Her father was left alive because of a boxing match. He had
been abducted during the “dirty war” which they now prefer to call “terrorism
of the state” because there was no war. He was taken from his home for no
reason and beat repeatedly for information he didn’t have. But there was a boxing
fight that night and before they’d finished him off they left to watch. And so
he survived and she was born, in the villa of Las Bocas, which she’d left when
she was two and returned to with us today.
Don’t wander away from the main tourist plaza because it
becomes a shanty town, warns the ex-pat who directs us to the right camioneta. I
turn to my friends and tell them that I like slums. Me too, they chime in
unison. So we walk a bit farther than others might and watch the streets transform from façade to
reality.
A guy strums a guitar on the balcony, switching it for a
mate gourd between each song, belly hanging comfortably over belt.
Two little girls share one pair of roller blades, several
sizes too big. Each wears one on the inside foot and they skate together
holding hands and tumbling onto the sidewalk. We hold our breaths a block
away until they popped up laughing.
On old man peers out of crooked shutters at his
grandchildren splashing in a plastic pool below.
Sheet metal walls two stories
high covered in cracked and peeling paint left over from boats that sailed many
decades ago. Burned out cars. Laundry drying the warm river air.
White walls say nothing. So now the city is covered with
images of love and loss and violence and fantasy. Identity affirmed and preserved
in a slanted signature, even when bodies are never found.
Mas amor por favor.
Sos parte del cambio.
Pensar
es un hecho revolucionairo.
