solely because of the violence he might exert. His danger lies in his intuition and his hidden intelligence.

Everything in the bandit’s criminal operation—even if they can barely read or write, as is the case with the Chef—has a prior intelligence. It is the crucial difference they use to categorize a rastrero (a bottom-feeder who steals a cell phone or ties an elderly couple to a chair) from a “real” bandit. The real one can pull off a handcrafted tactical hit on a higher-ranking dealer, or clear out a ranch in record time without hurting anyone, or why not, rob an armored truck and vanish with the loot. Think about it: this requires coordination, scenario forecasting, defined roles, guesstimating time, and escape planning.

I’ve seen these “plans.” I don’t know how they ended, but the planning was there. I’ve walked past them on my way to the bathroom just as they were preparing these actions in a circle, guns in hand. And following the rule of this place: I didn’t hear a thing. I didn’t even try to.

And here the question returns: that intelligence, that management of tension, that planning—what if he had seen that possibilities existed? What if another life were possible? If someone had walked him to school? If someone had asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up? A vet, an astronaut, a doctor?” Surely his life would have been different. When you talk to these “bandits,” you realize they know. Internally, they have a small fissure of pain propped up by the “What could I have been?” The eyes don’t lie. When I talk about these things with these men, that sadness is there. Because even if they can’t see the full extent of their intelligence, they notice they see much more than the rest. And I ask myself again: besides cowardice, was the difference between the Chef and me just luck?

This is where I inevitably return to the forces that push us toward different paths—real, physical forces that shape existence, regardless of whether the origin is objective or subjective. Here, the State’s irresponsibility becomes even more massive: trying to measure the complexity of existence with basic addition. It isn’t a mistake; it’s intentional. Using the best minds to prevent this would require intervention, and the State only saves itself.

How can a person without tools counteract such a trend if they have nothing to stop it? If everything they see on TV are idolized personalities talking like hitmen and dressing like hitmen (music is a point of inspiration and belonging here; it is the glorification, the “Great Why”)? It’s clear that a hollow culture is vital. Those inside the trend, heading toward crime, see nothing. And the others—the “good citizens”—see nothing either.

When I say I feel the Chef is my brother, I am telling the truth. And I want to highlight something about the codes: they are real. They even keep you out of certain things. Once, because I needed more economic stability, I proposed using my technical skills to start encrypting their communication network—both for his “soldiers” and his bosses. He wouldn’t let me in. Today I see it was a way to protect me. This sector I call “bandits” protects and respects the “good people”; it doesn’t want to drag them down the same path.

As for the codes: in the nearly four years I’ve lived here, the police and prosecutors have taken away about fifteen people from the neighboring lots. How do you tell a bandit from a coward? I’ve seen people who bragged about their “mafia” status only to snitch on everyone to save their own necks, trembling before a prosecutor. The real ones don’t snitch. If someone gets caught with drugs and gets out quickly, I guarantee they sold out all their “friends.” It makes me think: the word of a “bandit” has more value than that of your own coworker who would sell you out just to earn an extra 200 dollars a month. Which one is the true ethics?

Everything in the Chef is extreme. The first extreme blow was his father’s abandonment, then the abuse of his siblings. And I wonder: if the father had stayed, if there were a penal punishment for those who wash their hands of their children, would this Chef be the same? I am convinced he would be different. Which leads me to conclude that the first criminal is the father who abandons. The only real criminal is him—the one who unleashed the chain of events.

Path to Prison: Part 6

THE STREET-LEVEL ADDICT

Like you, I see it a thousand times on TV. Journalists, investigators, politicians—all saying the same thing: “Drug addiction is a public health problem.”

FACE THE TRUTH: If it didn’t cause such a scandal—if it weren’t such an explicit display of greed—the State would run the drug trade itself for the juicy profits. But that would shatter the sense of moral purity that justifies their existence. It’s a step they crave and fear at the same time.

