Clinton St. Quarterly, Vol. 6 No. 1 | Spring 1984 (Portland) /// Issue 21 of 41 /// Master# 21 of 73

By t1 i chae l Dal ey Photos by Le o Gabri el Salvadorans· in S eat tle LI FE ON Alonso e is sitting in the overstuffed chair H in the lobby of the hotel. He rises when he sees me through the picture window and comes to meet me at the glass doors. It is dark, eleven-thirty, and the streets around the hotel are filled with _screams and cries of small wars, betrayals, the uprushing traffic on First Avenue, the drunken crowds on Second Avenue. Alonso, I think, is glad that I have come to talk, to listen to his brothers. He has been waiting. We liked each other upon meeting this afternoon in the lawyer's office. For a few hours we talked about El Salvador: the military, the survivors, his home. Now he is taking me down Stewart Street to a tavem where he thinks his brothers might be. We pass people who always, this late at night in the downtown "combat.zones" of cities, make me anticip.ate instant stab­ ·bings. I'm worried now and walk rigidly alongside Alonso, who is comfortable and greets everyone: those with scars across the cheek, thin Indian faces, Northwest Makah? Salvadoran?_ I'm beginning to see the resemblance. Alonso's features are very Indian and I wonder if this war, like the war in Guatemala, is also genocide. He tells me to wait inside the tavern door while he looks around, so I sit with my small pack and· watch the waitress tell a large Indian to leave. She tells him even before he sits down. He is drunk, he stumbles away. The man in front of me is talking to himself. I recognize him from this morning when I stepped off the bus. He was talking to himself then too. He is very tall and his pants are too short. However, he is formally dressed: he wears the scraps of suits he found in the street. The most noticeable thing about him is his swollen ankles. Now he sips coffee as if he were in school, a ripped Alonso He - J>oate R ftlandez .SOaa , · · - ..tan te (t't- �e.attle w h vwi. Del ) ts.vu. t as inBton • El Salvador , h ighe s t rat e a country of 6 million , has the ► of d eath by s tarvat ion after Bangladesh . The poor can only do s eas onal work on the coffee Pi cking up pat i enc e . plantat ions . They l ive on $1 35 a year . the gun i s j us t a sign of _ the l o s s o f paper bag at his feet. I remember wl'lat I had been told earlier; Salvadorans who are not under the protection of the churches, but on the streets, have a double problem: They are a "refugee on a refugee." All the people on the streets, this man with swollen ankles, are refugees. And the Salvadorans, many who have come from families and educations that could never have prepared them for this, have had to learn not only how to live in a strange land, but also how to live on the street. Alonso comes back shaking his head and I follow him out, relieved there is no one to talk to. Now perhaps I can get back on the bus.As far as I can tell I am the only middle-class white wanderer on Clinton St. Quarterly . -- - THE ST.R-..i?T· s· . J:!:... ► � • • � .. �.....;...,:,,�,,,;-_ = ·.;..··�. t CORREOS OE El SALVADOR,C.A. : .. EL PUE8lO SALVAOORENO DEFIENOE LA OIONIOAD 'I' LOS DERECHOS liUMANOS. 4 -.....". r .. ' ' l 1 : \ ? • • �- • � . : �-=- � · Jlllil'IS��-ao : ! C. : ·. - - � -� .. - . - - - .... ;.,_ �.�:. ! ·· - � - - --- --- --------. . co,, ,,Eo s DE Et SAtV Ano;�� �-- .

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