THE PREDATORS OF A COUNTRY IN DECAY

He was watched throughout the country and even beyond its borders. It was a man who looked deeply distraught. A great trail of disdain made it even more accentuated; the terrible feeling of ineptitude that already drowned him in the sea of ​​a failure that he felt sheltered him "for now." He was perceived exhausted. That discouragement definitely turned out not to be so recent. That exhaustion was supposed to be a direct and logical consequence of a tiring job of months; maybe years. Everything came from the strategic tasks patiently devised, with which they wanted to achieve a long-awaited goal; but unfortunately for him and a large number of seditious accomplices, they turned out to be a resounding failure. The confusion that he expressed before the television cameras that took his image and sent it around the world, denoted his fear, his fear of what would come after that attempt that had not been able to achieve its purposes, as he let his friends know. Comrades in arms who remained distributed in the main cities of that country; as soon as he gave up. A country whose foundations were colossally shaken by that group of murderous coup plotters. He was sweating profusely and the involuntary movements he made with his hands definitely denoted; confusion and helplessness.

Sweat drenched his forehead and slid restlessly down the rest of his face, then drenched his thick olive-colored jacket. His parliament was later somewhat paused, decipherable; he seemed to rehearse each word in his mind before it was spoken. Or was it a strategy with which he wanted to cause some effect on those who heard him speak like a prude, perhaps like a hero. Something was drawing in his mind that had to cause panic; but that he did not. Few would understand: the return of militarism after its fall several decades ago. Not for nothing, in the near future, that man would be perceived by many as an unparalleled strategist, a brilliant tactician, skilful, shrewd and very perceptive. It would be an unusual phenomenon of social self-deception that future years would be responsible for unmasking.

At that moment that paralyzed the country, that afflicted man, ultimately, became the hope of a people. His mood reflected the result of what is always to be avoided at all costs; improvisation. Definitely, all that racket was nothing more than a poorly conceived plot that could only have succeeded if the insidious had succeeded in executing what had been woven for a long time: the assassination of the President of the Republic. I mean, something disturbing and creepy. Nothing more and nothing less than a true assassination. The bestial crime born of hatred or the ambition of power. Possibly both. It would really mean a muddy hate crime. Not like in a disastrous future, a quarter of a century later, when someone would be deprived of their liberty because they dreamed that the President of the Republic had died, and then commented on that event to a friend, through social networks. A serious crime for the simple reason of having dreamed. Dreaming, something that happens involuntarily. Anyone who dared to have a dream of this type would be branded as the author of a serious crime carried out with premeditation and treachery; of having committed the crime of hate. A crime with many aggravating circumstances, for which alternative measures were denied.

It was preferable at that time to be charged with murder than with that detestable legal accusation. What happened that day was indeed a degree of frustration assassination. Not like the phantom contravention that twenty-six years later so much fuss will produce, bordering on the fanciful and that supposedly, according to a grotesque investigation, will have to be frustrated. Nobody, absolutely nobody will believe that artifice that will border on the ridiculous. Not even they themselves, the excessive authors of the most cartoonish presidential fantasies; they will believe such satire. And the one who, long before, will proclaim a leader looking at him everywhere like a ghost. Yes, that president who will not stop constantly saying that half the world will want to kill him. The same one that will divulge almost daily that a diversity of States will be conspiring against it. It will be a little concealed fear that he will constantly feel, that his opponents will do everything to him that he, without modesty, wanted to do to a ruler years ago. Anyway, they say that each thief judges by his condition.

That beastly lack of coordination was compared to idiocy. That man, at the moment in which he was face to face with what had been planned for years, felt more concerned with a denunciation than with an effective coherence of the work; in addition to the correct performance of the units involved in that unpatriotic movement. It was a cowardly betrayal of the homeland, carried out by true beings who should have simply called themselves stateless. That February day had arrived. It meant an oath of unity that would later translate into a squandering of wealth into the wrong hands. The whole country was pending the transcendental event. It meant a hope coming from some hidden place, from an unexpected place. The day had just arrived that brought disorder in all corners. People wondered suspiciously: "What's going on when there's so much fuss?" Some said that the gringos had come to take the resources. Others that war had broken out, although they did not say why or against whom. «The military rose up! », they shouted from the terrace of an old building. Even the most orthodox said that it was some punishment from God. The truth was that, even before the arrival of the sapwood, unusual noises had begun to be heard in various places.

