Testimony: Lost in the Amazon

Source: https://elpais.com/internacional/2018/11/27/america/1543344243_444001.html

By: Arianna Sánchez

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao.

Olivia was born in a tiny town, hours away from Iquitos, in the Peruvian Amazon. To get there, you need to not only trek but also travel a portion of the way by boat. As Olivia told me, “there was absolutely nothing to do, I had to leave”. During our lunches together, she would tell me about her main dream growing up – she needed to get out of that town. Olivia would take any chance available to travel to Iquitos even to work for free, any excuse to leave her cramped town. Even though she grew up in a loving family, she felt suffocated. In a place where everyone knows everything about everyone. She could not grow. 

Shortly after turning 20, she went to Iquitos to look for jobs to become independent. She knew her town would not provide her with what she wanted. She needed a way out,urgently. She found the best way to get out was to find a job and the closest city was Iquitos. Walking with her head down and ready to give up, Olivia found a brand-new poster stuck to one of the light posts, “Looking for people to work in the jungle, near Iquitos. Will pay 1,000 soles.” Olivia knew what she had to do. Her golden ticket out of her native town. 

Olivia did not hesitate and called the advertised number quickly. A couple picked up. They asked her to meet them at the main plaza where they would discuss the job in more detail. What they told her seemed too good to be true. She would get 500 soles right then, and the rest when she finished the job. If she recruited more people, she would even get a commission. Best of all, the place of work was an hour away from the main plaza, and she would get free transport. Olivia rapidly thanked them, carefully placed those 500 soles in her purse, and ran back to get on a boat before it got dark. 

When she arrived at her town, she decided she would break the news to her cousin first. Her cousin was a young single mother with a teenage son. When Olivia told her about the pay, her cousin quickly came on board. Both Julia and Mateo asked to be recruited too; Julia could pay for house refurbishments, and Mateo could start to save up for his dream of attending university. It was their golden ticket too, and they took it. Olivia’s mother was not on board. She feared her daughter was making an abrupt decision rather than one well-thought. But Olivia would not take it. And so, a few weeks later, the three had packed their favourite belongings and crossed the river towards their big break. They arrived at Iquitos with a bright new glow and headed to the plaza to meet with their new bosses to-be. They greeted each other, and as time went by people started to join them. Suddenly, the man said it was time to go. They got into a huge van and headed into the Amazon. This was when things started to go sour. 

Olivia stared out of her window and into the jungle, ruminating about her next steps. Sure, being inside the jungle for months would not be a vacation, but it was a small sacrifice with a life-changing reward. She drifted off to sleep. She woke up confused and asked her cousin how long it had been since they started driving. Her cousin let out a carefully silent “it’s been like 3 hours”. Olivia pushed away her hunch and decided this would be her ticket out. In just a few months, whatever happened, they would be out and with 1,000 soles in hand. She sat upwards and looked out the window as they went deeper into the Amazon. The bus stopped and demanded everyone to get out quickly. Olivia grabbed her belongings and stepped out of the bus filled with excitement and yet a lingering negative feeling would not allow her to enjoy what she had been waiting for. Julia, Mateo and Olivia followed the bus driver for around half an hour, as they walked through what the bus could not. Finally, they arrived, the bus driver said. Olivia told me she can only describe that moment as bittersweet; she looked up and saw this beautiful plantation, vast enough to make her question if it even stopped somewhere. This ethereal view was heavily contrasted with what she called “incredibly scary men treating you like a piece of meat”, and an arsenal of weapons enough to carry an army. She realised where she was in a moment of both acceptance and deep regret. Mateo, a mere 17-year-old boy, grabbed his mum by the wrist and asked, “They are going to kill us, aren’t they?”

Olivia kept quiet. She knew her nephew could see right through her lies, and, if she did not lie, she could worsen the situation by further scaring him. She told me she still did not have a grasp of the entirety of the situation at that moment, but she knew the job was not the one advertised. Another man showed the new people to their quarters, separated between men and women, as were the jobs. Women were told to meet in the morning by the entrance of the plantation, whilst men were told to meet by the common area. Mateo grabbed his belongings and, trying to seem as confident as possible to build a reputation amongst the mostly older men, walked into his quarters without a goodbye from Julia and Olivia. The two cousins walked into their quarters, where they were assigned a bunkbed, next to a dozen others. 

