Brazil El Alto

Miguel Wong

Ant 316

Essay 3

Part B: Dramatic Discussion

Biu

Thank goodness is carnival time again, and the best part is that this year I'm going to wear a really nice red dress. My belly is not bothering me and my kids are big enough to take care off themselves, they probably will be playing all night on the street along with the other kids of the "el barrio". My oldest daughter probably will stay with her boyfriend.

Felix

I got to work this week, so I'm gona have a wonderful time this carnival weekend, I'll get drunk and party with my friends, this will be my best carnival ever.

Dona Felipa

I don't understand you people. You barely can sustain yourself and when ever you got work at the sugar cane you always spend all your money available. Why don't you take care of your wife and the son to be born soon. You Biu, I understand that carnival time is very important for us, but I don't want you to be sick and unable to work for me later on.

Felix

I respect your point of view Dona Felipa, but even though we are poor, we still have the right to have fun. Carnival week is for everybody here in Brazil, if we can't have fun on only this sacred week, where else and what else can we do to entertain ourselves.

Biu

Felix should take care of his family I have a son in my belly from us, from Felix, but I agree that carnival time is for party and is for everybody to enjoy. We are so poor and miserable that carnival is the only thing no body can take away from us. We live in misery, we don't have nor running water nor clean water, we even don't eat regularly, but carnival time is a brief moment for us to escape our reality, our miserable reality, if we cannot

have that little thing, we might kill ourselves as well.

Felix

Some day, I'll be rich enough to be able to enjoy carnival where the rich people go. I'll mingle with the government and high society people of the Alto. Someday my woman will never have to work again. Someday my woman will never have to wash clothes for others never again.

Dona Felipa

I think Felix, that you are a good man, and you want the best for yourself and for your family. But I think you are a fool by thinking in that way. I don't wish you bad, but it is nearly impossible for people like you to succeed here in the Alto. Even for people like us, with education and schooling, it is difficult to survive. My husband is a doctor, and I pay your woman to wash our clothes and help us at home. We make some good money and all I can do is to share it a little with your wife. Reality is sad, you should look at the future with both hope and common sense, but not with fantasies. I know you are a god man, but look at you, you don't even have a steady job, much less any education. Sorry if I sound rude, but that's reality.

Biu

I know that our reality is very sad, we don't have a future, we'll be poor all the times, that's why we party on carnival time. Even though we don't have anything to eat, carnival is more important than food for us. When I was a child my I remember my mother going to the carnival all the times, there was never a year that she would miss it. Sugar cane factories were abundant and she had jobs constantly. We were 6 brothers and sisters, and when the time came, we also participated in the festivities. I never met my father but the man my mother was living with, was a good person, he never treated us bad. Felix is a good person too, but sometimes when he is drunk he had hit my children a few times. I don't like that, but I understand that men sometimes need to drink in order to forget their troubles in life.

Felix

I know I don't have a steady job, but Dona Felipa you don't have to remind me that. If I don't have a job is not because I don't want to work, is because there are no jobs for me available. I was hurt many years ago, and I can't lift much weight since. I'm not the same youngster who once cut sugar cane in a very fast way. I'll get a better job and I'll be able to support my wife, but for know I rather beg in the streets than sending my wife to work at the sugar cane. I know I can feed my family, but as I said before, I rather starve on the streets than allowing my wife to work for those mean landlords.

Dona Felipa

Why are you so stubborn Felix? Don't you know that with hard work you can accomplish whatever you wanted in life?