THE EPIDEMIC INTERLUDE OR THE DAY TERERÉ WAS ABOLISHED
... Now I must dictate/write it down; write it down somewhere. It's the only way for me to prove that I still exist. But isn't being buried in letters the most complete way to die? No? Yes? And then? No. Absolutely not. Emaciated will of the chochez.... One writes when one can no longer act. To write fementiras truths. To renounce the benefit of oblivion. To dig the well that one is oneself. To pull up from the bottom what has been buried there for so long. Yes, but am I sure to pull up what is or what is not? I do not know, I do not know. To do titanically the insignificant is also a way of acting. Even if it is the other way around. The only thing I am sure of is that these Notes have no addressee.
I am the supreme, Augusto Roa Bastos 1974.
I leave my house, I put on my headphones to walk in solitude, a few minutes after leaving I realize that everything is louder than usual, and these electronic sounds begin to bother me. I decide to listen to the silence. I walk to the nearest supermarket I have, which is about 12 blocks, I go in search of bread for my grandmother. On the other hand, she doesn't know that there is a worldwide pandemic. I walk through the streets of my neighborhood in Asuncion, the blocks go by and I see no one, I pass by many houses with private security guards, we greet each other strangely, I notice that no one has a thermos of tereré. As I walk I begin to hear the sound coming from the radios and televisions from inside the homes, I hear many birds, no motorcycles pass, no cars pass, no people pass, not even dogs barking at me. I deviate from the road straight to the supermarket to go down an avenue, looking for movements, looking for sounds. I reach the avenue. The sonorous waves of engines crashing against the asphalt appear, which already begins to feel its absence. This used to be an avenue of encounters and disagreements, of frictions and tensions. I walk alone, no one appears on my horizon. Motorcycles do appear here, but they don't wear helmets, they do wear masks. I continue walking, people still do not appear, I look down and find plastic gloves on the ground, I do a few more blocks, I find more gloves, I pass by a garbage dump, many masks and gloves, and the last glove I see is folded like a condom when it is thrown away after being used, now the gloves cover the streets, and condoms are locked in the boxes of pharmacies or in the rooms of the houses in Asuncion, since in addition the access to motels in the city has dropped by almost 70%.
Now in this city the machines work, only the machines sound.
**
There is no panic, no fear, but silence.
The modern human no longer knows silence.
He does not know what to do with it.
**
Ojoikupaiteta lo mita hina, nderasore señora hendy la situación ! ( People are about to stab each other, the situation is difficult, ma'am)
A lady says to another lady at the corner of her house. She tells her that at the bus stop in the direction of the capital, is where the most tension is felt.
And we have to get to work on time. I've been at the bus stop for three hours. And the driver says: "Shh! We can't fill the bus... and the people can't take it anymore.
The tension is felt, the streets are empty of people, few cars but overflowing with an energy that embraces us all, it emerges from inside the houses, apartments, offices, settlements, mansions, pieces of wood, pieces of cardboard, and covers the air of the city, it is like the slow and arrhythmic breathing of a social body that breathes together after a long time.
What will this breathing together become?
According to Byung-Chul Han there are two ways: either we come out of this more "lonely, aggressive or competitive" or "with a great desire for embrace, (for) social solidarity, contact, equality". Here in this part of the world, tereré is beginning to be abolished, nobody shares it anymore and there are some brave people who face the custom alone.
**
The birds of the city move freely, listen to each other, sing and enjoy themselves; while foxes and wolves wander in moments when hyperstimulation is scarce and speculation is in abundance.
**
In discouraging situations truth demands as much support as error.
**
The U.S. already has more victims than on 9/11 in 2001. A note in a foreign newspaper. And I quote Jean Baudrillard: "We have fallen into the immoral panic of indifferentisation, of the confusion of all criteria". In these moments when the wildest face of the mass media begins to come to light and where every comparison, no matter how small, triggers the quantitative nature of terror.
