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02 Nov

Posted at 14:36h in Uncategorized
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By Ricardo Segreda (Credit: Wikimedia Commons) It was a novel and inspired notion, born in Santi’s head, and his best friends - Gato and Bruz - eagerly went along, taking it from imagination to reality. In their small village in Ecuador’s Andean highlands, they would prank foreign and even local tourists and capture the results on a hidden camera that they would then upload to social media such as YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok. Fun as well as funny, they’d be local heroes, and make a little money from ad revenue besides. On the edge of their village, Chullunku, in the Cotopaxi province, these sixteen year-olds years constructed a tourist attraction within an abandoned cabin that displayed, behind Plexiglas, the mummified remains of a thousand year-old Incan princess buried alive in a ritual human sacrifice. However, not only was the “princess” a fake - made of foam rubber, clay, and paint - but she was wired, at the push of a button, to thrust her hands forward and emit a painful and piercing scream. The boys also installed a camera not only inside the cabin but outside as well, recording the shocked reaction of visitors, and capturing them as they fled in panic – at least that is what these young males anticipated. At least they felt they had something to live for. In Chullunku – the village’s name meant “Ice” in the Kichwa language – opportunities for the boys were limited. Like their fellow villagers, they were poor. However, they were also outcasts. Santi was the product of an affair between his mother and her husband’s best friend. After Santi’s birth, his father turned him over to his maternal grandmother to raise, which she did reluctantly. Other children routinely derided him as a “bastard.”  Bruz, pronounced “Bruce,” and so nicknamed because of his passion for Bruce Willis movies, was born with a harelip, which made many in the village regard him with a suspicion born out of superstition  – dating back to a legend about a demon with a deformed mouth who spreads lies. As for Gato, his father was the town alcoholic, embarrassing him with public displays of inebriation and lechery. The inspiration for Santi’s idea originated in his lifelong fascination with the culture of his ancestors, especially their religion. As early as six he’d dress up like an Incan high priest and pretend to be speaking for the gods. When his grandmother suffered a stroke, he even convinced himself that his prayers to the gods save her from the brink of death, for which his cousins ruthlessly mocked him.   The three, in fact, felt this venture would bestow upon them an aura of rock-star glamour to counterbalance all the ridicule and exclusion they had experienced. They were particularly excited over the prospect of having girlfriends for the first time. With their meager earnings as part-time farmhands, they purchased the material for their princess, whom they nicknamed “Munay,” a Kichwa word for “beauty.” Santi saved every single image of Incan mummies he could find on Google onto his hard drive. He was fixated on one in particular, an adolescent girl, discovered by archeologists 50 years earlier in Cotopaxi and now on display in a museum in Quito. Bruz, a natural artist, was able to construct a convincing replica of the mummified girl’s face and hands. Meanwhile, Gato, who had learned a few mechanical skills when he apprenticed at an auto repair shop in the city of Latacunga, created an internal metal skeleton discreetly wired to a car battery. Inside the princess was a portable speaker that they could activate from their phones. They had downloaded an especially frightening “girl scream” audio file for the occasion. The next step was notifying hikers attempting to ascend the Cotopaxi volcano. On the most popular trail, they planted a simple signpost, in English, carefully crafted by Bruz: “Thousand-year-old Incan princess mummy, (only three dollars),” with arrows directing the hikers through a path to the old wooden cabin. Their first visitors were a pair of young hikers from Austria. They paid Santi (adorned in a colorful wood chulo cap and poncho for an extra touch of native exoticism) the entrance fee, and he led them inside. On a wooden platform, behind a sheet of Plexiglas, the princess sat with her “legs” crossed. Like the mummy he had studied, she appeared to be about thirteen. While some of these ancient figures seemingly had mute, solemn expressions, as if they had resigned themselves to their destinies, others conveyed acute, defiant agony, and that was the case with the young lady who was their model. With her mouth half-open and fingers curled, Princess Munay, like her inspiration, gave the impression that she was screaming. Gato tweaked the car battery while Santi activated the speaker. Munay thrust her hands forward and gave forth a scream that evoked the most primal human hurt imaginable. The Austrians reacted with screams of their own before turning and fleeing as fast as their rugged alpine legs could take them. Bruz, hiding inside, immediately bolted the door shut before exiting the cabin through a discreet back door that Gato had built for the occasion. Now that this was captured on their phones, they had the challenge of having the world take notice. They started with their anonymous YouTube account, entitled “Ecua-travieso” (“Ecua-naughty”), and from there they passed it on to WhatsApp, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter. They were careful not to identify exactly where this happened, other than vaguely indicating that it took place in the Andes. The video took off; within their first seven days, they had more than 300 visits to their YouTube page, along with many celebratory responses – “Gringos are such cowards!” “Atahualpa would be proud! “The Incas are avenged.” Within eight days, the number had climbed to over a thousand. Their next victim was a short man from Japan. As he paid his three dollars, he conveyed to Santi, in his broken Spanish, how much he was enjoying Ecuador. Santi, Bruz, and Gato took their positions and waited for the right moment. The Japanese traveler leaned in, took out his camera, and they activated Munay. He didn’t scream or run – at first. Rather, he stood as if paralyzed while urine trickled from his white hiking shorts down his legs to his wool socks. He then sprinted out the cabin screaming something in his native language, the same two-syllable word, over and over. That particular recording took off like a bullet fired at the sun. Within three days, the video had over 2,000 visits on YouTube and ricocheted around other social media platforms. More videos followed, featuring a variety of terrified tourists, though some – after the initial shock – were also furious, with one Argentinian punching a hole in the wall of the cabin and threatening to beat Santi and anybody else involved. This only made their videos more viral. The count on their YouTube channel now averaged about 10,000 visits per upload. At this point, Santi, Bruz, and Gato relaxed their code of fraternal secrecy, and leaked to select villagers in Chullunku that Ecua-travieso was their channel. For the first time in their lives, they were both respected and admired. Boys who taunted and bullied them would now invite them over to their homes to play videogames. More importantly, girls began to notice them. One sunny Saturday afternoon, four months after they initiated their prank, a heavy-set, middle-aged American hiker, smoking a cigarette and sweating heavily through his flannel shirt, paid the entrance fee and wandered into the cabin. Santi, Gato, and Bruz all assumed their positions and gleefully waited for the inevitable. Princess Munay thrust her hands out, screamed. The American opened his mouth, but without making a sound, before collapsing to the cabin floor, gasping for breath. The three boys gasped themselves, now feeling a much deeper fright than anything they had inflicted on their prank-victims. “Help me, oh please help me!” the American cried out, between gulps of air. Santi, Bruz, and Gato rushed to his side. His face turned a light shale of blue before his body began to shiver. Santi removed his poncho and placed it on the man’s enormous stomach. “Santi, what else should we do? You’re the smart one, you should know, right?” Bruz cried out. “I’m not a doctor, I don’t know anything!” he replied. “I’ve seen this on YouTube, in those reality shows,” Gato said. “Somebody has a heart attack, they pound the chest and blow air into his lungs, through his mouth.” “Then try it,” said Santi. “You do it. I’ll watch and tell you if you are doing it right.” “I should run back to Chullunku and get the medicine man,” Bruz said. “Don’t...