Around two weeks later, Olivia felt a constant ache in her arms due to carrying coca leaves to the main area and back all day. Her daily routine was almost as if robotic. Men would usually gather around to drink at night, so Olivia and her cousin tended to eat in their room. They would barely see Mateo, who was in charge of processing coca paste, and was dragged every night to the men’s nightly drinking-binges. They were tired but could not let anyone see, deciding to let their bodies run on autopilot and get it over with. Until the third week. Olivia and Julia were having dinner with some of their workmates in their room when they heard shouting outside. They dismissed it as it was extremely common to see drunk men making a fuss and starting fights every night. However, they stopped eating when they heard a loud gunshot. Julia did not even think twice and sprinted out of the room in an attempt to find her son. Olivia stared at her not knowing what to do – she froze. Julia came running with Mateo on her hand, trying to explain something to Olivia but unable to talk. Mateo told his aunt someone had been shot. With time not on their side, they decided to do what most were doing in a frenzy – escape into the jungle. 

Olivia told me the eight days she spent in the Amazon were the worst days of her life. The lack of clean water and safe food compounded with the constant paranoia of the drug traffickers finding them made these days a nightmare come true. They were following a stream of water trying to find a town, walking all day with an excruciating level of heat making them extremely dehydrated. However, the fear of being caught kept pushing them forward. At night, all types of insects would make sleeping impossible, and, by the morning, the three would wake up with wounds due to infected insect bites. But they had to keep going. 

Around day five, Mateo came running back from his daily food search to tell them he had heard people talking close by. What seemed like a golden opportunity to be saved, turned sour really quickly. Julia recognised the voices – it was a group of the drug traffickers. They realised walking would probably not be enough to lose them. They were severely dehydrated, and the other group did not seem so. If they tried to escape through land, they would get caught. Running out of options, the three decided their safest bet was swimming away. So, reluctantly, the three stepped into the cold river hoping it would lead them to safety. Olivia remembers the excruciating pain she would feel when she stepped out of the river. Leeches would be all over their bodies and taking them off by force was not an option. The only way to get them offwas urinating on them. 

A few days after, they felt overwhelming feelings of happiness when they found a small town. They were alive. Walking around the town, they recognised one of their fellow co-workers sitting on a bench alone. Mateo went running towards him, as the two had worked together for months. He told them he had escaped too and arrived at the town a few days prior to them. When he arrived, he found out the person that had been shot back in the plantation had told everything to the police for some money and legal immunity in return, and the traffickers had found out. The police and army raided the site during the night, and everyone who had not escaped was arrested on the spot. Most of the people that escaped were not seen again.

A few months later, the three were back in their small town, grateful to be there for the first time in years. However, their happiness was short-lived. Someone had given the police Mateo’s name, potentially in an attempt to reduce their own prison time. Mateo was arrested under charges of drug trafficking at 17 years old. He was sent to the capital, Lima, to become imprisoned in “Maranguita”, the only prison for young boys in Peru at the time. This meant his family could not even visit him, and the thought of hiring a lawyer from a capital was simply irrational. They could not afford it. Mateo spent 20 years in prison, without saying a word about Julia and Olivia, despite constant intimidation tactics by the police. Mateo was released last year, at 37 years old. 

Olivia has been diagnosed with PTSD. When she finished telling me her story, I cleared my throat and told her I did not know what to say. I did not know whether to tell her I was incredibly sorry or whether I admired her. She looked up at me and started laughing, and I thought she could see in my face my desperate attempt to find something to tell her. I asked what she was laughing at, to which she just replied, “I never even got paid the other 500 soles”

Arianna is a Peruvian 3rd Year Politics Student at King’s College London with a passion for Latin American politics and political risk-management.

Caracas: Land of Legends, of Great Warriors and My Home

Photo taken by the author: A Blurred Sunset in Caracas

By: Andrés Vargas Arévalo

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao.

On October 3rd, 2019, I decided to take a leap of faith; I would turn a short voyage to Caracas into a one-way trip. I had been living in Mexico City for the previous fourteen months and, as my mother used to say each time we vacationed outside Venezuela: “I would return with double the eagerness that I had had when I left”.

Mexico City and Caracas have much in common: they are chaotic and perhaps unfriendly. I see them as chiral, as though they were mirror images, yet different, and sinister. Mexico City was handed to me in the same way I was handed Caracas: without a choice. Each city came with its own implications, pains, and gains. Yet the only thing I wanted whilst living in Mexico City was to be back home, in my brutalist, concrete jungle. Now that I am living in Caracas, I sometimes miss Mexico City and the good memories I have of it, but I have always had one - and only one - place which I call home.

My memories started to resurface as the plane began its landing at Simon Bolivar International Airport. It was the first time in years that I was landing at night given that my mother thought it would be better to return using daylight flights for security reasons. To my delight, it wasn't the case this time and I would now be able to see lights that I could only recall as fragments of my childhood days when I’d go back and forth between Caracas and La Guaira on weekends. As my uncle drove up to Caracas, I was greeted by the magnific Caracas-La Guaira highway, a testament to the former glory years of the 1950s. On each side of the highway, the lights of the barrios took me back to my childhood since I used to fall asleep to them.