Terror is a condition in which the imaginary completely dominates the imagination. The imaginary is the fossil energy of the collective mind, the images that experience has deposited in it, the limitation of the imaginable. Imagination is the renewable and unprejudiced energy. Not utopia, but recombination of the possible.
Ñamanombata (We are all going to die), I hear on the radio as I pass by.
Meanwhile, in a city 300 km from Asunción, called Ayolas, on the border with Argentina, it has been decided to close the entrance to the city with sand and a coffin to persuade people about the danger of violating the quarantine. Locked up with the death of the gatekeeper.
**
One day, some other day, one more day, one day positive, one day negative, one day I realized, one day it will end and one day it will begin.
**
We feel we are back in the era of sovereignty. The sovereign is the one who decides on the state of emergency. A fairly well known story in these lands.
Here Lorena a neighbor friend of the family comes to visit us, she suffers from hemorrhagic disorders, she needs to have a surgical intervention with immediacy. She had an appointment at a public health center here in Asuncion. It is well known that public institutions are full of myths and legends, and one of them is the difficulty of getting an appointment for an operation. Lorena was granted an appointment at the end of last year, for April 22, 2020. She was living as best she could these last months, waiting for this operation in order to stop her bleeding. The coronavirus arrived, the borders were closed, hospital appointments were cancelled.
When this issue is resolved we will see if we can give you an appointment for December.
She is still bleeding, she is still waiting.
"The limitation of freedom imposed by governments is accepted in the name of a desire for security that has been induced by the same governments that now intervene to satisfy it" says Giorgio Agamben. This is how radical changes are accepted, driven by the same governments that show off their sovereignty by selling paranoia as products, and legitimacy as lack of constitutionality. Leaving Lorena, like thousands of others, waiting. Bleeding.
**
I turn on the television, watch "Ants", an animated film about an ant colony, I see the final scene and the main character says: "to think that we are part of a bigger world that we cannot see", the camera moves farther and farther away from the ant colony until it shows the skyscrapers of a city, making the ants become tiny. The encounter with the virus is our intimate encounter with a "non-human" life form, an encounter with another realm, specifically in what has to do with our relationship with "invisible" life.
In the history of humankind there have been previous plagues on the occasion of an encounter of the human with the non-human that have upended beliefs and transformed forms of sociability. But unlike some events of the past, this time our unawareness is not attached to a divine wrath, but to the agency of man - laboratory strain virus, weapon of imperialism or crisis management tool of the system.
Although we do not attribute the appearance of the coronavirus to divine punishment, God continues to watch over us from on high, and this time from a Military Force helicopter, Monsignor Edmundo Valenzuela toured the city of Asuncion imparting his prayer for the coronavirus, he prayed for doctors and the sick for a speedy recovery from the crisis.
**
I leave the supermarket, I turn my head to both sides, I see no one, I stop my gaze and I see a man sitting at the bus stop. He looks at me, he has a very particular smile, he is drinking tereré and has a basket of chips at his side. I approach, he is a chipa seller. He smiles at me.
Mbaeteko la porte don! (How are you doing sir?) Calm down!
He looks at me with a smile, while drinking his tereré.
Ko asunto koa ko hasata che amigo, no te preocupes (This problem is going to end my friend, don't worry).
He shakes his head in a friendly gesture, as if giving me advice with such confidence, like that of a very close friend. We look at each other for a few seconds, I nod and say goodbye, turn around and leave. A few seconds pass, I stop, go to the chipero and ask him the time, to which he answers 14:15.
I get home and look at the time, it is 13:35, it seems strange to me. In Paraguay the time was set back on March 22. The chipero never changed his time, he lives an hour before the rest and does not know it, maybe his ignorance, his belonging to a past time is what feeds his calm. Just like my grandmother who has been unaware for more than 40 days that we live in a sick society that waits to be cured of its own illnesses and fears. She and the chipero share a feeling that many of us are far from experiencing.
Juanjo Pereira