15 Apr

Posted at 17:30h in Uncategorized
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The Beautiful Martin By Carlos Carrión Martin was so beautiful and discreet that the ambassador wives from the diplomatic corps attended the dictator’s celebrations, only because of his son, despite his slight doggy smell. And, the ladies did not care much about being within their husbands’ earshot: they would say hello to beautiful Martin, and he would thank them and smile so seductively, that even the most forewarned ambassadors were fascinated by him. He glistened with elegance, beauty, and the palace halls’ discretion, so that women believed him indifferent, like a celestial Brad Pitt, and that made him breathe only feminine sighs. That was not all, and with the excuse of one or two Bourbons or so, Martin got fed up listening to the indecent proposals of those boring and perfumed seals: they reeked to the point that their sickeningly sweet enveloping cloud caused him to sneeze uncontrollably. Many of them even ended up in his bedroom. Of course, on the love’s battlefield he consummated no battle because, at the crucial moment, the soldier’s gun remained low to the ground. Martin, however, was very good at subterfuge in bed, and those eager ladies ended up stunned with more Bourbon, Swiss chocolate binges, anecdotes that he told them about handsome fag contests to name ministers and advisers held in secret by his father, and tales of torture for those who gave him the middle finger, or shouted sonofabitchin’ tyrant, as he drove in his armored car through the capital streets. Other times, he told them that he dreamed of traveling to countries that they and their husbands represented, and asked them to describe the countries’ geography, history, food, science and martial arts until he zapped their desire and they ended up asleep. Actually, it was not that the guy did not want to get to know these land seals in the biblical sense, but he was born a counterpart to God’s gift of masculine beauty, and being the dictator’s only son, with the misery of congenital impotence. The official historians knew, but said nothing; nor did they reveal that his father suffered from the same affliction. They didn’t say anything, not because Martin was the dictator’s son, but because of his mother’s laboratory scams. His mother, a Swedish platinum blond, and proud as a peacock, had married his father reluctantly, because, behind the dictator’s back, her eyes were on her husband’s favorite adjutant, a black cyclopean with a rock hard butt and golden eyes. Martin had a beautiful Doberman named Daffy. At six p.m., he used to go out with the dog as his bodyguard, even though at a distance there was always a squadron of hidden elite protecting him, and he used to tell his dog things, instead of confiding in his mother, whose Nordic beauty was somewhat elusive. Men stopped to watch them pass by. Some said, “Is the dictator’s son his mother’s child?” And others cautiously exclaimed in lowered voices as they scanned the horizon for a hidden henchman, “Is the dog? Don’t insult the animal!” Girls, were even more reckless than men, when they would approach Martin and say, “Wow what a cute dog! What is his name?” and if they could pet him. He, very coldly, “Daffy.”, and that they shouldn’t, because he could bite their hands. They screamed saying that should have called him Tribilin instead of Daffy and they didn’t care if he was going to bite them or not. Martin said nothing. At the beginning, Martin did not say anything about his problem to the Doberman; he even thought about something else because Daffy was so clairvoyant that he could read his thoughts, and that, being horny as any dog, humiliated him. Hornier than clairvoyant, Martin said. Well, when the aide who looked after him was distracted for a minute, Daffy would race into the presidential kitchen to try out the dirty tricks of a dog without a mate, and would go through the legs of the cooks and even the ambassadors’ women when they were invited, sniffing around the menu, and they screeched blissfully. He also never told the Doberman about his impotence because he always attributed it to the lack of inspiration those foreign seals offered him; even more so because they tried to seduce them without the subtlety that women use to persuade a man, but with commanding tactics resulting from excess Prozac, or as desperate women who, in their roles as queens of diplomacy, were themselves enemies of all forms of seduction. And, as if this weren’t enough, they bathed in perfume. However, Martin could handle it up to the point when these seals brought their daughters along: baby seals of raw meat from heaven’s seas, and they tried the same thing with him as their mothers had. Then he began to worry and made Daffy his confidant. He listened with his cars pricked up, as if sniffing danger or a bitch in heat. Finally, the beautiful Martin secretly consulted a psychologist. He was thick, old, and dark as a clandestine priest, with magnifying glasses on the up of his nose. Unaware of who he was, he made him lay down on the couch, as all his patients did, and asked about his childhood...

