saturday afternoon
Saturday afternoon. Spring warmth. The Mercado finding its feet. Medio y medio, cervea, pamplones, chorizos, asado de tira, mollejas, que rico, todo esto.
Snapshot memory of police in the Mercado, once, driving people out, drunken revellers, beneath a Birmingham clock, metals doors slamming shut, grills ablaze, los asasdores dressed in white, ducking behind counters.
In Plaza Matriz, protesters group beneath banners and slogans. Folk memories. Fighing the oppressor. Scaring the right.
They are marching against Bush; against the Yankee; against the Free Trade Zone of the Americas; against poverty; elitism; old sores; because they know no other way to make their case; because they are bored; because a friend told them to; because they resent their parents; because they believe they have to; because it's Spring and it's good to be out on the streets of a Saturday afternoon.
The march barely knows where it's going. Peaceful, festive even. Maybe some drunken liberal tourists spinning out of the Mercado tag along; walking off meat and alcohol, amazed to find themselves in this peculiar, Ciudad Vieja nirvana.
The masked men aren't part of the crowd. Who knows where they've come from. They shatter windscreens, shop windows, the mood. Is this the underbelly? Is this some militaristic PR conspiracy? Who are these salvajes, que se veia en sus rostros una gigantesca ira? They provoke riot police, they provoke the wrath of rain, they vanish into the parts of the city the tourists never visit.
They might be step-brothers of the Parisian immigrants, they might be the true sons of no-liberalism; they might just be the angry and disenfranchised runts of any litter.
Bush isn't here. He's in Argentina. The flame burns itself out. Left and right alike regret the rioting. The government stamps on the ghosts which tickle bourgeois paranoia. The left wing majority don't want the cage rattled now, when there's work to be done. The upper classes wonder if this is the sign they feared, the moment to buy a gun; off-shore cash; fear the worst.
Bush doesn't even know about it. He's heading back to Yankee land. The sun sets over Ciudad Vieja. There will be dancing til dawn. Jorge Suarez will not get an early night. Summer's coming; there's more to life than politics.
Snapshot memory of police in the Mercado, once, driving people out, drunken revellers, beneath a Birmingham clock, metals doors slamming shut, grills ablaze, los asasdores dressed in white, ducking behind counters.
In Plaza Matriz, protesters group beneath banners and slogans. Folk memories. Fighing the oppressor. Scaring the right.
They are marching against Bush; against the Yankee; against the Free Trade Zone of the Americas; against poverty; elitism; old sores; because they know no other way to make their case; because they are bored; because a friend told them to; because they resent their parents; because they believe they have to; because it's Spring and it's good to be out on the streets of a Saturday afternoon.
The march barely knows where it's going. Peaceful, festive even. Maybe some drunken liberal tourists spinning out of the Mercado tag along; walking off meat and alcohol, amazed to find themselves in this peculiar, Ciudad Vieja nirvana.
The masked men aren't part of the crowd. Who knows where they've come from. They shatter windscreens, shop windows, the mood. Is this the underbelly? Is this some militaristic PR conspiracy? Who are these salvajes, que se veia en sus rostros una gigantesca ira? They provoke riot police, they provoke the wrath of rain, they vanish into the parts of the city the tourists never visit.
They might be step-brothers of the Parisian immigrants, they might be the true sons of no-liberalism; they might just be the angry and disenfranchised runts of any litter.
Bush isn't here. He's in Argentina. The flame burns itself out. Left and right alike regret the rioting. The government stamps on the ghosts which tickle bourgeois paranoia. The left wing majority don't want the cage rattled now, when there's work to be done. The upper classes wonder if this is the sign they feared, the moment to buy a gun; off-shore cash; fear the worst.
Bush doesn't even know about it. He's heading back to Yankee land. The sun sets over Ciudad Vieja. There will be dancing til dawn. Jorge Suarez will not get an early night. Summer's coming; there's more to life than politics.
posted by maldoror at 11:12 a. m.
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