It was already common to perceive the death throes of crime. With them were reflected the eternal shots and the other extravagances that the night amplified to also extend the terror of the fearful inhabitants who were already safe; usually under beds or in any other place they considered safe. That night, everything turned out differently. Unusual noises were heard. It was then, at dawn, when that uproar intensified, and little by little the streets began to fill with representatives who had come from the barracks. In the early morning the city was abuzz with rumors. « The aliens have arrived! », expressed the most artificial. Television and radio only let out a disastrous noise that everyone missed too much. The operators, receiving sensible orders, did not want to cause more alarm and fear than there already was. « They want to kill the president! », Gilberto shouted from a car that devoured the distance and from which, only in seconds, there was simply a smoke product of a broken engine. "It's a coup! », «It's the guerilla, gentlemen! ».

Eugenio was on his way to the factory with the food in his right hand, light because he was carrying little. He carried a lot of anger. I didn't know what was happening. Whatever it was, he didn't care. He already had enough problems with his own and his family's. He was just walking fast, trying to earn a run on the assist scorer. When he was close to reaching his workplace, he stopped feeling the light weight of the food, he stopped feeling anger. He stopped feeling everything. A bullet coming from a town that was shooting at the town killed him. Eugenio would never find out what was really happening. He didn't have time to find out. He was concentrating on getting to his day-to-day work soon, bitterly savoring his anger at the thought of earning a tear in salary. He felt tremendous rage against the capitalist system that drowned him, against everything, against himself. With a measly month's salary, he barely bought food for his entire family made up of four boys, his wife, he and his mother-in-law who, bedridden after a painful illness, still ate abundantly. Oh…! And he had a little left to send to his mother who lived in a town in the interior. She could barely buy with that misery, the food of the month and her medicines. The poor thing was not enough for anything else. What a tragedy for those in need, wow, Eugenio repeated to himself as his footsteps tried to beat time. She could barely buy little clothes for the little boys, in order to lighten the load a bit and so that it would not feel so heavy when Christmas approached. Each month he advanced part of the usual expenses for the end of the year.

Little by little, I was also acquiring baby Jesus' toys and the ingredients for Christmas and New Year's dinner. Thus, he tried to ensure that his utilities were left almost intact to travel as a family before the boys' classes began. He got his annual vacation in January. This time I had planned a week-long trip to one of the neighboring Dutch islands. Luckily he saved the fare on public transport, since he lived close to his work and walked to it. At least that little money he saved, he used to take daily, in the afternoon, sweet breads and juice for his wife, his mother-in-law and the "girl". He would have to stop buying newspapers every day and what made him mad the most was that he would have to stop drinking his case of beers and have the usual barbecue on Saturday night, to do it biweekly then. Wow, what a disaster like this in the life of a town. « This disastrous government that makes the poor suffer more and more! », said Eugenio in a very low voice when that bullet shattered his skull, coming from the roof of a building. Thirty years have passed since then and his widow remembers it daily as if it had just happened.

Eugenio was born in a poor cradle, like the vast majority of the inhabitants of that beautiful country. Son of peasants, grandson of peasants and if you look for that family tree, you would think that you would always find working people. Industrious citizens, worthy inhabitant of a great country. When Eugenio was born his mother felt something completely different. He really did not know how to specify what he felt; but it was like an omen coming from the depths of his heart, which seldom poured out that blessed echo. It was not for less. In the first place, because Eugenio would be the last of his children; fertile offspring that came to their homeland to make it great. The boy closed that cycle of maternal sacrifices, laborious deliveries and sometimes; of moments of hunger and pain. His father was not present, never was; Neither his brothers' nor anyone else's. It was only Ernestina who took care of everything. It meant, then, the emergence of the irresponsibility of imbecile men and the irrationality of incredulous women who believe in empty words and unfounded promises. It didn't matter, silly or not, with eight boys born to different fathers; it meant a reality, and that reality gave no room for musings or regrets. The first three were a string, one each year. The other five were born every two years.