15 Apr

Posted at 17:24h in Uncategorized
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APRIL AGAIN* By Carlos Carrión They each brought a rose. And they left it behind. Not a single one was missing. Then they took us to the classrooms, and they put us on the playground against the wall. with and without nostalgia MARIO BENEDETTI. The girl was surprised when she saw me. From behind the door, half open, uninviting, I felt the pure amazement in her black eyes on the bitter face with which I went to let her in after healing the hurried knocks that had brought the building back to life with impunity, and I also felt, instantaneously, confused by the genuine blush of a petrified child, a sensation with which I was entirely unfamiliar. But I didn’t see the danger yet, though it was already too late. The girl was alive and suffering on the gray tiles of the hall, beautiful and without a shadow; as though she had invented the day in the face of the very history of all my badly lived centuries. She held in both arms against her chest, as if by force, a little stack of school notebooks. Her gaze was busy, deeply besides, with an anxiety that would have seemed to be the cause of my own if I hadn’t known such a thing to be impossible. Are you Luis’s father?, she said, putting into the name her beauty, her tenderness, her immortal childhood, her melancholy that didn’t wear daisies yet, and her anxiety. Which Luis? I answered with the unbearable certainty that this was one of my son’s girlfriends whom I hadn’t met, in which case there was reason for the girl’s surprise. We were identical animals, the two of us, with the sole exception of the unpardonable infidelities that were my years, years made more than anything of the torturous matter of long nights and lonelinesses carefully wasted among sordid bottles and companions. And resolved in what I called a simple compression of life and an old, invisible cynicism applied in understanding it. Apart from the white temples, which I judged a difference in my favor, I could thus live the hallucination of having the age and the face of my son, as well as the name. Luis, Luis Moran. Yes, I said, and like a fool I opened the door wide for her. When she walked by, almost brushing against me, I felt that every tomorrow remained outside in the street, splendid and useless, and that since a minute ago I needed this girl forever, independently of the cruel circumstance of son and father. She walked ahead of me to the living room, while I, behind her, suffered the humiliation of my disastrous hair, my unshaven face, my old-fashioned bathrobe, the heaviness of the air in the room, the hardness of the furniture, the horrible paint on the walls, and the damned empty bottles. And wetting my fingers surreptitiously with saliva, I ran them through the disorder on my experienced head and was an adolescent again that morning. The tiny black shoes stopped next to the easy chairs, waiting for me, in spite of the fact that she had heard my invitation to sit. In that brief moment, two dreadful meters from the girl made of a pure, adorable substance, I saw that the anxious depression of her waist, the tender space that went from one hip bone to the other, the splendor of sacred pollen that shimmered in her hair, the solitary beauty of the flesh of her face in her eyelashes, her lips, her tiny freckles, her little nose, and, above all, that child’s time that stretched, taut and undulating, in her body, from head to foot, like a deadly and inevitable leopard, caused me an infinite helplessness and the hallucination with respect to my son, that served to sustain my crazy vanity, assuming the entire reality of his being because he was the only one who was twenty years old in this house, vis-a-vis that marvelous womanly girl who no longer mixed up the two men.   It was nine in the morning. She took a seat after I did, in response to the offer I had to repeat. To one side of us, but more obvious than a cow three days dead, was the small table with the infamous bottles. Her legs, with schoolgirl socks and a short little skirt, adopted a lovely oblique pose, more pronounced because the easy chair was low, and she put her notebooks on her knees and above them, as though they were additional objects, her hands, her tiny bust, and her face. She didn’t use the backrest, that much is certain, tense, tenuous. I did, distinctly and deliberately with my back to the window in order not to face the light and diminish that helplessness, though neither managing nor desiring it from the bottom of my bones. The light, too bright at that hour, walked like the devil through the glass and the sheer curtains, revealing, unfortunately, the room’s desolate surroundings. But now it was an object happily soothed surrounding the child. Luckily, besides, her eyes hadn’t come to see the house. Then she began on the edge of the chair the tale of the tragedy that had brought her to miss class, swallow her pride, and come to see me, with her beauty. My name is Lilia, she said, and I love Luis very much. I saw that it was a name invented for her body and that what she said was true. She closed her eyes, turning bright red, as though she suddenly forgot what she had to say next, in spite of the ardent beginning, and found herself obliged to read the part that followed. Or as though, on the other hand, whatever she suffered was extremely grave. It was beautiful and sad that this girl loved my son. In some strange way, my fate as monstrous driller felt vindicated, but it wasn’t equal, damnit. My loneliness continued intact and eternal as ever and paining me more than life itself. My heart longed horribly and deliriously to be twenty-five years younger and with the same ability to produce the suffering in those black eyes. A half a minute had gone by and her lips didn’t find anything, twisting, hurting themselves. Only her eyes, the tears. I saw them grow between the lashes, and the painful and tender force that crushed them, and then stretch out dizzyingly and any minute now fall maybe on top of her tightly clasped hands, or, no, maybe here, on my soul I couldn’t talk at first, perhaps because I wanted to savor her closed eyes and better resist that adored face or because I couldn’t find the way either. That’s wonderful, I said at last, holding back the painful desire to go over and comfort her, don’t cry my adorable heaven. This kind of luck wasn’t meant for just any rambunctious kid. As though offended by my words, she burst out crying and I was by now capable of abhorring any man and damning myself for the rest of my days, if my hands didn’t knock the stupidity out of that brute of a son of mine And, without a single transition between what she’d heard me say and the new heights of her brimming and gorgeous eyes, she said with a heartrending hardness what she had to say, and she sat there her very open face bearing up under my old stupor, my conviction, and my dreadful indignation, three consecutive predators. Just wait until I...

