BAR DO PARQUE<\/p>\n
The prostitutes flit from table to table, exchanging jokes with each other, saying hi to the regulars, and introducing themselves to the new foreigners.\u00a0 A pleasant breeze is blowing and the moonlight is filtering down through the leaves of the trees.\u00a0 The condensation from the chilled bottles of beer is collecting in ever growing pools on the metal tables.\u00a0 Under my folding metal chair is a pile of pink paper peanut wrappers.\u00a0 It is almost midnight but it is crowded, because it is always crowded at midnight in the Bar Do Parque.<\/p>\n
The Bar Do Parque is located on the edge of the park, across the street from the Hilton, in downtown Belem.\u00a0 On the other side of the bar is the lavishly ornate Municipal Theater.\u00a0 At the entrance of the bar is a gazebo styled kiosk where waiters in white jackets sell drinks.\u00a0 Up half a dozen steps is a stone floor platform, which is surrounded by a waist high iron railing. On this platform about 25 tightly packed metal tables make up the bar.<\/p>\n
The year is 1987 and I am sitting with the expats at the moment, or expatriots from the U.S. and Australia.\u00a0 David says he’s no longer American, he’s international.\u00a0 The four men I’m sitting with have been working abroad from 10 to 25 years each.\u00a0 Most of them haven’t been back to their home countries in years and may never return again.<\/p>\n
Walter now lives in Santar\u00e9m, at the mouth of the Tapaj\u00f3s River, about half the way up the Amazon to Manaus. He works as a port navigator for a company based in San Diego, California.\u00a0 He says he never even entered the company office for the first two years of his employment.\u00a0 His entire professional relationship with his employer is conducted via telex.\u00a0 He was in Bel\u00e9m now on his way to his next assignment in Venice, Italy.\u00a0 To him Brazil is now his home.\u00a0 He has an adopted son in Santar\u00e9m, who has just made him a grandfather, and he has already arranged that he will be buried here when he dies.<\/p>\n
Walter has been here in the Amazon almost 25 years and is sort of a guru to the other expats in the region.\u00a0 David, who also now lives in Santar\u00e9m, told me that he had heard about Walter for over a year before he actually met him.\u00a0 Everyone, expat or native knew Walter and everybody treated him with respect.\u00a0 So did I.\u00a0 He was a wealth of knowledge and wisdom about the Amazon, and most of it seemed to be true.<\/p>\n
Walter spoke Portuguese with an American accent but he spoke it well.\u00a0 He busted balls with the waiters and the shoeshine boys who hung around him when business was slow.\u00a0 Some of the girls who were working the bar had been his friends for years and he chatted and exchanged cordialities with them also.<\/p>\n
I pumped him for as much information as I could.\u00a0 First came the standard question that everyone asked when coming to the Bar Do Parque.\u00a0 “How many of these woman are pros?”\u00a0 I received the standard answer in chorus.\u00a0 “All of them.”\u00a0 I inquired further.\u00a0 The woman with the sexy body and no teeth, who was always sitting down at some gringo’s table, had been seen throwing rocks at a man who had not been sufficiently generous.\u00a0 The really beautiful mulata, that David and I said we were going to fight a duel over, was schizophrenic.\u00a0 Maybe she would break a bottle and stab you or maybe she wouldn’t.<\/p>\n
“What about the polio victims?” I asked Walter.\u00a0 Among the particularly shocking sights in North East Brazil were the twisted bodies of polio victims who begged in bus stations and plazas.\u00a0 The ones with shriveled legs had leather pads strapped on their hands like sandals and walked crab style at an astonishing speed, even negotiating stairs as fast as I could.<\/p>\n
“You have to remember where you are.” he replied.\u00a0 “This isn’t S\u00e3o Paulo.\u00a0 You’re in the Amazon now.\u00a0 Belem is the beginning of Amazonia.\u00a0 They didn’t get polio vaccinations here until about 10 years ago.”<\/p>\n
I wanted to find out about the other medical oddities I had seen here.\u00a0 It would have been more scientific to go ask the state health authorities but Walter seemed to be well informed and after all, I was out drinking a few beers more than anything else.\u00a0 My academic training tells me that I should therefore take his word with a grain of salt, but my intuition of human character told me that he probably knew what he was talking about.<\/p>\n
