Wolves in the Jungle

By JJ célis

In mid-1976, a large group of prisoners were dropped from a C-130 H "Hercules" aircraft in the middle of the Amazon, with the intention of eliminating them. As fate would have it, an innocent 19 year old boy was thrown along with them. Without knowing where he was, or who those guys were, he had to survive with a small group of prisoners who survived the landing.
Immerse yourself in the company of young Hewlett in this adventure in the Amazon jungle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JJ célis
• Release date: Jun 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227921932

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Wolves in the Jungle

JJ Celis

Copyright © 2024 JJ Celis

All rights reserved.

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Preface

It was the first month of the year 90 of the twentieth century. I was in West Africa, in the Ivory Coast, taking a few days off. Months before, I had made a report on the fall of the wall in the German city of Berlin. I was staying at the Sophie Hotel in the city of Saint Peter, in the south of the country. Early one morning I had decided to go for a walk on the beach, I noticed its beautiful and pleasant sands to enjoy them with bare feet; and so, I did; I walked a long way along that coast, I could not stop admiring the beautiful view before me; the pleasant climate and the soft and constant breeze that enveloped everything around the beach; in those days the temperature in London, my hometown, must have been a cold seven degrees, I remembered that while I was walking. I wanted to get to the natural pool of Magina Beach, between that labyrinth of stone walls and a watery floor; a flashing light caught my attention, that reflection came from the crystalline waters of the beach. In the swaying of the waves, I was able to make out the object that produced those flashes. I approached the place and found what caught my attention; a bottle. I saw that there was something inside it, papers perhaps, it was hermetically sealed with a brass cap or some other similar material; it looked rusty, even so, it had done its job well; it did not allow the water to penetrate and damage its contents. I decided to take the bottle with me, I thought of it as a prize offered to me by the sea. When I returned home, I had news in London; I was to travel to South America to do a report on narcotics. Then I traveled to Madrid, Spain, this time my job was to document an Ethiopian immigrant smuggling ring. For some unknown reason I always traveled with that bottle, I had it as a sort of amulet or something like that.  I did not open the bottle for years after I found it. One rainy afternoon, almost ten years after the encounter with the bottle, I decided to open it, I was in the countryside an hour away from London. I owned a property there, inherited from my parents, it was a small house, more or less a cottage; I used it to get away from everything and everyone. When I opened the bottle, I carefully took out its contents; they were papers, of all kinds of material, they were in a very delicate state, they were almost impossible to handle. Even so, I managed to open them gently, each and every one of them had writings, but I did not understand clearly what those lines were trying to express. I began the task of deciphering and writing down what those improvised pages used as paper said. They were written in Spanish, and I didn't speak Spanish well, I didn't know how to write it either, I had learned some words in a self taught way, just that, that is to say, what I wrote copying from the papers found inside the bottle I understood by myself. There is a very popular saying in my country, there is no greater richness than to have friends or acquaintances, well, I am rich in both, I have friends and I know many people, and many of them; Spaniards. I asked one of those good Spanish friends to read before me those lines written on those papers. Well, what someone wanted to capture there was a kind of diary, however, from my perspective, beyond a notebook of simple personal notes, what was narrated there, was an extraordinary adventure, also dangerous. I decided to narrate by omitting and placing other things in the writing, but taking much of its real content. Immerse yourself in this adventure in the Amazon Jungle.

L. H. Thompson

Wolves in the Jungle

(Diary in a bottle)

CHAPTER 1

Hewlett is my name and I decided after thinking about it for a long time, to narrate this story, I am not a writer, but I defend myself by telling stories; I wrote them on any kind of paper I could find in this peculiar place. I made an effort to do it because it is so unique, otherwise I would not narrate it. I have to tell it from the beginning; with luxury and precision in detail, no matter that at the moment of writing it, ten years had passed since my disappearance, that was in 1976; and I don't know how long it will be until someone manages to read it someday. 