31 Oct

Posted at 23:32h in Uncategorized
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The Procession of the Dead (from Ecuadorian Ghost Stories, edited by Mario Conde, translated by Christopher Minster) Back in the old days, Quito was a small urban settlement that extended from La Magdalena in the south to what is now known as Colon Avenue in the north. In spite of the small size, the National Police (which was then known as the Carabineros Corps) was hard-pressed to patrol all of the sectors of the city, in particular the area of the small plaza of Carmen Bajo, in front of the San Juan de Dios hospital. People used to say that the place was sort of creepy and spooky because of all of the people who had died in the hospital. When any of the carabineros were assigned to the area, they would always cross themselves at the start of their shift because they knew they were in for a long, terrible night, fearful that they might come across a ghost or some other sort of apparition from the other side. Julio Benítez and Aníbal Parra were two young carabineros. One night, it was their turn to guard the small plaza in front of the hospital, between García Moreno and Rocafuerte streets. It was very dark, and an icy wind was blowing. The young men were shaking from cold, and they spoke with each other to keep their spirits up. They were trying not to think about the stories of apparitions and ghosts that, according to local lore, wandered around the area. Back then, there were no streetlights, and the area was fogged in darkness. The howling of dogs seemed to announce that something very bad was about to happen. When the bells of the San Francisco cathedral rang eleven o’clock, the two young men went out on patrol. They walked along García Moreno Street toward May 24 Avenue. Back then, there was a ravine near there known as Jerusalem, and there was a little trail that ran alongside it which went up to the Robo chapel, San Roque, and the San Diego cemetery. When the young carabineros got to the ravine and made their way to Venezuela Street, they stopped when they saw that there were lights to the south of the chapel, as if someone was coming from the cemetery. The carabineros thought the lights must be thieves, so they hid to see if they could catch them. The lights were still far away, but they could see that they were coming their way. They gripped their nightsticks. But suddenly their bravery dissipated when they heard a mournful, eerie sound like the beating of a drum: tararan tan tan, tararan, tan, tan. They could hear the drumming in the still of the night, and it was soon joined by a high-pitched whistling, like a flute, as if in accompaniment. The young men peered into the night with confusion and apprehension. Either they were dreaming or the lights were part of a procession of beings from the other side, coming from the cemetery. The policemen hid more deeply in their hiding spot, barely daring to move a muscle. After a while they saw something at the back of the line of shadows that looked like a funeral procession. It was a carriage, rolling along surrounded by flames! When the drumming noise was no more than a block away, and in the light of that horrible fire, the terrified young men could finally see the whole procession. In the front were two specters dressed in red. One was beating a cylindrical box like a drum, and the other carried a small flute, with which he accompanied the macabre drumbeat. Behind them, there were two lines of ghosts wearing black hoods. In their skeletal hands they held long white candles, which were topped with weak, dim flames. At the end of the procession was the carriage wrapped in flames, driven by a creature with a black face, two curling horns like those of a ram and a red cloak that covered his body. It was the devil himself, bringing up the rear of the ghostly funeral procession. The two young carabineros were paralyzed with horror. They could barely breathe, and their hearts were pounding in their chests. They were hoping that the funeral procession would turn up García Moreno Street a block away and head toward San Juan de Dios. But the madness of fear gripped them when they saw that the funeral procession was headed directly toward them. When the specters were only a few steps away from them, carabinero Porra, who was the more fearful of the two, took off out of the hiding spot, screaming at the top of his lungs and running as if the devil himself were on his tail. Julio Benítez was right behind him, matching him step for step. They didn’t stop until they had reached their guard post, two blocks away. The policemen shut themselves inside their little guard shack, trembling and unable to speak. Just when they figured that they had avoided the procession, they heard a familiar noise that sent shivers up their spines: tararan tan tan, tararan tan tan...

31 Oct

Posted at 23:27h in Uncategorized
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The Guaguanco  (from Ecuadorian Ghost Stories, edited by Mario Conde, translated by Christopher Minster) San José de Chimbo - Bolívar Polibio and Floripa could not have any children. They had been married for six years, and they had visited every doctor, herbologist and midwife they could find, but all of their efforts to conceive a child had been in vain. They lived in San José de Chimbo, a small town about an hour away from the city of Guaranda. They owned large tracts of land that Floripa had inherited from her father, a wealthy man from the region. The marriage seemed to be a stable one. However, the truth was that it was all an act, because Polibio had only married Floripa for her money, and when no one was around, he was very abusive, blaming her for his own sterility. At first the couple was asked to be godparents to a whole generation of the children of Chimbo until one day Polibio grew sick and tired of bringing other people’s children to church, asking for a blessing from a God that refused him any children of his own. He changed. Although he was once a happy, lighthearted man, he became somber and greedy. One time, his wife was asked to be godmother for the daughter of one of their servants, but when he found out, he forbade her to ever help anyone again. Floripa promised to obey him, knowing how frustrated he was that they could not have any children of their own. Polibio became obsessed with the idea of having a huiñachishca or an adopted child who could keep him company. But it wasn’t that simple. One afternoon, Polibio took his wife to town with him to arrange some details regarding a land sale he was involved with. Their business went to about six o’clock. At that time, they walked back to their home, which was only about twenty minutes away. To get there, they had to walk along a trail that was lined with thick bushes. It began to get dark, and the couple quickened their pace. When they were about halfway there, a sudden silence fell over the area. There were a few tense seconds until they heard a cry, like that of a baby. It seemed to be coming from the bushes a few meters in front of them. Surprised, the couple went closer to see if the cry had come from a human baby or some mountain bird. They heard the same piteous whimper again: it sounded like a baby, hungry and cold. They looked at each other without a word. After a moment they had not heard any adult voices, and their curiosity drove them into the bushes. They hadn’t gone as far as ten steps when they saw a little package, bundled in baby clothes. It was a baby, and he was crying loudly in front of a small sigses bush. Polibio took the child and covered him with his own poncho, while the eyes of his wife moistened with happiness. Floripa asked indignantly what sort of mother would have so stony a heart as to leave her newborn in such a state, as if it were some little animal. Polibio replied that it must be the result of some sort of illicit love affair, maybe the son of a single woman who got rid of him to hide her shame. It seemed like a good explanation, and the couple was filled with joy. Finding the child they had always wanted was like a miracle. They left the bushes and went home, delirious with happiness. On the road, while they talked excitedly about their plans for the future, it got dark. They had to slow down, so that they would not trip. The child had stopped crying and was nice and warm, all snuggled in the poncho. Polibio, fearing that something might happen to the baby, sent his wife ahead to advise him of any holes in the trail. The couple had not gone far when Polibio, feeling suddenly nauseous and tired, asked his wife to wait a moment. “What’s the matter?” his wife asked. “The baby is heavy,” he replied, upset. They kept walking, but oddly, the baby kept getting heavier and heavier. Polibio didn’t get far before he didn’t have the strength to hold it. Feeling faint, he stopped again. Suddenly, from one moment to the next, the baby was not only very heavy, but also burning hot, so scorching that Polibio felt his body being burned as if he had red-hot coals in his poncho. “What is this? My God! What is happening to this baby?” he asked, shocked. Polibio was certainly not expecting an answer to his question. However, the baby responded in a shuddering, nasal voice: “I have teeth. Look, I have teeth!” The baby reached one of its hands out from within the poncho. It had long, black fingernails, and it pulled the poncho away from its head. Polibio was horrified to see that the baby had sharp, tusk-like teeth like a wild beast, a purplish face and burning eyes, blazing like two tiny fireballs. “I have teeth. Look, I have teeth!” the demonic baby repeated. Then, it leapt out of the poncho and grabbed onto Polibio’s neck with its long nails and bit down with its teeth. Polibio died almost instantly. Floripa screamed in horror and ran away as fast as she could, terrified, tripping and stumbling. It had gotten so dark that she could not see anything at all. Nevertheless, she kept running, horrified, without knowing how far she was from home. Instinct told her that at any moment the devil’s child would throw itself onto her throat. She went mad with fear the moment she heard its infernal cry in front of her, as if lying in wait for her in the bushes. She kept fleeing, but the more she ran, the more she heard the demonic child. Desperate, she kept tripping in the dark until she finally fell, exhausted. She couldn’t go any more. It felt as if her chest would burst. It was then that she heard the nasal voice: “I have teeth. Look, I have teeth!” A tiny shadow, with a demonic shape, was approaching. Floripa covered her neck with her hands and waited for the end to come. But at the last moment she heard another cry, which sounded as if it came from a different baby. She raised her eyes and saw a woman approach, carrying a baby. She was lit from behind by a white light. Without realizing it, she had made it home and was on her own patio. The woman was the servant, mother of Floripa’s goddaughter, and she had come outside to investigate the strange noises. When the servant felt the presence of the devil, she pinched her daughter, who began to cry. The innocence and purity of the infant frightened the devil-spawn, who let out a chilling shriek and vanished in a puff of smoke. Without the bad influence of her husband, Floripa returned to the gracious, sociable woman she had been before she met him. She became very devout and served as godmother for many of the children of her employees and even took children of single mothers into her own home. Floripa used to say that if an unwed mother abandons a child in the wild, and if the child has not been baptized, the devil will accept it as a godson and turn it into a Guaguanco. This creature lures its victims – evil men and women – by pretending to cry like a newborn....

