Laval. Lait partiellement écrémé. Vie partiellement écrémée. Vie partiellement peuplée. Sitting again at La Brioche Dorée, a small café packed with students and immigrants in the babelic barrio of Côte-des-Neiges—the golden marraquetita, the golden bun?—a quiet café with waiters whose hair is not slicked back. A small tip in exchange for this brief moment of calm, this smell of tobacco, of chess players, of distance. Between the pages of your notebook, the fading steps and image of that beggar-magician covered in shiny black grease, drinking booze out of a can, leaning against a wall on Calle Jenaro Sanjinés, muttering the chapters of a story that will never end because it hasn’t yet been written.
January 1980. How did that worn copy of Vade Mecum of the Bolivian Soldier define Bolivia? Is Bolivia the sum of its mountains? Is it the celestial air we breathe? The flag and the national coat of arms? Is it the mother, the sister, the cousin, and the niece we beat and rape when the radios announce the coup d’état, the new military operations, the tanks and troops taking over the city sheltered in the darkness of the curfew and the sinister legitimacy of the state of siege, so impunicratically Bolivian?
Lieutenant (mestizo): “Private Mamani!”
Private Mamani (Aymara): “Yessir, Lieutenant!”
L: “Private, how do you define the Patria?”
M: “The Patria is my motherland, Lieutenant!”
L: “Very well! Private Condori! How do you define the Patria?”
Condori: “The Patria is Mamani’s mother, Lieutenant!”
L: “These dumb laris, indiosbrutoshijosdeputa! To the sentry wall! Hup!”
Where did you leave that little expedition diary from 1980? In what pocket did you hide your terror, little Bolivian soldier?
Seven in the evening. Month of May. Montreal fills your lungs and you don’t know whether you should read, or write, or read while writing. Better write while reading instead. Every sign, every curve on the road, every twist and circumstance becomes a step for your eyes to rise to the imagination of the past.
I wish the cheesemonger was only a cheese maker and not a butcher too!—someone cried out the slogan from the depths of your memory, a voice in a small town of quiet streets. The swollen river was rushing again through the lobes of your brain, that shocking, murky river of memories disguised in a pamphlet. “No...not again...please!” Memory: the wise queen of anarchy and intuition. Only she knows when she is leaving and when she is coming back. After all, San Javier cheeses are not that bad.
“Colonel…what measures will your government take to fight against the voices of the opposition?” asked the complacent featherduster from El Diario to the new caudillo of a tiny little country with no access to the Pacific Ocean, drowned in a sea of military men. “Well,” answered the mouse-in-boots, trying to speak in the solemn tone of an illustrious statesman who graduated from the School of Advanced Military Studies of Bolivia, “as my meenister of de interior Mario Adett Zamora is about to esplain, we’re gonna sweep out all dose evil volibianos who’ve tried to debase the name of our nayshon and swapped de estandar of our sanctificent motherland for de red rag of internashonalist cospirassy.” The pint-sized big shot loved the sound of his own voice twenty years later as he caressed the visor of the old colonel cap that still crowned his neodemocratic bald head, an invisible cap only he could see when he looked in the mirror and considered his campaign strategy for the upcoming national elections, another war against an internal enemy. American advisors assured him that thanks to his ex-dictator skills he would definitely win. Those arduous days of his first democratic experiments in the late 1970s were long gone. A fairly difficult task to carry out from abroad, and completely futile: the masquerade would be crushed by the simple, ironclad affections of a handful of miners’ and workers’ wives who’d decided to stop eating one day in the month of Christmas until their men were freed from the prisons and barracks around the country. Their example spread like wildfire, and days later thousands of people poured into temples and churches in a heroic, exemplary renunciation of their mundane appetites, which until then had delighted in savouring delicious portions of fricassee, jolke, anticucho, thimpu, costillar, boguitas, chairo con cuerito, pataska, chicken chanka, fake rabbit, ají mixto, plato paceño, ají de papalisa con chalona, charquecán, roast goose, majao, silpanchos, rangaranga, asado borracho, chorizos chuquisaqueños, tuntas with cheese, and other delicacies from all over the vast territory of Bolivian gastronomy. And so a hunger strike started that would eventually put an end to seven years of terror. Entrenched in Plaza Murillo’s Palacio Quemado, the mouse-with-epaulettes had no choice but to free the political prisoners, allow exiles to return, and hear the protests of people who were already dead, as well as promise the Bolivian people a load of crap about holding national elections.
