Tales of an Election in South America (4)
Dawn, election day. Santa Maria Farm had once been a thoroughly neglected backwater. Now, after years as a tobacco-farming training ground, it had become a mecca of production.
"Honey! Honey! Get up already!"
Before the darkness had even begun to lift, Carolina — once the trainees' representative, now the farm's manager — smacked her soundly sleeping husband across the back. The rumpled head that emerged from the blanket belonged to Kim Heung-soo, a specialist once dispatched from Korea's Rural Development Administration, who had married Carolina and earned his permanent residency in the bargain.
"Nnh... Carolina? What time is it..."
"Have you forgotten what day it is? It's election day!"
Carolina's eyes blazed like torches. She had already washed her face and changed into her finest dress, the one she kept buried deep in the wardrobe.
"The polling station won't even be open for hours yet..."
"We have to get in line! I need to be first so I can show His Excellency how I feel! If we show up later than everyone else, he'll be disappointed."
"Come on, it's not like His Excellency is watching..."
"Quit talking nonsense and get up!"
Kim Heung-soo grumbled and dragged himself out of bed. There was simply no matching a wife who was already buzzing around at four in the morning.
"Jessie! You wash up too, hurry!"
"Mmnh... Mom... I don't even have the right to vote..."
"Absolutely not! His Excellency is the reason you even get to go to school, and you're sleepy? You should be cheering! Get up this instant!"
And so Carolina scrubbed her half-asleep daughter, loaded her into the truck, and drove. Twenty minutes later they arrived at the administrative office.
"Wow..."
Kim Heung-soo could not close his mouth. It was barely past five. Dawn had not even broken, and already a long line stretched in front of the polling station.
"Oh my! Mr. Rodriguez! You're out early!"
"Ah, Carolina! You made it too! And Mr. Kim as well?"
Carolina exchanged warm greetings with every familiar face.
"I heard the tobacco crop treated you well this year, sir?"
"Don't even get me started. Thanks to His Excellency I paid off every debt I ever owed. Who would have thought I'd live to see the day I was mining gold from my own land? Hahaha!"
"We built a new house ourselves, you know. Not having to worry about the rain leaking in — I can't tell you how good that feels."
Nobody asked anybody who they were voting for. The question itself would have been an insult.
Who had saved them from a life of grinding poverty? Who had taught the word hope to people who had been rolling in the dirt? Who had given their children the gift of an education?
Eugene Choi, and Eugene Choi alone, had changed their lives.
"The doors are open. Come on, everyone — let's go vote!"
In the darkness, the villagers' eyes shone with the same unshakable certainty.
At the same hour, near Highway Construction Site, Section 4.
"Alright, alright! Everybody on the trucks! We've got voting to do!"
At the crew chief's gravelly bellow, Joseph and his coworkers scrambled up into the truck bed. On any other day they would have been worn down by hard labor, but this morning every face was lit up like a child on a field trip. Today they would elect a president with their own hands.
"Hey, Joseph. So who are you voting for?"
A coworker jabbed him in the ribs, grinning.
Joseph adjusted his hard hat and snorted.
"You idiot. Ask a real question."
"Hahaha. I only asked in case you were gonna vote for the other guy. Didn't you used to raise hell at the administrative office because they wouldn't give you land?"
"Vote for anyone else and you're a spy, not a citizen of San Marcos. And honestly... at this point, the land doesn't even matter."
Joseph watched the magnificent sweep of the construction site roll past the side of the truck.
"When I was scraping a living out of the dirt, I earned enough for one day and ate enough for one day. I used to shake thinking my kids would go hungry. Look at us now. Paycheck on time, meals that actually fill you up, the kids in school. I even saved up and bought farmland of my own. Where else in the world would you find a leader like this?"
"Right. My wife says she can finally sleep with her legs stretched out. No more worrying about the next meal."
"That's why you remember a debt. If His Excellency told me to die, I'd die."
"Same here."
While the two of them talked, the truck kicked up a cloud of dust and rolled to a stop at the temporary polling station near the highway site. The atmosphere there was nothing short of a festival.
Off to one side, workers had linked arms and were chanting Eugene's name without pause. The election officials watching them made no move to intervene — they were smiling, thoroughly pleased.
"Hey! Joseph! Let's grab a beer after we vote!"
"Hell yes! If you don't get drunk on a day like this, when would you?"
A secret ballot? Electoral neutrality? In this feverish heat, such things were meaningless. Everyone wanted one thing and one thing only: for Eugene to become president in the proper, official sense.
Joseph's turn came. He stepped into the voting booth.
Thump.
He stamped box number one without a second's hesitation, a smile spreading across his face.
Just as the sun was coming up, the door of Kiya's Sandwich Shop — famous throughout Libertad for never closing — was shut tight.
"Huh? What's this? Why's it closed?"
A regular who had come for breakfast rattled the door, baffled. The friend beside him clicked his tongue.
"My man, do you even know what day it is?"
"Of course I know. It's election day. I was gonna vote and eat a sandwich while I waited."
"Aigoo, you dense? Kiya's a citizen too — she's got to vote. Didn't you see the news? His Excellency gave a strict order: every last person votes. No exceptions."
"Ah. Right. So Kiya has to vote too."
The customer scratched his head and turned away.
