In my early years as an international student, I held the conviction that, wherever I went, I would contribute to making my environment more diverse. My attitude, as I realised over the years, might have been overly-optimistic.

The warm softness of my bed amplifies the rawness of the scene. A young man kicks a policeman on his motorbike. The agent, clumsy, reaches for his gun. What follows is a mechanical sequence of movements: aim, fire, miss, get off the motorbike, aim again, pull the trigger twice. His attacker, his enemy, is now dead. Marcelo Agredo, still a teenager, is dead. “This is the country I am going back to,” I think.

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