had been studded with cameras, the devotional routine of the ‘Sister’ had become more like a talk show hosted by some daytime diva. Cleopatra – or ‘Kleo’, as she called herself when she used to advertise her services, before God started talking to her – adopted, after God started talking to her, the look of Eva Perón and a stage presence that rivalled that of Susana Giménez, all-time TV diva and Cleo’s childhood obsession. The first records they had of her came from a hospital, a jail and a newspaper clipping. She was twelve years old, she was still called Carlos Guillermo and her father had almost beaten her to death ‘for being a fucking faggot’, as was explained in an article for the obscenely sensationalist newspaper Crónica published under the headline: Homophobic Brutality: Father Nearly Kills Oldest Son for Wanting to Be Like Susana. The press went to interview the boy at the hospital, and the TV diva was so touched when she found out how much the boy loved her that she invited him onto her show. That’s when Carlos Guillermo was definitively transformed into Kleo, still on crutches but dancing delightedly with the feather boas the diva placed around his neck. A few years later Kleo re-entered the limelight, as a result of some changes made to the slum that meant the poorest of the poor were finally able to enjoy the latest technology as well as everyone else. If the rich had security cameras and walls, why couldn’t they put up a wall and cameras around the shantytown? They deserved safety as much as anyone and desperately needed protection from the gang members who robbed even their own neighbours. This was the argument laid out by the middle and upper classes, politicians and the media. The gangs of teenage thieves didn’t like it one bit. At first they splattered the cameras with paint, but the next day the cops would come in and take away the person they’d filmed vandalising. Wearing balaclavas like the good old Zapatistas didn’t work either because the cops would just smash up someone’s house until they gave names. In the end, they resigned themselves to sharing the spoils of their robberies with the police. The cameras continued filming, the videos began to circulate and Cleopatra enjoyed the attention. With her hair swept back like Evita, champion of the downtrodden, and a bounce in her step like Susana, the queen of TV, and as blonde as both of them, the ‘transvestite saint’, surrounded by a court of pimps, prostitutes, thieves in training and other transvestites, preached with one arm around the statue of the Virgin a grateful workman had erected for her on the field inside the shantytown. The Virgin’s head was rather too large, and so was her nose. She was a bit rickety, with a cross in her right hand and a heart in her left. But Mary presided over the gatherings with her eyes turned skyward and a look of ecstasy on her face. ‘Like she’s being done from behind,’ in the words of Jessica, Cleo’s niece, who evidently thanked the heavens every time she had that experience. ‘One night,’ Cleopatra said, recounting the story of the Virgin’s first miracle for her followers, ‘the pigs raided the flat I was working in.’ She’d done karate when she was a boy so she was able to knock down a couple of the cops in self-defence. Then she was taken to the police station. They cut the cables on the cameras and, with shouts of ‘You goddam faggot, now you’re going to see what it means to be a man’, they beat her and gang raped her. The other prisoners joined in as well, clear evidence of the democratisation of the police force ever since they started making them go through police academy. Choking on her own blood and the semen of the entire police station, Cleo had a vision: the Virgin. ‘She was divine, blonder than Susana, and dressed all in white. She looked like she was wearing a silk tunic. She wiped my face with a tissue she got from I don’t know where, I think she had it up her sleeve, well, how should I know where she had it, enough with the stupid questions. So anyway, she sat me on her knee and told me not to worry, she was going to take care of me now and they weren’t going to kill any more of her children, and who did they think they were. I had to change my life, she told me. It wasn’t good for me to go around “copulating”, which means screwing, all day long, and I had to take care of myself. Since she was speaking so properly she sounded like Queen Sofía of Spain, and I thought it was funny. She asked me what I was laughing at and I told her and she’s so good that she didn’t get mad, she just laughed too and gave me a kiss on the forehead. She told me I was very sweet and she wanted me to marry her son, who’d take care of me like she would. And she started to tell me things that were going to happen and things that had already happened to me. It felt like she’d known me my whole life, as if we’d gone back in time and she’d been with me from when I was little, from when my dad almost killed me, and she cured me of everything, I didn’t even have the limp any more when I woke up. The cops almost fainted: they’d left me for dead and I’d just got up like nothing had happened and told them to repent, that Jesus and the Virgin were going to forgive them if they repented. And so they came into the cell where they’d thrown me and saw everything all clean and perfect and me looking dazzling, like I’d spent the night on a feather bed with satin sheets. There I was eating the breakfast the Virgin had left me, tea with milk and sugar and pastries. They were shocked when they opened the door and saw me stand tall and waltz out like a queen, not a mark on me, like I was ready to step in front of the camera and appear on TV that very morning.’
6. Quity: ‘The morning after’
The morning after we watched the video, Dani and I rushed to the slum. He wanted to take a Kirlian photo of Cleo and I wanted to write the story of the year. I liked to drive north of the city, to see the river even if only in glimpses, to smell the water, to slow to the rhythm of the landscape as we got close to the Delta. But that day we didn’t make it all the way to the river. We exited the motorway as soon as we saw the shantytown. It was built on the lowest ground: everything sloped gently downwards the closer you got to it, except the quality of life, which didn’t slope but rather dropped off sharply in the last few inches before the wall – a wall whose advertising potential the municipality hadn’t overlooked. The wall served as a mirror for the wealthy neighbours, their last line of protection: instead of seeing the slum, they saw only themselves in the ads plastered to the wall, people on top of the world with their expensive mobile phones, cars, perfumes and holidays.
Shame all those images of prosperity had to be interrupted by the grimy gates of poverty. The archway over the entrance was charming, with colourful letters that read ‘Welcome to El Poso’ and some painted cement doves, intended, I suppose, to be holding the sign up with their beaks, but looking more like they’d flown into a window. Little balls with wings plastered to the corners of the sign. On each side of the entryway was a security booth that bore various layers of decoration. The first layer was the requisite dark blue of all the booths; the second included the rooster of the Buenos Aires Police Department’s shield; the third, redheaded mermaids, a yellow submarine, the baby Jesus walking on a blue puddle, green fish and water lilies, all with eyes and smiling out from the dark blue background. The other layers of decoration consisted of graffiti, little cocks for everyone, including the baby Jesus. If it hadn’t been for the cocks and the smell of shit, you’d have had the impression you were entering a Catholic preschool in a poor neighbourhood. The security guard looked like just another decoration, a surprised octopus poking his head out of the booth’s window. Intelligence and press, the badges Daniel and I carried, gave us right of passage.
‘Go ahead, sir. Have a nice day, sir.’ The octopus respected hierarchy even though he was dying of curiosity.
‘Are you coming to see the Sister, sir?’
‘What’s your name, Officer?’
‘John-John Galíndez, Inspector.’
‘Are you the artist, Galíndez?’ Dani asked, mischievously nodding toward the elaborately painted booth.
‘Negative, sir. That would be Jessica, the Sister’s niece. Would you care for a drink of mate, young lady?’
‘Yes, thanks, John-John. Busy day?’
‘No, not really… Ever since the Virgin’s been around, the slum’s been pretty quiet. Very quiet. The only problems we have now are with the Condors, the private security paid for by the rich neighbours. Even the cokeheads get up early to listen to the Sister, she’s a comfort to us all. It’s pretty incredible. You’d
