It was a zone much feared because of the jungle, the tropical diseases and its remoteness.
The encampment consisted of 146 Italians, out of more than 1,200 that arrived that year.
The houses were large, built with round or carved woods and conveniently covered with galvanized iron plates, or else with straw. They followed the style of huts in the countryside. The kitchen, where I had to work, was separated from the bunk beds, just like the rooms for the boss and the foremen. According to Ramón, they would pay us good salaries, plus food and lodging and medical assistance and we would only have to work ten hours a day during six days of the week. They offered me a salary of 5 colones per day, equivalent to 5 dollars.‖
―And what was Ramon's job?‖ Susanita asked.
―When we started I did not have a clear idea of his duties. He had told me Americans wanted 'Natives of the country' to make sure Italians were well behaved and did the job they were supposed to do. His role was of an intermediary and informant to the Company; he was supposed to report any incidents, robberies or mutinies. By the way, I had to welcome the immigrants arriving from Mantua. They came on board the ship Australia and arrived one day in December 1888. Upon their arrival, the government and the Banana 196
Company checked them out to make sure they were healthy. Ramón and I came along with Dr. Juan Ulloa, sent by the government and Dr Calnek, sent by the Company. They would tell the Italians: 'tutti li,' that is 'all of you over there,' for the medical examination. This is the reason why, thereafter, all the Italians in Costa Rica were called 'tútiles.'"
―And what was your job, if you did not know anything about medicine?‖
―My role was to help the physician, writing down the data on the report that would be sent to Don Minor Keith, the contractor. Ramón was in charge of buying the food and other materials. However, he expected there would be problems, since he had read both the contract signed with these men in Italy and the one that would be applied in Costa Rica.
According to Ramón, in their native country the Italians were promised better salaries than the ones they were actually to receive in Costa Rica. Over there they signed a contract establishing a salary varying from 4.20 liras to 7 liras (1 lira was 1.25 colones and 1 colón was equivalent to 1 dollar). When they arrived in Puerto Limón, the Company established a single rate of 5 liras. They were also promised health services, financial aid in case they needed to return to their homeland due to illness and food poison. Moreover, the original contract signed by them in Italy said they would have the weekends off. But none of these conditions was fully met.‖
―The Italians were to get a salary four times the one they normally got in their hometown (Mantua), but were taking a major risk, because in case of illness they would only get half the pay."
―As I was telling you, we did expect to have some problems, but we did not anticipate we would really need to confront them. When I came into the boat I did not expect to find 562
Italian men, all of them between 18 and 22 years old, in the prime of their youth and more beautiful than anything I had previously seen in my life. When Doctor Calnek shouted 'tutti li,' they all followed his orders and undressed. My relation with Ramón had been so stormy and so much against my will, that I did not know if I liked it anymore.‖
―But that morning I realized my particular disposition. One by one the Italians marched in front of me, without any clothing whatsoever, tens of very beautiful men, strong, happy and ready to start quite an adventure, such as building a railroad in the middle of the impenetrable jungle. They would stop before us and the physician carefully checked them.
For my part, I was doing my own scrutiny.‖
―This one is a good specimen,‖ said the physician. ―He will be a good stud.‖ In his opinion, the Italians, like the bulls recently imported from Spain, were excellent sires. For my part, I thought there were no women in 30 miles around and the only available cow is me.‖
―The immigrants, in turn, came from a society where sodomy was even more common than in Costa Rica. Doctor Calnek himself, originally from London, said that Italy was the holiday paradise of the 'sodomites.' Some of the men winked an eye to me, as soon as they detected where in their anatomies was I putting my sight on. Others, when passing by my side and noticing my excitement, touched my behind, grabbed a hand or got a hard on. The 197
physician sent by the Costa Rican government laughed and said to me innocently, 'You surely remind them of their girlfriends.'‖
"This is the best story you have ever told me! Just by imagining 562 naked Italian peasants doing the military salute with their lower swords, I start to play the castanets with envy,‖
excited and joyful Susanita said.
"But it is not all, it was not all fun. I suffered and I learned," the narrator added.
"Once in the campground I noticed the injustices committed by the Company. Ramón was a tattletale that tried to squeeze all the juice he could from the poor workers. He did not respect the salaries and paid the same amount to the different types of workers: peasants, stonemasons or stonecutters and masons. The food was bad; believe me, since I was in charge of preparing it. In the morning we gave them just two loaves of bread, a cup of coffee and a piece of brown sugar to sweeten it. At lunchtime, they would get three loaves of bread, some rice or beans and about eight ounces of meat. They got the same portion for dinner. Some days the bread was rancid, other days we gave them macaroni, but with worms and when I complained, Ramón told me to grind them. Because of the many difficulties with transportation, we constantly suffered delays in our salaries."
