{"id":112,"date":"2011-04-21T00:30:39","date_gmt":"2011-04-21T04:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/?p=112"},"modified":"2011-03-08T00:11:43","modified_gmt":"2011-03-08T04:11:43","slug":"time-part-2-of-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/?p=112","title":{"rendered":"Time (part 2 of 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Umberto had been arrested, of course. He was interrogated in increasingly brutal manners for a week. Then he was tossed out of a moving van at the front door, not of his parents gated house, but at the tiny one-story of his now-reluctant mentor. The man took in Umberto, cleaned him up, fed him, and then demanded that he leave no later than one week later. <\/span><\/p>\n

Umberto left after six days. He took all the money the professor had in his house and the man’s watch, because it was infallible and included a calendar. He sneaked into the chauffeur’s apartment of some family friends who no longer had a chauffeur. There he spent his days planning and his dark nights without lights watching. On evenings when the friends or their neighbors went out, Umberto entered their unattended, excessive homes and helped himself to cash, food, clothes, and supplies. Even after he had enough to rent a little apartment, he frequently visited the former chauffeur’s apartment to watch and steal. He became accustomed to doing his thinking in its quiet darkness, with only the dim streetlight through the curtains illuminating his note-taking.<\/span><\/p>\n

Slowly, over a period of a year, Umberto began to wage a war against his former friends and neighbors, the system, the establishment, the government, and the foreigners who were smothering the majority of his countrymen with their excesses and selfishness. People began to speculate about his identity and location. He was called a revolutionary and a guerrilla warrior. <\/span><\/p>\n

In a moment of desperation to be understood, he released a statement to explain that it was not anger but disillusionment that motivated him. \u201cYou should all be disillusioned and motivated. It’s time for change!\u201d he concluded.<\/span><\/p>\n

Umberto gathered to himself followers who also believed in effecting an end to poverty. They were poor themselves. And they didn’t know Umberto\u2019s history. They thought that he too was a poor boy with a desperate story. They thought he knew of what he spoke; that he had lived what they have lived. <\/span><\/p>\n

As the men and handful of women were hunted by the police, the government, and eventually the soldiers, Umberto and his <\/span>gente <\/em><\/span>sequestered in the interior provinces, away from the urban centers. They built encampments in the hills, in the valleys, and in the mountains. They took over a small, uninhabited island in the middle of a mountain lake; uninhabited because it very nearly disappears at high tide and is completely submerged for weeks after hurricanes.<\/span><\/p>\n

As their ideology mutated and their resources increased, Umberto and his <\/span>gente <\/em><\/span>began to execute more robberies of wealthy homeowners. They escalated to banks, city halls, and other government buildings with cash holdings. They carefully divided and distributed the proceeds among the poor. They began in the capital city; the largest in the nation and the location of the biggest slum. After their first hit, fifty families in a slum that almost completely surrounds the city discovered at their door a small, plain box filled with cash.<\/span><\/p>\n

(All but seven families reported their finding. Twenty-eight of them end up on the evening news. Government agencies \u201creclaim\u201d their money. Fifteen families stay out of the public eye, despite all of their neighbors knowing their good fortune. Of the seven families who did not reveal their find, four moved out of the slums into brand new houses in developing suburbs, and three immediately sent their children to better schools and began planning for their college education. In the next decade, all of the college bound children completed their courses, got good-paying jobs, and moved their parents and siblings even further away from the slums.)<\/span><\/p>\n

In a period of 15 months, a legend was born; a hero of the tropical jungle was created.<\/span><\/p>\n

——–<\/span><\/p>\n

Umberto and his <\/span>gente<\/em><\/span> hid out in the jungles. They camouflaged themselves into the surrounding flora. They harmed only the animals they needed for nourishment. They left nary a footprint on the jungle floor. For their forays into towns and cities, they dressed like everyone else. No rows of bullets crossing their chest. No ski mask covering their face. <\/span><\/p>\n

They blended with the general population wherever they went. Peasant garb in the banana plantation towns. Worn blue jeans and tight shirts in the urban streets. Tailor-made suits for reconnaissance trips to banks and government offices. <\/span><\/p>\n

However, unfortunately, Umberto and his <\/span>gente <\/em><\/span>never realized that there will always be \u201cthe poor.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Umberto\u2019s parents never heard from him again. <\/span><\/p>\n

——–<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The soldiers asked Umberto for his final words, but didn\u2019t wait for them. \u201cTime without courage and time without fear is just so much wasted time,\u201d he thought as the bullets began piercing his body. Then one of them punctured his heart.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou should all be disillusioned and motivated. It’s time for change!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scattered-smothered-covered"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=112"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114,"href":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions\/114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}