Santiago Gamboa - Night Prayers

She was weeping with joy.

You’re an artist, she said, moved. She gave me a hug, clinging to me with her whole body, and I could feel her trembling. Then she looked me in the eyes and said: from now on, I’m going to work so that you have what you need.

Juana did her classmates’ assignments for them, earned money for it, and began to bring me cans of spray paint. Montana Gold were the best, although Belton were cheap, and easier to get hold of. Ten thousand pesos per can, depending on the dollar exchange rate. Of course, Consul, the revaluation of the peso during those years helped me a lot and I never knew what it was due to, but anyway, I mustn’t be distracted from the story. I liked the Montana for the way they penetrated the wall. As if the concrete, the brick, or the stucco had been created out of that color. You have no idea how it felt, shaking the can and hearing the little ball, and then, when I had the image clear, pressing the valve and almost touching the color expelled by the spray.

I started to look at Keith Haring’s lonely and slightly hysterical dolls, and the designs of an Englishman named Banksy, a pioneer, someone who simply wanted to put on the street what he thought that street lacked, police officers kissing one another, windows in industrial walls with a view of the sea, playful rats, anyway, my work wasn’t like that, I dreamed of other things, not populating the city but giving a little reality to what I had inside me. As I’ve already said, mine was an art of escape. Everything in me tended toward flight. I wanted to leave, I hated my life.

My sister started studying sociology at the National University. She had been given a scholarship because of her average grade in the high school diploma and the SAT tests, and because she did well in the entrance exam. That was the only reason my parents let her study that subject, because for them, as for most Colombians, studying sociology was like studying to become a member of FARC, a kind of apprenticeship, especially at the National. We were deep into the government of Uribe and anyone who wasn’t a fascist and a patriot was suspect, all kinds of people were accused of being with the guerrillas, you just had to defend human rights or the Constitution to be considered a terrorist.

Every time Juana brought her university friends home Mother would say, are they guerrillas? are they all like that in your class? Father would barely greet them, he would put the newspaper in front of his face so as not to see them. Once he said to Juana, you see, princess, I can’t pay for you to go to a university like the Rosario or Los Andes or the Xavierian, but at least try to change to economics and in the meantime I’ll save, and then, when you graduate, I’ll pay for you to do a decent doctorate in Argentina, okay? It’s just that with these hippies you’re going to give your mother a heart attack, do it for her sake. He told her he was going to ask for a loan to send her to Europe, or the United States. Once he went into debt to buy her an iPod and a new cell phone. He loved her but didn’t understand her.

From that time I remember another argument at the dinner table.

It was very violent, and left me breathless for several days. Mother said something about the pre-Independence period, known as the Foolish Fatherland, and Juana, who already felt stronger for being at the university, said, well, it can’t ever have been more foolish than this, we live in a country of fools right now, a really dangerous and corrupt country.

Father looked at Mother and felt obliged to respond. This country may be foolish now, he said, but it’s the safest and the best we’ve had in all the time I can remember, with more security and peace and with more well-being. At least since I was born and since the two of you were born.

The best? Juana retorted, oh, Daddy, what are you, one of those snakes in Congress? it’s a horrible time! A Mafioso president, an army that murders and tortures, half the Congress in jail for complicity with the paramilitaries, more displaced people than Liberia or Zaire, millions of acres stolen at gunpoint, shall I go on? This country maintains itself on massacres and mass graves. You dig in the ground and you find bones. What can be more foolish than this brainless and insane little republic?

Of course, my parents jumped on her, gesticulating like wild animals, is that what they teach you at university? to insult authority and order? what side are the professors who say these things to you on? who’s giving you these analyses of what’s happening in the country? do the rector and the Ministry of Education know you’re being taught this? do the professors go around in uniforms and boots? how many have warrants out against them for capture and extradition? do they sit down with weapons on their desks? do they demand ransoms from the cafeteria or the Plaza del Che? do they give their classes with Venezuelan or Cuban accents? or in Russian? or directly in Arabic? Show some respect to our president, young lady, who’s the first Colombian to get up and go to work! do you hear? when you’re relaxing from your evenings out or from reading anti-Colombian texts with those aspiring terrorists you go around with, or when you’re fast asleep, he’s already in his office, studying and making decisions, giving orders and analyzing what’s best for this country, and I tell you one thing: you may not like it but the reason you can sleep easily and continue going to study in that nest of idlers is because he’s there, watching over your sleep, and not only you but forty-five million Colombians, do you hear me, young lady?

Oh, yes? watching over my sleep? said Juana, you’re kidding, and does he watch over the sleep of the murdered trade unionists, does he watch over the sleep of the negro leader in Chocó who was shot by those who helped his campaign? does he watch over the four million displaced persons? or the anonymous corpses in the mass graves this damned country has so many of? No, Daddy, don’t be taken in. The only ones who can sleep easily here are the paramilitaries, and not just sleep: they can continue killing trade unionists and governors, mayors and left-wing students, young unemployed people and drug addicts; they can continue making money and making deals with the State to steal its money; they can continue terrorizing the peasants, taking their lands away from them just by accusing them of being guerrillas, Daddy… The paramilitaries are the only ones who can sleep easily in this country! Not the decent people, not the humble people who, ridiculous as it seems, keep supporting the president out of ignorance or because they’ve been bought off with subsidies, the State money he gives away as if it’s a gift! Because never before has so much been stolen, never before have the paramilitaries been able to speak in Congress, forcing the congressmen to listen to them, have you already forgotten that? do you remember how the security service threw out a representative of the victims who was raising a banner? don’t you remember? well, I do, that happened in this respectable country, the representative of the victims kicked out so that the murderers could speak! what kind of democracy is that? what do you call a government that allows that, eh? The reason I can sleep easily, Daddy, and who knows for how much longer, is because, thank God, there are also decent people in Congress, like Senator Petro, who put their lives on the line to make the country open its eyes.

Father restrained himself from banging his fist on the table or throwing his glass at the wall and said, oh, Juanita, better keep quiet, okay? you don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re just repeating what the terrorists at the National teach you, but that’s because you’re very young and you don’t know where everyone comes from, that’s why you don’t know that senator’s a Communist and used to be a guerrilla, a terrorist! he has blood on his hands so he can’t come along now and give lessons to anybody. The president himself has already said that, did you know that? and Juana, who was a student leader in her year, said, Daddy, the M-19 wasn’t communist, because being a Communist, at least in this world, means adhering to the thoughts of Marx or Lenin or even Mao, and the M-19 wasn’t like that, it was a Bolivarian, Latin American socialism, and in any case being a Communist or having been a Communist isn’t a crime, as far as I know, where did you get that from? On the other hand, being a paramilitary, supporting the massacres of peasants and the parapoliticians in Congress is being a decent person, who loves progress, his country, and the Virgin Mary, is that right? That’s the problem, Daddy: everything here is back to front, but if anyone says that the top paramilitary leader is the president, people scream and cross themselves.