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MOST PEOPLE TALK BULLSHIT:
One Primate's Search For Intelligent Life
(GENESIS)
March 1973 - Marine Corp,
Juarez, Mexico
Seeing Poverty Brings An Epiphany
I
was feeling comfortable about losing my interest of the dark and
profane. Besides, I could no longer burn the candle at both ends
as I had been these past few months, so I cut back on my
drinking and stepped up on my sleeping, -- a little. Overall I
decidedly was now more on keel.
One
weekend, I decided to go well beyond the main strip where most
of the upscale fornication took place, to take a tour of the
fringes of Juarez, without the veil of alcohol and darkness of
night blinding my senses.
As I
toured the fringe outlands of Juarez, the memory of the
conversation with Craig was on the forefront of my mind. What he
had said about the women of Juarez hooking for the sake of
economic survival.
As I
explored the fringes I saw the people in Juarez exist in a level
of abject poverty far worse than what I experienced as a kid in
North Carolina. Worse even than what I had read about in the
Appalachians back in the States. Many of the hovels I saw that
day were barely more than a tumble of rubble, with walls that
were caved in, a bit of tarp covering the hole, windows broken,
rusty corrugated tin for roofs on some of the numerous shacks.
I
saw dirty kids play with savage innocence along side of raw
sewage in which floated bloated decaying bodies of animals
festering, marinating in the raw relentless Mexican sun. As I
watched, another pack of kids materialized behind me, begging
for attention and commerce. I inquired for a restaurant. A
plucky kid, dark, dirty, with shining black eyes and very white
teeth took my hand and led me a block over to a street vendor,
selling dog-meat laced burritos. The burrito was good and as I
wolfed it down, I visualized a poor Mexican family sitting down
to some holiday dinner and instead of turkey or ham I could see
a dog centered on their table, dressed, basted with cherries in
the eye-sockets and an apple in the mouth.
The
plucky kid tucked at my sleeve, dragging me out of my morbid
reverie. In broken English he asked me how I liked the dog meat
burrito. “Mucho gusto, muy bien, gracias,,
little man”, I replied and I gave him a few bucks for his
efforts.
As I
looked all around at the hovels, the children, the adults, it
was apparent that the majority of children looked curious and
underfed, a few adults glowered at me with malevolent animal
resentment; mostly however, the majority of adults were vacant
eyed, with a look that no one was home, that they had checked
out years ago to avoid total insanity. Scattered about out in
the fringe, the outlands of Juarez were defeated men, drunk or
otherwise fucked-up, sleeping on hard-pack dirt in the shaded
alleys. Pathetic souls with festering and wet skin diseases
mottled about their bodies, people with eyes that looked liked
milky-white tough skinned grapes, screwed in their eye sockets,
sightless and unblinking.
In
the raw pitiless daylight, un-insulated from alcohol, darkness,
and the luxury of first world cinematic induced romance, I
sensed the sharp rotten reek of deprivation. I was confronted
with the harsh painful reality of disease, poverty, degradation,
invincible impotence and mind numbing hopelessness.
I
saw that these people did not even have the benefit of the
woodlands, streams, beaches or swamps from which my brother and
I had foraged for food. It had been tough for my mother, but how
much tougher it was for the Faye Chimera’s of the third-world
nations. I was overwhelmed, both by the suffering and what I
felt to be the senselessness of life. The intense grief that was
welling up within me caused my legs to go unsteady and I had to
find a place where I could sit.
I
begin to weep uncontrollably at the terrible unfairness of the
world. I cursed God for creating a world that allowed the
suffering of innocent women and children.
“You
fucker! You evil fucker!” I shake my fist up at the sky as if
God would take notice of my anger, my sense of betrayal.
I am an
insignificant insect.
I feel
embarrass as I am noticing that the people around me are curious
and more than a little disturbed by my emotional outburst.
It is the
realization of their hardness and their callousness for their
own plight that makes me weep even harder and harder and harder,
and it doesn’t seem to end.
I
keep weeping, over and over and over again. Finally my tears are
spent. My ribs hurt from all the crying. I am not cleansed.
Instead, I feel like an empty shell that will never feel full
again. I swear to God and myself that some day, somehow, my
mission is to help reduce the level of suffering in the world.
I
suppose it is what many of us do when we feel another’s pain, or
feel guilt for having more than others. In my situation, it was
the guilt one feels when face to face with the fact he has
intentionally or unintentionally capitalized on and exploited
another person’s misfortune or weakness.
I
felt shame at the thought of the many times I had finagled
“bargain” rates and, worse, accepted the largess from many of
the women who saw something in me worth investing in. It didn’t
matter whether it was as Craig said, “Even whores need love,” or
even a hooker’s honest impersonal Machiavellian intent to better
her lot in life by trying to “snag a GI.” I realized most of us
young men had the misconception that the lives that these women
lived were by their own choice. Until that day, I did not arrive
at the full realization that the main aphrodisiacs that drove
these women to prostitution were poverty and hunger.
HOMEPAGE
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