About three months after my arrival in Chile, I started speaking to animals in Spanish— probably the strongest sign that one is, effectively, living in a different language. It was also during this time (on my birthday, to be exact) when one of the greatest waves of civil protests in Latin America started. To the black puppy with white spots that'd hang around my house, I talked about my impressions of the revolution, the absurdity of eating avocado with salt, something about my mom. I listened to its porteños barks of sorrow. We got a bit agitated, but arrived into soft conclusions and lickings. Many other stray dogs had disappeared by then. Perhaps went up the hills, on a journey for survival, or due to pure disdain for the confusions of men. When an unexpected one appeared, disoriented in the middle of the tear gas, howling protest hymns, a common objective was immediately set: taking care of the animal. The last drops of bottles were gone (no more thirst), the final splashes of bicarbonate (eyes no longer burn), delicate gestures were reborn from hands stiffened by the streets to guide the creature out (is there an out?) For a few seconds, police vans became ants, unnoticed, relegated to an unworthy of attention daily routine. Pain, on the other hand, is always a star, even if it greets the doorman and has gone to the same coffee for years. It's the ones below trying to overthrow the ones above, I’d hear, but even popular union has a maximum capacity. There are so many legs, hands and arms, inevitably they’d slap each other at times. Notwithstanding and yet still standing, when someone needed care— dogs are a metonymy— the communion was christian: infallible, with a hint of guilt. I’ll tell tales: A gas-wet pigeon awaits the unnatural course of its existence. Four skinny boys, their faces covered and hands loaded with ransacked appliances, cross paths with the disabled bird. The taller one points and everyone stops, boxes and knees on the floor. Equipped with a level of patience incompatible with the general rush, they spray water on each committed feather. I think I saw one cleaning the pigeon's eyes with his pinky finger, but I won’t risk romanticizing. Three military vans surround protesters on an unpleasant hill. Mannequin-proportion stairs turn into an escape route, forming a permanently astonished centipede. The steps hatch a confrontation between going up (to buckle) or going down (to brave), giving birth to this paralytic being. Amid the inclined chaos, hundreds of people crouch on the handrails, with cloths, bottles, lemons, offering help without accepting refusal. Many people stop, panting and taking advantage of the indecisiveness. Other simply hug, without knowing whether they're acquaintances or accomplices. Here I’ll take my chances with the romantic— I experienced it just like that. The guilt I mentioned is also shared: we have failed. We let them fail us. Allowed them to intimidate us in our own home. I say we because I'm Latin American, but mainly because I had my body in these lands at the end of the world, squeezed between mountains and alleys, among the other battle bodies. Now, what remains is to be attentive, restless, pondering over frustration in a healthy measure until it becomes power. Guilt can be paralyzing, but care knows how to drive. The manifestation of care is self-managed and unquestioned. It's a crooked arm under a loved one: protecting discomfort, active anesthesia. The night's long and you have to move, find another way, insist. Irregular repetition is the path and one only arrives for the pleasure of returning to the beginning. I suspect that's where sex and democracy run into each other. … The puppy teared a pigeon apart one day and I found him lying next to the corpse, watching the feathers fly down the sidewalk. It came over to smell me and we discussed the violence. I considered myself radical in that sense, but haven't torn anything apart yet. Before saying goodbye, I stroked the white spots on its chest, and I swear it wiped the pigeon-covered snout before licking me. That’s how we should carry on: with voracious care.