I was hungry, I had had a long layover in Bogota before departing for Caracas and the flight had not accepted international cards to pay for meals. My uncle took me to a hot dog stand called ‘Joao’ in Las Mercedes, where I used to eat every week with my high school and college friends after a night of partying. It was a sad moment because I haven't seen many of those friends in years, and I knew that life takes turns and perhaps I won’t see them in what remains of my life. Caracas has given me everything and has taken a lot from me, but I still love her.

Just after getting home, I decided to surprise one of my best friends, Mort. As he entered my house, I jumped on him and started to laugh. He took me on a ride to one of the most sacred places for a Venezuelan patriot: the house where El Libertador was born, which is now bordered by cafes. There was a certain joy in the streets that night, with lights which were strange to me. You had to be crazy to go out after sunset to the center of Caracas due to the fear of getting mugged, but I didn'tfeel any fear whilst drinking a frappuccino almost at midnight.

We drove back to Las Mercedes to eat arepas and get a couple of drinks. Pilsner beer was something I’d missed while in Mexico City; negritas, as we call them, have a unique taste (In Venezuela the word ‘negro’ isn’t racist, it is actually used as a synonym for friend and as an affectionate nickname). I was surprised to learn that a nation in which it used to be illegal to have dollars, or any other foreign currency, now uses them as its main currency and that foreign credit cards could now also be used. Even using a credit card seemed surprising; previously it had been a nightmare to use one because the card terminals never worked.

Caracas wasn't the ghost town that I had left behind on July 27th, 2018. Somehow, she had come back to life. I still had friends left, my first alma mater was still standing and there were still opportunities left to grow up in the former land of opportunities; opportunities to rejoice, to mourn, to go out and to face the world.

Some may argue that I'm short-sighted, which as a matter of fact I am. There is still an unimaginable misery in Venezuela that shocks everyone, with news of the elderly and the young dying alone of starvation. The witches - as we call the policemen - roam in the shadows waiting for an unlucky soul to snatch. This is still the capital of the Animal Farm, ruled with an iron fist by our very own Napoleon. But it would be an insult to me, to my family, and to all hardworking Venezuelans lie to you saying that we are hopeless. We have stood up to tyranny many times before and we have always won; from Carabobo to Boyaca, from Junin to Ayacucho, and to our very own streets, we have fought and won. It's only a matter of time before we win again. 

Even in the darkness of the pandemic and of the economic ruin, we still wake up to work for a better life, just like the millions of wartime refugees of long ago who spent weeks walking towards ports to board ships, seeing no daylight until they had reached the ports of a land of grace called Venezuela.

I see you, Venezuela, each day as I go out to work; I see your fear dwarfed by your immense ambition for a better life and your courageous struggle for happiness. I see you, delivery guy, I see you, entrepreneur; old and young, I see you all. You are the true lights that stand up to the darkness, and the guiding star to a new dawn.

You are the heart of Caracas. Soon the carcasses of the buildings that lay dormant will rise, and we will become again the city of the eternal spring, the branch of the heavens, the home that so many have missed.

Andres Vargas Arevalo is a second-year student of Chemical Engineering at Universidad Metropolitana. Born and raised in Caracas who has lived in Canada, Mexico and Spain. A passionate entrepreneur and founder of @TuMetroCondon.

Latin American Community: Little Bird

Photo provided by the author

By: Camila Consolmagno

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao

My story begins where it ends. All my life I’ve heard people say, ‘when one door closes, another opens,’ and all my life I saw this as nothing but a pretentious proverb attempting to justify the vexatious things that happen in life. In reality, sometimes things just occur irrationally. People seek comfort, sometimes in a proverb, in the same way as a hug; it will never actually solve the problem, but it will still be solacing. While growing up, however, I’ve realised that that saying isn’t as ostentatiously ignorant as I’d always believed. All endings are also beginnings; we just don’t know it at the time. And so, my story begins and ends with an airplane. 

...

It was an ordinary day in Guarapari, Brazil – adhesively hot. I wasn’t born here; my birth-city is a 15-hour car drive away. I was born in Londrina, my mother’s city, but my parents moved to Guarapari just a couple of months after having me. I don’t recall the time, but the sun was out, probably morning. I was in my mother’s flat – which was unusual for a Saturday, considering I spent the weekends at my dad’s. Unwashed dishes from the night before. No toys on the floor for a change. Four packed suitcases by the door. I was nine years old and my brother was four. 

