Little Boy from Fuerte Apache

Look, unless I can come up with some kind of gimmick, I have to accept at least one of the following realities:

1. I'm not interesting enough to regularly write a blog, or
2. I'm not self-indulgent enough to regularly write a blog.

Either way, as you can see, I'm having no more luck this time around at maintaining a blog than I did the first couple tries. Ah, well.

Anyway, last night I went to Villa Devoto to go to the movies with a friend. I screwed up and got off the bus at the wrong corner (though, luckily, only a couple blocks away from where I was supposed to get off). As I was waiting there, I saw what appeared to be two boys playing on the other side of the street. They appeared to be wrestling around. I watched with more than a little curiosity, having enjoyed a childhood wrestling match or two myself.

Since I'm now a "trained" intelligence analyst, I'm pretty conscious of a lot of the mental processes that most people unconsciously go through when trying to evaluate something, whether it be a difficult problem, a news story, or simply a puzzling situation they are witnessing first hand. Watching these two boys go at it was no exception. Let me give you a blow-by-blow of my analysis:

Hey, look at those two little kids wrestling. I remember when I used to do that!

But, it's kind of dangerous for them to be wrestling there right on the corner with the traffic passing by so closely. What if one of them falls in the street?

Wait a minute...there's a grassy park right there, why aren't they just playing in the park?

Shit, they might actually be fighting. They're both really little, maybe 8 or 10
years old. They can't hurt each other that badly, but maybe I should cross the
street and break them up anyway.

But wait, there are people over there, responsible adults, just walking by without saying or doing anything. I really haven't been in this neighborhood before, maybe this is just how kids play here.

Besides, there´s no yelling or anything going on. They're obviously just having
fun.

Oh wait, this one is pulling that one's shirt off...and now he's turning his pocket inside out...and now he's taking his money. And now he's kicking him and crossing the street. Damn it, I should have gone and broken it up.

The miniature robber crossed the street, and started to walk by me. "Hey, kid, what are you doing?" I ask him, so he starts to run. I started to run after him but then thought, "What am I going to do? Beat up a 10 year old and re-steal the money?" so I just let him take off. I instead turned my attention to the little boy across the street, trying to get himself dressed on the corner.

When I reached him, I saw that he was quite a bit smaller than his adversary, which I hadn't noticed when they were just a tangled ball of little kids a few moments before. He was crying, swearing at himself. I asked him what happened, and he told me the bigger boy had just grabbed him and told him to hand over everything he had, and he'd tried to tell him that he didn't have anything, and that's what prompted the beating. I asked him if he lived nearby, and he told me he lived in Fuerte Apache, which is, depending on who you ask, the most dangerous neighborhood in all of the Buenos Aires urban area. I asked him how much money he lost, and he told me $19 pesos (a little less than 5 bucks). He had probably already sized up the situation and was lying through his teeth to me, and I was conscious of this but didn't care. I took $19 out of my wallet and handed it to him, and told him to be safe on his way home (I sure as hell wasn't going to walk him to Fuerte Apache, even if I hadn't had arrangements to meet a friend).

It's hard telling what he'd had to do to get that money. Although there are some pretty young little criminals, he obviously didn't have a weapon and was far too small to present a credible threat to someone, unarmed as he was. He probably had just begged it, or sold gum, or something. The typical stuff that little poor kids have to do here that will almost certainly prevent them from getting a proper education to ensure that their own kids won't be the victims of a Liliputian street-corner assault and robbery 15 or 20 years from now. $19 pesos is a pittance, but for a little boy, especially from Fuerte Apache, it was probably quite a bit, and I got the feeling that he was expected to go home with something to show for the day he'd spent out and about.

He didn't thank me for the money, but he seemed a little relieved and had stopped crying. As he was walking away he stopped, turned back to me and said, "You sure made that asshole run!" He smiled, then turned back around and headed home to Fuerte Apache.