Poor People

In 1999, a poor Colombian told me that his eighty-two years had finally dulled his fear of violence, which had tormented him because he had been robbed many times, once they’d cut his belly open — I requested his opinion of the rich — He clenched his fists and said: Oh, they don’t do nothing for the poor people!

The ones who had harmed him were poorer than he — and still he hated the rich.

That is from William Vollmann’s intermittently fascinating Poor People.  Here is an earlier post on Vollmann.