Diego's Pride

by Deborah Ellis

  ‘We need to post watches at each barricade and make sure there are enough volunteers to change over every couple of hours.’

  Diego volunteered for one of the middle-of-the-night shifts, and no one told him that he wasn’t old enough.

  ‘There will be two or three people on watch at all times at each end of the bridge,’ Mr Ricardo said. ‘More eyes will make us all safer.’

  The runners committee was a different story.

  ‘What are you staring at?’ Bonita asked, when Diego arrived at the group’s first meeting.

  ‘Is this the runners committee?’ he asked, hoping it wasn’t. Aside from Bonita, the other two members of the committee were two of the young men who had been so excited by the fancy car, including the one with the black baseball cap and the knife. They reminded Diego of the young men in his father’s prison, with more confidence than sense, always needing to prove their manhood.

  ‘Meet Dario and Leon,’ Bonita said, sounding as impressed with them as Diego was.

  Dario and Leon weren’t sure whether to be insulted that their teammates were kids, or excited because it gave them a chance to act like big men. It was comical watching them trying to sort it out. Diego caught Bonita’s eyes and saw that she was thinking the same thing.

  ‘The first thing we all need,’ Dario said, ‘are battle names.’ Dario was the guy in the baseball cap.

  Diego bit his lip to keep from laughing, but Bonita boldly asked, ‘Why?’

  ‘So we’ll know what to call each other.’

  ‘Why don’t we just use our real names?’

  ‘You’re too young to understand,’ Dario told her. ‘Trust me on this. I’m going to go by the name Wolf.’

  ‘I thought I was Wolf,’ Leon said. ‘I thought of it. You wanted Spear.’

  ‘I’m Wolf,’ declared Dario loudly, ‘and Leon will be called Spear.’

  ‘You got the better name,’ whined the Spear. ‘A spear needs someone to throw it. A wolf acts alone.’

  ‘Wolves hunt in packs,’ Diego said.

  Dario looked crestfallen, then sat up and said, with his finger in Diego’s face, ‘Not lone wolves!’

  Diego decided to let it pass.

  ‘And you,’ Dario said, pointing at Diego. ‘You are as cute as a bug. We will call you Bug.’

  Diego didn’t care, and he didn’t really mind. A bug was small, but it could do a lot of damage, like a mosquito that carried malaria, or the bug that spread chagas.

  ‘Now we need a name for you,’ Dario said to Bonita.

  Diego watched her steely eyes half close in a glare.

  ‘My name is Bonita,’ she said.

  Wolf and Spear wisely left it at that.

  ‘Is there a list?’ Bonita asked.

  They looked at her blankly.

  ‘A list,’ she repeated, ‘of the things we need.’

  ‘It’s up here,’ Leon said, tapping his forehead.

  ‘Maybe we should put it someplace more secure,’ Bonita suggested. ‘In case something happens to you.’ She got up, walked to where her family’s things were piled against the bridge railing and came back with a pen and a school notebook.

  ‘I will be the keeper of the list,’ she announced.

  ‘We need paint for the signs,’ Diego said, while Bonita wrote. ‘And boards or something to make the signs with. And brushes.’

  ‘Lanterns,’ said Bonita, as she wrote it down.

  ‘Cloth for bandanas,’ Dario said, eager to get in on it. ‘Vinegar.’

  Bonita paused in her writing. ‘What do we need that for?’

  ‘See? You don’t know everything. Write them down.’

  ‘Where do we get these things?’ Diego asked.

  ‘We scavenge. We ask. We take.’

  ‘You mean we steal. I’m not sure everybody would agree.’ Bonita put her pen down on the pavement.

  ‘Well, all right, we don’t steal, but…’

  Whatever else Leon was going to say was lost to Diego. Someone was shouting.

  ‘Runner!’

  ‘You take it, Bug,’ Dario ordered, and Diego was happy to get moving. He could tell he wasn’t going to like the meetings part of the blockade.

  Others seemed to, though. As he ran from group to group carrying messages, people seemed to be enjoying themselves, talking and debating.

