Saturday 23rd, 6.15pm, Mattia and the boys go down to see what kind of local food is being sold on the pavement near the wall of our building; they also cross the street to keep company to a couple of co-volunteers, buying ice-cream or choco-fruta at the little shop. While they wait they comment on what happened about an hour before, when police cars and ambulances, sirens on, were rushing down to Búcaro, where some violent events must have certainly taken place.
6.30 they're all back on the roof, Michele&Sam putting on their pyjamas for a movie night.
6.45 we start hearing noises down below: from one of the rooms' windows we can see the military coming, with a couple of pick-ups letting soldiers off on the street underneath our terrace, right were we were a little while ago.
While Elena keeps the boys in our room, Mattia and some of the others keep watching, peeping from the bottom of the window. Shots are heard, shouts keep coming to our hears.
There's a brave soldier clambering up to the roofs of the houses on the other side of the street and moving on, walking on metal sheets to the centre of the block, while his colleague are moving in from the two small streets on the two sides. More military personnel are around, struggling with local inhabitants, who don't seem to realise the seriousness of the situation (they're quite accustomed to shots and all, so they seem to keep going as if anything is normal), and finally manage to empty those two streets.
The soldier on the roof fires some warning shots, bright strips of light in the dark, and calls his mates to go in somewhere.
Police personnel are coming too, now, plenty of them. It's a major operation, nobody seems to remember any tale of something similar. There must be over 30 armed people involved, including special forces, streaming in and out of those alleys, while cars and pick-ups keep coming and going.
More shots go off.
It's not hard to understand that they must be after gang-members involved in the shootings earlier in the afternoon, 2km down the road, and they won't get caught easily.
After some confused time, during which panic starts spreading at the news that a woman working in UPAVIM couldn't find her daughter, though everything gets solved soon (she was with a neighbour), we see a couple of young adults and a woman being carried away by the police, but it's unclear what their position was. An ambulance goes into one of the two streets along the block, but we can't understand whether there are actually wounded or dead people to take. Local women rush in the alleys, going to check if everyone is safe at home.
Things are calming down now, most of the police seem to go away, though many stop just a few blocks away; some military and police chiefs are now here, exchanging opinions.
The locals understand the worst has passed, people start moving around again, and then a familiar cry gets heard again, signalling the end of the troubles: tamales, tamales, tamales... the shouting lady is back in business, selling her evening food, so life is back to normal, according to local standards.
The boys of course want to know what all that fuss and most of all the shots were about, so now daddy takes them to the window and then the terrace, just to show them all the military and police presence. Then back to their movie and more talk on all this will be done the next day.
The next week, talking at school over lunch with his students (especially Waldin, who lives in the very road where everything was happened, so much so that gang-members tried to seek refuge in his house, banging on the door, luckily in vain), Mattia finds out that most of the wanted men managed to run away, sliding down the ravine at the other end of the block.
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