I come from a country full of idiots and crooks. I say it a lot, and it’s because of stuff like that investment firm’s pyramid scheme that has everyone in Popayan rioting. I haven’t heard of a lot of rioting in Colombia before—I mean, riots happen but it’s no France. You can’t have a two-man riot in front of the place that sold you a phony jewel. That happens to everyone. But when it’s a huge amount of people being tricked by few, and they see a note on the door of a place in which they’ve invested their trust and money that says, "Have a terrible Christmas and a shameful New Year!" I mean, come on. That’s like, "Fuck you very much! Bye losers! Thanks for funding our escape plan!"I usually laugh at this kind of stuff, where everyone’s duping everyone while still full of hope that it won’t happen to them, but this time I feel terrible for these poor, stupid, fucked-up people in a fucked-up third world country where they have nothing to hang on to.I know I say "they" but I am one of them. That "fucked-up third world country" that I speak of is the "fucked-up third world country" I came from. I’m just not faced with the same problems here in the U.S., although I still am pretty na√Øve. In several occasions my house in Colombia got burglarized but it wasn’t just people breaking in—it was situations my family caused ourselves by opening our home to strangers. You’d think we’d learn the first time but it took like three burglaries to get it.One time it was my own fault. I was home with the maid, my great grandmother, and her nurse. We were selling the house and these three women came in to see it. They were very nice and mentioned my aunt’s name so I let them in. A day later my grandma realized all her jewelry and perfume was missing, and my dad’s money was gone. (By the way, having a maid in Colombia isn’t all fancy. We weren’t well off; there’s just a lot of people from the countryside who come to the city for jobs and become cheap live-in maids. I feel terrible about it now, especially because I clean houses in the U.S.)But anyway, everyone is a scammer and/or the idiot that falls for it. My dad and grandpa had an antiques shop, and I’d see them being sly and sketchy, and then it’d turn out people were selling them fake antiques all the time. Over and over this happened to them, their banker friends, their painter friends, their professor friends‚ĶThey just get fucked so often, you think they'd learn, but if you don’t do some fucking too you get doubly fucked. Even now, with the riots, and having caught two people running out the back door with suitcases stuffed full of cash, I'm not sure anyone has come to the conclusion that they just can’t trust one another. Look, it's a beautiful place and the people are good—just don't do business with anyone. ANYONE.PAZ C.
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