TODAY THE CALENDAR once again marks 18, and we in the last neighborhood on the hill are fearful. It’s a heavy day. Even for those with no ties to Guanacos Criminales Salvatrucha, the enemy is one and the same: the Columbia Little Sycos from Barrio 18. The converse is true as well; people from here face suspicion downtown in Barrio 18 territory. This war divides all.
I am at the entrance to the communal home waiting for my students. One by one they arrive and get settled. I take a second to chat with Hugo and Karla’s mother, Jazmín. She has spent several years selling drinks in these parts, and this war is nothing new to her.
“My husband, my kids’ dad, got killed in 2006. I always think, if he were alive my kids wouldn’t be how they are now. When he was around they still behaved. God, right now who knows where Karla is, I don’t know if she’s with that man or where the hell she went.”
“What man?” I ask.
“That one, sir, Little Down. She’s gone with him before. She was living in his house for a while, but look, she’s a girl, she doesn’t know how to wash men’s clothes, or cook. At home, I do the cleaning, and I don’t have her cook because she’ll burn it. When I found out he beat her for not knowing that stuff, it made me furious. I went to talk to him. I didn’t give a damn! ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I don’t give a damn who you are. If anything happens to her again, I won’t let you get away with it.’ I don’t give a damn if I have to go into hiding! They’re saying now it’s him who’s gonna run things around here, not Destino, I don’t know. I don’t give a damn, I’ll do anything for my kids. ‘Look,’ I told Little Down. ‘If their dad was here, you wouldn’t be around anymore, just ask around what he was like. Ask.’ I told him. Because look, Juan, their dad didn’t fuck around.”
“Why was he killed?” I ask.
“June fifth, they killed him. He had joined a crew. Not gang stuff, just a crew. Like, maybe he was short on cash. Like, you know, men with more than one girl don’t have enough money, well, he had another wife and kids.”
The kids have arrived and it’s time for class to start. I leave Jazmín midway through our conversation.
Inside, the two seminarians are desperately trying to impose order. The ensemble of voices is unintelligible, like a horde of furious bees. In one corner, Kevin, a twelve-year-old, has one of the seminarians in a chokehold. He laughs, and calls the rest to show off his accomplishment. Seated at a table, a boy carves his initials on it with a three-inch pocketknife while the other kids run circles around the other seminarian, who pleads, like a broken record:
“Children, behave. Do your work.”
I rush to free the first from Kevin’s clutches, and he immediately replicates the chokehold on a classmate. I try to level with the kids who are running, but it’s impossible. If I get Karen to sit, Melvin gets up and throws a notebook at Brian. If I, after much begging and pleading, get Cindy to do her work, Pamela tugs at my shirt crying because Alejandro has taken her things. And so on, and so on.
In a corner, a girl with big eyes and long, long black hair looks on at the rest with tears in her eyes.
“Nah, she’s always like this. She’s a weird one,” says one of the seminarians when I ask about her.
I approach her slowly, sit by her side without saying a word, and she looks at me with terror in her face, braces herself, and lowers her eyes as if she were in the presence of a monster. She’s not yet ten, her lips are painted bright red and she sports a miniskirt far too short for a girl.
“What’s wrong, sweetie?” I ask gently.
The girl responds by pulling her skirt down, like she is hiding a treasure. She is consumed by anxiety. I ask if she wants to draw with me, and hand her a sheet of paper and some crayons. She doesn’t answer, but she takes the crayons. She moves slowly, like she’s afraid. Slowly, she starts to draw. I spend the afternoon by her side and manage to get a laugh out of her with my terrible drawings. A garden begins to emerge on her page. It is colorful, like a park. It is illuminated by a smiling sun, filled with swings and seesaws, with little girls running around throughout. In her drawing, all of the little girls are smiling. There are no men in her garden.
The session is over, and the bees swarm elsewhere. The girl stays behind, walking slowly with her drawing in her arms.
I stand in the doorway with a knot in my throat that won’t let me breathe.
