Read Online Something Fierce by Carmen Aguirre - Free Book Online

Mexico.”
    The newcomers didn’t bat an eyelash. An open bottle of wine stood on the table, and all of the adults were smoking like crazy. I could tell Mami and Bob were happy to have company. We cooked a Chilean cazuela together for dinner, a stew made with potatoes, squash, rice and meat. Darkness fell, we pulled the curtains shut, and it was just like the old days in Vancouver. The adults drank more wine, the ashtrays overflowed, and our shortwave radio, usually tuned in to news stations from all over Bolivia and the rest of the world, was playing Andean music instead. Hours passed as we swapped stories and jokes. My mother and Trinidad kept grabbing each other’s shoulders for support as they laughed. My mother had always had lots of girlfriends, and I could see how much she’d been missing them. Bob and Lucas spoke in hushed tones about the mounting crisis in Bolivia. Walter Guevara, the interim president, was faced with a critical economic situation, thanks to the Banzer dictatorship, which had robbed the country of millions. The military were nervous about the planned elections, because they did not want to respond to questions about the bloodshed during the Banzer years. Poverty was out of control, and people were clamouring for change. Bolivia was growing tenser by the day.
    Trinidad had mashed up her food during supper, and every so often she got out of her chair and lay down on her back. She’d lie there laughing at one of my mother’s jokes, and everyone continued as if it was the most normal thing in the world to have Trinidad on the floor like that. Lucas had wavy fingernails from torture, and there were two bullet-hole scars on his right forearm. At least that’s what they looked like to me. Trinidad and Lucas reminded me of my uncles and aunties back in Vancouver. The ones who’d been fresh off the boat, direct from the concentration camps, with their scars and broken bodies. We all did janitor work together, in a group. The broken ones would have to take breaks from using the big vacuum cleaners and mops to lie on their backs on the floor. There was always someone who was crying uncontrollably, and someone else would explain it like this to us kids: “The Great Sadness has overtaken Aunt Lidia today. That’s all.”
    For the first time since we’d arrived in Bolivia, my heart ached for my people in Vancouver. I got up from the table and went outside to the courtyard. When I came back in, the adults were singing banned songs in whispers: the music of Violeta Parra and the exiled Chilean groups Quilapayún and Inti-Illimani. Those two groups had been touring Europe when the coup had happened. If they’d been in Chile, they probably would have suffered the same fate as the great singer Victor Jara, who had been tortured and murdered in Chile Stadium days after the coup. In Vancouver, the Chilean solidarity committee held monthly peñas at the Ukrainian Hall, benefits with singing, dancing, empanadas and wine. Hundreds of people—Chileans, gringos from the labour movement and the Communist Party, hippies, U.S. draft dodgers and exiles from everywhere from Palestine to Uganda—jammed into the place. Speeches would be made and documentaries shown and cumbia danced. The kids ran around, falling asleep under the tables while the adults cleaned deep into the night. The money raised was sent directly to Chile, because an active resistance demanded an active solidarity, as my mother always said over the microphone, her left fist in the air. Snow sometimes covered the ground as we drove through Chinatown and back home, where there was always a place on our couch for a new refugee.
    Lucas and Trinidad stayed with us for months. Lucas would sometimes leave for a week or so, but he always returned. Soon after their arrival, Bob landed a marketing job at Bolivia’s first computer company. My mother started teaching English at the American English Centre. They