to his table. He started eating, but just a few minutes later the results were announced. Jesus Cabrera was the winner and as it was common all the other candidates showed up yelling every way they could, saying the elections were rigged. It was just like looking at a group of children that lost the lollipop they had been licking for the past few years.
As soon as the results were announced the majority of the coffee's customers stood up screaming in excitement and went toward the televisions as if they wanted to touch Jesus Cabrera through the screen, it was as if they saw a saint or something like it, a lot of them were crying of happiness. The group was conformed by the worst of the faculty's students, drug addicts, known troublemakers and thieves, whores and vagrants, he even saw the sisters holding hands in happiness as if they were doing some sort or ritual. Most of the people celebrating had at least 7 years in college and were still very far away from graduating, having said that, most of them had a proven expertise in avoiding the law since most of them were minor criminals. So huge was the amount of people that came in to try and see the televisions that they surrounded Guillem's table completely blocking his view of them. He grabbed his food and got away from the group as much and as quickly as possible, finding finally a few empty spots in the most farther away tables, as soon as he got there he noticed that the few people out of the crowd had a very sad and pessimist look in their eyes. Finally he managed to sit down at an empty table and continued eating and studying for his test which was about to start and for which he still had not had enough time to study properly.
From the table he could still hear the television through the crowd, so he was able to hear when Cabrera started his speech.
“Comrades! Now I can call you all my Bolivarian comrades! You will see! Now we are going to convert this country in an egalitarian society. Let's forget about democracy, that is a concept created by gringos to steal our resources from us, it was imposed by the empire of USA! Now we are going to convert Great Colombia into a socialism, a socialism of the XXI century! From now on anyone that has a car shall share it, if you see someone in a car you can demand him to take you, what is that about having a 4 seater car for only 1 person? No! We cannot let that happen any more! Houses? How is it possible that there are people in the city's east living in those huge houses? Everyone without a nice house go on an reclaim that which is yours! You built those houses! And they are enjoying them! Let's go and invade those rich people's properties! Everything will be returned to the people with my government! Not to the oligarchs of the empire! With me you will be able to recover everything that they did not allow you to have! Because they are greedy and bad! They are the devil...” And so he continued.
It was really insufferable to hear him talking, so he rushed eating his food and got up to go study somewhere else where he could not hear such nonsense. As soon as he got up he heard many people from the crowd yelling revolutionary slogans.
“Let's go! Let's take the college for ourselves! Let's kick the rich people out of our place of study! They should be in rich people colleges! Not here!”
“Out with the oligarchs of the USA!”
“Return your places in our college! Give those positions back to the people!”
“Let's kill the oligarch teachers that want to make us fail! They do not want us to graduate!”
“Let's take over the college! It belongs to the people! We have rights!”
Guillem went out of the coffee shop as quiet as possible and began walking to the faculty of science, in the way he took his mobile phone out and called Tom's number.
“Tom, things are getting quite ugly around here, some of the worst students are getting together and yelling very aggressive things, I am now going to your faculty, get everyone together and let's leave this place as quickly and silently as possible. It seems like my mother was right after all.”
“Yeah right, we are at the usual tables playing. Come on in and then we can leave.”
On the way he saw other crowds forming, they were growing and getting more aggressive by the second and had already started to yell and threaten students physically, things were going to get worst very soon.
Finally he arrived at the faculty's pedestrian entrance which was on the inside of the college grounds, facing the rest of the college, but the gate was locked with a padlock. Immediately he started walking towards the main entrance which was on the outside of the college grounds so it required for him to leave through one of the college entries and then back again in through the faculty's main entrance. At most a walk of a couple of blocks.
While approaching the college exit he saw yet another crowd blocking it, it was composed by the informal traders that always placed their dirty little shops outside of college and usually helped thieves by hiding or reselling their stolen items, there were a lot of other people arriving there including more students of the college. Since the college guards were not allowing them to come in they started throwing rocks, food and anything they could find to the guards and to any car that went through. It was not hard to notice that the guards were losing ground there, it was too much aggressive people.
When he saw the crowd closing him, Guillem went back to the locked gate and started trying to climb the wall, it was quite irregular and should have been easy to do, but the weight of his books kept dragging him down. Then he noticed that from the inside of the college grounds there was a second crowd closing in, a group of the guards left their main group and went to try and control them, but between both crowds they were leaving the guards highly vulnerable and he was in the middle of the confrontation. In the middle of his desperation he dropped his bag and made one last try finally making it to the other side of the wall and falling quite noisily on the other side. He hid for a little while inside the faculty, looking through the gate at the fight outside. The students were keeping their distance and were throwing everything they could to the guards, in the few minutes he was there he saw cans, rocks and bottles thrown at the guards, on their part the guards were trying to get close using some old shields like the ones used occasionally by the police to protect themselves, while others were using trash lids or the cars and columns to hide while throwing back the stuff thrown at them. After staying for a while there he started running towards the tables and his friends. The tables were located at the back of the faculty, in theory they were supposed to be used to study, but the reality was quite different, they were used by drug addicts and couples without money for a hotel every evening and night and during the day there was a quite large group of people playing cards and role playing games. He noticed that the faculty was quite empty and silent that day.
When he arrived to the tables he found his group playing cards as if nothing was happening. The table they had chosen was very close to a vehicular entrance on the back of the faculty which faced the faculty of business administration and was closed by a huge gate.
In one of the tables he saw Francisco and the group of youngsters that idolised him playing one of their crazy role playing games, hiding behind him was the little girl that he called his girlfriend. Some time ago Francisco tried sharing more time with Guillem and his group, but he could never fit with the others because of his personality, always trying to live someone else's live and creating adventures to see if others would admire him. But it was good that he finally found an appropriate group for him, these youngsters really loved him and looked up to him. In the group playing with Francisco that day was Efrem, he was a very good guy, quite energetic and who loved exercising, he even had a lot of training in sword playing. His problem was that every time he had the opportunity he would play in a role game, this had caused him to lose quite a lot of friends an even some girlfriends, so much was his fanaticism that he would go and play in any game even if that meant breaking a date with his loved ones.
In another table he saw Carmelo, Jorge and Patricio trying to sell some of their usual cheap merchandise to a group of new students. They always seemed able to find and sell any object or service i
n existence. The sad reality though was that nobody really appreciated them but even then, there was always somebody wanting to use their services so they always hanged around the tables waiting for someone to fall on their crappy trap.
“But, what are you doing?, didn't I say that there are problems in the college grounds? We have to go! And we have to do it now!” Guillem told his group very frustrated.
“Come on, this sort of thing has happened before. A group of idiots manifesting and complaining is quite common, in fact, they must be just trying to get free stuff, favours and what else using force, the police will take care of it. Did you know that every week there are many manifestations like this all over Caracas.” Xavier said.
“This time it is different, Cabrera told them they could do it! The president himself gave them license to take or destroy anything they wanted!”
“Well, crazy guys come and go. It does not matter, it will go away by itself, when was the last time you saw a good president? Let alone a successful one. He will come, steal all he wants and then leave through the back door leaving the country the same way he found it. Anyway, what can we do? From what we have heard,