“What about all the beggars on Avenida Presidente Vargas?” I asked.<\/p>\n
“Oh the guy that was amputated at the waist and sits there like a stump?”<\/p>\n
“Yeah, like a human bowling pin.”\u00a0 I answered.\u00a0 I passed this man several times a day on the bustling Avenida Presidente Vargas.\u00a0 My first day in town I was being swept along by the pedestrian flow when suddenly the crowd parted and I nearly tripped over him.\u00a0 He balanced upright on the pavement at waist level and held his arms out stoically for alms.\u00a0 He was well dressed and shaved and his hair was combed.\u00a0 His arms however, had been amputated at the elbows.\u00a0 When I recovered from the shock I handed him a coin of 50 centavos.\u00a0 He raised his stumps to receive it and I realized with a shudder that I was going to have to touch the shriveled ends of his arms.\u00a0 I held the edge of the coin with my fingertips and he skillfully snared it without touching me and dropped it into his shirt pocket.<\/p>\n
“I never give him any money.” Walter took a puff on his cigarette and a sip of his scotch.\u00a0 I waited patiently.\u00a0 There was no doubting the pecking order.\u00a0 I was a greenhorn here.\u00a0 Walter turned his burly body and leaned towards me.\u00a0 “I don’t know what happened to him, but he owns three apartments now.\u00a0 On the other hand, the guy with elephantitis, I give him 10 cruzados every time I see him.\u00a0 And the same thing with the guy that goes crawling around on all fours.”<\/p>\n
I knew who he was talking about.\u00a0 I had just seen him for the first time today crawling around near the Hilton.\u00a0 All four of his limbs were disfigured and he was dirty, unshaven and truly wretched.\u00a0 After this I always gave him some money which he took with his lobster claw right hand.\u00a0 His left hand was fitted out with a kind of leather padding that he used for hauling himself along the pavement.<\/p>\n
The first time I met Walter, I had been drinking beer with Frederico, from Bilbao, Spain, and Gary, the Australian, in a German restaurant that Walter was a partial owner of.\u00a0 It only takes a few syllables of any language that isn’t Portuguese to warrant an introduction from a neighboring stranger in Brazil.\u00a0 Walter introduced himself.\u00a0 Frederico, who studied at a university in Germany, replied in German.\u00a0 “Eh?\u00a0 Only English and Portuguese here.” was Walter’s reply from his barstool.\u00a0 We invited him to join us at our table and he proceeded to pay for everything for the rest of the night.\u00a0 I was embarrassed but personality strength was on his side.<\/p>\n
Gary was planning a trip into the interior of the jungle to see what you couldn’t see just cruising by boat up the Amazon from Bel\u00e9m to Manaus.\u00a0 His idea was to board a supply boat going up one of the rivers, perhaps the Rio Negro.\u00a0 Walter was telling us about the gold mining areas up the Tapaj\u00f3s, where 50,000 miners were going from rags to riches, or rags to rags, or rags to riches to rags again, depending on their luck and how much cacha\u00e7a they drank.\u00a0 “You guys wouldn’t last a week up there.\u00a0 If malaria didn’t kill you, the other miners would.”<\/p>\n
The Tapaj\u00f3s gold mining areas are notorious for their lawlessness and their homicide rates.\u00a0 According to Walter if one of the miners wanted your shirt and was drunk enough on cacha\u00e7a, he might shoot you for it.<\/p>\n
The area was also full of malaria, and this touched off another major discussion.\u00a0 The only people that seemed to take the malaria pills were the foreign tourists like Gary and me.\u00a0 The expats and the natives seemed to scoff at them, because the pills themselves cause damage if taken for a prolonged period of time.\u00a0 Besides, as long as you were on the Amazon, there was little risk of malaria.\u00a0 It was when you went into the interior that malaria outbreaks became more common.\u00a0 However, all the expats seemed to have contracted the disease at some point.\u00a0 David swore that when he drank too much beer without eating that he started getting chills again.\u00a0 Walter had survived it once himself and still had fevers from time to time.<\/p>\n
At the end of the night in the German restaurant, Walter brought Frederico and I a couple of huge shots of straight cacha\u00e7a.\u00a0 Neither Walter nor his son Raimundo, both capable of consuming enormous amounts of alcohol, would touch the stuff.<\/p>\n