"Don't explain, all that economic stuff! Please go on, tell me about the love affairs,"
Susanita interrupted again.
"Love and politics cannot and should not, be separated; as you yourself should know better, dear Susanita," The Duster replied.
"Without a woman in sight and with just one 'sodomite' in their headquarters, life in that campground was pretty busy for me. I had dozens of these men. Typically, they would come knocking at my door during the night, when the others were resting. Of course, I would let them in only if Ramón was not there. Otherwise, he would have killed me. I tried to be as fair as possible and whenever I could I would give them an extra piece of bread or some rice. They were always hungry and not only for my buttocks."
"But do not believe the entire campground depended upon my services. Inside some dark cellars, those more ardent satisfied themselves with some of their fellow workers who charged for their ministrations and some of these were making more money in this way than with their stonecutting. Still, some others would sell opium to dampen the pains of both body and soul. Ramón was involved in all the dark businesses going on in the campground and stole much of the money the Company provided to buy medicines."
"No one was surprised," she continued, "when suddenly those robust and hardy Italians, began to fall sick with yellow fever and dysentery. We had days when half the workers had to remain in their bunk beds; however, the physicians would hardly visit them. If we had medicines, we would give them an iron tonic mixed with rum to bring down the fever. But sometimes we did not have anything to give them and soon many began to die. Just in our campground I counted thirty men dead. The workers were getting really upset at the way the Company treated them and some of their leaders started to talk about a strike, something previously unheard of in the country."
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"The workers had never been organized, and we did not even know how to proceed to start a strike. But Ramón always found out who the leaders were and, if they got sick, he managed to make their medicines 'disappear.' At other times, a 'sudden problem' emerged, which prevented the sick men from reaching the hospital. They were left to die in their bunk beds; that simple."
"By October 1889, the situation had become unbearable and more and more workers were talking about starting a general strike. 'We will fight for our rights and we will not let the Company exploit us any more,' they shouted in Italian. They wanted physicians in the campgrounds, macaroni instead of black beans, wine instead of coffee, the salaries they were promised in Italy, paid overtime during weekends, and the possibility to return to their homeland."
"But what is the connection between this story and my situation? I do not understand,"
Susanita complained, now beginning to get bored.
"Perhaps if you let me finish...?" The Duster replied.
"Ramón did not leave our campground because he knew it was about to explode. He had heard the main leader among the nonconformists was Giorgio Dimani, a peasant with anarchist ideas. I knew him well since he was the love of my life. When I saw him, beautiful like Michelangelo's David, I could not but fall in love with him. One day I put some ground 'milenaria' leaves in his coffee, which I had previously used in my morning bath. When I saw him drinking it I said to myself he'd make a perfect lover. And I wished he'd come to me. And he did. That night, I had him in my room."
"Ín my homeland,´ Giorgio said to me, ´we also use milenaria leaves to attract love. But we do not use as much as you do.´ We made love, but he also told me how the European workers were organizing themselves to fight against exploitation. Í will organize a strike and then you and I will get married by the river. ´
It was precisely this Adonis who was the one Ramón had decided to get rid of! He had told me how he was going to do it: Í will kill that tútile in an accident, provoking a landslide.´
The strike was planned to begin on Tuesday October 22nd. Ramón was ready to provoke an ávalancheát the spot where Giorgio was working."
Susanita began to realize the parallels between their lives. However, he struggled against the idea. "My situation is not exactly like yours, dear Dusty, because you did not love Ramón," he commented. Nonetheless, he did not stop listening.
"I decided to go to Giorgio and ask him to move the beginning of the strike to Sunday, October 20, because his life was in danger. ´They want to kill you and you must act quickly,Í said. The peasant looked at me tenderly and asked me how did I know. I had to confess Ramón was planning an 'accident' himself. Then, instead of thanking me for the 199
information, he said he was worried for my safety. ´What if Ramón finds out you have told me?Í did not know what to say. ´He will surely kill me,Í replied."
"That Friday night we went to the river. We carried a red wax candle, vegetable oil, orange blossom flowers, ground iris roots and crushed anise. We wrote our names on the candle and drew a heart around them. We oiled the candle and mixed the herbs. Then we covered all but the tip of the candle with the herbal mixture, making sure it was well covered, lit the candle and dived, naked, into the river."
