The harshest years of the dictatorship were unfolding in the early 1980s when I met Flaco Loayza. If memory serves me right, it was at a political rally in Plaza 10 de Noviembre. I saw him leaning against a pine tree. He wore a blue union man’s jacket, his hair slick, straight, and wet, as if a horse had licked it into place, and he sported a pair of mariachi-style mustaches identical to those of his political boss, Motete Zamora.

At the time, he was a union leader for the workers of Karachipampa. “At a big assembly, they appointed me Secretary of Conflicts,” he told me—a title that suited him like a glove, given his occasionally combative personality, I thought. Meanwhile, I was just beginning to cut my teeth in politics, specifically at the University.

We shared similar ideologies, even though we belonged to different political factions. Still, wherever we happened to be, both of us put our necks on the line more times than I can count.

Dodging the constant snares and traps, each of us followed his own path along the slippery trail of a political apathy dressed up as hope. And, in our own way, we contributed our obligatory little grain of sand to the struggles and battles for the recovery of democracy.

In the early days of our friendship, our conversations—or, more accurately, our ramblings—revolved around the now largely irrelevant audacity of foquismo, a theory that was almost dead while still alive, yet had left deep scars on the country. At other times, we would launch into half-baked intellectual analyses of entire heaps of ideologies inherited from foreign ways of thinking, ideas that, like muddy waters, were taking root in the country right under the noses of all the fools watching.

Inevitably, the magnetism of those fiery, silver-tongued speakers, combined with the indoctrination of those days, eventually convinced us and turned us into cannon fodder—movable pieces, like pawns in some street-corner game of chess, ready to march off to the slaughterhouse.

More often than not, we talked ourselves hoarse in conversations that went nowhere, carrying on until dawn without understanding a thing about those famous means of production, the intrinsic value of surplus value, and whatever other nonsense happened to cross our minds.

Until daybreak, we cheated sleep, stubbornly trying to understand the principles of class struggle, studying the Thesis of Pulacayo from beginning to end and twisting our brains around those and so many other ideological operettas we innocently tried to believe in when we were younger.

There is no doubt that we had caught that leftist bug that quietly prowled around universities and labor unions, disguised as a political agenda or as some pajpaku peddling earthly paradises. It seemed to attack, almost exclusively, young people in the bloom of youth and the great masses of workers, leaving them in a state of ideological bewilderment that was very difficult to escape.

We thought ourselves revolutionaries and liberators in the making simply because we had experienced the harsh compulsion of necessity firsthand and because, every now and then, we reacted to injustices committed against others, just as the manuals and slogans scattered through the streets prescribed.

Trapped with no way out in the revolutionary whirlwind, Flaco vainly tried to grow a beard. He swallowed homemade hormones supposedly made from quince meat and smeared his face with creams and cosmetics of questionable reputation, all in an effort, according to him, to acquire an appearance more in keeping with his ideas. But he never managed it, because, to his misfortune, he had been born smoother than a porcelain cup.

We killed time idly talking about the role of youth and popular participation in the epics and uprisings we had been promised but that never arrived. We greeted the dawn trying to outwit the night, our brains scorched from the effort of understanding the damned axioms of Thomas More’s utopia. Half-dead from lack of sleep, and perhaps through some miracle of osmosis, we repeated like trained parrots stories about egalitarian peoples who had discovered the fountain of youth and all the other bullshit that happened to be fashionable at the time.

Sometimes simply because that was what we did, and other times because we damn well felt like it, we set aside the real problems of flesh-and-blood people and argued tooth and nail about urgent needs and other socialist-colored absurdities. We did it with such fervor that one would have thought we were defending a doctoral dissertation. And the funniest part was that, once we came to our senses, we realized how absurd the whole thing had been. Naturally, like perfect demagogues, we tried to make up for the wasted time with arguments even more childish and worn out than a cobbler’s knee, such as that wandering notion known as “the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Inevitably, our revolutionary drive and fervor slowly began to fade, creating an ideological precipice into which our thoughts and principles fell headlong until they became nothing more than words, Quixotic fables, and the old tricks of the gullible uncle—much like the exotic demagoguery brought along by the bearded fifth columnists who sprang up in Ñancahuazú in the 1960s.

And yet, the effects of that contagion were so persistent and severe that it took nearly four decades to shake ourselves free from that spell of ideas and convictions. It was as if those sentimental slogans had been tattooed onto our skin—the very slogans to which, quite rightly, the merchants of words had given the grandiloquent label of “revolutionary mystique.”

As time went by, and as our comradeship matured, we came to realize that the only true ideology that really counts in life is the ideology of friendship. That is why our friendship remained untouched by time and stood as solid as a monolith until the day Flaco departed from this world.

Flaco was certainly no saint, nor some little angel sent down from heaven with a mission to hand out forgiveness through other people’s Our Fathers and Hail Marys. Nor was he the picture of caution, decorum, or restraint. He was a man—imperfect like all of us, but endowed with more human qualities than most.

