Something Fierce

by Carmen Aguirre

  The boy I was kissing was Ernesto, born and bred in Sopocachi, our new neighbourhood. We lived in a narrow two-storey row house with “Sunnyland” engraved on a plaque above the door. It boasted a palm tree in the front yard, a garage in the back and a tile courtyard where our laundry got washed and hung. The music of our own mortar and pestle joined all the others in the lunchtime symphony of chilis being crushed. Ale and I had been back in La Paz for just three weeks, because my parents had a new deal: the two of us would go back and forth between them until we came of age.

  My mother explained the arrangement like this: “Your father misses you.” But I knew it was more than that. As Mami had explained that day at LAX, most women who had responded to the Return Plan sent their kids to live with Cuban families who’d volunteered to raise them or with grandparents somewhere else. My mother had insisted on bringing her daughters with her, and not only that, on having another baby while living underground. As far as she was concerned, a woman shouldn’t have to choose between motherhood and revolution. She wanted both. But Trinidad, I’d come to understand, was Mami and Bob’s superior, and she’d argued that the current situation was too dangerous. If García Meza had fallen after a brief time in power, it would have been different. But six weeks after the coup, the dictator’s boast that he would govern Bolivia for twenty years looked as if it might come true. Mami and Bob were in deep, and García Meza and Pinochet were soul brothers.

  “Well, if you are ordering me to get rid of them, the best thing would be to send them back to Canada. But I feel absolutely that my girls belong with me. I am their mother, and I will not give them up just like that.” Mami’s voice broke.

  Listening from my bedroom door, I knew that Trinidad would have the final word.

  Before we left, my mother took us to the black market, where we talked her into buying us the white Bata clogs that were in fashion. When she reached for her wallet, however, she discovered a hole in the bottom of her purse, where it had been sliced open by pickpockets.

  “Well, my precious girls, your memento of Bolivia from your mother will be the anecdote of this hole in my purse.” Mami laughed till she cried. She cried and cried as we walked hand in hand all the way home. Ale couldn’t stop sobbing. I cried silently, my teeth chattering.

  Papi, who had just completed his PhD, was penniless, and the cheapest tickets he could get for our return to La Paz required a two-day stopover in Miami. We stayed with a Cuban family who still grieved the U.S. defeat at the Bay of Pigs; the driver pressed the gas pedal to the floor when forced to pass through black neighbourhoods. The Cubans were related to Julio, our Colombian friend in Vancouver, though they had no idea that Julio had defected to the left. They showed us around Miami, even giving us a tour of their “freedom farm” on the outskirts, a small sugar plantation where a couple dozen black men worked the land and were housed on the premises in huts. The men had been “saved” from Cuba by this family, they told us. They helped smuggle people out on a regular basis. The evening news on their TV was filled with images of Cubans scrambling out of speedboats, dropping to their knees and kissing Florida’s shores.

  The stopover was good practice for the Bolivian reality of having to nod and smile and keep our political views to ourselves. No more wearing painter’s pants covered in buttons reading “El Salvador Sí, Junta No” and “Boycott Chilean Goods.” In Vancouver I had officially joined the Rebel Youth Brigade, run by my uncle Boris, so I was now a card-carrying member of the resistance youth. (Not that we had actual cards; that would have gone against security measures.) After being sworn in, I was given the task of politicizing my high school. That involved showing documentaries on Latin America at lunch times, bringing in speakers and raising my hand in class to give my revolutionary opinion on whatever was being taught.

  My button campaign had begun with me going up to random kids in the hallways and saying: “Hey, do you wanna wear this button? The red will coordinate nicely with the hats on your Devo button.”

  Random kid: “Well, what the fuck does it say?”

  “Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front.”

  Random kid: “What the fuck is that?”

  “It’s a revolutionary guerrilla organization fighting for justice and bread in El Salvador.”

  Random kid: “No fucking way, man! Gorillas are taking over? Get the fuck outta here!”

  “Totally. And they need our solidarity.”

  Random kid: “Like, how many are there?”