I had left my house like every night, but that day I don't know why, I felt something special in the atmosphere, maybe because the purpose of the outing was to meet Vanessa; a beautiful brunette with light eyes that I had met one afternoon in a shopping mall in the city. I was a young man like many others, I didn't study, I worked from time to time, because if I didn't have a job, then I was a bohemian. I went down the streets and steps until I reached the avenue, I will omit the names of the places where I come from because what I will narrate below might not be convenient to many. I am, if you will, the stereotypical image of the city thug, or as we say here and in several Latin American countries, a bum, a malandro or a choro, yes, my appearance is that of a guy with dark skin, with shorts, bermuda shorts, basketball boots (perhaps nowadays, there are other fashionable ones), a short cut, etc. Of course; they always notice me at the time of a police raid or something like that, they do not fail with me; kicking me in the ass, pushing me and all kinds of abuse and rudeness on the part of the police, military, guards and the like. Everyone who wears a uniform feels an unbridled fascination for mistreating our asses every time they see us, I say they see us because, like me, there are many. I have a wide repertoire of tickets to police headquarters, but they always release me the next day; I am not, nor have I been a delinquent, although I look like one of them. Anyway, I was walking distracted and with my peculiar way of walking, dodging pedestrians (and them avoiding me), dodging the unprotected, uncovered street lamps (the ones left by the electric company in a careless way), dodging cars, dodging dogs, dodging everything, I was obstinate to dodge so much shit and I decided to shorten the distance to save time. I decided to go through an unkempt, smelly and dirty road, to then cross one of those sectors that they call popular but in reality, do not want to call it by its name or do not want to admit the reality in which they live, a marginal sector; in short, I knew I was approaching an abandoned sports field used by the jíbaros for the exchange of merchandise for metallic. Every time I think about it, I remember an old crook who lives in my neighborhood, he told me "Hewlett, when the grass (meaning cannabis indica) is metamorphosed into metal, that is to say into money; that simply ‘my young apprentice’, is pure ‘alchemy’ and every time he got philosophical, I knew he was ‘flying’, living in the sky or as we say in a colloquial way: ‘stoned out of my mind’.

As indeed there were the jíbaros in their alchemical laboratory, transforming grass into metal, making their top management executive transactions. They looked at me and, since we knew each other by sight at least, I didn't call their attention, "I said, Epale, panita —With the proper inflection in my voice, because if I don't do it that way, they would not know me, they might think I am a foreigner from another neighborhood, I can't say Good evening, friends How are you. I must not talk like that because they would kick my ass; I must have that typical street language" inflection. They answered me with a certain reluctance and indifference an épale in a low voice and without the panita, but with the same inflection in their voice. As I left that dark place, I could see some ranchos with their lights on, some happy houses, some sad ones, I define happy as those houses that have their walls with friezes, the sad ones; they are the ones where you can still see the naked blocks. Well, I was quite distracted, so much so that I tripped my feet on a portion of uneven sidewalk that I almost lost my teeth when I hit a metal post, I held on with my hands so as not to fall. A brunette girl was nearby, sitting in front of the door of her house. When I almost fell, I heard her laugh, and with my arrechera I shouted, What's wrong with you, you burnt turd—she managed to say between laughs, (that was what made me the angriest)—And you think you are a blond from Switzerland—I answered—Yes, it is true, I am black; what I am not is shit—I walked back out to the avenue, I had cut quite a long, I was looking at the mall in the distance, I was walking in a hurry, with that excitement in my chest for the encounter with the girl, my nerves were not exaggerated because the bicha was hot. I saw, but without pararle bolas, three or four guys going in the opposite direction to mine, then I realized that the guys were running away from a police patrol, but I ignored them and continued. When I arrived at a police station, what was going to be my surprise, a raid and of course I was approached.

Citizen, against the wall, identification

The ID or the wall, define yourself, I said

Oh, this one is funny—the paco told me back.

No, not funny, with common sense—I said, trying to look very smart.

Are you a minor?—asked the policeman with a gesture on his face that I didn't like, scared I answered—No—I felt a heavy hand on my back, when I turned around, I saw the reflection; the flash; the lightning of a blow that hit me full in the face, I felt that the fist had reached my throat because of how hard it was. In that fraction of a second it was all over, no more fucking, no more house, no more family, no more without beginning; Vanessa.

The constant noise like those produced by the discontinued air conditioners they still use in those old and musty buildings that they have the nerve to use as motels, that Huuu that does not stop, that penetrates our ears in a annoying way, was what woke me up from a fantastic dream with Vanessa, she and I in one of those sleazy hotels. When I woke up everything was dark, I felt a terrible cold and every so often I heard the unmistakable sound of assault rifles being loaded. I did not want to raise my head because I knew I was not alone, there were several with me; although I could not look at them, I felt the rubbing of arms and legs, however, I knew I was not alone because of a penetrating bad smell, like that of people who had not taken a bath for many days; we were in a huge airplane, that was the reason for the noise that woke me up. After a few moments I felt that the floor on which I was lying, moved, at the same time I saw a large door open in the back, I was not alarmed and did not raise my head, because no one did, they were asleep or something worse I guessed. A horrible cold was coming in through that apparatus; so much so that my balls wanted to go up my ass. We were sliding little by little towards the outside, I didn't want to believe what was happening, we were being launched from that plane (a huge C10 plane, I found out later), that was the reason for that noise that woke me up, it made me want to pee, to shit, to vomit; I wanted to have a fixed thought on something different from everything that was height, but it was impossible; the truth was in front of me and I felt every centimeter as I advanced towards the abyss. I wanted to cling to the edge, but I could grasp nothing, everything was smooth and cold. When that device fell away from me as if it were a turd, I had no other alternative, the most handy one I had, the most opportune and appropriate one I could think of at that moment. I do not know who heard me, nor to whom specifically what I said was directed, perhaps in my subconscious I said it to everyone on that plane, perhaps to the government, perhaps to the whole world. As the plane detached from me, I shouted.

