Chapter 133: That Time We Took In Refugees in South America (3)

TL: Skye

Four weeks later.

The refugees who had completed their training began boarding buses for the Second and Third Tortilla Farms.

But there was something a little strange about them.

For people who had supposedly received nothing more than training in farm operations, they all looked noticeably exhausted, and their faces bore the peculiar hardness of people who had endured something.

More than anything, they were wearing military uniforms.

Technically, they were San Marcos Army work uniforms, but dressed head to toe in camouflage with combat boots on their feet, they looked every bit like soldiers.

Which, in truth, was only natural.

San Marcos integration training was practically basic military training.

They woke before dawn, built up their stamina with morning runs, learned the rules, laws, and institutions they were expected to obey in San Marcos, and were taught loyalty to His Excellency.

As a result, the Venezuelan immigrants, who had once been little better than vagrants, had been transformed into a tightly disciplined group.

In one corner of the bus, an even more astonishing sight was unfolding.

“His Excellency’s love is as boundless as the sky His Excellency’s will is deeper than the sea”

Marcelo Gutierrez, a mid-level boss from one of Venezuela’s most notorious gangs, was humming The Love of His Excellency, a San Marcos military anthem.

The very same Tren de Aragua mid-level officer who, just four weeks ago, had confidently declared that he would take over San Marcos’s underworld had completed a special education program prepared by the SIA and was now singing a military anthem praising Yu-jin.

Just what in the world had happened in there?

No one knew.

No one asked, and Marcelo never said.

All that was certain was that the predatory gleam had vanished completely from his eyes. In its place, he gazed wistfully toward the Presidential Palace.

Vroooom-

The buses carrying the immigrants rolled across the endless plains.

Outside the windows stretched green fields as far as the eye could see. Fertile land spread beneath the Caribbean sun.

And then they reached their destination.

The Third Tortilla Farm.

When they arrived at the facility, which had been built to house and employ thirty thousand people, the management staff came out to greet them.

Not one of the supervisors looked ordinary.

Ironically, they were former gang members and corrupt officials who had worked at the First Tortilla Farm.

And now those same people stood in positions where they would manage newly arriving refugees.

Here was how that had happened.

For a time, the First Tortilla Farm had been struggling with a labor surplus.

The farm had originally been designed for roughly fifty thousand people, but once construction of New Town began in earnest, around two-thirds of those who had completed Reeducation were reassigned to construction sites.

That left roughly fifteen thousand people. Then another fifty thousand Venezuelan workers arrived.

At first, there was no problem. The experienced workers, who were already farming veterans, worked alongside the relatively inexperienced Venezuelans, and the farm ran smoothly.

But as time passed, things changed.

The Venezuelan workers rapidly became more skilled.

That was when the labor surplus became a real problem.

Sixty-five thousand people were doing work meant for a fifty-thousand-person farm, so they started running out of things to do.

Farm work that had once taken twelve hours a day dropped to eight, and by three in the afternoon, some people were sitting around blankly with nothing left to do.

At a Tortilla Farm, where the 777 Schedule, 7 to 7, seven days a week, was the rule, such a thing was unimaginable.

Then came news that the Second and Third Farms were being built.

The Tortilla Farm administration did not let the opportunity pass.

From the remaining original farm workers, they selected around ten thousand people with excellent Reeducation evaluations and put them through two weeks of management training.

Farm operations, personnel management, basic accounting, emergency response. It was a process that transformed people who had once been managed into the ones doing the managing.

And they were scheduled to be dispatched as managers not only to the Second and Third Farms, but all the way through the planned Twentieth Farm.

It was somewhat ironic, but there was a certain logic to the arrangement.

They had experienced the Tortilla Farm system firsthand.

They understood the importance of discipline in their bones, they were veterans who had learned farming through actual fieldwork, and above all, they understood better than anyone what Reeducation was really like.

The same was true in any organization. People who had been managed themselves often knew best how to manage others.

One supervisor for every fifty immigrants.

The supervisors had been trained in advance not to abuse their authority.

Ten-hour days, six days a week.

Since the population included both men and women, the conditions were considerably more relaxed than the original Tortilla Farm’s 777 regimen.

They were given a reasonable workload, adequate rest, and three filling meals a day.