  “Oh, thousands. Urban, rural, rich, poor, intellectuals and workers—”

  Random kid: “Get the fuck out!”

  “Yeah, so do you wanna wear one of their buttons?”

  Random kid: “Hey, Yotto! Get a load of this! Gorillas are taking over Africa and they even have their own buttons! It’s like Planet of the Apes, man!”

  On our swearing-in day, I’d chosen my political name: Tania. Uncle Boris had handed me a red star, and I’d pinned it to my heart. The youth cell members were Ale, me, my cousins Gonzalo and Macarena, and eight other kids from the exile community. We met once a week to discuss the writings of Ché Guevara, Fidel Castro, Lenin, Marx, Ho Chi Minh and Tania the Guerrilla. We studied the history of Latin America from the people’s point of view.

  I’d had to leave my red star behind when we returned to La Paz, of course, along with a vintage copy of Ché’s diaries presented to me by some visiting Cubans. A precious card from Laura Allende lived in its pages. Sister of Salvador Allende, mother of the resistance leader Andrés Pascal Allende, she had stayed at our house when I was eight, while she was on a cross-Canada speaking tour. I couldn’t believe that a woman of her stature was sitting right at our table, drinking from our cups. At night I’d hear her weep. My mother explained that not only had Laura lost her brother, her country and the dream we all shared, but her son Andrés was underground in Chile and had barely survived an ambush. What’s more, the cancer she’d had for several years was advancing quickly, and Laura was in great pain. At her speaking engagements in Vancouver, I’d admired her grace, elegance and strength. She’d handed me a card on her departure, which read: “Carmencita, never forget my brother’s words: other men will overcome this sad and bitter moment in Chilean history, and the great avenues will open once again, where the free man will walk.” When she committed suicide in May 1981, my uncle Boris dedicated a youth brigade meeting to her memory.

  In Plaza Avaroa, someone cleared his throat, but Ernesto and I just kept kissing. Loud coughing followed, and when we disengaged I saw Bob.

  “Carmencita, time to come home.”

  Bob took a few more steps and then did the same throat-clearing and coughing manoeuvre on Ale, who was lip-locked with Claudio, Ernesto’s younger brother. They were the most beautiful boys in La Paz, and, as of tonight, they belonged to Ale and me. The brothers lived up the street from us, in a house decorated with hand-carved leather and wood furniture and Inca-inspired gold artifacts. Their father was a high-ranking military man, something we didn’t discuss. García Meza’s reign had lasted only a year, ending in August 1981, but his successor, General Celso Torrelio, was another extreme right-winger financed by the cocaine cartels, the IMF and the World Bank.

  Lalito, my new baby brother, was fourteen months old, all apple cheeks and big brown eyes, golden curls framing his cherubic face. Mami and Bob had brought him to meet us at the airport in a little woven poncho. Our new life began with no mention of Trinidad or the Swede.

  We had a maid at Sunnyland. Nati, a woman in her fifties, did all our laundry, cleaning, cooking, dishwashing and grocery buying. A decrepit old Aymara man referred to as “el maestro” came by once a week and wheezed his way around the house, waxing every last inch of floor on all fours. The whole situation made me sick, but I understood the rationale. People gossiped about moneyed families who didn’t have servants, wondering what they were trying to hide. And now Bob had ties with the ruling class. He’d been promoted to head honcho at the computer company, and
the firm was pleased that he’d become the go-to guy for the Bolivian government, selling computers to the military, the cocaine cartels and the politicians. Having a computer system installed was very First World; when the guy in charge of the installation was a real-life gringo, you knew you’d made it. The computer company’s building was on the corner of Plaza Avaroa. Directly across the street stood the Ministry of Defence. On another corner overlooking the plaza was the United States Embassy. Bob and Mami, who was now the director of the American English Centre, went to cocktail parties there. The minister of defence had Bob over to his office for tea and sweets every week.