"Damn, I'm starving... Fine. Let's go vote first. Breakfast can wait until after."
The two of them headed for Libertad Polling Station No. 3. Midway down the long waiting line, a familiar, bright, ringing voice floated over the crowd.
"Come on, come on, standing in line makes you hungry, doesn't it? Sandwiches, two dollars each! Fresh milk, squeezed today, one dollar a carton!"
"......?"
The two men could not believe their eyes. Right in the middle of the line, waiting for her own turn, Kiya was selling sandwiches and milk — at nearly double the usual price.
"I'll take one!"
"Me too! And a milk with it."
People who had been standing hungry since early morning were already opening their wallets. In the thick of it, Kiya was too busy counting money to look up.
"Kiya? What are you doing here?"
"Oh my! Mr. Jose! While you're here, grab one. You'll get hungry waiting in line."
"Wow... you are something else. I figured you'd closed up to go vote, and you came here to do business?"
Kiya handed over a sandwich and beamed.
"Oh, I'm just killing two birds with one stone!"
"Hahaha! Unbelievable. Give me two."
Cast a vote, make a profit. A smile blossomed across Kiya's face.
Election day in San Marcos. One polling station was a little different from the rest.
The temporary polling station at Tortilla Farm.
The workers there were civilians under the law, and so they, too, would vote. The mood, however, was not quite the same as everywhere else.
Laborers who had been hauled in during the war on crime — former gang members — stood around in knots, smoking and muttering.
"Hey, do we seriously have to vote? This is the guy who put us in this mess."
A man covered in tattoos spat on the ground.
"We're not slaves. We're already breaking our backs in a cornfield — now we have to vote for him too?"
The coworker beside him answered as if the man were an idiot.
"So what, you're gonna vote against him? Are you out of your mind?"
"Why not? It's a secret ballot. Nothing stopping me."
"Don't give me that crap. You think anyone actually believes that? The second you walk out of the booth, your face'll tell the whole story. Keep it up and you'll actually get dragged off to the coal mines. I hear you never see sunlight down there."
"...Okay, that's a bit much."
"And honestly, you think he won't be president if we don't vote? He's winning anyway. Might as well cast a ballot and score some points. Besides... this place isn't all that bad, is it?"
"True... they feed us well. And the wages come on time."
They were still wavering between resignation and self-interest when someone appeared in front of them.
It was Bruno Alves, former Vice Minister of National Defense, a straw hat pulled low over his eyes. The de facto leader of the civil-servant laborers who had been dumped here for failing the competency exam, he seized a megaphone, eyes glittering.
"Attention! All personnel, attention!"
He had been shouting himself hoarse before he even arrived. His voice came out raw.
In truth, no one was more desperate than he was. He believed that if Tortilla Farm produced an overwhelming turnout and an overwhelming share of the vote, he might finally seize the lifeline that would carry him back to the center.
"Come on! Everyone, let's go vote for His Excellency! Each of our votes will decide the future of the fatherland!"
"Boss, we got sent here as punishment. You really think His Excellency will even notice if we vote?"
"You moron! That's exactly why we have to try harder! If we deliver a one-hundred-percent bloc vote, His Excellency will see we've become proper human beings and give us another look, won't he? And even if we don't make it back to Libertad — if conditions here just get a little better, isn't that something?"
Bruno clenched his fist, spit flying.
"I believe in His Excellency's mercy! If we show him, he will answer! Now get in line! If I find a single dissenting vote, I will not let it slide! I'll hunt them down on my honor!"
"Alright, alright. We're going."
And so the workers of Tortilla Farm filed toward the voting booths — some holding their noses, others clinging to a thread of hope. To survive. Or for a better tomorrow.
Two in the afternoon. Libertad Polling Station No. 1.
The election observers dispatched by the UN arrived at the polling place. Their chief, David, let out a sigh and thought, Elections in a dictatorship are always the same.
He sent a sharp look over the rims of his sunglasses. He expected soldiers ringing the station with rifles, ballots being forcibly inspected — the usual illegalities. The moment he caught any of it, he intended to report it to the international community and deal a fatal blow to Eugene's moral standing.
Instead.
"Careful, Grandma!"
"Oh my, thank you, dear."
There were no soldiers at all. Young men were carrying elderly people who could barely walk, piggybacking them all the way to the polling station. David watched closely, wondering if they were government plants — but they were ordinary citizens going in to vote themselves. Not a single person was being coerced.
"Excuse me — has anyone pressured you to vote a certain way?"
David stopped a middle-aged man coming out after casting his ballot. The man blinked at him.
"Pressured? What pressure?"
"Threatened into voting for a particular candidate, or..."
"Ha. Would you listen to this man. Are you insulting our His Excellency right now?"
The man exploded, and citizens nearby came swarming in.
"What's going on?"
"This guy's asking if His Excellency had to beg for our votes!"
"Is he insane? If we don't vote for His Excellency, who the hell else would we vote for? Are you a spy?"
"Have you lost your mind? How dare you talk that garbage in a sacred polling place!"
"N-no! It's a misunderstanding!"
David came within a hair of being seized by the collar. He turned tail and fled. Once he had made it out, he wrote the following in his notebook, his hand trembling:
Physical coercion: not confirmed. However, the condition of the voters is abnormal. It is as if one were observing a group that has fallen into a cult.