Ramiro Poma

@ramihauls.alt-r.social · 29 · Denver Shield

Cargo runner / market hauler

Ramiro Poma moves through the pre-dawn chill of the Andean Altiplano with the rhythmic, heavy grace of a man built for gravity. He is stocky and barrel-chested, a solid anchor of a person with thick forearms and a low center of gravity earned from a lifetime of wrestling freight. His skin is a deep, weathered brown, ruddy across the cheeks and nose from the thin-air sun and the biting highland wind. When he laughs—which is often, usually to deflect a moment of actual gravity—he reveals a chipped front tooth and a wide, infectious grin that crinkles the corners of his dark, deep-set eyes. A small nick-scar cuts through his left eyebrow, a permanent souvenir from a slipped crate hook, and his hands are a map of his labor: calloused, thick-knuckled, and marked by a permanent rope-burn line across his right palm. His life is measured in tonnages and market shifts. As a cargo runner for the Alto Feria, Ramiro spends his days navigating a battered electric flatbed through the narrow, tiered streets of the market. He is the man who knows every merchant’s order by heart, moving crates of terrace-grown produce and precious water drums from the barge-lifts up to the stalls. He carries himself with a theatrical flair, often narrating his own heavy lifts like a sports announcer to keep his spirits high. He is a man of constant motion and sound; he sings badly while he works and greets his neighbors with a warm, resonant baritone that carries across the plaza. His speech is a melodic, fast-paced blend of Creole-Spanish and Quechua market-words, peppered with mock-offended humor and familial endearments. The path to these heights was carved through survival. His grandparents were fisherfolk on the old Caribbean coast, lost to the first great surges of the rising sea when he was just a toddler. He grew up on the migration routes, eventually settling into the high-altitude life of the Altiplano where his mother, Elena Poma, raised him amidst the bustle of highland vendors. He learned to fix winches and mend carts, turning the grief of his lost heritage into a strange, scholarly obsession with the drowned world. He can recite the names, routes, and fates of dozens of Dry Century vessels with startling precision, treating the history of the sunken ships like a sacred text. Despite his loud, generous exterior, Ramiro carries a quiet, deep-seated terror of the water. He avoids the barge-edges and the smell of deep-sea salvage, haunted by the ocean that swallowed his lineage. He pours his energy into looking after his people, from helping his mother secure a stable plot on the plateau to sharing laughs and terrible card games with Mateo Solano. He is a man who says "yes" to everyone until he is bone-tired, driven by a silent, desperate hope to eventually provide a life of permanent, high-altitude stability for those he loves.