31 Oct

Posted at 19:27h in Uncategorized
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March of the Devils By Ricardo Segreda Juan Paredes Garcia was eleven and woke up angry that cold morning in November in the south of Quito, as he has every morning of his life ever since his father left him four years ago for his new girlfriend in Guayaquil. He hated that alarm function on his iPhone (not the real thing, by the way, but a cheap imitation made in China), because it interrupted his sleep, the only peace he has, and reminded him of what a bleak world he has to face. He knew that his older brother, Tino, was getting up too, and in a few minutes, after he went to the bathroom and changed into his school uniform, it would begin all over again. Tino, who was five years old than Juan, would “wrestle” with him, grabbing him and holding him tightly in a locked position, twisting his arms and calling him a “maricon,” or “faggot,” until Juan screamed because this hurt so much. Juan’s mother, Margo, as usual, would ignore this even though it was going on right before her in the kitchen as she made coffee while she smoked Marlboros, until Juan screamed in pain. At which, she’ll yell at Juan and tell him to stop making so much noise. And that is exactly what happened. Afterwards, as Tino laughed, Juan grabbed the cheap toasted bread as well as the eight-ounce carton of milk his mother left out for his “breakfast,” and caught the bus to school. In his classrooms, Juan went through the motions of being a student, but he barely paid attention to his teachers, and barely took notes, as he sat in the back of the classroom and meditated on how his brother treated him, his father’s abandonment (it was the talk of the neighborhood for years, with Juan walking through a gauntlet of taunts on his way home), what his mother did for a living - rummage through garbage for recyclable goods - when so many of the other children were a little better off because their parents with “real” jobs, and that he rarely understood what the teacher was talking about when Juan did try to listen. When his father was around, he kept up with his homework, because that is what “Papa” expected of him, but when he left he gave up, and fell behind in his studies, and nobody, not even his mother, seemed to notice. That is also when Tino changed and became a bully (until then Juan regarded Tino as his best friend).  Now that he had fallen so far behind in his learning it had become harder and harder each year for him to catch up.  He feared that the other children now regarded him as “stupid,” and that only intensified his resentment toward them, especially the ones who were getting praise and attention from the teachers. Juan made up for it, all of it – life at home, school – during recess and lunch.  He was tough and mean, quick to figure out which boys are weaker and more insecure than he is, and how to get other students to join in with him in making fun of them. And with his right fist, he would soon make them regret any attempt they make to defend themselves, even with words.  Juan was especially proud of himself when he could make another boy cry.  And what could that boy do? Go complain to one of the teachers? That would only provide the ultimate confirmation of that boy’s weak character. But that particular day in when he woke up with his usual bitterness, would prove different. For the last few weeks the prettiest girl in school, also the smartest, with multiple academic honors, prompted a new and beautiful feeling in him. He knew what sex was – Tino introduced him to hardcore pornography years ago – but what he felt was a tenderness that almost bewildered him. “Is ‘this’ what people mean by ‘falling in love’?,” he wondered. Her name was Elsa, and though he had known her, from a distance, for years, it was only now that he found himself thinking almost constantly about her – when he wasn't distracted by his unhappy life. Otherwise, his mind kept returning towards her green eyes, her small mouth, her soft lips, her long black hair, her cute laugh...