"Giorgio planted a hot kiss on my lips and made me his partner. That would be the last time we were together. Íf they kill me during the strike,´ he said, ´write a letter to my family and tell them why I died.Í also had something to request: Íf Ramón hangs me from a tree, pray for my soul.´ But perhaps the most important thing I learned that night was the pride of being what I was: Ńever lower your head because you are a sodomite. Proudly display what you are, because it is something good,´ my husband told me. Śome day they will say Giorgio's lover saved the first workers strike in this country,´ he predicted."
The Duster explained to his listener how that was the first workersśtrike in Costa Rica and how it became a model for those that ensued throughout the Banana Company campgrounds. The Costa Rican worker's movement emerged from it, which, in turn, gave rise to the Reformist Party and then, in 1931, to the Communist Party. Their goals were to improve the terrible conditions endured by the workers, to struggle to obtain social security, freedom to organize unions, an eight-hour working day and a decent minimum salary. "As a present," The Duster said, "he left me the socialist thought, the example of how to organize a strike and a reputation of a sodomite, irrespective of the fact that I was born in such a respectable family."
But Susanita could hardly hold himself; he was dying of curiosity:
"Do not tell me about politics. I am dying to know what happened to Giorgio."
"On Sunday, when the strike started, Ramón went berserk. Somebody had revealed his plan. He asked his friends and informants, to find out the name of the traitor. Nobody knew or said anything but when he came into my room he found a piece of red wax candle with our names on it, also the milenaria potion I had used to seduce Giorgio. I did not know Ramón had found these things. He looked for some rat poison and exchanged it for the milenaria potion. That very night I killed my husband," The Duster confessed.
Susanita began to cry.
"Do not permit the shedding of innocent people's blood, much less that of the Jews, for all they do is to earn their living," The Duster said to Susanita.
Susanita did not know what to say. "Perhaps I am waiting for a miracle which will bring Max back to me," he whispered.
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The Duster finally gave Susanita all the necessary instructions to accomplish his wishes.
"Go to the Central Market, across the store of your friend David. There they sell the following goods. Buy them and prepare the following concoction: six rose petals, one kitchen spoon of lavender, one kitchen spoon of cinnamon, one piece of red ribbon of about 3 centimeters, one five cent coin, one rose quartz, 18 centimeters of pink fabric, green thread or worsted yarn, thread and a needle. On Friday under the waxing moon, place the six ingredients on the center of the fabric. Tie its ends with your fingers and hold the sac by your heart. Then sing: Venus, queen of love, divine, obey me; bring to me that love that belongs to me. He is as perfect as I am; together we are destined to be and to share the beautiful. Venus, queen of love, so much filled with warmth, to me without hurting, bring my love."
The betrayed lover left The Duster's place and went directly to the Central Market. He did not know what to do with her friend's story, but was convinced the spell would not fail.
However, he felt like a thorn pushing through his heart. "Poor Giorgio! What a horrible way to die!" he thought. Once he bought the goods to make the concoction, he realized he was near David's store. From the distance, he saw him trying to sell a pair of underpants to a peasant woman.
"This? This is not a hole, missus. It is ventilation," the salesman argued. Susanita felt an enormous tenderness and a knot in his heart. He remembered Giorgio, The Duster's love and remembered all the poor people that had to leave their homelands.
"Could I betray them?" he asked himself.
Susanita took the most difficult steps of his life and came closer to the merchant. "David, the Nazis want to take over and exterminate you all. Here, take these documents and photographs I found at Max's! Warn your community and get ready for the worst!"
Once the truth was out he felt relieved, inhaled deeply, walked a few steps and then threw all the ingredients in a toilet hole. "They will do better in there," he said loudly.
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XXIII
"Shit Pole! Go back to Poland!" was the insult Samuel heard when he got on the bus with this father. The abuse reminded him of how in Poland some people shouted similar things, but demanding they go to Palestine.
Samuel returned to his childhood. When he first entered school in Długosiodło, the Christian Polish children had a feast with their Jewish classmates. One of the favorite sports in town was, precisely, throwing stones to the scared and poor Israelite students who since the end of World War I, were forced to attend public schools. The teachers were as anti-Semitic as their Polish students and therefore would not move a finger to prevent the abuse.
"They (the Jewish children) deserve this, because nobody asked them to flood our schools with lice," said the mathematics teacher.