  ‘I don’t mind carrying messages,’ he told Mr Ricardo. Diego was carrying the latest slogan suggestions from the sign-painting committee to the communications committee. ‘But why don’t they get up and do it themselves?’

  ‘This is a drill,’ Mr Ricardo said. He was on his way into the forest to help dig latrines. ‘We’re practicing for when that won’t be possible, for when we all have to stay at our posts. The committees are practicing talking to each other this way, and you are practicing carrying messages.’

  That made some sense to Diego, although he didn’t really understand.

  ‘At the same time,’ Mr Ricardo continued, ‘you’re getting to know names and faces, and what people’s responsibilities are. As a runner you’ll know the whole picture of the blockade better than most of us. That’s a very powerful job.’

  Diego liked the sound of that. ‘I guess I’d better get back to it, then.’

  Later that day, leaving Bonita on the bridge to run messages, Diego, Dario and Leon, along with a few volunteers from other committees, went into the village to the north. They took a shortcut through the jungle so they didn’t have to go up the hill and around the canyon the way the highway did.

  ‘We’ll need to block off the trail,’ someone said. ‘Or at least hide it. We don’t want strangers, or the army, coming through here and surprising us.’

  Diego looked out across the gorge. He could see the bridge. ‘Why don’t we post a lookout at the side of the bridge to watch the trail? It would work in the daytime, anyway.’

  ‘Good idea,’ some of the others said. ‘Tell the security committee when we get back.’

  ‘What about camouflage?’ Dario asked, walking behind Diego. ‘In the army they teach you to blend in with the jungle and lie very still so that you look like a rock, and then when your enemy is all relaxed and doesn’t suspect – Pow!’ He gave Diego a swat across the top of his head on the word ‘Pow.’

  Diego kept his mouth shut. He knew all about guys like Dario. They might be on the same side, but that didn’t mean much.

  The trail opened up at the side of the highway. Cars and trucks lined the road, abandoned, motors shut off.

  ‘Everybody’s at the chicheria,’ Leon said.

  The little village, with its church, school, few shops and scattered eateries, seemed extra full for a day that wasn’t a market day. People weren’t doing much, though. Just sitting, walking slowly from one place to another, looking at their watches. More vehicles were parked anywhere there was room.

  ‘They’re waiting for the blockade to lift,’ Diego realised. He saw the bus with its door open, some people still inside, sleeping with their faces flattened against the windows. He saw the trucks full of lumber and cattle.

  ‘Will those cows get fed?’ he asked. ‘Will they get water?’

  ‘Why do you care?’ Dario asked. ‘You should be asking, ‘Will we get fed? Will we get water?’’

  ‘Will we get chicha?’ asked Leon. He and Dario started toward one of the taverns, but were pulled back by their friends.

  ‘You want people to know we’re from the blockade?’ their friends asked. ‘Let’s just get what we need and get out of here.’

  The group went from house to house, shop to shop. They kept to the back streets as much as possible. For now the people being kept waiting were drunk on chicha and sun, but tempers could fly at any moment.

  The cocaleros had friends in the village. They also spent their money there, when they had any. In some ways the villagers were as dependent on the coca crop as the cocaleros. Cocaleros with no money meant shops without customers.

  The bundles grew in Diego’s arms.
People helped out with what they could. An old bed sheet to turn into a banner. Tins with small amounts of paint left. A stained tablecloth to be cut into bandanas. Plastic buckets for water.

  The protesters made their requests quietly, not wanting to arouse the suspicions of the folks who were stuck in the village because of the blockade. We won’t be hard to spot, Diego thought. We’re the only ones carrying things. Everyone else was taking their siestas, or pacing impatiently.

  ‘Candles,’ someone said when they were standing behind the church. ‘Someone should ask the priest for candles.’

  ‘Send the Bug,’ Dario ordered. ‘He looks angelic. Don’t blow it, Bug.’

  Diego handed the things he was carrying to one of the others. ‘Don’t leave without me,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if I can find the trail without you.’

  ‘Move, don’t talk,’ said Dario.