07 Oct

Posted at 02:03h in Uncategorized
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The Package by Cristián Londoño Proaño Translated by Joan Gavey, Paula Weiss, and Ricardo Segreda I live together with my grandparents in a hacienda in a town on the Ecuadorian coast called Buena Fe, meaning "Good Faith," which is an hour and a half from the provincial capital and seven hours from Quito.  My grandparents adopted me when I was five years old, because my parents died in an unfortunate traffic accident. I grew up with them, and learned the family business. My grandfather, Carlos, dedicates himself to the sowing and cultivation of various products such as tomatoes and bananas. He still maintains some ancient agrarian techniques such as hydroponics. He has yet to bring in robots to automate harvesting. Rather, he prefers to hire people from neighboring communities to do the work. It's noon and it's raining cats and dogs. For three days it has not stopped. I am in my room listening to electronic music and emailing my last assignment for the semester. "Your grandmother requests your presence at lunch," states Rita, the virtual assistant. “Thanks, Rita," I respond. I leave my room. I walk down the corridor. On the walls are the photographs of the old cacao plantations that once covered a large part of the hacienda. My grandparents and I sit at the table. My grandmother, Rosa, makes an effort to prepare food with the hacienda's own produce. She cooks up rice with stewed, chicken. I like the traditional Ecuadorian touch of my grandmother's food. Grandmother has preserved the recipes she learned from her mother and tries to prepare them just like the originals. However, due to the fact that some ingredients no longer exist because they are no longer produced, she has to incorporate other elements. At the head of the table, Carlos, or as I call him, Grandfather, eats a spoonful with a piece of chicken. He chews it, swallows and afterwards he lingers, looking out towards the window. I admire his graying hair and green eyes, his wide nose and fine mouth. In his green eyes I perceive a lot of frustration, one that I totally understand. It began two years ago. It was early morning. Two sharp knocks on my door woke me up. "Lucas?" I hear my grandmother's voice. I stretch out. It was still dark in my room. I check my cell phone. Five in the morning, very early. "Tell me, Grandmother," I say, waking up. My grandmother slowly opens the door, the light of the corridor filtering faintly into my room. "The lights, Rita, " I say to the maid. They come on. My grandmother enters my room. The brown hair, turning gray, her green eyes and pink mouth; Grandmother looks distressed. There is something urgent. "Did something happen?,"  I say. My grandmother comes over to me, takes me by the hand and says: “Your grandfather…" I hurriedly sit up. My grandmother's words scare me. "What happened?" "It's okay," my grandma says slowly. However, she then she groans and speaks with heaviness. "But…" I sense something. Whatever it is, however, she is not eager to tell me. "It failed again," she announces. "It failed?," I say. However, I knew what she was referring to. The importance of the project that my grandfather had undertaken. He said he was a dreamer. That was how he defined himself. As for me, I am like my late mother. The limited memories I had of her involved her incredible way of encouraging my father in his innumerable projects. Here I had been by my grandfather's side in the project. For several days I had accompanied him to the field and toured the property, making sure that conditions were fulfilled so that the plant would grow healthily and would bear fruit,  that nothing would fail. But what, exactly, had failed? "Where is he? Where's Grandfather?," I ask anxiously. "In the dining room, Lucas," my grandmother answers. I walk, as quickly as possible, to the dining room. My grandfather is sitting at the head of the table. To one side was the plant. You could tell that it had atrophied and rotted. I approached, I sit on a chair and say to Grandfather: "What happened?" "It didn't make it, Luquitas." He took the fruit in his hands and added: "Every time I try to make the cacao grow back, this happens. I only want a strong plant that can survive the climate. I want to plant cacao just like the grandfather of my grandfather's grandfather, I want the cacao plantations to grow in my land. Is that too big a wish?" Starting from that early morning, my grandfather's frustration grew and grew. He was not able to dedicate part of his crops to cacao production, as his ancestors had done, because theobroma cacao seed was dying. With great sadness, I still remember when some media reported that chocolate was a luxury pleasure that was gradually being relegated to history. There was very little production and in the coming years it was expected that it would disappear completely because the theobroma seed had not withstood climate change, nor fungi and even less insects. The main producers such as the Ivory Coast, Ecuador and Central American countries had their crops decimated. The efforts made by an American company in the first decade of the 21st century to save cacao did not yield the expected success. Thus the seed was doomed to become extinct. Nonetheless, my grandfather was convinced that he could achieve a miracle through his techniques. He had tried to cultivate the plant through various means, but with no success. This filled him with frustration; he felt impotent, was not fulfilling the legacy of his ancestors. However, though it seemed to him that it was his fault, he did not understand that climate change had affected the entire world and all human activities. Now back to me.  Grandfather looks away, lifts a spoonful of food and puts it in his mouth. We all eat in silence, savoring the wonderful grained rice and the chicken stew seasoned with onion and garlic. Grandfather finishes his food, he pushes his plate aside and says: "Some of my plants will die. This climate seems like the enemy of farmers." Rosa, sitting to his left, raises her spoonful of rice, pauses, looks at Grandfather and says: "What is he talking about?" Then turning her face and looking at me with much tenderness she asks: "How are you doing in college, Lucas?" For a moment, I recall that it was two years ago, in 2049, when I decided that I would study in a foreign university, even though my Grandfather told me that he thought the institution was too far away. "Now the universities are closer," I say to Grandpa when we walk among the hydroponic tomato crops. "What do you mean?," he asked, plucking a tomato with his hands. "All the universities have virtual campuses and most allow online attendance," I answered. "That's why I say they are closer, you can spend short periods in your