Now, back to the “addicts as a public expense” myth. In certain social vectors, it is a massive lie.

Think of a man or woman over 25. Bad tattoos, poorly done. Thin bodies. Heavily worn clothes, dirty or smelling of nothing. Think of people who spend every waking second thinking about the next hit, about selling their chairs, their gas tanks, their stoves. Some have abscesses swelling from their gums; others have stains all over their skin. People who can walk twelve kilometers just to find a supplier, who never know if they have a common cold or lung cancer, or AIDS, or any of the diseases that terrify you.

They eat every other day because the hunger isn’t “born” in them. They’d rather do a back-breaking odd job for a hit than for a meal. They live like this for decades. You might think I’m exaggerating, but I know sixty-year-olds who live exactly like this—unless they shift toward an alcoholism with one sole purpose: cirrhosis.

If 99% of these people don’t step foot in a public hospital for decades, I ask you: Where is the public expense?

Do we really have to swallow that lie? Public health doesn’t even care about the teeth of the poor—those who barely have three or four stained, decaying stumps left in their mouths, even if they’ve never touched a drug in their lives. The State doesn’t care about preventing a flu from becoming pneumonia, or an appendicitis from becoming peritonitis.

They shout at us from their moral pedestals—both the State and the “good citizen”—about how we should coexist. Does the statesman know what the addict’s morning is like? What the night is like? Do the “gray” citizens of virtue know? Or do they just listen to talk based on data that isn’t real at all?

The only expense an addict will ever give the State is the cost of figuring out where to bury them, or sending a check to the funeral home for their cremation. An expense we all generate, we the poor, whether we use drugs or not.

REHABILITATION CENTERS

I believe that for a person to seek help in a rehab center—or for a family to commit them—there must be a different cognitive structure. You have to know a “better world.” A world far from here, far from lots with fifteen stone-slab houses where each room is a micro-neighborhood with its own rules. You have to have seen that change is possible, that life doesn’t have to be wasted.

But those achievements, those reachable realities? They are unknown here. There is ambition, yes. There are dreams, yes. But they are light-years away from what a middle-class person can see, think, feel, or build with “steady effort.” All that mental baggage required to decide to get clean—if you don’t have those resources, only then do you end up burdening the saturated national public system.

The only public expense of a poor person is their birth, their childhood (with fewer State contributions every year), and, as I said, their death.

We have to understand some hard truths. If someone writes the word “hello,” why do we assume they aren’t illiterate? Reading and writing should no longer be the yardstick for illiteracy—at least not around here. Here, the very concept of “rehabilitation” is unknown.

Imagine this: people have asked me, “What is a guaranty?” I’ve been called hundreds of times to translate (with my zero legal knowledge) a court summons or a PDF presentation from a prosecutor. Why am I telling you this? Because I’m trying to explain that there is no GPS for improvement. Nothing will lead these people to think of “rehab” as a necessary first step toward a better life.

I’ll say it again: Here, the addict is never a public expense. That message is just a moral and systemic reinforcement. Entire bureaucratic careers depend on drugs being seen as a “problem” to sustain their own economic lives. They need the problem so they can type about it, classify it, and discuss it.

The State handles every part of the drug business except one: it doesn’t sell it. It cannot afford to lose its image of purity.

Think about it for a second: If they didn’t have the “drug war,” what would they talk about? God forbid the only illegal acts in the news were white-collar crimes—the bank frauds and corporate scams where the winners always live in the same gated communities with extravagant last names. Places where the police cannot go to justify themselves. Places where they can’t exercise that same spectacular violence and trampling of rights just to get applauded on social media.

There are things you do not touch.

The addict as a public health expense is a hollow metric. It’s not a political problem; it’s a State necessity. Dressed up. Very well dressed up.

Path to Prison: Part 5

SOME BRIEF CLARIFICATIONS

In the previous chapter, I spoke quite a bit about differential calculus and mathematical forms. You might think this is about to become an algorithmic postulate. It is not.