Motherfucker!

CHAPTER 2

Once I externalized that spontaneous feeling, because of the panic that took over me, I had not realized that I was carrying something on my back, that is, I was carrying a lump on my back; I did not know anything about those attachments, which today I call detiene—coñazos, because that was what it did; it stopped the pingo é coñazo that was going to give me, well, that pod opened automatically, I did not pull anything.

After that huge sheet was spread out, it gave me a pull upwards, and I was so far down, that I was disemboweled. I continued to fall, but gently, I was already a little more relaxed, despite my situation, I knew that I would not die from that one. I began to look around me, I had to make great efforts because the darkness was the owner of everything, the sky was completely cloudy; it flashed every so often, with that I took advantage of the seconds of clarity generated by the lightning. I looked at other cairns thrown like me, I attributed it to hallucinations for the moment because of the terrible experience I was living, but it was not like that, those were also thrown into the void. The impression I had when I was falling with the detiene—coñazos was that of floating in the nothingness, because everything was completely dark; and the earth disappeared in my eyes.

I was falling and as I did so I felt a smell of wet earth that choked my breath, I am approaching land I said to myself.

I was strung up in a tree whose branches did a good job of scratching my whole body, from every millimeter of my face, through the degrading experience of feeling outraged, since a branch was determined to get quite violently up my ass, so hard that it broke my shorts. It was still dark, I didn't know what time it was when I was hanging there; of course, it was uncomfortable, but, even so, I fell asleep.

I woke up at dawn and guess what, I was still hanging there, two guys were looking at me, one was wearing pants and nothing covering his torso, the other was wearing orange overalls, he looked like a carrot.

"He was more tasagiao than a coporo hehehe!—He said, without taking his eyes off me, and turning to the one with the panties who was no longer looking at me, he said—Look Musiu, this little present they left in the Christmas tree!"

As a matter of fact, when I took a closer look at the carrot I noticed that the guy looked like a foreigner.

"Look at the shitty apureiño do mierda máis musius será vusé que llegó de los albañales, yo soy brasileiro!"—Looking at me, he asked this question without foreign accent.

Are you crippled, my friend?

Me? No! Why?—I asked.

Why don't you get off?

Because I can't, if I knew how to get down from here, I would have done it already, I'm not stupid!—The Musiu approached me, stretched out his arms and pulled the end of one of the straps that held me and I fell suddenly, I felt the veins in my feet burst. Then I heard the shirtless one say—Coporo, what if you're stupid, hehe!

Ignorance, my friend, doesn't discriminate, it's cruel sometimes and in some cases it's costly, right?—the Musiu gave me that hurtful phrase, looking at me with contempt.

I was left lying on the floor and those two decided to leave, suddenly they stopped and looked at each other; then they looked at me and made signs for me to be silent, since I was still complaining about the pain. Both went to a certain place crouched down, then I discovered that we were on a kind of hill full of huge trees; the Musiu called it a cliff, but for me it was still a hill. They had heard voices, because of my pain I didn't give a damn about anything, but they were right to worry, because what happened next was hell on earth. After watching that horror, they had to explain to me, because I did not understand that slaughter.

They were two gangs that had a culebra that is to say, a fight to see who would take control of the mafafa or drugs, in the prison where they came from, I approached the edge of the cliff and saw that carnage, they shouted, cursed, they even hit each other with stones, there were some who were armed with knives, the apureño commented—"Look, Musiu, they threw them armed, they threw them with the chuzos!"

"I know that some of them paid to come armed before they were put on the apureño plane!"—commented the Musiu.

