Dean Julius | After Quilotoa, the ICE Raids | Poets Resist

Poets Resist
Edited by Michael Carter
August 29, 2019

Dean Julius

After Quilotoa, the ICE Raids

for BL, the 680, the rest We tell ourselves not to worry. We’re all still learning to trust, riding La Virgen de la Merced from Quitumbe to Latacunga, from there to Isinliví, & always the specter of mountains. I watch our packs in the overhead like a dog at the window — expectantly. Nothing happens. A man stands up at the front of the bus, warns of the dangers of grasas, the benefits of un colon limpio. He asks us all to buy what doesn’t translate: chalk in a bottle, or maybe it’s snake oil. He tells us not to worry. We’re still learning to trust new medicines. My head plays the window’s drum as the brakes sigh & the bus lurches to something like a halt. I want to relax, keep faith in goodness of others. My partner sleeps beside me, but my mind wonders what’s in the bottle, remembers a story we read on a blog: 10 shocking reasons to avoid Ecuador… You won’t believe number 7 exists — foreigners duped on a bus, backpacks swiped while they napped. Back home, the sound of tires’ treads & sulfur from chicken shit. Marimar & her uncle hide in a Peco freezer for eleven hours to avoid a camp. Six-hundred & eighty others less fortunate ride unmarked Greyhounds to La Salle, Pine Prairie — Louisiana’s a prison state. Byron, my ESL student, already there after a routine traffic arrest. Driving without a license & insurance is one of our country’s invasive threats. We tell him not to worry, pray his court hearing will be different from the rest, but I’m concerned, worried how different we are from the agents in bulletproof vests — someone announces our final stop — did they watch their backs when they rode the busses? Did they sit in the front? At the station in Isinliví the driver hands us a candy. Cuidado, watch your step, he says. We tell ourselves, don’t worry — still learning to trust — belongings held close to our chests.