So it was that Banzer’s godson, a certain Juan Pereda Asbún, an ungrateful high-ranking air force officer, decided to stage a revolt against his godfather, he who had worked so hard filling ballot boxes with thousands upon thousands of fake votes in favour of Juanito and his puny Frente Nacional Popular. After getting drunk, that wretched godson of his tried to seize the election results and the presidential throne, all in vain. The little monkeys had failed. The fraud was so great that even two years later, in the early 1980s, the soldiers of the Air Force Security and Defence Unit—a battalion formed by eight companies of eighty-one soldiers each, plus several supernumeraries, confined at the El Alto Air Base near the city of La Paz—were still wiping their rearguard with the air force colononel’s mug, the forgotten paladin whose smiling face appeared on the green ballots of the Frente Nacional Popular.
“In Bolivia, do you say colonel or colononel?” Anne and José asked while Alfredo read them these improvised passages in a tiny apartment on Fairmount Avenue, half a block from Café Kilo on Boulevard Saint-Laurent in Montreal. They could smell the bagels that were baked 24/7 in the bakery next door. Marcelle Meyer had explained to him that the sesame-covered doughnut-shaped rolls were of Jewish origin but now—a sign of our times, when marks of identity are becoming increasingly ambiguous—they were made by young olive-skinned Sri Lankan men. They rolled the little balls of dough, one under each hand, working in unison. They boiled them, dipped them in a honey-and-water solution, and coated them with sesame seeds to finally bake them for the glory and good name of the city of Montreal. He remembered this, and more, faster than a rooster can crow—though no rooster actually crowed because in Montreal there are no roosters, except the colourful plastic ones outside Portuguese restaurants. Returning to his hosts’ question, Alfredo Cutipa calmly explained to them the equine logic of the uniformed in a country teeming with barracks, where it was only a matter of time before any rearguard soldier, prodded by a rifle butt, managed to climb to the top of the military hierarchy, and earned ipso facto the opportunity to take the “reins” of the nation or at least some juicy post in Customs or Narcotics. Bolivians: are they just eight, ten, fifteen, or twenty million hopelessly forgetful lambs?
What a rude question, he thought, after rereading his improvisations. And there he was again, walking down the lanes of Cala Cala, near Avenida América, his eyes searching for the century-old bark of the Great Chillijchi, father of all trees; looking for frog tracks beneath the shadow of the mighty molle trees in a faraway childhood by the Rocha River; looking for the refined elegance of a frog he could hide in his pocket and take with him to learn the gymnastics of the English language in a tiny summer school. The small amphibians never survived the linguistic experience.
Two days later, the river of words has dried up and memory sleeps the short dream of present reality. One of many possible realities. In the meantime, Marcelle Meyer, his girlfriend, had disappeared, swallowed up by the bustle of a public accounting firm, her face sprinkled with numbers and digits that wriggled like tadpoles all over her computer screen.
Drinking a bowl of café au lait at Café Le Damier on Saint-Denis and B
élanger, he thought that he, Alfredo Cutipa, would never get anywhere if he kept wandering around carrying the weight of his personal history on his back, as if he were some aparapita carrying a grand piano, chewing his acullico of coca and llipta, drenched in sweat, climbing up the steep Calle Pisagua in La Paz. Where were these fictions taking him?
