Chucha de tu madre! Que bestia!¨
Louis grumbled under his breath as he watched the men on red scooters visiting all the small shopkeepers. ¨Chulqueros! ¨ He spat into the gutter. ¨Todo el pueblo anda chiro; ¨ - meaning of course that everyone’s pockets held lint, or dust, or assorted garbage, but none of them held any money.
They can’t get credit cards, and banks won’t lend them the small amounts that they needed to keep their business running, so they look for one of the countless street shysters that sit drinking coffee at beachfront restaurants in the afternoons when the sun has mellowed. These merchant bankers are the survivors who fled the brutality of their own countries; and although they now wear fine leather shoes and silk shits, the scent of decadence still clings to their pores.
Last year they were charging twenty per cent of the principle on the first of the month. Nervous and confused, shopkeepers were easily double talked into believing that they were being charged the same rates as banks. Now they made it even easier; a few dollars every day. But all the borrower ever pays is the interest. One day their victims wake up and realize their mistake; and then they fold and disappear into the nighttime air. Or perhaps the back page of the morning paper.…show more content… It begins with the cold echo of church bells. The tempo and aimless acts of the work week are suspended exposing the raw, sober urban poverty that surrounded him. Louis bowed his head, inhaled the crisp morning air and continued sweeping the daily dust from the sidewalk in front of a small family owned restaurant. It was the same as he did every morning. The grey sky had been getting cooler and smelled of the possibility of rain. There were only a few weeks during the year for a chance to grow some quick crops before the endless heat returned and burned the land back to yellow and