68.
   Boris pressed his face close to mine. “Those adolescent days of torture and assassination are being replaced by the bureaucracy of The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Why kill a country’s leaders and replace them with an unreliable dictator when you can saddle it with parasitic loans? Banks, not tanks, Oliver. Banks, not tanks.The money pays off the oligarchy that agrees to the loans and builds the infrastructure the corporations need to steal the resources they want. The loans come with ‘structural adjustments’ that privatize the government, the water, the power. They are flooded with cheap food and cheap goods that destroy their ability to produce anything on their own. Haiti is a good example. In ten years, its people went from being self-sufficient to eating dirt. Haiti’s starving farmers poured into the cities and became sweat shop slaves producing plastic trinkets for Disney. Imagine, Oliver, nations and nations of slaves. Today it’s the best of both worlds. A third world country pays for the plundering of its resources and its people are turned into slaves who produce the products that global corporations sell to the first world. It’s much more efficient than the old days when you had to go to all the expense of capturing and transporting slaves to your country. Now when you are through pillaging, when you have used your slaves up, you just leave them to starve and move on.”

   The tango on the jukebox came to an end. Boris sat me down, whipped out his glasses and unrolled a map. “But my time is short. Someone else will continue the story. You must visit the Giant of the Atacama. This map will show you to the way.”