He lived his life the way Frank Sinatra sang it: his way. He sowed plenty of wild oats and wandered countless times along the outer edges of accepted morality, flirting with sin, not giving a damn about what people might say and wiping his backside with the puritanical labels of those holier-than-thou souls.

To balance out his little sins and transgressions, however, he possessed one human virtue I have seen in very few men: solidarity. Men are not born compassionate toward others; they become so when they carry in their hearts the suffering and misery of strangers and decide to do something about it.

Flaco carried that quality in his blood and demonstrated it whenever the occasion called for it. His ability to feel, in his own flesh, the hardships and anxieties of both friends and strangers allowed him to carve a path out of nothing—a path perhaps without roses or gladioli, but undoubtedly filled with good intentions—until the merciless reaper, wielding his scythe, took him far too soon.

There is also no doubt that, given his sociable, mischievous, rebellious, and stubborn nature, his life was like a roller coaster of emotions, full of rises and falls. But in the end, just as he always wanted, he lived his own destiny. Proud, with his eyes fixed on whatever lay ahead, he finished his days blessed by time, retracing step by step the boundaries he himself had drawn.

His acts of generosity and his loyalty will remain in the memories of the many people whose lives he touched during his brief passage through this fleeting existence.

He was charismatic and foul-mouthed, and at the height of his powers he seemed like an inexhaustible spring of local audacity, overflowing with sayings, expressions, and wisecracks that only reinforced his identity as a born troublemaker.

He liked to call himself a “gangster of love,” as justification for his escapes and seductions. He was a natural rogue, an innocent bandit without pretensions, free of inhibitions and shame. He was also, as many people can testify, hopelessly in love with life.

Whenever some kind of party or good-time mischief broke out, wherever it might be, Flaco would move heaven and earth to make sure he got there. Once inside, no matter the protocol or the occasion, he would pull stories and anecdotes out of his sleeve and laugh until his jaw ached, with tremendous passion and flair. And whenever arguments or scuffles erupted, he would laugh himself hoarse until the last stifled sigh of those humorless, self-righteous souls was completely drowned out.

He also possessed a contagious optimism, even in the hardest moments, when anxiety and sorrow ruled the day. He had the ability to turn the solemnity of a funeral into a carnival-like celebration full of jokes and irony.

Flaco was a mortal man who always danced to the beat of his own drum.

Together, we walked through the well-intentioned landscapes of bohemian life, got ourselves mixed up in politics, and thousands of times tried to unravel the mysteries of life itself. We wandered from one end to the other through the cobblestone streets of the old quarter of our beloved city and its surroundings, and on more than one occasion traveled far and wide to the most remote corners of the country in search of bread, money, and, above all, adventure.

Flaco! I always told you that, to a great extent, you were responsible for my getting together with my wife. Remember? That time we traveled to Tupiza, it was you who, while driving the truck, spotted a stranger with a blue backpack, hiking boots, and almost orange hair, making her way through the hills of Cuchu Ingenio. When you gave her a swallow’s whistle, she came over, and that magical moment changed my destiny forever. Who would have thought that that girl, as adventurous as we were, would one day become my companion of nearly thirty years?

Today I shed tears for you, for your departure from which there is no return. I shed these tears, so much like those that once rolled down our cheeks when our horizons seemed to be made of nothing but gloomy clouds and bitter sorrows.

And these tears, filled with the crystallized pain of your irreparable loss, I hope the southern winds will carry away and scatter gently through the irrigation ditches of the little valleys surrounding Potosí, where we went countless times in search of sunshine, grapes, and good fortune. Or perhaps let them fall with the thunderous sound of a thousand laments upon the stone walls near the summit of Licancabur, which we visited that time when borax smugglers chased us with gunfire across the harsh terrain of the Siloli Desert, where we nearly died of hypothermia when that snowstorm broke loose on our way back from Laguna Verde.

I hope that wherever you are is a peaceful place, a haven filled with tranquility, a little corner covered with gardenias and kantutas, where springs of crystal-clear water filter through, and where the sap of those wildflowers becomes a fragrant balm that wraps your body—that of a dilettante gladiator—during the journey you have undertaken, and from which you will never return.

In the winter of the previous year, when I had the good fortune to visit you in our native land, I found you already weakened, but still carrying that exuberant optimism that was so characteristic of you. You welcomed me with the affection and appreciation reserved for great friends.

Like the city boys we were, after a necessary stroll along the old boulevard, we went to enjoy some salteñitas at El Hornito and spent a good while talking, seasoning our memories of old mischief with plenty of garlic and pepper.

That was the last time I saw you alive, and I am grateful that, although the visit was brief, we were able to share that strong and sincere embrace, and the firm handshake I gave you—as though I had somehow sensed the journey from which you would not return.

To say goodbye, dear Flaco, I want to paraphrase a few lines from a bolero by Carlos Puebla that you loved so much. The words are so fitting that they could very well serve as a perfect epitaph:

“Here remains the clear,
the beloved transparency
of your dear presence…”

Until we meet again.

Your friend,

Marco Félix
February 2020