  Diego went around to the front doors of the old stone church. He opened the heavy wooden door. Inside the light was dim, coming through the stained glass in easy streams. The air was cool and smelled of incense and candle wax.

  Diego walked slowly up the aisle, wondering where the priest was. He liked the cosiness of the little church. The cathedral in Cochabamba, where he sometimes went to light a candle for one of the old prisoners, was grand and fancy. The God who went there would have too many important things on his mind to listen to the prayers of ordinary people. But in this simple church, Diego thought, maybe prayers could be heard.

  A door opened at the side of the altar.

  ‘What do you want?’ The priest came into the sanctuary, walking toward Diego. He was an older man, Spanish, not Quechua or Aymara. The soft glow from the candles made the top of his bald head shine. ‘Catechism class isn’t until tomorrow – and how dare you come into my church looking like that?’

  Diego knew he was filthy. He’d been thrown in the dirt, he’d worked in the coca bushes, he’d been busy.

  ‘I’m with the cocalero blockade, Father,’ he said. ‘I’m here to ask you for some candles.’

  The priest crossed the distance between them in a few quick, angry strides.

  ‘You want our holy candles to light up your unholy activity?’

  ‘Unholy?’ Diego didn’t understand. ‘People just want their coca back. They just want to put tin roofs on their houses.’ He was beginning to doubt that this was a place where God would listen.

  ‘You are breaking the law, and I want no part of it,’ the priest said, leaning in closer. He was a spitter. ‘You are all going to be arrested!’

  Near Diego was a station of the cross, the one where Jesus was being taken away by the Roman soldiers.

  ‘Jesus was arrested,’ he said.

  ‘Get out!’ the priest yelled. ‘Get out of my church!’

  Diego got out. He went around back with empty hands, but the others had left.

  ‘What do I do now?’ he asked out loud.

  A small door opened at the back of the church. A nun ran out, her hands full of candles.

  ‘Your friends had to rush away,’ she said, handing him the candles. ‘A fight might have started with people waiting for the blockade to be lifted. Don’t worry. You’ll catch up.’ She told him where to find the trail entrance. ‘God bless you,’ she added with a giggle, then ran back into the church.

  Baffled, a little scared, but quite suddenly very happy, Diego headed for the trail.

  He passed two young gringo men with long hair. They were lying on the ground, heads propped up on their giant backpacks.

  ‘Hey, little brother,’ they called out as he rushed by. ‘What’s your hurry? Enjoy the day!’ Then they laughed.

  I am enjoying the day, Diego thought, as he found the entrance to the trail. He put down the candles and dragged bushes and branches across the pathway for camouflage. Then he picked up the candles and headed for the bridge.

  EIGHT

  Diego stood his first watch on the second night of the blockade, at the south end of the bridge.

  The south end, the farthest from the town, was the quietest. Cars weren’t lined up at this end. There was another blockade nearly twenty kilometers farther south that was holding them back.

  Ahead of Diego was the dark Bolivian night, the thick growth of trees on each side adding shadows and whispers. Behind him the community of the bridge was settled down for the night. They made quiet human noises – whispers and snuffles, snores and coughs. The children’s area was set up at the south end. Under the tarp, mothers and little ones were sleeping and dreaming.

  It had been a fairly quiet day. A couple of times travellers had tried to break through the blockade on foot. The north barrier was so built up by now that there was no way cars could cross. Two hikers were allowed to go through after they asked respectfully and explained to everyone that they were doing a rainforest study and had the papers to prove it. The education committee nabbed them to give a speech to everyone on Bolivia’s ecosystems. Diego only half listened to it. They spoke as though they were used to lecturing people who had to listen to them. Diego suspected they were allowed to go on their way just to shut them up.

  A group of cyclists from Spain tried to get through by first walking their bikes on to the bridge, saying they wanted to join the protest. But halfway across they mounted up and tried to ride off. They were promptly turned around. Leon and Dario wanted to add the bicycles to the barriers, but Mrs Ricardo said simply, ‘That’s not why we are here,’ and sent the cyclists biking back to the town.