And so began the first week.

Most of the immigrants remained wary.

That was only natural. They had been put in military uniforms, put through the wringer at an army base for four weeks, and then assigned to a farm.

Some even suspected that the place might actually be a labor camp.

The second week.

Their wariness gradually began to fade.

The work was hard, but not unbearable, and once they realized the supervisors neither beat them nor hurled abuse at them, the atmosphere began to change.

The third week.

At last, a realization began to spread among the immigrants.

‘This is... actually more livable than I thought?’

‘It’s... not bad?’

‘Isn’t this way better than being in Venezuela?’

‘Getting three full meals a day is already something.’

Most of them had lived in Venezuela without any guarantee of food, clothing, or shelter.

They were people who had rummaged through trash cans in the streets for something to eat, gotten soaked by rain in shantytowns, and lived without any hope for tomorrow.

So it was hardly surprising that people like that would think things were not so bad when they were given steady work, three meals a day, a roof that did not leak, and clothes to wear.

The four weeks of basic training had also played a major part in changing their mindset.

Discipline. Communal life. Responsibility. And loyalty to His Excellency.

The best example could be seen in one corner of the farm, where Marcelo and his men silently tilled the fields without stopping.

Of course, food, clothing, shelter, and education alone were not enough to plant hope in a person’s heart.

Human beings, after all, are creatures that live on hope.

But hope existed at the Tortilla Farm.

Fundamentally, the Tortilla Farm was a collective farm.

Instead of paying individual wages, it guaranteed basic food, clothing, and shelter, then distributed dividends from the farm’s profits once every six months.

The farm grew a variety of crops, including coffee, avocados, corn, sugarcane, and tobacco, sold them domestically and abroad, and distributed eighty percent of the resulting profits to the farm community.

Naturally, people with good evaluations received a little more, while those with poor evaluations received a little less.

But the difference was not extreme. The system was designed so that the person receiving the most would never get more than twice as much as the person receiving the least.

‘Work hard and get more. Slack off and get less. But no matter how much someone slacks off, they won’t starve.’

That was the philosophy of the Tortilla Farm.

One might call it a system combining capitalist incentives with a socialist safety net.

Workers who saved money on the farm could move into better housing as well.

For now, everyone started out in studio-style container units, but they could save their dividends and upgrade to larger units, or buy furniture and appliances.

But there was another reason their eyes really lit up.

“If you marry and have a child while living on the farm, that child will automatically receive San Marcos citizenship. The child will also receive free education at a boarding school.”

Regular training session.

A Tortilla Farm executive was spreading hope among the newly arrived immigrants.

“Then our children become citizens of San Marcos?”

“Yes. They receive San Marcos citizenship from the moment they are born.”

The immigrants looked at one another. Their eyes had gone wide.

“Then what about us? Can we become citizens too?”

The supervisor nodded.

“If you marry and have a child, the parents also become eligible to take the naturalization examination. If you pass, you’ll be able to obtain permanent residency.”

“Permanent residency means...?”

“The right to live freely in San Marcos. The only thing you won’t have is the right to vote. In every other respect, you’ll be treated the same as citizens. You can leave the farm and live in Libertad or New Town, and you’re free to find whatever job you want.”

The certainty that one’s child could have a better life.

With that alone, people could endure almost any kind of grueling labor.

And Yu-jin understood that better than anyone.

Because that was how Korea had grown.

The generation of parents who worked with nothing but their children’s future in mind amid the ruins of war had created the Miracle on the Han River.

And Yu-jin, who intended to recreate that miracle in the Caribbean, was now...

“I believe I simply did what had to be done.”

...giving interviews to some of the world’s leading media outlets.

***

Ten days earlier.

As Yu-jin was handling affairs of state as usual, Isabella brought him a magazine.

“Your Excellency, please take a look at this.”

Wondering what kind of magazine it was, Yu-jin accepted it, then froze when he saw the cover.

“Huh? What’s this?”

It was Time.

One of the world’s most prestigious newsweeklies.

And Yu-jin’s face was on the cover.

Across a photograph of Yu-jin staring straight ahead with the San Marcos flag behind him was a bold headline.

