García Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude begins by describing the moment when:

“Before the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

The novel’s first edition appeared at the end of 1967. Many years later, when I reread it, I remembered that we had made a similar discovery. I cannot recall the exact date, but it must have been around that same year—the year I went to the movies for the first time.

That was when we discovered the magic of the seventh art. I remember clearly that I did not go alone. I took my younger brother and my cousin with me as eyewitnesses to this historic event.

The journey of discovery was an extraordinary adventure with enormous consequences. Despite the passage of time, it still lives in my memory like a ship’s log recording a voyage whose course and conclusion could easily have provided the plot for an as-yet-unmade film.

Instead, it now exists only in the intangible theater of memory.

Christopher Columbus departed from the port of Palos de la Frontera in 1492 on his voyage of discovery, an expedition considered the starting point of the conquest of America.

For us, the conquest began 475 years later. Although our journey was neither as long nor as cruel, it was nevertheless filled with adventures, much like that fateful voyage.

The Ticket with a Hook

It was a Sunday, around nine in the morning.

My grandmother had given us a loro—the name used at that time for a ten-boliviano bill—because we had never before woken up at the crack of dawn on a Sunday, without even waiting for the rooster to crow.

We had eaten breakfast without making our usual mess. To top it all off, we had cleared the table, folded the tablecloths, and put away our belongings.

The loro was enough to buy the tickets and perhaps a few sweets, but it was not enough to finance such an expedition. So we had no alternative but to steal some old silver coins my grandmother kept hidden in the cupboard and in the trunks.

As we had done many times before, we sold them to raise enough money to complete the celebration.

We decided that the day of discovery would be that very day. We chose Sunday because it was the weekend, which meant we were not condemned to the daily torture of doing our schoolwork.

More importantly, Sunday was the only day when the famous double morning shows were offered.

As far as I remember, we chose the morning performance because it offered two films for the price of one, thanks to an ingenious economic arrangement euphemistically known as the “ticket with a hook.”

According to some definitions, a hook is a hairpin used to hold a girl’s hair in place. In the absence of a belt, it could also be used to “hook” a sweater to one’s trousers so that one would not literally walk around with one’s backside exposed.

In the language of the local underworld, a “hook” was also a punch delivered with a bent arm. As my friends would say:

“Don’t mess with me, or I’ll land a hook on you right now and split your backside open.”

In the cinema world, this economic trick meant that one person bought a single ticket, but two people entered. If the doorman was distracted, even three could get in.

It was a kind of homemade, popular bonus.

The only condition was that people had to arrive at the cinema in pairs—two by two, just to be clear. If someone arrived alone, he had to search among the crowd of children for another lonely soul and ask, without shame but with great enthusiasm, almost like a declaration of love, whether the other person wanted to “hook up.”

If the necessary chemistry existed—and one could not hook up with just any random rascal—the agreement was made in gentlemanly fashion, according to the English method: fifty-fifty.

Each person paid half the ticket price. One ticket was purchased, and the two entered the cinema hand in hand, like newlyweds.

But these accidental partnerships were like modern marriages: they lasted only a few miserable moments. The divorce was automatic. As soon as the couple entered, the mismatched partners began the process of unhooking and disappeared into the fog and darkness of the theater.

I have no idea who invented the system or what economic theory had produced such a scheme of childhood commerce. The reality was that it benefited children, especially those who were not particularly wealthy.

That day, like young captains of the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María, we launched our own caravels of conquest and set out across the open sea of the city in search of the treasures of the seventh art.

We departed from our port, located in Ballivián Square. We headed north along La Paz Street and continued as far as the corner of Chuquisaca Street.

From there, we turned left, passed the headquarters of the drivers’ federation, and reached Doña Brígida the Frigid’s ice-cream shop. We stopped there to enjoy some cherimoya ice cream.

We crossed diagonally over the cobblestones of May 25 Square, which served as a parking lot for battered cars used as urban transportation, moving vans, and passenger buses.