Dad finally arrived, late and impatiently pressing his car horn. ‘Vamos!,’ he yelled still from inside the car but with his head poking out of the window. His girlfriend of a few months was sitting next to him in the passenger seat. My mother rushed down with my brother and I; then ran up and down again but this time with our suitcases. We’re waiting outside the flat. ‘Vamos!,’ Dad shouts again. My mother’s crying. My brother doesn’t understand what’s going on, and I’m mad at him for not knowing. ‘Say goodbye to mum’ I suggest, ‘because you might not ever see her again” – I’ve always been dramatic. He cries and hugs her, and I say a quick goodbye. We get in the car and just as the door closes my dad agilely speeds. I look back but in the flash all I see is a speck of what’s supposed to be my mother’s face. In what feels like less than a second, she vanishes, and I don’t get the chance to look at my mother’s face for one last time before I go. 

I didn’t see that face for another six years.

We arrive at the airport just in time. My dad and his girlfriend say their last goodbyes. I envy their hugs and their kisses and their tears as all of that was blindly swept away from me in the honk of a car. I still hate that noise. 

One airplane, eleven perpetual hours. I remember staring out at the clouds and imagining what it would be like to taste them. They looked like candy floss. Although I hated candy floss, the thought of eating a cloud was incredibly appealing. ‘It’d taste like ice,’ I thought, ‘after all it’s just water anyway.’I tried to look for shadows in the clouds, trying to see if I could find an angel. Eventually I just gave in to the screen in front of me and watched Finding Nemo repeatedly for the remaining nine hours. Growing up in a small town with fifty-two beaches I found comfort in the sea, even if it was pixilated.

...

We were moving to Peterborough in Cambridgeshire, England. I hadn’t really quite processed that – and I wouldn’t for a while. What then used to be a magical town full of adventurous parks where my nine-year-old self could gambol for hours on end, is now a monotonous nightmare for the seventeen-year-old version of myself. ​

We lived with my grandparents for the first bit before we found a place of our own. Their house was a two-storey, three-bedroom, old English brick house. It would be spacious if my grandma had not adorned it with every decorative gift she had received within the past thirty years and bric-a-bracs she’d found in Sunday markets for the last ten. Mini replicas of famous paintings, like the Mona Lisa and Girl with a Pearl Earring hung above the living room’s electric fireplace that I’ve never seen been used. On the wall that followed the evanescing burgundy carpeted stairs that made ghost-like creaks whenever it made contact with any sort of weight, my grandparents blue-tacked framed photos of family members, dead and alive. My father was there, a profile picture of himwhen he was fourteen; that one was my personal favourite.Upstairs were two guest rooms, a bathroom, and my grandparents’ en-suite room. The first guest room was taken by my uncle, so we stayed in the second – the biggest, though not by much. My bed was a single mattress on the carpet floor, coercively squeezed between a wall, right below the only window in the room and next to the double bed where my dad slept. My brother slept on an air mattress adjacent to the double bed, so our mattresses formed an L around its left side. 

My dad’s girlfriend, Carol, joined us three months later and all four of us were crammed into that same room. Sometimes at night, Carol and I couldn’t sleep because of the notable different time zones that we still hadn’t got used to. So, whilst my brother and my dad slept soundly, she’d join me on my mattress and we’d get a pack of cards and quietly, yet competitively, play until we were both finally sleepy, this was often until 3am. Sometimes, we would also watch the current melodramatic Brazilian soap opera on the internet. Or, play the most emulous rounds of dominoes. Together, we always found something to fill our sleepless, empty nights with.

Although, I only seemed to love her when no one was watching. I was still pretty raw from leaving my mother behind and I thought there was a chance I could convince my dad to take us back to Brazil and return to our ordinary lives. But we are better off here, it just took me a while to realise that.

...

I’ve been moving all my life. In Brazil, I learnt never to get attached to a house as every year we moved and changed schools. Now, in England, having moved cities twice, gone to four different schools and lived in five different houses, I’ve learnt not to get attached to people. Albeit, at the same time I’ve grown used to moving, it doesn’t seem to get any easier. Once my dad knew he didn’t have to have it all figured out to move forward, he hasn’t stayed still. I think that’s where I get my impulsiveness from, but some would call it courage. 

I leave Brazil, enter England. My mother leaves, Carol shelters me. One door closes, another opens. 

People often ask me which of the two countries I prefer, almost in a wrong or right form, but they’re incomparable. I can’t note the similarity or dissimilarity between the Latin heat and the British wintry, a feijoada versus a roast dinner, a cup of coffee or a cup of tea. They are countries underneath the same sky and above the same sea, but they are different universes apart. This year when I turn eighteen, I will have lived half of my life in each country. The magic of it all is not choosing which I love most but loving the most of out of both. In the end, I’m only one airplane away.

Camila Consolmagno is a final-year Bachelor of Laws student at SOAS, University of London. She is the first Brazilian President of the SOAS Latin American Society and an aspiring human rights lawyer