[President Yu-jin Choi of San Marcos Makes a Great Decision That Will Go Down in Human History.]

Yu-jin hurriedly flipped through the magazine and read the eight-page feature article.

The article’s tone was overwhelmingly laudatory.

[A small nation of 9.2 million people has decided to accept one million refugees. This amounts to more than ten percent of the country’s population, an unprecedented proportion for refugees voluntarily accepted by a single nation in human history.]

[President Choi Yu-jin’s decision will be remembered as one of the greatest and most humanitarian decisions in the political history of Latin America.]

[San Marcos’s choice, in stark contrast to developed nations closing their doors in the face of the refugee crisis, sends a powerful message to the international community: even a small nation can do it.]

Yu-jin lowered the magazine.

‘Why did this become such a huge story?’

To be completely honest, he had not accepted the refugees for humanitarian reasons.

It had simply been a diplomatic strategy to pull Venezuela into the Blue Team. Pure humanitarianism had very little to do with it.

But the world judges results, not intentions.

Looking solely at the fact that San Marcos had volunteered to take in one million refugees, it certainly did look like an extraordinarily compassionate decision.

Sure enough, when he searched his own name on Google, articles came pouring out.

[The Great Leader, Yu-jin Choi — The Caribbean’s Little Giant]

[President Yu-jin Choi of San Marcos, a Leading Candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize?]

[Can Choi Yu-jin Succeed Where Merkel Failed? — A New Model for Refugee Policy]

[CNN Special Report: Why the World Is Watching Yu-jin Choi]

“Congratulations, Your Excellency.”

Isabella spoke with a delighted expression.

“Now the whole world will know of Your Excellency’s greatness.”

“......”

And the repercussions began in earnest the very next day.

Interview requests came flooding in from major American media outlets.

CNN, NBC, FOX, The New York Times, The Washington Post. More than ten interview requests a day poured into the presidential secretariat.

They pestered him so relentlessly that Yu-jin eventually gathered the American media together and held a joint interview in the briefing room.

*

More than fifty reporters had packed into the briefing room.

CNN, BBC, Reuters, AP, NHK, NBS. Media organizations from not only the United States and Britain, but Korea and Japan as well, had turned out in force.

When Yu-jin stepped up to the podium, camera flashes erupted.

A CNN reporter raised his hand first.

“Mr. President, Time described your decision to accept these refugees as one of the greatest and most humanitarian decisions in the political history of Latin America. How were you able to make such a decision?”

“San Marcos is a poor country. As recently as six years ago, our own people were suffering from hunger. So we know what hunger is. We know what that suffering feels like, and because of that, we could not simply turn away.”

Yu-jin answered calmly while looking into the cameras.

A BBC reporter followed up.

“But accepting refugees equivalent to ten percent of your population is an enormous burden. Germany also accepted one million refugees and experienced serious difficulties. Do you believe San Marcos can handle it?”

“It won’t be easy. I know that very well.”

Yu-jin admitted it frankly.

“But if we refuse to do something simply because it is difficult, the world will never become a better place. If it is something someone has to do, then I believe even a small nation should be willing to step forward.”

The reporters nodded. One cameraman was wiping his lens with a visibly moved expression.

A reporter from Korea’s NBS raised his hand.

“Mr. President, I’d like to ask this as a Korean. Did your identity as a Korean influence this decision in any way?”

“Of course. I was born and raised in Korea. Korea was able to rise from the ruins of war and become one of the world’s ten largest economies because it received help from the international community.”

Yu-jin continued.

“Korea transformed from a country that received aid into one that provides it. I want San Marcos to follow the same path. We received help, so now we should become a country that gives help. That is the Korean spirit I learned.”

The NBS reporter scribbled it down with a deeply moved expression.

The final question.

A Reuters reporter asked.

“You are being mentioned as a leading candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. How do you feel about that?”

Yu-jin shook his head.

“The Nobel Peace Prize... I believe I simply did what had to be done.”

Yu-jin looked directly into the cameras.

“I don’t need an award. If I have one wish, it is that this becomes an opportunity for more countries to take an interest in the refugee crisis. If San Marcos can do it, other countries can too.”

The reporters all began applauding.

Yu-jin felt extremely pleased with himself.

*****

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