Free Blood of Paradise by David Corbett

productively.
    â€œOn top of that,” Eileen said, “you’ve got the current pack of thieves siphoning government funds to their buddy Saca’s election campaign.”
    â€œAccusations like that get tossed around every election.”
    â€œBecause they’re true.”
    â€œHow come they never get proved?”
    She shook her head, like he was hopeless. “That’ll happen about the same time I give birth to a goat.”
    They entered one of the tunnels along the coastal road. Inside, the headlights rippled across a moonscape of rough-hewn rock. It was a good place for bats. And robberies. Jude juiced it a little until they came out again on the far side.
    â€œExcuse me if I’m looking at this wrong,” he said, “but unless I’m missing your drift, what you’re trying to say is that Aleris and some of the other people you hang out with think I’m in with the thieves down here. Some sort of modern day Pinkerton. I dunno, maybe you do too.”
    â€œFor God’s sake—no, I don’t. And what I’m trying to say is, even with the others, it’s not personal.”
    Oh, it feels plenty personal, Jude thought.
    â€œIt’s just—hear me out, okay?” She wrapped her arms around her legs and settled her chin on her knees. “Everybody’s got this sick sense that the few good things that came out of the Peace Accords have come undone, and too much wasn’t even started in the first place. There’s forty percent poverty in the cities, sixty percent in the countryside. The big scare during the war was that if the guerrillas won you’d have mass migrations to the States. Well, a third of the country has emigrated anyway, with seven hundred a day trying to follow behind, and two thirds of those still here work in the underground economy, if they work at all. The water situation is awful—the rivers may as well be open sewers. Add the industrial waste and pesticide runoff from the plantations, presto—not a waterway in the country isn’t polluted. You’ve got eight-year-olds with machetes in the sugar fields, thirteen-year-olds behind sewing machines in the maquilas , all of them making at best a couple bucks a day, millions of squatters crammed into barrancas in the city or stuck out in the country in their shoddy little champas . You’ve been to the dig at Joya de Cerén? Fifteen hundred years ago, the Indians ate better food and lived in better houses than any of the poor do now. That’s progress for you. And the solution? Karaoke bars and burger joints. More sweatshops churning out crap sneakers and T-shirts.”
    She pounded her chin softly against her knee and made a moaning little sigh.
    â€œNow you’ve got CAFTA coming, which manages to piss on the unions and just about everybody else except the same old cronies. But it makes such a great smoke screen. The areneros can carp about jobs, jobs, jobs, but it’s just lip service. The system’s rigged so the same folks at the top never suffer. There’s a real tradition here of screw the losers.”
    â€œLot of that everywhere,” Jude said.
    â€œYeah, well it has a real nasty edge to it here. The rich aren’t just snotty, they’re vicious. The poor disgust them. Embarrass them. ‘Qué grencho,’ ever hear that?”
    â€œSure. But they make fun of hillbillies back home, too.”
    â€œIt’s like poverty’s a crime. The term ‘vampire state’? It was made for a place like this.”
    Actually, Jude thought, it was made for a place like New York, thus the pun on Empire State, but before he could find a way to say that without sounding snide, she’d launched on.
    â€œAll the crap you hear about things getting better? Spare me. Economy’s been flatlining for five years. Things are as bad as during the war, if not worse, and you don’t have the guerrillas to blame it on.