Where the Wounds Refuse to Heal [View all]

[polly7]

Down the Mean Streets of Central America

http://www.zcommunications.org/where-the-wounds-refuse-to-heal-by-andre-vltchek

By Andre Vltchek

Source: Counterpunch

Monday, August 06, 2012

It is getting dark and my friend Manuel, a local journalist, is driving me in his battered old pickup truck through the ruined streets of the tough and violent Panamanian city on the Caribbean coast – Colon.

"Near the first corner where we stop I spot an old woman puffing on something wrapped in a makeshift paper cone. The smoke is heavy and it stinks: it is neither tobacco nor marijuana; it is something unidentifiable and thoroughly vile. She spits on the ground and then looks straight at me with provocative and bloodshot eyes. I say nothing, she says very little; but those few words that she utters represent the lowest grade of the language that used to serve such great poets like Cervantes and Octavio Paz. Her Spanish is indeed as degraded as the stuff she is smoking, but she does not care, nothing seems to matter to her anymore......."