physical campus, but most of the study is done in the virtual campus." "In all the majors?" "No, only in some courses,” I said. “For example, communication classes are one hundred percent virtual, but for scientific careers there is a mixture of both modalities. In addition, the quality of the researchers at the university seems interesting to me. I have read some of their work and they seem to me to be both rigorous and serious." I had persuaded Grandfather and he decided to support me. Afterwards, I took the university virtual skills test, as well as the knowledge test. I applied for the scholarship. It was hugely satisfying when they sent me the email notifying me of my acceptance. After I matriculated they sent me my coursework in genetic biotechnology. Brimming with enthusiasm I attended my first classes, lectures and talks using the university's virtual reality platform. I put on my virtual glasses as well as my sensory gloves. I entered the password for my avatar and transported myself to the campus of the university. At the entrance there was a cement arch and at the top was the name of university. I entered via a path. On the sides were several gardens showcasing flowers of various colors as well as fruit trees. The details of everything represented was impressive, making it seem vividly real. At the bottom of the path were three buildings. The first building was in the Baroque style, and it housed the administrative offices of the university. The other two remaining buildings had ovular modules; they looked like spaceships, and inside these were the classrooms and laboratories. In the virtual classes, the avatars of the instructors allowed you enter into the settings of the subjects taught. For example, the science history professor created a virtual nineteenth century environment in order to teach us about the scientists of that era. You could chat with Darwin himself and hear him explain his theory of the evolution of the species. In the virtual laboratories there were humanoid robots that, on the one hand, gave guidelines for the experiments that had to be carried out; while on the other hand, supported the student's personal research project. The "in person" classes also motivated me, though most were developed with forms of enhanced reality. For example, the professor of genetics facilitated a didactic activity in which the structure of DNA was looked at and the chains could be altered with one's own hands. Due to my high qualifications I could apply to be an assistant in the genetic agriculture laboratory. Part of my work there was done in the virtual campus and the rest in my visits to the university. Coming back to the present. I look at my grandmother's sweet face and answer the question: "Very good, Grandmother." Grandfather smiles and listens to me admiringly. "I really like my 'in person' classes," I say, full of enthusiasm. "Would you believe I have Chinese, Malaysian, Finnish and Arabian classmates?" "And how do you communicate with everyone?," Grandfather asks. "Everybody speaks English?" "Now it's different, grandfather," I reply. "We all use our headset translators. There is no problem talking in your own language. The headset translates into your language." "Wonderful," says Grandmother. "If that had been available in my time, I certainly would not have bothered to study English." "And how do you develop your work in the laboratory?,"  Grandfather asks. I take a small sip of water. "Some processes have been automated," I answer." Robots and artificial intelligence help out in the laboratories of the university. Many processes that could have lasted months have been shortened to weeks. I believe that, in the next few years, they will be shortened to days." At that moment the doorbell rings. Rita, the virtual domestic assistant, informs us that there is a person at the door who wants to see me. "Thank you, Rita," Grandfather says. "You're welcome, Don Carlos," says the virtual assistant. Rita is one of the few technological acquisitions that my grandfather has allowed to be installed in the hacienda house. There are only a few things that he likes, since he considers most new technology an aberration. He still has an old iPhone, for example, which he will not change for anything, even though the new crystal cell phones are ultra-fast. "Who is it?," Grandmother asks. "He says he's a messenger," Rita informs us. "Thank you, Rita." "Should I relay some message to him?," she asks. "None, Rita," I say. I'm going out now. I stand up as my grandparents watch me attentively. Maybe I can intuit what this is about. I walk down the hall of the hacienda house. I take an umbrella from the coat rack and walk out the door. I open the umbrella and walk down the dirt path. In the background I see the banana plantations. I start thinking that, maybe, just maybe, I know what kind of package it is that I'm about to pick up. I've been waiting for that package with great expectations, the result of what I started two years ago. I open the door and look at the messenger’s face. He is a young boy with brown hair, brown eyes and a wide nose. He has a red cap featuring the logo of the delivery company, and he is holding a square package in his hands. "Lucas Mendoza?," the messenger asks. "It's me," I reply anxiously. The boy pulls out a device: "Look at the red light, please." He places it in front of my eyes and scans my retinas. My identity confirmed, he hands me the package. My university’s name is mentioned in the label, “send to.”  I thank the boy and we say goodbye I wak into the hacienda, holding in my hands the package that has come from the university, and leave the umbrella hanging on the rack. I worked a lot on this project, I believe. I spent many hours in virtual laboratories as well as university "in person" laboratories. Though I was only an assistant, I supported and assisted in the development of this venture. I involved myself enthusiastically. And it was in the laboratory that they developed a new genome of the cacao seed. The laboratory researchers wanted to modify the genetic sequence, changing the mobile chromosomes. In that way, the seed would be better adapt to the climate, resisting temperature changes, excessive rain, fungi and damage caused by insects. I remember that one of the researchers said that cacao would arise from death. After the researchers had the seeds genetically designed, I offered to plant them in my grandfather's farm. They accepted and thus, they sent the package to my house. I enter the living room. My grandparents are sitting in the armchairs. I sit on a sofa. My grandparents look at me expectantly. I take the package in my hands, unwrap it, then open the box inside and take out the hermetic capsule. “What is it?," Grandmother says. I smile. So does my grandfather. "Don't tell me it's...