If you don’t believe me, ask Ponciano Villca. He wouldn’t let me lie. Ask him how many high-ranking soldiers, from the second echelon, came that night in February of 1980 to break our souls with all the rage accumulated over 300 days and nights of ser-vicious military service. They came in through the broken windows facing the barracks at the main point of entry to the military base on El Alto’s Avenida 16 de Julio. I’m not talking about the avenue of the same name in downtown La Paz—a gaudy, pompous, frivolous circuit used as catwalk by a sector of the population that tries to hide their indio nails, their indio names, their collective mestizo memory ashamed of the blood in their veins. I mean this one here, this wide Avenida 16 de Julio in El Alto, this one teeming with indios, stinking of the frantic sweat and concrete of bricklayers and the mouldy tobacco of construction workers who will drink agua de sultana until they die, this avenue that smells of the rough grass and coca of the Aymaras who’ve just arrived in the city, future bricklayers, future construction workers, future aparapitas, future drunkards and market caseritas, future flags for the Inter-American Development Bank and its desperate attempt to show how modern the small-business cholitas are as they fight slowly but surely against hunger, selling their ají de fideo for one peso, fake rabbit with rice and llajua, fresh rack of puppy-lamb with a side of steaming chorrellana and boiled potatoes, while their children wander from corner to corner shining shoes, selling candles, marraquetas, screws, calculators madeinChina, and flypaper.
“Alfredo, are you still serving up that same old commie speech from the seventies?” asks the Scribe, who keeps track of every single one of my words, jotting them down in his notebook with great care. “How much longer, che!”
The Scribe licks the tip of the pencil he is using to write these lines. An avid follower of the writing ritual, he thinks any text can end up becoming the next Holy Bible. He looks at me, waiting for the next word, the next sentence. Even though he doesn’t agree with me and loathes these words, he knows that the story must keep moving, twisting around like an earthworm in the vast humus of Bolivian collective identity. Impossible to fix, preserve or restrain. I’ll keep telling my story about that night. Without turning on the lights in the giant troop barracks, the high-ranking soldiers entered, their faces covered, and ordered us to jump out of our narrow four-tier bunk beds. They wrenched us out of sleep in the dark and ordered us to form a line, which ended up more crooked than an achachi dancer’s staff because of our fear. Later on we learned there were only four of them, all from a tiny village in the Altiplano near the lake, but at the time, the accumulated rage of those beaten Natives would have been enough to fill Lake Titicaca with blood.
“¡Ya, ferme carajo!... ¡Fermeydichu mono y mierdas!” they ordered us, keeping their voices lowered, feeling powerful, violent and methodical.
Thuds, fists pounding ribs and faces, someone’s breath bursts into a whimper or groan at a blow to the stomach. A shadow bends over and crumples to the floor at El Alto’s military garrison. Someone starts crying, quietly. Alfredo breathes nervously, listening. His sweaty hands shake like two fish on land. The air in his ears swells at the crack of a slap near his face. Everything happens in the dark, almost in silence. There are no faces or names, no one to call on, no hand intervenes to stop the fury of a night as dark as a black whale swollen with bile.
“Stop...please stop...please!” someone cries out before collapsing to the ground, rolling and folding under the kicks and blows.
We couldn’t break formation. We were nailed to the floor—perhaps by our incipient military discipline, perhaps by fear. As I tried to figure out what time it was, fervently wishing for the first light of sunrise, I felt my mouth explode and, before I was even aware of the pain, hot blood running down my chin. I fell back, shocked by the silent attack, ears ringing, lips throbbing, unable to make sense of what was happening in that space where shadows moved and foul breath whispered bitter orders all around me.
“You’re making that up! That’s cheap literature, che, like those little pamphlets written by the resistance where the heroic militant smiles like Superman while someone rips his nails out or slices him open and hangs his guts out to dry. You’re pulling my leg, che! This Alfredo is really something else...You’ll never change!”
“No, no, Scribe!... I swear it’s true! Ask Ponciano Villca, he remembers, he was there. He wouldn’t let me lie.”
The Scribe shook his head in resignation and kept writing as Alfredo dictated, since that was his job.
They were sitting around a table at La Bruja, a dive bar in a dusty narrow street at the foot of the Ceja de El Alto, in the city of La Paz. The bar had several small patios with chairs and covered tables crowned with giant pitchers of chicha. Alfredo and his buddies, now civilians who had completed their military service, saw a group of former soldiers from who-knows-which battalion walk up to a nearby table. They had a guitar and a fat pitcher of chicha. For some reason, maybe the way they walked, Alfredo surmised they had been infantry soldiers. They’d had enough to drink to shed their Andean timidity with regard to emotions, and now showed a mix of cheerful despair and the sadness of Pepinos without a carnival. It was as if they were drinking their first chicha after a year of compulsory military service “in the heart of the Armed Farces, as established by the Political Constipation of the State,” said Alfredo Cutipa with improvised solemnity watching them approach. He even felt as if he and his army mates had been in the same military unit, the same regiment, the same army, with the men sitting beside them. The newcomers plucked a song by Domínguez out of the air and their voices and eyes plunged off-key into that cadence of guitar strings concocted by the Tupizan into a song that no one in the world except soldiers could truly understand:
Who knows what affections
spin around in his mind
our Private Juan Cutipa,
while he’s cleaning his guns,
our Private Juan Cutipa.