Passing through Millares Street and by the corner pharmacy, we continued toward the historic Pichincha fountain. We stopped for a moment to cross ourselves in the open chapel of La Merced Church, then walked a few meters down to the corner shop called La Castellana, located across from the Workers’ Union in the very middle of the boulevard.

Like Columbus, we sailed across the undulating sea of the boulevard’s red-and-white tiles, glancing at the merchandise, groceries, and odds and ends displayed in the windows of the businesses lining the pedestrian passage.

We elbowed and pushed our way through the crowd, which wandered along in its Sunday procession of idle speculation, until we reached the vicinity of the place of discovery, almost out of breath.

To rest and recover our energy, we sat for a while on the steps of the Valda Music House. From the loudspeakers installed above the doorway came the melodies of a melodramatic song.

A few minutes later, revived by the inspirational powers of the fourth universal art, we raised the sails of our caravels, tied the ropes, repaired the rigging, and set our course eastward toward our final destination.

At last, we docked at the corner of Simón Chacón, on the shores of the Cervantes Cinema.

Perhaps it was the whim of destiny, the urgency of our impatience, or the malfunction of our compasses and sextants that led us to plant our flag first at the cinema farthest from our starting point.

We failed to notice the Omiste, Hispano, and América cinemas, all of which were much closer to our route. In subsequent voyages, however, they were duly discovered.

The Cervantes Cinema stood a few steps above the once-distinguished Ópera Cinema, which, over the years, was first acquired by COMIBOL and later by Tomás Frías University.

Geographically, the Cervantes was almost next door to my first school, the famous José Alonso de Ibáñez. A little farther down was the intersection known as the Liberators’ Corner, one of the city’s most important commercial arteries.

The Gallo Gallery

Unlike the Cervantes, the Ópera had only a ground-floor section and a balcony. It did not have a gallo, which was the preferred area of our unruly crowd.

The ground floor was called the luneta, or “orchestra,” as people referred to it in those days. It was the first level of the building, where leather seats were arranged in successive rows.

The pullman was the name given to the second floor. It was a kind of hanging balcony with leather seats that were relatively comfortable—and, I believe, even perfumed.

The gallo was like a forgotten, foul-smelling bedroom, particularly suited to mischief. It was located at the very top of the cinema.

Its crude seating consisted of rows of wooden benches with protruding nails. If you were careless and sat on one, the nails would puncture your backside. These seats resembled the worm-eaten wooden stands of some Third World stadium.

The place was dark and gloomy, which made it especially frightening for the “well-bred girls.” As they crossed its wooden walkways, anonymous invisible men would take the opportunity to grope them free of charge.

For other girls—those little troublemakers from the poorer neighborhoods who went to the cinema solely to cause mischief—the gallo was paradise. They went there precisely so they could be squeezed and receive full-body massages.

The gallery also encouraged the mischievous behavior of children. Bored by the lack of action in romantic or musical films, they played tag and hopscotch in the middle of the screenings.

More often than not, the gallo served as a refuge for abandoned lovers who possessed neither a coat nor a bed.

Entering the gallo meant accepting personal risk. Anything could happen there.

To make matters worse, there was no usher assigned to the area. Ushers only moved around the orchestra and balcony sections, guiding patrons with their flashlights.

Naturally, tickets for the ground floor and balcony were substantially more expensive than tickets for the gallo.

It goes without saying that the customers in the orchestra and balcony were made up of the local jailones—wealthy, upper-class people who went to the cinema with polished shoes and tiny ties.

They were very different from the noisy, lively mob of mischievous children who frequented the dens and chambers of the gallo every Sunday.

This arrangement represented a natural class division—not a political one, at least not explicitly.

To emphasize the difference, the entrance to the gallo was not even located inside the same building. It opened directly onto the street, attached to the outside of the cinema and exposed to the elements, like an unwanted stepchild abandoned to its fate and hidden from the strolling eyes of respectable people.

