"If I regret?" I never wanted to be the kind of person who starts an answer with a question, but sometimes this is inevitable.
I take a deep breath before going on.
Do I regret it? I questioned myself the exact same question too many times now. I never found an answer. At least, not an easy and simple one.
"Look, what you have to understand is: we always play with the card that others deal us. And yes, card. Not cards. Poor people don't get cards, we can't afford options, and no one cares if we have them. They gave, give and will give only enough for them to look good. And back then, the minimal was far less than today."
He looks at me with naivete. He thinks he knows the history because of his researches and readings. He doesn't know shit. Only the ones who lived can understand, and some things are unexplainable.
"Today, I know that vaccines aren't what we thought they were," I start to remember, which is ironic because I spent most of my life trying to forget. "Now, I know vaccines save lives. But back then? Back then..." I don't finish my sentence; I can't. I close my eyes and let the memories possess me.
The smell is what hits me first, the scent of too many people in too little space. Today is even worse; we have more people and even fewer rooms. Things were bad in the past, but they're gruesome in the present.
Then, I can hear the screams, the tears, the complete desperation. We thought it was only a threat; we didn't believe they would keep their words. We were naive; we should know we were less than insects to them.
"You have to understand a couple of things. First, they killed us by destroying our homes. Rio de Janeiro was an old town full of old, broken and miserable tenements. But we lived there. However, someone decided that the city needed to be new and beautiful, and we paid for it. They destroyed our houses, not caring if we left. Many died buried by their own houses or by the feet of the ones that tried to save themselves."
I remember the man. He was being stomped, his eye exploded. I tried to forget. I feel the same fear I felt.
"We ran from the city to the hills and mountains. We had no money, no houses, no belongings. We only had our lives, each other and the certainty that our city didn't want us anymore. But love is a funny thing. We loved Rio, how can you not? So, we stayed."
I look to the horizon; the view is wonderful. I hope the riches never discover that we have the best view in town.
"We built our houses collecting the wreckage of our old ones. It's no surprise that things kept going downhill."
I turn around and look at my home. I still can see the pieces of wood that I helped my parents bring all the way up. It was rotten back then; nowadays, there isn't a word to describe it.
"Soon, everyone was ill. At first, no one cared. They only cared when the disease left the slums and arrived at the city. Then, they sent teams of medics and intellectuals to try to understand the situation."
I laugh; it's automatic and inevitable.
"They said we had deplorable conditions—too many people, not enough space. They were horrified when they discovered we simply threw our feces. How could they be surprised if they were the ones who made us ran to that place that was a forest and not a city?"
I feel the anger coming back.
"A couple of weeks later, they came back. But this time, it wasn't the intellectuals that followed the medics; it was the cops. They knocked on the doors, and if you didn't open they broke. The physicians then vaccinated us. Of course, we didn't know what a vaccine was. All we knew was that the majority of people got even sicker after that."
I take a deep breath; I need. I can feel the urge to fight; they fucked us and kept fucking.
"At that point, we had been expelled, killed, got sick and now getting sicker because of them. I, we, everybody got to a tipping point. So, we went downhill, and for a week, we fought for our rights and to make sure our voice was going to be heard."
I calm down. I never found an easy answer, but I did found an answer.
"So, you want to know If I regret it? I do regret that everyone knows it as Vaccine Revolt because it wasn't. We were fighting against death, against our killing. We never wanted anyone to die; we tried to stop a genocide. Our genocide! I regret that people and history will remember us as idiots who fought against a good thing rather than uninformed people tired of dying. In the end, the killers will win. In the end, the killers always win."
THE END
*****
The Vaccine Revolt or Vaccine Rebellion (Portuguese: Revolta da Vacina) was a period of civil disorder that occurred in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (November 10–18, 1904).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_Revolt