I, of course, without knowing what they were talking about, asked what was going on, pay what? but they didn't answer me, suddenly there was blood everywhere. They were hurting each other in a brutal, fast and merciless way, it was a bloodthirsty scene never seen before by me. I heard one of those who were killing each other screaming like a beast, bloodied, I saw his viscera hanging from his abdomen; he threw accurate knives at his enemies, he looked at their guts from time to time as if it was not happening to him, he pulled the knife at everything that moved; until suddenly he fell trembling, that impressed me, but not as much as watching them kicking the slaughtered head of one of those demoniac beings as if it were a soccer ball. At the end of those horrible scenes of blood and violence, only one remained, I did not hear him scream at any time, but he looked like a machine when it came to handing out knives, he called his cronies by their names, but no one responded, he walked back and forth, slipping on the spilled blood that covered the ground, the feet and bushes of that place; the guy kept calling out to his friends, shaking the already inert bodies, without response. He looked around, made a movement as if to run away; but he stopped, took his hands to his head, looked at the knife he had dropped before, picked it up, took it to his chest and let it fall forward, stabbing him until it pierced his back, I could never forget it, it was a horrible impression, at the same time degrading; to see human nature at its lowest level.

When I regained my speech, I only managed to say.

A slaughter!—I exclaimed, still surprised.

I was paralyzed, with my eyes closed I wished that it was nothing more than a nightmare. When I sat up, the Musiu and the apureño were gone. I walked after them, since I did not want to be alone in that hell that had just ended. After a while I found them; I commented that we had to find a way out of that mountain, the Musiu asked me how and I explained how we would do it.

I said—We climb the tallest tree we can find, so we can look at any of the nearby roads, we head that way and ask for a queue, if we do it before it gets dark the better!

They laughed until they fell to the ground, especially the apureño almost fainted from laughing so hard. As I watched them laugh, I could not see the humor in my words.

After a while of laughter and more laughter, the Musiu asked me. 

What is your name?

Hewlett Americo Borrego!—I answered him and he said to me.

"Buddy, take off your name and baptize yourself as Crédulo Bolsa, don't you know where we are?"

On a hill, don't you?—I answered.

"No! We're in the Amazon! A—ma—zo —nas! This is the pure and wild jungle! Everyone you saw killing themselves, including us, we came from different prisons in the country and we were thrown out of those airplanes to be fucked by the culebrones, the arañotas, the lions, the tigers, and all the other animals that exist in this mountain! Don't you see that where we were, the fuckers were us and since here in this country the death penalty is still not legal, they threw us like dogs, then they will say that we escaped and that's it, the rest will be done by the jungle, and how the hell did you get here?"—said the shirtless man nicknamed Apureño.

They grabbed me in the street!—I answered him.

Did you hear that, Musiu? They grabbed him in the street and threw him here! What would have happened? Maybe the cop didn't like you! Or who knows why he made this move on you? Good for him, bad for you!—The Musiu intervened in the conversation and said.

I'm going to call you as the apureño says, Coporo; you see, Coporo here, the one who manages to survive wins, the one who doesn't, simply loses; from those airplanes, Hercules, to be precise, two hundred prisoners were launched, including me. According to information given to me at the prison, fifty inmates were given damaged parachutes, thirty were released under sedation, of those remaining, subtract the eighteen who have just been killed. Take care not only of the animals in the jungle, but of the rest of the inmates who possibly survived. We cannot go on together. Here we say goodbye, it is nothing personal, but in this place the fittest survive, the Apureño knows the hostile life of the outdoors, the wild life of nature, that is to say he knows how to hunt and fish and I have intelligence and common sense, if you had something to offer us you would come with us, but I think you have nothing to offer, don't you?"

Right, I don't know how to make ‘un coño’!—I told them that angrily, I knew I wouldn't convince them and I didn't keep talking. I set out to walk and they followed me, there was no other option, it was a narrow clearing in that dense jungle. When we reached a certain point where there were some huge trees with their branches and dry trunks, we heard some shouts.

Help, I'm stuck up here ‘epale mi pana’ help me! 

Of course, it was a caniso, using the same linguistic resources of them, because these guys say pagar cana to the fact of being imprisoned; and I taking advantage of that I allow myself the levity of calling them that way. The caniso was there, on the top of one of those dry trees. That being was as pale as a piece of paper, wedged in a pitchfork, he didn't look so badly wounded, however, he had a sharp branch pierced through his leg.

Yes, yes, we saw it, my friend, we are going to help it!—I shouted.

The Musiu kept walking and I stopped him.

What are you doing, do you think we are going to leave him there? I said—What are you going to do?—asked the Musiu.

I'm going up to help him!—I said vehemently.

That man is dying, that wound in his leg may have cut an artery, he has survived only because the branch obstructs the hemorrhage, once you take it out, he will die!—said the Musiu with a frown.

But something must be done!—I said with alarm.

If you want to do something, I won't stop you, help him if you like; but don't count on me, I don't know if the apureño wants to stay with you and help you, what do you say apureño?—He pointed at the guy, who answered with his