When Eugenio came to life, in that country the heavy and stormy embraces of a dictatorship were felt. They could be heard even in the remote corners, the herds of henchmen persecuting those who did not agree with the ideals of the government. The echoes of wandering screams were heard in the dungeons. They felt the pitiful cries of mothers looking for their children, who had been taken from their homes like slops and taken to unsuspected places. Children never found. Parallel to the aberrations and tribulations propitiated by those bloody and fearful minions, at the same time there was an unshakable truth. Beneath his own footsteps, millions of years contained in the subsoil arose to that present to elevate him to the heights of progress. It meant, then, an economic advance never seen before in that glorious nation. It was the blessed oil that flowed. Oil exploitation had allowed the regime of the mid-20th century to finance an ambitious program of industrialization and modernization, and although in the coming years they did not want to understand it, not everything was repression, torture and death; but also progress. The truth is the truth, and whether we like it or not we must accept it. That iron dictatorship had, despite this, a favorable economic climate whose main engine was the expansion of the oil industry. Really, that country was modernized at that fateful moment in its history. Those were other times; later they would be longed for by many.

Eugenio's story could have been the story of millions of citizens of that beautiful country. It could have been Liborio, Luis, Antonio, María, Josefina or Milagros; It's just that Eugenio's case was very particular, since he was the first person killed in that military coup. A bloody sedition that opened the doors to a hazardous stage in the history of a great country. The attempt on that day in February was predicted as a military maneuver that would undoubtedly have valuable support, the mobilization of multiple sectors of a society hoping for change, tired of an old scheme; just as those seditious people had been hammering at him for a long time in their constant perorations. After so many hubbubs, after so many promises, they thought that surely everyone would take to the streets to support them, but they were wrong. Those ideas were born from the confusion that some presidential decisions had originated and continued to motivate; but the people wanted peace.

Despite this, there were many deaths. Victims who, as always, were unnecessary. Deaths of innocent beings, which had nothing to do with bad governments or with the perverse ambitions of wanting to usurp a regime. The echoes of wandering screams were heard in the dungeons. They felt the pitiful cries of mothers looking for their children, who had been taken from their homes like slops and taken to unsuspected places. Children never found. Parallel to the aberrations and tribulations propitiated by those bloody and fearful minions, at the same time there was an unshakable truth. Beneath his own footsteps, millions of years contained in the subsoil arose to that present to elevate him to the heights of progress. It meant, then, an economic advance never seen before in that glorious nation. It was the blessed oil that flowed. Oil exploitation had allowed the regime of the mid-20th century to finance an ambitious program of industrialization and modernization, and although in the coming years they did not want to understand it, not everything was repression, torture and death; but also progress. The truth is the truth, and whether we like it or not we must accept it. That iron dictatorship had, despite this, a favorable economic climate whose main engine was the expansion of the oil industry. Really, that country was modernized at that fateful moment in its history. Those were other times; later they would be longed for by many.

Eugenio's story could have been the story of millions of citizens of that beautiful country. It could have been Liborio, Luis, Antonio, María, Josefina or Milagros; It's just that Eugenio's case was very particular, since he was the first person killed in that military coup. A bloody sedition that opened the doors to a hazardous stage in the history of a great country. The attempt on that day in February was predicted as a military maneuver that would undoubtedly have valuable support, the mobilization of multiple sectors of a society hoping for change, tired of an old scheme; just as those seditious people had been hammering at him for a long time in their constant perorations. After so many hubbubs, after so many promises, they thought that surely everyone would take to the streets to support them, but they were wrong. Those ideas were born from the confusion that some presidential decisions had originated and continued to motivate; but the people wanted peace. Despite this, there were many deaths. Victims who, as always, were unnecessary. Deaths of innocent beings, which had nothing to do with bad governments or with the perverse ambitions of wanting to usurp a regime. They definitely achieved power, with the d*mn tools that acts of excessive corruption always provide. They wanted to achieve all this, through one of the most vile acts that someone can commit, murder.

Something unexpected for those criminals was that, as they expected, the people did not come to support them in their vile actions. This was perhaps due to the fact that the insurgents did not sufficiently convince the people to participate in that uprising. So much talk was of no use to them, since they were facing a democracy-loving people. It was a hurting town, it could not be denied; but lover of peace. The insurgents had become involved in masking a reality, in sowing hatred towards a political system that, according to them, was starving, was the cause of their misfortunes; but they did not go far enough for the citizens to try to go that far. The people thought rightly when they felt the sudden military attack. That country was afraid, not only of the attack against the president that they, for the most part, had chosen to direct their destinies; but he was afraid that it would attack a freedom that, despite everything; it had been erected as an option against the military d