Whereas Elena stoically braved the rain of stones, the boy decided to find protection among his fellow Jews. From the start, some kind of special gene made him rebellious against the notion that he was less than others and he was ready to fight. Increasing his strength he tried to change existing power relationships. Aware of the fact that the children attacking him were older, Samuel had to outsmart them. Among the older Jewish students a few of them were tall and fit for boxing. One of them was Jaimito Techman, who was 12, tall and good at throwing blows. Samuel promised him bread rolls and doughnuts if he protected him whenever the Polish children threw things at him.
Since the Poles feared Jaimito, on numerous occasions his partner was able to avoid Christian attacks. "Whomever has any problems with Samuel must fight with me," the bodyguard shouted, as he counted the bread rolls his protégé had brought for him. "We should not fear the Poles, otherwise they will forever walk all over us," said Jaimito to Samuel and to the other Jewish kids. "If they bother you, do not hesitate to call me," he added. Jaimito was obtaining as much benefits from the anti-Semitism as the Poles themselves.
However, something called Samuel's attention about his protector. He was the son of Don Salomón Techman, the Zionist leader in Długosiodło. Apparently his inclination for fighting originated in his father's teachings.
"Do not pay attention to the Techmans," Anita advised her son. "They are a bunch of crazy Zionists that want to take us all to Palestine to grow potatoes." The mother, who was a recalcitrant Socialist, did not want to relate to the Jewish nationalist ideology. Ever since she had read Theodor Herzlś book, The Jewish State, which proclaimed the need to colonize all Palestine for the Jews, she regarded that ideology as dangerous. "What it does is divide and creates bourgeoisie among us," she used to say.
But her only son would not pay heed to her advice. Slowly, Samuel became interested in Jaimitoś stories about the need for returning to Eretz Israel, their ancestors´ homeland.
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According to his friend, Zionism was the only ideology that could put an end to anti-Semitism, forever separating Christians and Jews.
"They will never accept us; and no matter how much we try to be like them, they are going to expel us, or sooner or later they will kill us," said Jaimito, repeating what his father used to say. The boy told Samuel the founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, had convinced himself that assimilation was impossible when he saw the anti-Semitic French masses condemn Dreyfus as a national traitor. "It was easy for them to accuse a fellow Jew of espionage in the army, simply because, for them, the Hebrews could not be loyal to France."
Although you could count the Zionists in town with the fingers of your right hand, they did have an impact on everybody. Anti-Semitism was on the increase. When Poland acquired independence, the population became more nationalistic and thus less tolerant of those who did not exactly match the image of what a Pole should be like.
Samuel began to assimilate the dreams of living in a country only inhabited by Jews. Each time he saw his mother doing paper work to immigrate, he begged her to take them to Palestine. "Mother, do not take us to America; buy tickets to Palestine," said Samuel. "If it was in my hands I would rather go to Moscow and never to Eretz Israel, where only the madmen go," Anita answered enraged.
But not everybody in town thought like her. Given the attacks of the nationalists, some Zionists in Długosiodło first decided to organize themselves and then to migrate to Israel and work in the kibbutzim. The town Zionists began to give lessons of Hebrew, of personal defense and agriculture. Their philosophy was that Jews should diversify economically and again be able to practice all trades, as it was the norm during the Biblical times.
The lessons of personal defense were so attractive to Samuel that he attended them without his mother's knowledge and approval. The boy knew that sooner or later he will not have Jaimito around and will be forced to fight for himself. To do so he must learn to fight.
The Zionists enraged religious people when they allowed women to fully participate in their movement. Women were included even in military training and were taught to learn how to use the old Polish rifles. For their part, the Socialists resented the fact that the Zionists mocked their dear Yiddish language and preferred to communicate in Hebrew.
In turn, the Zionists considered the Bundists to be fools aspiring to create an independent Socialist Jewish republic within Poland. At the end, many of the tactics for self-defense were used, not against the anti-Semite, but in fights between Jews.
The main source of problems was that both held their meetings at the same school. Each time they met, the smallest spark would kindle the conflict. One day, to demonstrate their independence from the Torah, the Bundists organized a dinner in which, horror of horrors, they served smoked ham! The religious advocates of the Agudat Israel were so outraged 203
seeing their Jewish brothers committing such a profanation that they started to hit them, destroying all the school desks.
Another time the Zionists decided to organize a dance with Hebraic songs, in which men and women danced holding hands. This motivated the religious sector to start fighting, ending it all in a major melee. "Heretics!" shouted the conservative members of the religious party, while exchanging blows with the Zionists.
