benevolence. "These poor children without a place to go, in this city of sin, in this ..." He looked at us, sipped another glass of wine, and went on.
This went on for two hours and still we had learned nothing. Impatience led me to try another totally instinctive approach. First I found myself smiling and saying, "You say that you are getting nothing from the stadium." He smiled and nodded.
"But I can see that you are an intelligent man."
He smiled self-effacingly and nodded again.
"In fact," I went on, "you are extremely smart." He looked appropriately humble. "I just cannot imagine," I went on, critical now, "that a man as smart as you would give up something without getting something for himself. After all you are smart ...."
He had had just enough wine. His eyes blazed and his nostrils flared. He would show this gringuita that he was not dumb. "Wait." He jumped up and rushed into the other room. Within moments he was back. Breathlessly, for the red wine had taken its toll in the heat, he unrolled a very large roll of paper that held the entire design for the stadium on it. "There, you see whether I am smart or not!" he proclaimed.
We went over it, studying it. First we saw nothing unusual. There was indeed the regular part of the stadium--a large, round circle. But then I saw that carefully drawn in all around it were little, tiny, individual squares. Rooms. I looked at my journalist friend and he at me. GarcÃa, meanwhile, was standing upright, all five feet four inches of him. How could we think for one moment that he was dumb. Never, never, never!
"The rooms," he said, pointing to the rooms lining the outer wall of the stadium. "Those are mine. And I also get the concessions for all sales inside the stadium. Muy vivo, no púes?"
I congratulated him. He was, I told him, indeed the man I had thought he was.
The journalist and I wandered back in a kind of comic daze. GarcÃa had given the land so he could locate his girls right in the stadium. What's more, he had signed a contract with the city council. Knowing this, it was easy to get the contract from the mayor, even to make him bring it over to me at the hotel.
The bishop of Chimbote waxed ashen when he got the full story -- then he was enraged.
Pensacola, once knowing "the truth," withdrew the project. No more Girl Scouts went door to door to collect for the boys (and girls, we now knew) of Chimbote.
***
Alistair Cooke once described best the special work and opportunities of the foreign correspondent. "It is the stimulating duty of a foreign correspondent to cover everything," he wrote. "Whereas a domestic reporter, even at his best, graduates from general reporting and hops up the ladder to success towards a single specialty, a foreign correspondent is required to act on the preposterous but exhilarating assumption that he takes all knowledge for his province." Cooke also answers well the nagging -- and utterly incorrect -- claim that no one can ever really know another society in a short span of time, as an outsider. "The best stuff ever written on the Constitution was by Bryce, a Scotsman," he pointed out, "and the best thing on Peru is by a Bostonian. But, of course, you start from scratch. You don't take things for granted. You don't think you know. That's an important thing. The resident of a country thinks he knows. The foreign correspondent has to go back to the origins of things every day. You can't write about a violation of interstate commerce without explaining to the British where the whole concept started. So you teach yourself."
Although some newspaper editors maintain that regular street reporters are the same as--and can be exchangeable for--foreign correspondents, they are really two very different types of people. To be a foreign correspondent means being of a particular, somewhat manic temperament, always seeking to conceptualize and bring things down to their roots. To be a foreign correspondent is to love the entire process,
This went on for two hours and still we had learned nothing. Impatience led me to try another totally instinctive approach. First I found myself smiling and saying, "You say that you are getting nothing from the stadium." He smiled and nodded.
"But I can see that you are an intelligent man."
He smiled self-effacingly and nodded again.
"In fact," I went on, "you are extremely smart." He looked appropriately humble. "I just cannot imagine," I went on, critical now, "that a man as smart as you would give up something without getting something for himself. After all you are smart ...."
He had had just enough wine. His eyes blazed and his nostrils flared. He would show this gringuita that he was not dumb. "Wait." He jumped up and rushed into the other room. Within moments he was back. Breathlessly, for the red wine had taken its toll in the heat, he unrolled a very large roll of paper that held the entire design for the stadium on it. "There, you see whether I am smart or not!" he proclaimed.
We went over it, studying it. First we saw nothing unusual. There was indeed the regular part of the stadium--a large, round circle. But then I saw that carefully drawn in all around it were little, tiny, individual squares. Rooms. I looked at my journalist friend and he at me. GarcÃa, meanwhile, was standing upright, all five feet four inches of him. How could we think for one moment that he was dumb. Never, never, never!
"The rooms," he said, pointing to the rooms lining the outer wall of the stadium. "Those are mine. And I also get the concessions for all sales inside the stadium. Muy vivo, no púes?"
I congratulated him. He was, I told him, indeed the man I had thought he was.
The journalist and I wandered back in a kind of comic daze. GarcÃa had given the land so he could locate his girls right in the stadium. What's more, he had signed a contract with the city council. Knowing this, it was easy to get the contract from the mayor, even to make him bring it over to me at the hotel.
The bishop of Chimbote waxed ashen when he got the full story -- then he was enraged.
Pensacola, once knowing "the truth," withdrew the project. No more Girl Scouts went door to door to collect for the boys (and girls, we now knew) of Chimbote.
***
Alistair Cooke once described best the special work and opportunities of the foreign correspondent. "It is the stimulating duty of a foreign correspondent to cover everything," he wrote. "Whereas a domestic reporter, even at his best, graduates from general reporting and hops up the ladder to success towards a single specialty, a foreign correspondent is required to act on the preposterous but exhilarating assumption that he takes all knowledge for his province." Cooke also answers well the nagging -- and utterly incorrect -- claim that no one can ever really know another society in a short span of time, as an outsider. "The best stuff ever written on the Constitution was by Bryce, a Scotsman," he pointed out, "and the best thing on Peru is by a Bostonian. But, of course, you start from scratch. You don't take things for granted. You don't think you know. That's an important thing. The resident of a country thinks he knows. The foreign correspondent has to go back to the origins of things every day. You can't write about a violation of interstate commerce without explaining to the British where the whole concept started. So you teach yourself."
Although some newspaper editors maintain that regular street reporters are the same as--and can be exchangeable for--foreign correspondents, they are really two very different types of people. To be a foreign correspondent means being of a particular, somewhat manic temperament, always seeking to conceptualize and bring things down to their roots. To be a foreign correspondent is to love the entire process,
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