  There was a white car locked in the garage at Sunnyland. Nobody ever mentioned it, but two other voices joined Mami and Bob’s out there some nights, one female, one male. Our new house also had a darkroom, where Mami and Bob photographed documents and developed the rolls of film that arrived on a regular basis at a post office box downtown. Over lunch one day, they revealed that both of them had been having fainting fits over the past year. We were not to call a doctor if we came across one of them sprawled on the floor, though; we were simply to pour ice water over their faces. The fainting spells were due to stress, they assured us, not anything medical. Then they filled us in on what had brought them to Sunnyland.

  Soon after Ale and I were sent back to Canada, the lane house had been dismantled. Trinidad and the Swede had moved to an undisclosed location, and Mami and Bob had gone to live in a small apartment close to Plaza España, a lower-end neighbourhood, with newborn Lalito. One day, after picking up Lalito from daycare, they got home to find the apartment had been raided. Papers, books, pictures and the contents of overturned drawers and closets littered the floor. Nothing had been taken, but the message was clear: we’re watching you. García Meza had already had a thousand people killed. Political prisoners filled the jails, thousands had gone into exile, and nobody knew how many people had disappeared. But instead of leaving the country, Bob and Mami had simply stepped up security. This meant, among other things, making sure they looked middle-class and mainstream.

  But then Bob had made a mistake, they told us. He bought his daily pack of cigarettes at a kiosk across the street run by an old couple, and one day he’d purchased an expensive silver lighter as well. When he presented it a couple of months later for the free refill he’d been promised, the woman had called him a fucking gringo who wanted to take advantage of Bolivians. Bob lost his temper and started yelling. The woman jumped up and lunged at him. Then her husband came out and accused Bob loudly of molesting his wife, at which point a cop had been summoned. The cop had arrested Bob on the spot, and he was thrown into the clandestine jail in the basement of the ministry of defence, a mere block away. My mother had waited and waited for him at Sunnyland.

  Bob was beaten at the jail referred to as “the dungeon” by the guards. Surrounded by political prisoners in different states of pre- or post-torture devastation, he had spent the night listening to horrific howls and desperate pleading. The next morning the minister of defence himself had done his daily inspection of prisoners. Upon seeing Bob, he had chastised the guards, apologized profusely and taken Bob up to his office for coffee and cheese rolls. If Bob hadn’t already befriended the minister, no doubt they’d have done a background check on him, and that would have been the end of it all.

  These stories were meant to remind Ale and me that we were not back in Bolivia just to make out all day with the beautiful brothers, dance with Lorena—whose house I’d run to as soon as we arrived—to the b-52s and have our jeans ironed by Nati, even though she was paid triple the going rate, had weekends off and worked only half days. We were in Bolivia doing serious, perilous work, and two new people were going to take Ale and me under their wing, my mother informed us. Ale and I glanced at each other, not daring to ask what that would entail.

  I ANSWERED THE DOOR the next morning, and there was Rulo. Rulo, who’d driven us to the airport the day we first left Vancouver and been gone by the time we returned. Rulo, who’d shown me his scars and sung the old protest songs in a quavering voice, his eyes squeezed shut. Here he was. On the doorstep of Sunnyland, hands in his pockets, a big smile plastered on his face. My heart almost jumped out of my chest. He winked at me as he came in, followed by the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Her cheekbones were the highest ever created, and she moved like a panther.

  Soledad looked to be in her early twenties. I deduced as we sat around the table that she and Rulo, who was now called Leo, were a couple and that the voices I’d heard in the garage late at night belonged to them. Now they’d also be educating Ale and me. Our work together would be twofold, Rulo outlined. We’d continue to learn about the history of Latin America, and we’d hone our underground skills. With a nod, he turned things over to Soledad, who launched into a lecture on beauty. It had taken her years to accept the way she looked, she began, because of the racism in her country of Bolivia, where standards had been set by the invaders. Indian was ugly, Spanish was beautiful, gringo was downright gorgeous. It was still hard for her to claim her Aymara blood in certain circles.