  They did have two travellers staying with them now on the bridge – the gringos Diego had passed on his way back from the village. He thought of them as richer, whiter versions of Leon and Dario, except with wild hair and scruffy beards. They had been passengers on the bus that was stuck in town, and decided they wanted to be part of the blockade rather than wait around in the village. They took up a lot of space with their giant backpacks, their rubber sleeping mats and their sleeping bags. They kept burning incense that smelled like burnt strawberries. They played shrill tunes badly on tin flutes, read novels and told each other jokes in English, but Diego never saw them do any work.

  Diego sat on an old wooden crate a little apart from the others on watch. They were playing cards by the light of one of the nuns’ candles. They’d invited him to join them, but he wanted to watch the darkness.

  I’m protecting everybody, he thought. It was a good feeling. He listened to the people noises behind him and looked out into the darkness ahead. It felt good to be doing his job.

  Then two hands smacked against Diego’s eyes, blinding him from behind.

  Diego sprang off his seat, twisting and turning, hot and cold with terror, too scared to scream. He was sure that the monster from his nightmares had crawled out of the quicksand to get him.

  ‘Whoa!’ he heard a young man’s voice say as the hands came off his eyes. He spun around to see Dario, laughing at Diego’s fear. The card players looked up and were laughing, too. ‘You think there are ghosts out there? Booooo!’ Dario raised his arms like a zombie and made an ugly face.

  ‘Quiet down,’ hissed a woman from underneath the tarped-over area. ‘Children are sleeping.’

  Diego used the distraction to pull himself together, pressing his fingernails into the palms of his hands to keep himself from crying.

  ‘Just joking,’ he said.

  ‘Sure you were.’ Dario took his place on the crate. ‘Anything happening out there?’

  ‘It’s quiet.’ He wished Dario would go. He wanted his seat back, and he preferred the quiet night to dumb conversation. But he couldn’t ask Dario to leave. Being on a blockade was all about getting along with people. The bridge wasn’t big enough for quarrels.

  ‘Vargas wants to see you,’ Dario said. ‘I’m supposed to relieve you.’

  Vargas was the rep from the coca growers’ union, the people who had organised the blockade. He’d given a big speech when he arrived just before sunset.

  What if Vargas had found out th
at Diego wasn’t a real cocalero, but just a stray prison kid far from home? Would he be kicked off the blockade? Where would he go?

  ‘What does he want?’ Diego asked nervously.

  ‘Am I an encyclopedia?’ Dario asked. Diego had to admit that Dario was anything but, although he kept that opinion to himself. ‘Move it, Bug.’

  Diego headed across the bridge, stepping carefully around cocaleros stretched out on mats and blankets, little groups sitting and talking, mothers soothing their babies back to sleep, old couples holding hands and whispering. Portable grills smoked with the cooling charcoal of the evening meal.

  My parents would love it here, Diego thought, as he had nearly every hour since arriving at the blockade.

  ‘Have you seen Vargas?’ he asked a man who was leaning against the bridge railing and quietly strumming a very small guitar.

  The man nodded toward the north end of the bridge and kept strumming. The notes he played were so light and delicate it was almost as if they were rising up from the river.

  Diego saw a group of adults standing together and talking. He couldn’t see their faces, but he recognised Vargas’s cowboy hat. He’d got it in La Paz, he told them in his speech, from a tourist who couldn’t fit it into his luggage.

  ‘I wear it to remind me that Bolivia will one day soon no longer need hand-outs from foreigners. We are rich in resources, and one day we will keep Bolivian resources for Bolivian people, not give them away to rich countries in exchange for trinkets – or John Wayne hats!’ Everyone had laughed at that line, particularly when Vargas had raised the hat and waved it in the air.

  Diego knew that some adults hated being interrupted by kids, even when it was important. But he had a job to do, so he went right up to them.

  ‘Mr Vargas? You sent for me?’

  The adults laughed – even Vargas – but it was a nice laugh.

  ‘You will swell his head,’ one of them said. ‘He will outgrow his hat and have to find another gringo tourist, one with a bigger head.’

  They all laughed again, but quietly, so they didn’t disturb the others.