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” said Walter, as if he had seen it a thousand times before.\u00a0 Twenty minutes later, Frederico announced that he was leaving, left some money on the table, and departed, ignoring my demands to join me for another cacha\u00e7a.\u00a0 Half an hour after that I was violently retching my guts out in the street outside the bar.<\/p>\n
Two days later when I met David in the Bar Do Parque, he introduced himself to me with: “So you’re the Yank who got sick on cacha\u00e7a the other night.”\u00a0 I was already famous in Bel\u00e9m with the expats.<\/p>\n
David had been in the Amazon for two years and ran an excursion tour with his boat from Santar\u00e9m.\u00a0 Before that, he had worked for international oil companies for a dozen years in Southeast Asia and Africa.\u00a0 “Oil and gas trash,” he said often, “the best people in the world.”<\/p>\n
I sat with the expats and drank beer for several nights.\u00a0 They traded stories about their work and their lives in various places around the world: Indonesia, Thailand, New Guinea, Nigeria.\u00a0 Wherever their jobs took them.\u00a0 They were well paid in American dollars and after work there was beer and local women.<\/p>\n
David had a sixteen year old mistress in Santar\u00e9m.\u00a0 Her parents didn’t mind.\u00a0 An American was a good catch.\u00a0 Even a poor American has a lot more earning power than the average Brazilian. When I announced that I had a Brazilian girlfriend, I was answered with skepticism and laughter.<\/p>\n
“What bar did you meet her in?” asked David.<\/p>\n
I protested.\u00a0 “No, she doesn’t go to bars.\u00a0 She’s not like these girls here.”<\/p>\n
Even more laughter.\u00a0 “We’ve all heard that one before.\u00a0 An American is a one\u2011way ticket out of the favelas.\u00a0 They like your gringo dollars.”\u00a0 I had just enough self doubts of my own to laugh with them.<\/p>\n
Walter leaned in for emphasis.\u00a0 “Whatever you do, don’t marry her.\u00a0 You’re down here now for a few months having a good time.\u00a0 So you fuck around with these girls as much as you want, but don’t marry one of them.\u00a0 You’ll be miserable.\u00a0 If you take her back to the States, what are you going to have to talk to her about?\u00a0 Maybe you like the sex now but what are you going to have when that wears off?\u00a0 Nothing!\u00a0 You listen to your old dad because I know what I’m talking about.”<\/p>\n
Naturally there are women in S\u00e3o Paulo who are as modern, urbane and sophisticated as any you will meet in Soho or the Upper West Side of New York, but Walter’s warning was applicable to a sizable percentage of the population.\u00a0 I had already received marriage proposals from several Brazilian women.\u00a0 They were so charming that it was hard not to consider them seriously.<\/p>\n
A blond man in his mid 20’s, who appeared to be either German or Swiss, sat down at the next table and was promptly joined by four of the local women.\u00a0 “There going to cost him a fortune.” chuckled Walter.\u00a0 “First it’s a cigarette, then it’s a drink, and then it’s something to eat.”<\/p>\n
I spent several other evenings in the Bar Do Parque in the company of a young American couple from Wisconsin.\u00a0 Mike and Mary had recently graduated from college and were traveling in Brazil for three months before continuing on to grad school.\u00a0 I had heard them speaking English in my hotel and introduced myself.<\/p>\n
We sat in the bar drinking beer, discussing Brazil’s external debt, and evaluating the hookers.\u00a0 Several of them were sitting at a table nearby talking to a kid of about 18 who had polio and walked around on his hands.\u00a0 He was one of the regulars, always spinning himself between the tables and begging for money from the patrons.<\/p>\n
At one table was a group of blonde Dutch sailors, each one paired off with a dark skinned local girl.\u00a0 Very few of the men spoke Portuguese so they mostly conversed and joked with each other while the women talked amongst themselves.\u00a0 Occasionally a couple would exchange kisses and then return to their drinks.\u00a0 They all seemed to be relaxed and enjoying themselves.<\/p>\n
One of the sailors had been coming to Bel\u00e9m for years and his companion was apparently his steady girl when he came into port.\u00a0 He spoke English and had turned around to our table to talk with Mike and Mary.\u00a0 His girl turned around also and offered us a plate with sliced salami.\u00a0 I filled up her glass with beer and we chatted pleasantly in Portuguese for twenty minutes.<\/p>\n