  Ale stifled a yawn while she stared at the ceiling. All I cared about was the two whistles coming from Plaza Avaroa, signalling the arrival of the brothers and their posse. By now, Soledad had started in about our petit bourgeois concerns. Rich boys were mentioned, and our repeated trips to see Endless Love at the cinema on 6 de Agosto. The fact that Ale liked to take the curling iron to my head before we went to house parties was another example of our shallowness. My pants were too tight, my lipstick too red, and the couple from the kiosk across the way—who were friends again with Bob—had reported that Ale and I were wasting our summer days sitting on the front steps of our house with gangs of kids. This obsession with popularity and Hollywood standards of beauty was unrevolutionary, Soledad scolded, and was causing our parents great concern. There were far more important things to worry about in this world than looking like Brooke Shields, such as universal medical care. Anger flashed through me, but then I glanced over at Rulo, with his broken body and his concentration camp eyes. He and Soledad were giving their lives for the revolution. If they could do it, so could I.

  Tomorrow, Ale and I were to meet Rulo and Soledad at Plaza Murillo. For now, we were released into the Plaza Avaroa sun, where the brothers waited for our afternoon make-out session to begin. Once outside the door, we dove for the gate and, together, broke into a run.

  11

  RULO’S HANDS STEERED ME from behind. Climbing cobblestone steps was a feat at the best of times. Doing so when you were wearing dark glasses and your eyes were closed upped the ante. Add to that the carsickness from driving in circles to lose any possible followers, and it was a miracle I wasn’t rolling down those steps, head clunking at every landing. Ale and I had arrived at Plaza Murillo with five minutes to spare. We’d stood on the assigned corner, and before we knew it Rulo and Soledad had pulled up in a nondescript Brazilian car. The back door flew open, Soledad yelled at us to get in, and the car merged again into the heavy afternoon traffic. Soledad handed each of us a pair of dark glasses with orders to put them on and keep our eyes shut for the entire ride.

  “Just a little farther,” Rulo said now. “Good.”

  I kept my poker face on, turning this into an acting exercise. Since returning to La Paz, I’d been taking classes with a teacher who was also a respected theatre director. I never missed his twice-weekly sessions, where I was the only teenager in the bunch. I’d given up on my earlier dream of becoming an actor, since that would be too bourgeois and self-centred, but I could put my skills to use in this kind of situation. I pretended my eyes were open for the benefit of any onlookers, moving my head from side to side occasionally.

  Finally, after leading us through a door, Rulo said it was okay to remove our sunglasses and open our eyes. We were in the tiny living room of a small house. Every wall we could see was covered in news-paper. As we settled onto an old couch, Rulo updated us on the struggle in
Chile. It was the beginning of 1982, and the movement of the masses was picking up, he said. Thank God I knew what he was talking about. Back in Vancouver, I’d made a fool of myself at a Rebel Youth Brigade meeting by proclaiming, when quizzed by Uncle Boris, “The movement of the masses is when the workers are transported on buses.”

  The generalized repression of the 1970s in Chile had slowed down to the more selective practice of picking up resistance members in the middle of the night and doing away with them quietly, Rulo continued. “Overt violence has been relegated to underground detention centres and shantytowns. But we must remember, comrades, that the definition of violence is much wider than beatings, torture and assassinations. Is it not violent to starve people to death? To deny them the basic human rights of health care, shelter and clean water? Is it not violent to have an official unemployment rate of 30 per cent, to privatize schooling and deny the right of a huge part of the population to education, to privatize hospitals and clinics and allow children to die of the flu, to destroy national industry, giving free rein to the multinational corporations that have taken over Chile?” Rulo/Leo was leaning in close, his brow furrowed. He was treating us like adults, and it made me miss the old Rulo, the one I’d taught the hustle to.

  Soledad took the reins. “We must remember, little comrades, that Pinochet is part of a much larger military and economic plan being orchestrated all over Latin America, with firm roots in the North.”

  Ale rolled her eyes. “Uncle Boris already told us all this stuff at our youth group meetings in Vancouver.”

  Soledad looked stern. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, little comrade. You must remember not to mention the names of people or places.”

  I nodded furiously, trying to compensate for Ale’s indiscretion. Soledad went on.

  “The twenty-five Chilean economists who were offered scholarships at the University of Chicago have implemented a brand-new economy in Chile, referred to as neo-liberalism.”