Pure Evil

Albert Christ - every town should have one

It´s official: Christopher Hitchens is dead, Obama signed away due process for American citizens, the senate in all there wisdom is solving the deficit by passing more tax cuts, I have only three songs by Warren G with me, and I´m stuck in La Cumbre until monday. This is a weekend of pure evil.

Red meat

The bike mechanic told me I have to wait til monday, and he absolutely refused to let me have a go at the hub myself, so here I am, trekking around a random town that I was only supposed to pass through on my way to Ruta 38. Anytime a stop is forced on me like this, in means I have to pinch pennies to make up for lost time, which means I´m eating nothing but corn and lentils until my wheel gets fixed. For 5 pesos, it´s actually a pretty decent mix.

What to say about La Cumbre that hasn´t been said in my last post? I had the chance to go hiking around town and the mountains yesterday. That was fun and breathtaking and all that noise (they got a novelty-sized Albert Christ overlooking the town), but I find when I´m stopped in a place for too long, I get pretty anxious and want to get on the road while my leg muscles are still coarsing with the power of Satan.

Speaking of Satan, I finally opened up The Argentinian Reader, a history textbook donated by Evan and Sarah, and it´s loaded with fiendish tidbits about the evil origins of this country. My favorite section is a first hand account written by a German mercenary--a certain Ulderico Schmidt--in service of the Spanish crown. In 1554, he is dispatched to a very early colonial Buenos Aires.

The new European arrivals were welcomed enthusiastically by the native population. Every afternoon, the indigenous Argentinians paraded cartloads of honey, meat, and other delicious things into the European camp as a sign of friendship. The Spanish were not having a lot of luck collecting food on their own and wanted to see where the Argentinians were getting all this awesome grub, so one day they decided to follow their Argentinian benefactors back to their homes to see if they could find the source of all this abundance. Instead, they were quickly discovered, got their asses kicked, and sent back to their crappy colony in disgrace.

Ulderico wasn´t too keen on being disgraced in such a way, so the next day he and the rest of his buddies suited up for slaughter, marched to the Argentinian camp and murdered as many folks as they could. They didn´t even do a good job at that since so many Argentinians managed to escape the massacre and run to other villages to tell all the other tribes to avoid these crazy christians at any cost.

Without the daily parade of free food on behalf of the native folks, the Spanish colony quickly began to starve. A few Spaniards came to the realization that since they aren´t really using their horses, they might as will eat them. Well apparently, even when facing certain death at the hands of famine, eating one´s own horse is an executable offense, and so these fellas were quickly strung up. After a day or so dangling in the hot Argentine sun, the bodies started looking rather delicious to the rest of the colony. It was only a matter of time before someone started clipping off some toes or a hand or greedily making off with a whole thigh. Human flesh became the new craze amongst the inhabitants of the fledgling Buenos Aires, and it is here we find the origins of the famed asado tradition. Fortunately, no more horses were hurt.

The news of cannibalism spread to the native Argentinians, who according to Ulderico, assembled like Voltron and did everything they could to kick the crazy Spanish out. Since killing the invaders only increased the food supply for the remaining Spanish, the native folks finally managed to burn down the colony and force Ulderico and his pals to swim back to their homeland. Pure evil.

Alright, I´ve spent enough time at the computer. All this talk of devouring human flesh has made me absolutely ravenous. I´m heading to the public gallows to see if they have any fresh convicts strung up today. Wish me luck!