Face

Face is here again.  I can see the top of his black knit hat through the front door window.  I think briefly that tonight I will invite him in.  I know I will not.  Face frightens me.  He is everything I try to pretend my north Minneapolis neighborhood is not.  He comes out at night and keeps to the alleys as he distributes crack to people's back doors.

            I didn't know Greg was using again until Face appeared at our back door for the first time two weeks ago.  Greg was in the shower.  He didn't lie about it when I asked why a black man dressed in old, dirty clothes and reeking of malt liquor came looking for him at nine o'clock on a Monday night.

            Tonight Face is at the front door and I know he has done this for my sake.  I am not really afraid of him. What scares me is watching Greg poke a hole in a beer can with his car key, fill it with cigarette ash, carefully place a crack rock on top, and smoke it.  The smell it leaves behind.  That smell that is like no other smell in the world, so there is no way to describe it, but no way to forget it, either.  That smell scares me.  This is who Face is to me; the courier of destruction and desperation in my life.

            I look out the window again as Face blows air into his cupped hands and bounces form foot to foot on the porch.  I feel a twinge of pity for him, an impulse to open the door and say "come in."  I turn around and walk upstairs to tell Greg Face is at the door.  I stay there reading a book in bed until I hear Greg say, "See ya later, man," and close the door. 

I know Face has no place of his own to sleep tonight.  I know he makes more money selling crack than he could at a legitimate job because of his lack of education and the hard, raised scars that mark the left side of his face.  I know he has steady work as long as people like Greg continue to lose the battle of addiction.  I even know that, put in the same circumstances, there is a good chance I would do the same thing.

After two months of telling myself I can help Greg, I give up and decide to move out.  As I pack, I discard all the things I don't really need, but keep everything I think might be worthwhile to my future writing career, including a semester's worth of papers on the United States' recent drug policies in Central and South America.  They focus specifically on our involvement in Columbia and the little-known eradication surge called Plan Columbia, aimed at destroying coca growth in the southern regions of the country.  I skim through pages of facts on an aid package sent to Columbia in 1999 that included funding for spraying thousands of acres of farm land in the Gaumuez Valley, deep in the state of Putumayo, where nearly half of Columbia's cocaine was produced at the time.  The people who grow the coca plants are, for the most part, Indigenous families who have farmed the land for centuries and who grow coca not only for its traditional uses, but also because it is a cash crop, and one of the only cash crops that grows well in the region.

Because the United States is as elusive about foreign policy and narcotics control as Greg was about his crack addiction before Face appeared at our door, I know few people who have ever heard of Plan Columbia.  Essentially it was our government's response to pleas for help from Columbia to end violence in the country, but that put most of the money into narcotics control.  This included spraying massive amounts of chemicals over coca plant farms, which had detrimental effects on the environment and on several large and small communities of Indigenous farmers.  A program was established that provided farmers with up to six months of temporary food and shelter in exchange for surrendering their lands or ceasing the growth of coca.   For most farmers, this meant surrendering their only means of subsistence, for no other crop can compete with the global market for cocaine in southern Columbia. 

If Face were to appear again before I move out, I imagine myself asking him to stop selling crack with the promise of six months of shelter and food, and even a little job training.  Could he make?  I doubt it.  Most shelters in Minneapolis would grant him a night or two, tops, at any one time.

On December 22, 2000, aerial fumigation of coca crops funded by the United States hit the community of Nueva Isla.  Between January 1 and 14, three other communities were hit, some much harder and for longer periods of time.  In each of the four communities, all indigenous, losses extended far beyond the coca plants.  In Nueva Isla alone, food crops that sustained 32 families were completely destroyed.  Chicken sheds, fish hatcheries, and medicinal gardens were all covered in chemicals.  In these communities, there is little if any medical help nearby.  Livestock perished.  Adults and children both fell ill. 

Plan Colombia has caused the displacement of hundreds of family farmers.  Indigenous communities have been forced to flee their native lands not only due to the massive levels of chemicals, but also because of the physical threat presented by the different army groups in allegiance with the United States, and against. Four major armies roam over the country of Columbia: the two main guerilla groups, the FARC and the ELN; the Columbian army; and the paramilitaries.  Although the two guerilla groups occasionally find themselves in combat with the Columbian military and the paramilitary, their goal is not political control.  The farmers have been caught in the middle of a bloody battle for control of the coca market. 

The majority of farmers who surrendered their land or who fled their destroyed farms were forced to move to the city, where they must learn to survive with no job training, no education, and little cultural understanding.  Yet with each new farmer in the city, there is another farmer in Columbia, or somewhere deeper into the Amazon, who will harvest a crop of coca plants and sell it on one of the most profitable markets available to him, his community, and his country. 

I wonder how long it would take for a coca plant on a small family farm in an indigenous community in Columbia to reach Greg's beer can crack pipe, and if in that time the farmer who grew it had managed to keep food on his table and a roof over his family's head.  Is there something better that could be done with the more than one billion dollars spent by the U.S. government to interrupt the flow of narcotics into our country each year - an expenditure that has done little, if anything, to slow the rate of distribution or consumption of cocaine and crack?  If not, then is there some other strategy that would keep people like Greg off his habit?  Something that would provide Face with adequate skills to support himself by another means?  Something that would provide the citizens of Columbia personal safety from guerilla warfare, freedom from chemicals pouring down from the sky and poisoning their subsistence, and gross human rights violations at the hands of their government? 

North Minneapolis has received much press recently.  This is due in part to the efforts of police to tackle the crime rate in the neighborhoods just west of where Greg and I live.  I heard they brought a specialist up from Chicago to help develop the plan.  Last week, the ice cream man was shot in front of our house.  Two nights ago, they found a body in an alley three blocks away.  Last night, Greg and I sat on the porch and watched police raid the two-story apartment building on the corner. 

Face is back.  This time something is wrong.  I can hear Greg pacing back and forth upstairs.  He is cursing about something.  He shouts down to me not to open the door and to come upstairs to our room.  We pass in the hall and Greg tells me to stay there – upstairs – until he says it's all clear.  He says this to me as he tucks a gun into the back of his pants.  Less than a week before I move out, I hide under my covers and listen to the two of them argue in the kitchen.  Every second I anticipate the sounds of a gun shot.  All I can feel is my heart beating.  It reverberates in all of my limbs, and I know that soon I will be away from all of this, but I don't know if it will be soon enough.