And here is a secret if you aren’t familiar with advanced math: it’s not about solving equations. It’s about operating ideas. When you see symbols or formulas, take them as behavior patterns. Shorthand. Otherwise, to explain the process, we would have to write pages. Symbols are a necessity.

But the secret is simple: thinking. When you weigh whether a project will work, you are already doing advanced math. You are operating ideas. I will continue this line, treating issues as forces and actions interacting with one another.

THE IGNORED FORCES

What is the weight of abandonment?

Of a rape?

Of every blow received?

Life is not linear—no news there. If we could draw a life, we could map it. Peaks. Falls. Deviations. Movements that are responses to forces outside us—and sometimes, forces created by ourselves. Why this abstract form? Because in my view, forces appear and disappear on our path.

Call them decisions, traumas, luck, mistakes, personality. Call them loneliness, tragedy, or ego. Everything is a force operating on the graph our days are drawing.

Think of it like this:

A father’s abandonment is not a “lack of something.” It is a force of impact. It is a moment where the graph of a child’s life suffers an angular deviation so violent that, without a counter-force of equal power, the destiny is sealed. The graph is directed toward a new range of spaces—the eigenvector, if you will.

The State sees the 25-year-old man selling marijuana. But it refuses to see the initial acceleration. It is blind to the dynamics. The State is an expert in punishment only because punishment is static.

If we can see a dozen destructive forces acting on an individual, we can predict exactly where that individual is headed. But the State doesn’t want to see. Because then, it would actually have to intervene. Instead, it prefers statistics. It judges a single point within a graph of millions.

Why? Because the State is selfish. It fears death. It hoards all the money it can. Real, physical prevention is non-existent. Motivated by fear, it only knows how to spend on one thing: police, police, and more police. Power and Justice are inert observers:

  • Justice is Arithmetic: 1+1=2 (Fact + Law = Prison).
  • Reality is Calculus: F(t)dt (The sum of all forces over time).

The State hates the integral because the integral distributes blame. If we integrate the Chef’s life, the result isn’t “800g of marijuana.” The result is a system of forces where the State appears as a friction coefficient that never helped—or worse, as a force that accelerated the fall.

I am NOT saying everyone is innocent. I am saying I have seen the full arm of the law unleashed to condemn people using ethical and penal rules they were never invited to share.

How can we demand obedience to a contract they never signed? How can they be judged for not being part of a society that only recognizes them when it has to handcuff them?

It is the ultimate scam: the State keeps you out of the welfare equation but puts you at the center of the punishment equation. The non-natural criminal is the pressure valve used to endorse the status quo. If there are criminals, fear can be sustained infinitely. Your fear is the most perfect killing machine in history.

THE CONTAINED FORCE

If you want to know why we no longer dismember a criminal in the town square, read Discipline and Punish. Spoiler: a dead man no longer produces. He doesn’t pay taxes. He doesn’t consume.

Does the prisoner produce? No. But he is a dormant resource. A resource on pause. Besides, applying that much brutality to the bereaved could trigger an atomic bomb of blood.

So we have the modern prison.

Take a life crushed by soul-breaking forces and put it in a ruined, damp cubicle. Add more demolition: rape, humiliation, constant tension, the need to kill or be killed. Add the abuse of the prison service—undercover criminals themselves.

Do you seriously believe the destructive tendency has been corrected?

Here is where your cowardice speaks: “we should just kill them.” But relax. You support capitalism. Justice has evolved not to kill a body that—with a few corrections—will eventually return to consume, produce, and pay taxes.

So, here is food for your terror: good luck when they get out.