“Ey! Juan, are we playing or what?” yells one of the Guanacos Criminales Salvatrucha, bouncing a soccer ball on the dirt. I have forgotten completely. A few days ago I said I would play on the neighborhood field.
It is El Guapo21 who beckons me, a gangster of some twenty years who stammers with every sentence. His description matches that of a suspect currently being blared on the news: black hair, dark eyes, five foot two, thin, tan, no tattoos.
I am scared, but I say yes. He says we’ll hit the field that’s lower down on the hill, and tells me not to worry, that it’s not a serious game, just men in the neighborhood looking to kill time.
As we walk down the slope, a million news articles race through my head culminating in the same result: a group of young men murdered in a field on gang terrain. I am reminded, again and again, of today’s date: February 18. The eighteenth of February. The eighteenth.
The gangster says we should cut through an alley down a slope filled with rocks and old tires. At the end of the slope lies a barren and dusty field. At the flanks, the men have improvised some bleachers with tires filled with cement and dirt. Dozens of MS and GCS clica murals envelop the area.
Several young men await the ball El Guapo holds in his hands. In a corner, on the grass, our team is waiting. Some stare at me with mistrust, others immediately launch into making jokes. Some tattoos peek through their clothing. I can’t tell the gangsters and civilians apart. We form various teams of seven players. The team that gets scored on is replaced by another, tournament-style. And without further ado, we play.
In a lightning play, El Guapo sends the ball up the pitch and lands a corner kick. A tall, thin man goes for it, but misses. The goalkeeper grabs the ball and sends it downfield. The others then run toward our goal, guarded only by this terrified anthropologist and a forty-something they call El Negro. He’s our goalie. The opposing players advance ever closer, and my teammates call out:
“Let’s go, man! Do it, fuck shit up!”
I face off against the forward who is a few feet in front of me, and launch myself toward the ball, eyes closed and bracing for impact. I hear a swoosh—the forward has taken a shot. I see nothing but a cloud of dust. I fear the worst. I get up and look so fast that I don’t realize I have torn my pants. Everything is fine. El Negro has tossed himself to the ground, and grips the ball tightly to his chest. The play is repeated several times, and each time the forward leaves me in the dust, to the utter disgust of my teammates. El Negro flings every nasty word he can think of my way.
The match goes on and the bleachers slowly fill with fans. Other teams wait their turn to play. The thing gets more and more exciting. The audience begins to yell profanities, like at a real stadium. Tempers flare and the goalies shout directions from across the pitch. El Negro curses me out again.
“Move, goddamnit! Just fucking do something!”
El Guapo is our star player. He has made something like fifteen shots on goal, all without success. Soon, the ball comes my way, and that same forward who has embarrassed me so many times already, toys with me yet again. He fakes me out left and right, and the crowd is jeering. I feel an immense pressure in my chest and move without thinking. I fake him out to the left and kick the ball gently between his legs. The crowd yells out a long Oooooolé! and I kick the ball with all my strength. El Guapo launches it effortlessly toward one of ours, who headbutts it into the opposing goal. The thrill is incredible. Next thing I know, I am hugging the scorer, and yelling profanities just like the rest of them. For a moment in time, the game becomes something important, and the field something welcoming.
The euphoria is short-lived, and the questions that had pestered me during the game hit harder, reminding me that I am supposed to be here to answer them. Why is this mass of young men playing soccer at four in the afternoon instead of working? Could it be that there’s no work? Why can’t they find jobs? Why do they need lookouts to be able to play? Why are we afraid when the calendar marks 18? Why is it likely that someone might come and shoot us? Why do we keep playing on a field where so many young men have already been killed?
My desperation to answer these questions is the thing that keeps me tied here.
The next team knocks us out in under five minutes. Immediately, another squad of seven players comes onto the field, cheering and hurling insults.
The bleachers are full, some four teams wait their turn, and a group of kids watch the matches intently.
As I head out, a steady flow of young men descend from the neighborhood and climb the bleachers.
21 In English, The Handsome.