Once we arrived at the place of discovery, we stood there solemnly contemplating the posters for that week and the weeks to come.

Those posters were genuine works of art in themselves and had nothing to envy in today’s giant billboards.

They were hand-painted canvases made of cotton cloth. They were so full of life that the strokes of the brush conveyed the spirit of each film’s plot.

They were like a spoken synopsis and a precise visual representation of everything that was about to happen.

The landscapes and figures were so immense and vibrant that they seemed to have escaped from the hands of Toulouse-Lautrec. They looked so real that all they lacked was the ability to breathe and sing.

In enormous capital letters, the following words had been painted:

“Grand Premiere — Ticket with a Hook — Double Feature.”

That day, for the first time, my younger brother and my cousin stepped onto solid ground. They entered together, properly hooked—holding hands, so to speak—jumping over the children packed into the stands like bunches of grapes.

As usual, I was the odd number—or, better put, the most singular one—and I had no choice but to find someone with whom to hook up.

Fortunately, I ran into a vendor selling pencos and tocinillos, a harmless-looking fellow with a face that suggested he would not hurt a fly.

He had just sold the last of his merchandise. We struck a deal, and together we crossed the threshold of the cinema to taste the fruits of discovery.

It goes without saying that we were left speechless when we experienced the sound, the giant CinemaScope screen, and the infinite prism of colors produced by Technicolor.

That day, our eyes bulging and our hearts lodged somewhere in our stomachs, we watched a Western film whose accidental title was The Bad, the Good and the Ugly.

The title seemed to allude directly to my cousin’s badness, my brother’s ugliness, and my own goodness.

The film told the story of three riders of the American West who galloped around Laredo on the backs of their horses. They wore cowboy boots with shining spurs and carried Colt pistols tied into leather holsters.

They were searching for gold in the midst of the American Civil War.

With fierce expressions, they rode with belts of ammunition slung across their chests. They whistled and spat tobacco as they traveled, dismounting their tired horses at the gates of dilapidated saloons to drink whiskey in the rain while bells tolled in distant cemeteries.

Invariably, as though it were a religious sermon, the narrative of those spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s revolved around the struggle between good and evil.

I do not know why we called the heroes—the good guys—the “young gentlemen,” while the villains were improperly labeled the “opposition.”

At that time, everyone wanted to be one of the young gentlemen. No one wanted, even by accident, to be associated with the dreaded band of villains.

I remember that whenever we returned to my house, located in the very center of Ballivián Square, we would go out into the street and recreate the plot of the film.

We escaped from the house over the rooftops, terrified by the shouting of my aunts and sisters and by my grandmother’s threats. She would chase after us with leather whips, yelling that if she caught us, she would beat the soul out of us.

We would rush out in a group, galloping on our wooden horses, which were nothing more than broomsticks wrapped in hemp string.

Armed with our bone pistols—which were actually lamb jaws left over from the soups sold by the food vendors in the square—we would ride around the neighborhood.

Like groups of young gentlemen, we galloped around shooting sparks and firing our imaginary cartridges at point-blank range through the passageways of the old house.

From time to time, dressed as llaneros and protected by the night, we would go out to punish, with great theatrical cruelty, the entire horde of children, nephews, godchildren, stepchildren, and adopted youngsters belonging to the merchants and regular patrons of the noble Ballivián Square.

As I said, the destination of our voyage of discovery was the famous Cervantes Cinema.

More than simply being one of the city’s principal cinemas, it was a fashionable place to invite a secret sweetheart—to declare one’s love and seduce her with the aroma of Bazooka chewing gum, brightly colored soft drinks, and little plastic bags filled with toasted beans and peas.

The Ticket Resellers

Many years after the glamour of that first discovery had faded, we began going to the cinemas in the capital more frequently.

More often than not, we went to the orchestra or balcony sections, which represented a considerable expense.

But after so many trips back and forth, my cousin—who had always possessed a sharp nose for business—figured out how to enjoy the films almost free of charge.

