Manta, September 16, 2018
On the Pacific coast the liquids flow in floods. The coconut waters climb up the straws, the beers go down the throats. The ovoid nuts roll in the sea, bob on the surface of the waves.
At dusk one meets a band of Venezuelans. Sunday air, friendly as suns, they have fled the bled-white country, strangled by power: the land of hoarded petroleum, of scarce bread, of paper money, of violence rumbling in hollow bellies. The immigrants work in the factories of the coast, earn a few dollars and make millions of them, which they send to their families in Caracas or in the sierra. Others are undocumented and barely survive, juggle for the cars at the lights, sell off their bodies along the boulevards. On the bus to Montecristi, two girls sell empanadas between stops:
– No tenemos cédulas, they tell me.
Could you go work in another country? In Peru maybe?
– Es lo mismo en todas partes.
At the beach my new friends water me with a cheap liquor served in plastic bottles. Blend of coconut and dubious alcohol, sickly-sweet milk with a sour finish. Then they say it’s time to dance:
– El baile!
– Los tambores!
They drag me to the other end of the beach.
Already the drums resound. A circle has formed, in the middle is a savage dance. Sweats run down the bronze skins. Strong thighs paw the sands. A man writhes in front of the woman, back muscles carved with a knife. My friends push me into the middle of the circle, the crowd bursts out laughing:
– El gringo! El gringo baila!
Yes, I dance, I dance among the breaths and the sanded skins, the flesh soaked with coconut milk, the legs loosened by alcohol and tom-tom. I dance with the women with powerful legs, buttocks like Americas, j-strings like salty isthmuses. Men snatch my partner from me, I steal her back from them in turn, in a round of lips and hard sexes.
The last gulls drop through the grainy sky. The harbour lights blink at brunante. Soon the beach will close, we’ll be forced to leave. The tribe redoubles its ardour. It dances all the harder. It shouts each louder than the next. It loves itself and kisses full on the mouth.
In the dusk of a beach in Manta, in Ecuador, Venezuelans flip like fish out of water. Desperate and alive, they keep their bodies and shake them like a triumph, a victory of the hips and of sex, a victory of desire. Barefoot in the sand of the Pacific, the men dance, the women dance, to the sound of hides and palms.
On the other side of the isthmus it is already night.