The trial was a farce. The cadets closed ranks. The teachers wanted to avoid a scandal. Only Gamboa pushed for the truth. And then, the accident happened.
The ringleader was known as El Esclavo —the Slave. He was thin, with cunning eyes that had learned to spot fear like a shark smells blood. His lieutenants were El Boa , a brute with fists like sledgehammers, and El Poeta , a quiet, bitter boy who wrote verses about death in a hidden notebook. libro la ciudad y los perros
The true war began with a stolen exam. The Fourth Year cadets had the answers to the chemistry final, guarded in a locked drawer in the Commandant’s office. El Esclavo needed them to avoid failing and repeating the year—a fate worse than death, for his father had promised to send him to a reformatory. The trial was a farce
One Tuesday, a new cadet arrived. His name was Ricardo Arana, but they called him El Jaguar because of the way he stared—unblinking, golden, and cold. He did not flinch at the circle. He did not beg. When El Boa grabbed his collar, El Jaguar broke his nose with a headbutt. Only Gamboa pushed for the truth
El Poeta did nothing. He went to his bunk, opened his notebook, and wrote a poem titled The City of Dogs : Here the strong devour the weak, And the truth is a buried bone. We bark, we bite, we never speak, And the city is our prison of stone. Years later, Alberto—the former mouse—walked out of the academy’s iron gates for the last time. He was eighteen. He had a scar on his palm from the broken glass. He had learned to smoke, to curse, to never cry. He had learned that the city of dogs was not just the academy. It was Lima. It was the army. It was the whole country.
Their ritual was the "circle." Each night, a new recruit was chosen. The victim was dragged to the latrines, stripped of his belt or his rations, and humiliated until he cried. If he told a teacher, they would beat him worse. The unwritten law was simple: silence is the first and last commandment .
Alberto said nothing. He had learned the first commandment.