05 Oct

Posted at 00:36h in Uncategorized
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The Unproductive Ones by Cristián Londoño Proaño Translated by Lorraine Caputo   Operator 220 arrived at six in the morning to his Stock Exchange Building in the north of the city. He entered the main door, walked down the main hall and placed himself at the end of the double line the other Operators had formed for the elevator. He didn’t talk with his neighbors. Scornfully, he barely looked at them. Today begins my rise to the top, he told himself with a sarcastic smile. He entered the elevator and took a corner. On the diminutive screen, the floor numbers counted off. I will achieve a just price for my effort, he thought, as the panel indicated 125. When the elevator door opened, he delved into his floor and saw the Operator of the Month hologram. A cold stinging sensation circulated throughout his body. It’s been a month since I was beaten, he said to himself, and I couldn’t stop it. But this month, I have the victory assured. I am the winner. For a few minutes, he contemplated that white-complexioned face with brown eyes and thin chin. He remembered that Operator 305 had thwarted his designation as Floor Manager. Eleven times he had positioned himself to be Operator of the Month, for eleven months – and last month he lost, thanks to a sufficient strategy Operator 305 had used. That twelfth month, Operator 305 had negotiated a block of food company shares at half the price. At first, he judged it was a horrible buy on the part of his rival. But within a few days, the value of the shares began to rise and triple. The woman took the opportunity to sell them and earn the points she needed to win the stock market competition. This strategy had impressed him and motivated him to make a decision, without realizing the consequences. The day after his defeat, just as he got off the elevator at his floor, he found himself face to face with Operator 305. He had a strange sensation he had never felt before for any Productive Being. Very spontaneously, he said: “Congratulations, Operator.” The stockbroker 305 kept her face stony, not moving a muscle, and replied with a sharp tone, “You lost, I won.” She then slipped away in the midst of a group of stock market employees who had entered the floor. He stood in the hall, wondering about the primitive emotion he had felt for his rival. In the course of the following days, he could not answer his question. He knew he had liked the emotion, he could describe it but not define it. It was like an electrical current that shot up his spinal cord and expanded down his extremities. Onc,e he was tempted to visit his rival’s cubicle and look her in the eyes. That simple act would have been enough for him to understand that primitive emotion. Although perhaps he would never understand. But he wasn’t courageous enough, nor did he want to throw his future away. He had an idea, he had it clearly: He had to arrive to the top. He would not stop until he was another Robert Zach. “It doesn’t serve you to compete unless you win.” The voice of the Global Television announcer pulled him out of his thoughts. Your neighbor can be your worst enemy … Being first is the most important … These phrases were the secret to success that made Operator 550, one of millions of productive beings, win the competitions in each of the buildings, in each of the cities and in each of the zones, climbing positions and earn the right to become “Robert Zach, The Maker.” He walked along his floor. He knew it was the same as all the floors of all the other stock buildings. All, absolutely all, were arranged on a mathematical matrix. Twenty rows by twenty columns repeated in 200 square meters. Four hundred cubicles, 400 Operators, 400 stockbrokers that traded at the same time, fighting for points to be the first on the monthly list. The location of his cubicle was U5: Column U and Row 5. He took Column U. “The Asians always acquire shares of the best companies!” He heard the furious shout of an Operator that was in the third row. He noticed that that individual had virtual goggles on and had turned off the holographic screen. It’s ridiculous, the man said to himself as if commenting to another person, complaining to the walls of his cubicle. He’s losing time. He should be detained for unproductive activities. He continued his course. At the fifth row, he turned and sat down at his workstation. He put on the neural crown and virtual googles. “On,” he muttered. Between the metallic porticoes, the holographic screen opened. He briefly reviewed the indexes of the main stock exchanges: Wall Street had risen seventy points, Tokyo had dropped ten points. London, Rio de Janeiro and Paris had remained unchanged. He asked the computer to display the monthly list of Operators in his department. He verified his score and placement. I’m in first place, he said to himself with pride and emotion. I just need to make one transaction. Perhaps I could buy a package of shares from a genetic lab and then sell them for three times the points. An excellent transaction. My point difference with increase in comparison to Operator 305 and I’ll reach my objective. At last, I’ll gain my twelfth month and I’ll be made Floor Manager. He cracked a sweet, pronounced smile. He continued to revise the list and discovered that Operator 305 was still in second place with 290 thousand points. His smile softened. The same number of points as two days ago, he told himself with admiration. Perhaps there’s a system error. He ordered the machine to check the system, looking for network errors over the past two days. “The system is operating optimally,” he read on his screen. What’s happened to this stockbroker? he said to himself, trying to find an answer. He felt uncomfortable. Could it be that Operator 305 had been a coward, that she had opted for inertia when she found that any of her attempts proved unsuccessful, because he would win this time? A malicious idea came to his mind. An idea that had evilness similar to what any productive being in the same situation would have. Perhaps the young Operator was afraid of her inevitable defeat, and couldn’t control herself and committed suicide. He heard several voices passing through his floor. “Video,” he ordered his computer. In one corner of his holographic screen transmitted the signal of the closed-circuit cameras. A pair of Detectors was crossing the floor. She was a small, svelte woman with a round face. The other, a middle-aged man with a strong body and a flattened chin. They entered cubicle 305. The Floor Manager had a pale face. He felt sorry for his boss. He recalled that a few months ago, the previous Manager had serious problems with the Detectors because of a case of unproductivity. The official had not systematically reported the case of an Operator who had arrived late for work for three days in a row. The Manager had only verbally reprimanded the unpunctual operator. The next day, the Detectors did not take long to arrive to the 125th floor and apprehend the unproductive Operator and the Manager, accusing him of concealing “a crime of unproductiveness.” On his holographic screen, he watched the Detectors’ procedures. One of the cameras focused on the agent that was adjusting his glasses and crossing his arms. The woman approached the metal porticoes of the cubicle. Meanwhile, the Manager did not stop observing the Detectors’ rigid movements. The man gestured with his hand to the Manager, requesting that he leave the cubicle. The woman remained seated in front of the metal porticoes. He heard the murmur of the Manager’s and Detector’s voices nearing bit by bit. “The first case of unproductivity that has occurred in your administration,” he heard the gruff voice of the Detector say. “As soon as I noticed that Operator 305 was not coming to work, I contacted the Service,” he heard the Manager's emphatic response. “Don’t worry, Manager 125,” said the Detector. “We haven’t filed any charges against you.” The voices fell completely silent. Intrigued, he got up from his chair and looked down the hall as the Detector and the Manager moved away from the cubicles and towards the manager’s office. He returned to his post and paid attention to the video window that was still open on his holographic screen. The Detector was sitting in the chair of cubicle 305. She put on the neural crown and virtual goggles, reviewing the Unproductive’s information. What happened to the Operator, to cause her to desert? she asked herself. The Detector ordered the machine to shut itself down, turned her body and rested her head on the back of the chair. One of the cameras captured her face. Her brown eyes shined brightly and her facial expression was relaxed. Suddenly, her fine lips formed a word that summarized in one word all the investigation in that workplace: “Nothing.” “Attention, Operators,” a female voice said over the floor’s loudspeakers. “Code Orange.” He settled back in his chair. He had not imagined that the defection of the Unproductive was so serious. As stipulated in the regulation, when the Detectors thought it was convenient, they could declare a Code Orange or a Code Red. Code Orange code was a DNA sample taken from everyone on the floor. Code Red was an interrogation of each of the Operators. He had heard many times, the stockbrokers got too nervous and ended up confessing to whatever behavior that may have been done that did not comply with procedures. Others thought it a good opportunity to get rid of rivals and lie, saying that so-and-so Operator had committed a crime of unproductivity. “Three hundred forty-nine,” announced the female voice. On one corner of his holographic screen, he watched the security camera video. Operator 349 got up from his chair with a slight tremor in his hands. He thought that it would not be at all odd for that stock market employee to plead guilty to having ingested unpermitted quantities of Boxin. The Detectors would smile compassionately and tell him not to worry, that it happened frequently, he had committed no crime. “As you should know, Operator 349,” the Detectors would say, “Boxin is a substance of unrestricted consumption.” The Operator would breathe a sigh of relief and apologize for the impertinence. On his holographic screen an icon flashed, indicating that a block of shares had been placed for sale in the virtual market. He verified the provenance. It was a package placed by an Operator in the West Zone. There were only ten shares from one of the laboratories that make Boxin. It seemed his prayers had been heard. These laboratories are revalued daily, he told himself. They elaborate a genetic product for mass consumption. The same Global Corporation distributes it free of charge in doses of twenty vials per month ...

04 Oct

Posted at 18:00h in Uncategorized
94 Likes

The term minimalism is also used to describe a trend in design and architecture where in the subject is reduced to its necessary elements. Minimalist design has been highly influenced by Japanese traditional design and architecture. In addition, the work of De Stijl artists is a major source of reference for this kind of work....