Zionism never obtained the support of the majority. The Jewish bourgeoisie feared that large-scale propaganda would harm their position and could threaten emancipation achievements. The religious sector objected to the Zionist tendency to take in their hands what should be left to God or to the Messiah.
The Bundists considered the dancing event as a bourgeois entertainment and an enemy of the desired solidarity between Christians and Jews. Anita taunted the Zionists because, for them, any land was good to colonize and they were undertaking negotiations with the British to obtain Uganda. "Perhaps for you and your sister it would be better to move to Africa. You will fit in perfectly with your Turkish color," she said to her children.
Migrating to Palestine was not a real option for the Sikoras. The land of the ancient Israelites was just a desert where you could not find industries or commerce and the few Jews that had migrated there were hungrier than in Poland. When they got the tickets to travel, they decided to go to a different Promised Land. "Perhaps Costa Rica will be the new land the Messiah was going to give us," said Anita with plenty of irony. "God may promise one land and then give us another one. The important thing is that we get enough food from it and not the other way around - not the land eat us."
Once in the New World, Samuel did not have any protection, since Jaimito stayed in Długosiodło. Now, the boy had to fend for himself falling back on what he had learned in his self-defense lessons. His body had developed and the former fat and placid boy had become a beautiful and virile adolescent. He soon was able to boast of a tremendous physical strength and he had a face that drove women mad. His eyes had a fury in them, similar to that of a Spanish bull, always ready to gore whoever faced him. He had light brown eyes and impressive eyebrows that provoked sighs among all young girls at his high school.
The young man, in contrast to his sisters, did not wish to raise a family in Costa Rica. Since he arrived, he was looking for ways to get information about how to immigrate to Palestine.
Without letting his parents know, he started to study Hebrew at the hotel owned by a Zionist friend and to practice target shooting with two friends.
When it was time to do his bar mitzvah, unlike others, he could understand the Hebrew he was reading perfectly. "I will need it very soon," he would tell his friends. Although his father introduced him to a number of Jewish girls, all beautiful and rich, trying to make a good shiduch, Samuel was not interested. After courting and enamoring them, he would tell 204
them it was still too early for him to think of marriage. "I shall marry,‖ he told Elena,
―under the sky of Jerusalem."
When the man shouted to his father to leave Costa Rica, David was not ready for the aggression. Until then, the anti-Semitic incidents had been but rare. Most of the times, the Costa Ricans mocked him for his strange way of speaking Spanish, or else complained about the prices he charged for the goods he sold. Now and then, he did not receive good service at some store or at a government's office. On such occasions, he was never sure if the cause was anti-Semitism, or simple bad humor from the part of the clerk. But he never had to face such an open and hostile confrontation.
The anti-Semitic diatribes published in El Diario de Costa Rica were beginning to influence the population. One day this newspaper accused the Jews for adulterating the milk sold at the stores. Some other day, it said that Jews were persecuted because Judas had sold Jesus Christ, as if Judas and Jew were the same word. A few days later, the pasquinade reported that the Jews were planning to buy an entire Costa Rican province in order to settle millions of their countrymen. When the Government decided to register the Costa Rican Jews, the newspaper said they were refusing to cooperate and had attacked two policemen.
Just like in Germany, the anti-Semitic poison flooded the newspaper articles and the people's hearts. "Poles refuse to reveal the contents of their suitcases," was the headline of a recent article.
But the days when you could use bread rolls to buy protection had come to an end. Samuel, getting up from his seat on the bus, went to the man that had insulted his father. The thug was a government white-collar worker, neither poor nor rich, neither an idiot nor smart.
Just one of the souls filled with envy, wishing to blame others for their own miseries, never able to recognize their own infinite mediocrity.
When he saw David's son coming up to him, he also stood up and waited with a threatening pose. Soon the two men, or rather, the man and the boy, looked each other in the eyes, overwhelmed by hate and lack of understanding. Two thousand years separated them, still fighting over whether God could become a man, divide Himself into three parts, die or be reborn again.
"Would you repeat what you have just said to my father, please?" asked Samuel with his fists clenched and with his eyes like those of the bull when he sees a red cap. "Just what you heard, you shit Pole!" answered the government's clerk. But before he could finish the sentence, Samuel had jumped on him and started his first fight in the New World. The Christian hit Samuel three times on the face, making his left eyebrow bleed. Samuel was able to hit the man with a right punch, breaking his adversary's nose.
His father contemplated the brawl in dismay. His religiousness prevented him from agreein