The guitars and voices—some deep, some high-pitched—of teenagers branded by violence with the white-hot iron of coups d’état and the silent, anguished gestures of the 1979 and 1980 corpses gradually grew quiet and sank with their hearts into the lyrics of the song that came to life in their hands, in their voices, eyes, and souls. Surprised, the boys felt the tears that welled up in their throats now rising to their eyes like frightened, shiny fish, softening the leathery skin on cheeks that had faced the fire and ice of the Bolivian Altiplano. Some of them started to cry, trying to hide their tears, ashamed of what they considered a clear sign of diminished virility, their heads bowed, quiet tears falling on their worn veterans’ boots.
“Here, here,” said the Scribe, reaching out towards him, “it’s all right...calm down, man, it’s over...”
Alfredo stretched out his hand and grabbed the wrinkled handkerchief offered by the Scribe, still recognizing himself in those ex-soldiers.
“You still remember these things, Alfredo?”
“Yes, I remember, Scribe. That’s why you’re here, to help me gouge out of my eyes, to find out if I can forget all this by writing it down.”
Yes, Ponciano remembers that night. How many Bolivians does this story belong to? Why is the wheel of uniforms and humiliation still turning? In the end, we would just laugh and choose to take the rage and violence with humour, and even a touch of nostalgia; because it was the type of violence that made you feel completely detached from your aggressors, your little bosses, your excelentísimos who would be just that for the rest of your life. Because that’s how they turned us into real men. But did they really make us manlier? By taming us to just take the pain?
By making us comfortable with resignation and numb to violence? Come on, brother, let’s piss on the Bolivian flag, on the political constitution of the state, on the historical constipation that orders us to be patriotic and serve the country. But whose country? Being patriotic means letting others kick you, letting them beat you up and insult you. So deeply patriopic, aren’t we? These soldaditos…these little patriopic bolivianitos... They’re just so nice. And that’s exactly why they deserve it.
In the middle of Quinta La Bruja, in a lower-class barrio in El Alto. After the song ended, plunging the guys at the next table into a pensive mood, Alfredo stood up, inspired by the noble but mean Incan liquor that would leave him with a respectable head-throbbing chaqui the next day. A chicken thinking himself a tenor, he burst into song with the national anthem: “Boliviaaaassnos helaaaaados propicioooos, coronoooo...coronooooo...coronoooo...” He got stuck in that word, forgetting what came next, both delighted and horrified that he might have forgotten the sacrosanct rhythm. Someone yanked him by the arm, forcing him to sit back down.
“Shut up, you dickhead! The cops are gonna take us in! You haven’t changed much, have you... Fucking commie!”
“Well, like the man said it: let’s go impregnate our hens, brother!”
Ten years later, a poem by a Tarijan man who left his homeland—and returned ten years later to find that his people looked at him with emptiness in their eyes—landed on a blank page as he started to write a letter, not knowing quite how to start the first line but thinking of Susana San Miguel, all dressed in black, sitting on a white sofa, her hair long and shiny, so long that it had reached across thousands of days and kilometres, mountain ranges, family tragedies, customs inspectors, and ruthless Canadian winters, all the way to where he was, and managed to bring warmth to his fingers again, the fingers that were now writing her: Susana, I just finished shovelling the snow that was blocking the entrance to my house and now my back hurts. It’s snowing and on the radio the forecast is calling for twenty more centimetres of snow. It’s cold out and I don’t want to leave the house, but I should go to the library to read—or suffer—the latest news from Bolivia brought by the handful of newspapers in Spanish that manage to reach the island of Montreal.
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