There were several kids who wandered from table to table selling peanuts.\u00a0 They were only about 8 or 9 years old but despite their age they stayed up and worked the bar until it closed. After being in Brazil for a while this kind of thing no longer seemed unusual since there were so many children living in the streets.\u00a0 These kids truly looked like waifs with their little backpacks and their buckets of peanut packets that were kept warm by glowing coals in the bottom of the bucket.<\/p>\n
A couple of handfuls of peanuts were wrapped in carefully folded pinkish\u2011brown paper, usually in the shape of a cone.\u00a0 The price ranged from 3 cruzados each to 3 packets for 5 cruzados.\u00a0\u00a0 Haggling was definitely part of the game.\u00a0 Mike especially enjoyed the harsh bargaining.\u00a0 “Give me 3 for 5 cruzados.”\u00a0 he demanded.<\/p>\n
The little boy protested with righteous indignation.\u00a0 “No.\u00a0 They cost 2 for 5 cruzados.”<\/p>\n
Mike was adamant.\u00a0 “Give me 3 for 5.” he repeated.<\/p>\n
The little boy shook his head and pouted.\u00a0 He looked like a tired little child who only wanted to be tucked lovingly into bed.\u00a0 I was ready to give him 10 cruzados for 1 packet.\u00a0 Mike held firm.\u00a0 “3 for 5.”\u00a0 he said once more.<\/p>\n
The little boy nodded assent and the deal was completed.\u00a0 Then the boy smiled and went off to the next table.\u00a0 We bought peanuts 5 or 6 times a night and frequently went through the negotiating process.\u00a0 We never paid more than 3 packets for 5 cruzados.<\/p>\n
The sailors and their girls left and we ordered another round.\u00a0 After waiting patiently for 10 minutes or so it became obvious that our waiter had forgotten our beer.\u00a0 Moreover all attempts to attract his attention had failed.\u00a0 We had tried the usual Brazilian system of getting a waiter’s attention by whistling a loud “PSSST!” at him, but he hadn’t responded.<\/p>\n
“What an idiot.” I grumbled in frustration.<\/p>\n
“Yeah,” grimaced Mary, “a real shit for brains.”<\/p>\n
A flash of drunken inspiration hit me.\u00a0 “Hey shit for brains!”\u00a0 I shouted out over the buzz of conversation in the bar.\u00a0 The waiter, who was on the other side of the bar, turned to see what I wanted.\u00a0 I gestured for another bottle of beer and he gave me the ubiquitous thumbs up sign.<\/p>\n
Mary went into convulsions, howling with laughter while Mike sat expressionless, in a state of alarmed shocked.\u00a0 I grabbed a handful of peanuts and tried to act as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, but I had the adrenaline pumping through me.\u00a0 Mary was still screaming with laughter and a lot of people at the neighboring tables were looking at us.<\/p>\n
“If I don’t get the crap beat out of me, this is really funny.” I said wishing Mary would shut the hell up.\u00a0 However a minute later our beer arrived with a smile and it was evident that nobody in the bar spoke enough English to understand my churlish overture.\u00a0 A minute later Mary’s laughter subsided and our table receded peacefully once more into the general atmosphere of perennial hubbub in the Bar Do Parque.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BAR DO PARQUE The prostitutes flit from table to table, exchanging jokes with each other, saying hi to the regulars, and introducing themselves to the new foreigners.\u00a0 A pleasant breeze is blowing and the moonlight is filtering down through the leaves of the trees.\u00a0 The condensation from the chilled bottles of beer is collecting in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":266,"featured_media":0,"parent":61,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-74","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leahyinstitute.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leahyinstitute.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leahyinstitute.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leahyinstitute.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/266"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leahyinstitute.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/leahyinstitute.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/74\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90,"href":"https:\/\/leahyinstitute.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/74\/revisions\/90"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leahyinstitute.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/61"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leahyinstitute.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}