Carnaval, Montevideo

First, to situate us in time and space: Friday, January 31, 2003, between 8:30 and 11:00 P.M. Uruguay time, which is two hours later than Eastern Standard this time of year, and which neither springs forward nor falls back, nor would it, for in Spanish, unlike English people always tell me, there are many words for the same thing, but rarely one word that means many things, and thus it is with primavera and otoño, which are seasons only, not verbs. We were watching the Carnaval opening parade at the corner of 18 de Julio and Rio Negro, the corner of the Plaza del Entrevero, named for a statue of fighting gauchos all jumbled together on their horses. The parade was a good parade, but it was what you'd expect from Carnaval anywhere. It was missing the elements that make Uruguayan Carnaval unique: the political-satirist, clown-dressed, a cappella singing groups, the parodists, the full drum corps. You could say that the people were excited and it was hot and there were almost-naked women and people dressed up with makeup or big heads made of papier-mâché, and the floats had a moon and stars theme, and my children were whining because they wanted a cheap plastic Power Rangers mask that I wouldn't buy them, but, in the end, it was another parade, and we would leave early because it was getting late.

So you can appreciate my interest when people all around began looking away from the parade and down the street at a gathering commotion. I caught the action already in progress: a shirtless man was surrounded by 1) all-in-black police with bulletproof vests and billy clubs, threatening but not connecting; 2) other police in white shirts and blue hats; 3) other police in yellow reflective vests; and 4) young men in white T-shirts with SEGURIDAD on the back. The shirtless man was yelling threateningly, insultingly, trying to get away smoothly, while a woman whom I took to be his wife was yelling and holding a baby in her arms. The uninvolved began yelling, too, all the more when the shirtless man picked up a small, crying boy, presumably his son, and the police fell upon him with greater urgency, arms grabbing at the boy, others fending off attacks from the wife.

The struggle moved slowly down the street, dancing in and out of the shadows of leaves above, and as the crowd of jeering bystanders grew, the chaos muffled the music of the parade. I hung back, but my anger burned, and I surreptitiously took out my camera. I hadn't seen what the man did to deserve the police's special attention, but he was one guy against twenty, and now they were wresting his son from his arms and the boy was wailing and the police were shouting and the man was spitting in anger but impotent against the force that now descended upon and finally subdued him. I snapped two quick pictures before they shoved him into a white van and shut the sliding side door.

It was the second picture that did it.

I should explain that I realized that the police wouldn't like their picture being taken, even though they were probably within legal limits regarding use of force, and I had heard plenty of rumors in Uruguay about how the police take your camera and rip the film out, just like in the movies. Only a few months earlier, a friend of mine had scheduled an interview with a famous radio personality, Jorge Petinatti. He had driven his motorcycle across town only to be told by Petinatti that he would no longer grant the interview. As he turned to leave, my friend snapped a couple of pictures, which enraged Petinatti, who called his own security guards, then the police, who confiscated my friend's camera, tore out its film, pulled it full out of its canister. Then they took my friend to the station, booked him, and beat him up.

So when my flash lit up the scene for the...