Path to Prison: Part 3

THE WHOLE WORLD AND CHILDHOOD

Ever since the raid came for the Chef—even though we all got swept up in the dragnet and ended up with a submachine gun pointed at our heads and a boot crushing our chests against the floor—I suspected, and still suspect, they were going to get him one way or another. His sentence was the minimum for what they managed to find (had they raided on a different day, the sentence would have easily been double digits). However, in my own hierarchy of crimes, he doesn’t fit; he is still innocent. I may not be right, and I don’t have to be, but it’s a necessary scale.

After four years of living here, the things that used to be done in secret or hidden from the eyes of my mother, my partner, or myself, stopped being hidden. They were simply done in the yard. Yes, I’ve seen bricks of marijuana stacked up while I was heading to the bathroom (the bathroom was, and still is, shared, located at the back of the lot). I’ve seen guns. I’ve talked to—and some even worked for my cleaning company before I closed it—guys who were responsible for shootings, threats, or drug-related debt settlements. I knew all the secrets; I saw them because it’s inevitable when you live on the same lot. Even if you don’t participate, you step out to the yard and find a group of guys handling exactly what I mentioned.

What would you do, “good citizen”? Would you call the police, you, the paragon of virtue? Would you report them? Those guys willing to “battle” for you? The Chef, who would answer for you if you hit a rough patch and had nothing to eat, who would lend you money or bring you food without expecting favors in return or rushing you to pay him back? Someone who would invite you to his table for Christmas and New Year’s, even if you don’t like it or don’t want to be a part of it. If you report someone like that while living on his land, let me tell you: you probably no longer have a soul or a reason to justify your existence as a human being, as a species. Though, of course, the System would be delighted with you.

Knowing everything also led the Chef to open up to me, and his wife to open up to my mother. That’s how we learned about the Chef’s childhood (remember that when we moved here, they were both 21 years old with a child). If we look at his life, we see a boy who was probably abused (though he never said it explicitly). But his sister, as a child, was raped by her stepfather, as was his brother. As if that weren’t enough to ruin any future—having to keep living with the rapist—his mother, starting when the Chef was six years old, forced him to stand at traffic lights to beg for coins. He had to come back with money, or the punishment was a beating. Later, at thirteen, when he could no longer get money at the lights so easily, he became “useless” and was kicked out onto the street. What I’ve told you so far is more than enough to manufacture a ruthless killer. Instead, we have a man with the sensibilities I’ve already mentioned.

After living on the street for a while, the State did not take him in; it never even knew he existed until he decided to become a criminal. As if that were something one simply “decides.” Regardless, the only social circle that gave him shelter was some poorly organized, precarious gang. He was a “cook”—of drugs first. And then, who knows out of what curiosity, he wanted to be a Chef. A suffering, helpless child, cooking cocaine, wanting to be a Chef in a restaurant. A situation that is, at the very least, interesting to witness. And even more curious: he actually became a Chef. He managed to graduate. So, there was effort and capability. Of course, all that ended when he decided to pull an “inside job” at the restaurant where he worked (no one suspected him). I don’t judge that action; it feels like an inevitable act. There was no foundation, no control, no chosen path other than his own.

Later, he began butchering whatever field animals crossed his path; that’s how he fed himself and lived for a couple of years. Meanwhile—listen to this, “honest” citizen—according to what he told me, and later confirmed by other testimonies: he cooked for the Gendarmerie (Border Patrol) and was in charge of keeping the business’s books. All of it endorsed by the police, the gendarmes, and a prosecutor. I don’t know if a judge was involved too, so they’re off the hook for now. Of course, I cannot give names.

Who would be the guilty party in this case? The Chef, who struggles to read, or all those with formal education who are part of that criminal ring? If we put the blame on the dark-skinned Chef who looks exactly like what society calls a criminal, there is something seriously wrong with our heads.

Later, when all of that had to stop due to changes in government, prosecutors, and officials—and others were going to take over that part (make no mistake, that dirty State business never stops; don’t be naive)—his path in street-level drug dealing began.

Path to Prison: Part 2

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?