For a while, we devoted every Sunday to the art of reselling tickets, until the inevitable finally happened.

On Sundays, around noon, after attending Mass and confessing in advance the sins we intended to commit, we accompanied my cousin to the area near the cinema.

We stood like lampposts in the long lines, waiting for the doors to open. Then we would rush in like a flash flood, obtain tickets, and resell them.

With the profits, we would naturally go up to the gallo and enjoy the films without spending any money at all.

Because there was considerable competition from other ticket resellers, we sometimes went very early and joined the line before dawn.

To pass the hours—in other words, to kill time—we usually took refuge at the Pradel foosball hall, directly across from the cinema.

On other occasions, we played billiards at Florvic’s pool hall, located only a few steps from the Hispano Cinema, around the corner on Matos Street.

The Cervantes Cinema had metal bars across the ticket windows, making the place look like a miniature prison from which tickets were dispensed.

The cinema doors resembled retaining walls, struggling to hold back the crowd that surged forward like a landslide, trying to snatch tickets from the hands of the box-office clerk.

In front of the ticket seller was a semicircular wooden board shaped like a half-moon.

It was covered with little holes that apparently represented the rows of seats, creating a kind of graphic model of the cinema’s interior.

Inserted into the holes were small green and yellow paper slips showing the seat number and the corresponding row.

One terrible Sunday, one of those days when everything goes wrong, I spotted several booted, tough-looking men bursting through the crowd.

They carried black clubs and aluminum whistles and were arresting some suspected ticket resellers.

To avoid such disgrace, I did not think twice. I ran out into the street and took off uphill toward the América Cinema.

During my frantic escape, I suddenly ducked into the Bolívar Frontón, better known as Ckachcha Bolívar. It was only a few steps away, squeezed between the cinema and the Calero School.

I hid there for several minutes while the pursuit continued. To calm my fear, I amused myself by watching some shoemakers and bootblacks playing handball against the enormous wall bordering the cinema.

Unfortunately, my cousin was not so lucky.

He had been absorbed in financial transactions with the customers of the moment and had forgotten to run. As a result, he was caught red-handed.

Once I had recovered somewhat, I returned to the scene and saw my cousin being led away by two police officers.

He was in chains. With sadness, I watched as they pushed him into a patrol car, a hood over his head so he could not reveal where he was being taken.

Without further ado, they carried him to the DIRME cells near San Bernardo Church—a detention center for minors.

I have no idea how the relatives of that particular citizen—my cousin—found out what had happened. They called the president of the court, who happened to be his grandfather, and asked him to order the boy’s immediate release, without any subsequent consequences.

After all, how could anyone imagine the grandson of such an illustrious magistrate ending up in jail?

Unfortunately, the order arrived too late.

The guardians of public order had already applied the standard punishment. In cases involving the resale of tickets, the required penalty was a haircut.

Two hours later, accompanied by my grandmother, I saw my cousin arrive at our house.

He had been shaved—or, more accurately, the prison barbers had mowed down his hair with what looked like a lawn mower.

He had loved his long, Sandro-style hair. He was devastated for a very long time.

In the face of this event, I thanked God for having made me as fast as a gazelle. Charles—my cousin—had been unable to run, had been caught red-handed, and now looked like one of those conscripts the military packed into trucks during the famous recruitment raids.

Naturally, when I saw him in that condition, I laughed myself sick.

Some time passed.

Then one day my cousin appeared downstairs with his hair completely transformed. He had shiny little curls all over his head.

The rascal had gotten a permanent wave.

I wanted to know why he had made such a drastic change in his appearance and general outlook. He answered me confidentially:

“It has been scientifically proven that a permanent wave is difficult to shave off if you are arrested for violating municipal regulations prohibiting the resale of tickets to public performances.”

I was stunned by his answer.

But I said to myself:

“What permanent wave? To hell with that. The important thing is to have agile legs.”

Several years later, my cousin graduated as an engineer.

Although I know he works as one, I am not entirely sure whether he still resells tickets.