In the time of the guarimbas (the guarimbas are protests against the government) last year, a day that I can barely remember (I say just because I do not have a photographic mind either). I went to the university as usual taking the bus from ring 2 and tried to pay the student passage collector and instantly after counting the money he told me - I do not accept student passage - and I insisted he had no more money and showing him the University card told him that I had that right, in the end, he gave me back the money and I got off the bus, and I had to wait for another one if he charged me for a student ticket. Later that day I arrived at the university, I found my classmates talking about things that I can not remember and I entered my class. The day seemed the same as the rest, but when I arrived at noon when I had to go back to my house, another student gave me the news that in the bypass 2, the route would force me to take to get to my house. full of guarimberos (people who are part of a guarimba) and the entire highway did not transit the vehicles.
Logically I stayed at the university hoping that the guarimberos would leave or that the police would take them away (Luckily the university is a bit removed from the main avenue). It was three o'clock in the afternoon everything was still the same, one of my friends says - Let's go because if not, the night will fall and this is going to be a "problem" (the word my friend uses is "verguero" which is a colloquial word and more or less means "problem" in that context) - I am right between my saying and support your idea.
The father of a friend who has a car gave us a lift to where his car could reach. One block from the ring 2 we were Miguel, Victor, Lismari and I (the names change them to avoid problems) walking towards the crowd that covered their faces with flannels or rags, you could see the black smoke of the burned and the graffiti artists painting the streets in protest to the Nicolas government. At the moment we crossed the corner of the 2 the guards were trying to get on the posts to knock down or deflect the security cameras. Already in the bustle of the two lismari says goodbye to us and follows his way different from ours to his house. That was the first and only time I saw the bypass 2 without a car and my friends and I were walking in the middle of the street without any worry about being run over, singing some of the most memorable songs of the late Canserbero.
Many people who left their jobs or were there by chance and wanted to return to their homes and could not do it in the usual way so a lot of people walked along with us to go to their homes, from children with his parents even people with disabilities. Walking I could see the fire in the streets, the black smoke from the burning of rubbish covering the sky, extortionists who asked you for money to be able to move to a public area and uniformed soldiers to go by motorbikes without doing anything. For about an hour walking and a little away from the epicenter of the guarimba my friends and I had the luck to get in the back of a "chirrichera" (a truck that is part of public transport by the shortage of buses) that moved us away quickly from all problems.
The next day, I was surprised by the news that one of my colleagues in the guariba shot him in the leg. And of course, I did not live the crudest moments of the guarimba, nor the looting, nor the burning of buses and murders that these days left.