In recent days, some facts of the harsh situation in Argentina have pointed out to us without concealment, without elegance and without artifice, some of the saddest deficiencies that we show as a society.
This poetics of the shipwrecked man that we naturalize anesthetizes us so much that we can no longer capture clues, guess meanings, reveal meanings.
So, reality puts metaphors aside and exposes itself like this, naked and in front, to see if it manages to make us react.
Last week, five students from the Instituto Jóvenes Argentinos, in the Jardín Espinosa neighborhood, south of the capital city of the province, fell into the septic chamber of their school. The fact could be used as a metaphor that reflects the state of education in our country, if it were not for the fact that its literalness leaves us speechless.
At the same time, in another area of the city, and within the framework of a judicial investigation, forensic experts hope to find some remains of the body of Anahí Bulnes, a teacher and mother of three girls who has disappeared since December last year. A woman murdered and thrown away.
At what point did it stop frightening us that we have to separate and classify waste to find a person, a woman?
Unfortunately, it is not the first news that unites people with dumps in the same title. In November 2022, an 8-year-old boy was crushed to death by a garbage truck while looking for food – or was he playing? – in a garbage dump in Paraná.
When it is said that poverty makes sick and kills, it is not a play on words.
Last week, the newspapers reported that a homeless baby died a few meters from the Casa Rosada. It was in exact synchronization with the day the heartbreaking poverty rate in Argentina was announced.
We Argentines, far from the reach of metaphors, are dying of literality.