Translation from Chaco, la muerte del niño y la canalla mediática by Mempo Giardinelli for Página 12. September 10, 2015.
It’s hard to write in a mood of grief and rage but there’s no choice. A new wave of cynicism has placed my province in the middle of the lies before the elections.
Because it is true that cases of TB and malnutrition in Chaco are endemic, long-standing and painful as well. But it is miserable to take advantage from the unfortunate death of Oscar Sánchez, a 14-year-old malnourished Qom, to spoil beforehand the elections of September 20.
You have to be really mean to feign feelings you don’t have, feelings that none of these scavengers ever had, and suddenly they found out what anyone knows: dozens, thousands of Qom, Wichi, Mocoiq (native tribes) children passed away in extreme conditions, 10, 20, 50 and 100 years ago.
And it is clear that, unfortunately, there will be other cases such as Oscar’s, and that one on January with Néstor Femenía, an ill boy with TB, meningitis and pneumonia. They both died because of estructural causes, denied for ages, that will take a long time to eradicate.
But what is annoying about these “accussers” is that they love promoting –because that is what they do: promotion- anything which scares away “the good faith of people”. These deceases are the result of causes that were never solved in the last 50 years. And it is obvious that neither the current government did, but at least, they implemented health, education and infrastructure policies that had never been applied. That’s the difference, and walking through the hills of the area known as El Impenetrable is enough to check it is true.
These vultures of the media said, last week, that the Pediatric Hospital in Resistencia, recently opened, had estructural fails. And they also “reported” insufficient equipments in Villa Río Bermejito and Juan José Castelli hospitals. I don’t know if these health centers ever had serious problems, but there they are, they exist. There had never been a decent hospital in those places. So it is not fair to discredit the existence of the three hospitals, with medical staff.
But they don’t say that. As in 2007, 22 from 100 children born alive in this province died, nowadays the rate dropped to 11,8. They don’t say that there are 125 new health care centers and other 200 are under construction. About TB, the Control Program of Chaco detailed a month ago to the National Supreme Court that in the Health Region 5 (El Sauzalito, Nueva Pompeya, Miraflores, Castelli) there are 48 registered patients being treated, with other eight people in Pampa del Indio.
They also silence the fact that 4 Qom have graduated from Medical School and they work in Castelli and El Espinillo, and they are part of the team of 1,259 health workers (doctors, nurses, dentists) of El Impenetrable (out of 13,562 in the entire province). Neither they say that since 2014 water connections are being set up between Fortin Lavalle and Castelli, and there are more connections to other places, while in 2015 there are 15,000 new users of rural electrification who ten years ago were in the dark. And the first networks for cellular phones and wifi are arriving at El Sauzalito and Nueva Pompeya, in the northern part of El Impenetrable, to serve 35,000 inhabitants. And across the province electricity users increased from 250,000 to 359,000.
Of course, in any society in which there are four ethnic groups who for centuries were subjected and invisible, and where extreme poverty has been fierce for at least the past 150 years (ie since the «civilization» came to Chaco), we will always «discover» tremendous, painful and shocking cases such as these two kids.
But it is infamous to exploit their misery, take them out of context, and lie in a vile and obscene way to alter the moods 10 days before an election, which results are obvious since the results of the primary elections with an overwhelming difference that no one questioned. Anyone.
These scoundrels are so cynical and manipulative that they write on the photos and videos of a dying child: «Warning: image and video may be shocking». Readers, I do not know about you, but I’ve never seen anything as miserable and violent as this in the world press.
In a province where poverty and extreme poverty have been historically very high, it is at least stupid to discuss and compare data of the discredited INDEC (National Institute of Statistics and Census) whit data of private stakeholders’ «based» on pretended «price indices».
But there is the promoted Observatory on Argentine Social Debt of the Catholic University, which insists that in the last three years poverty rose throughout the country. I wonder in which country these men live, because it is enough to just go to the provinces to see that although there are many problems at all levels, in any way poverty is higher, though they make tremendous efforts.
If it were true that today one in four Argentines is poor (they say 11 MM people are poor, and 2 MM are extremely poor) and that in 2014, 40 percent of Chaco was under the poverty line and 17 percent was below the extreme poverty line, nobody whith eyes would believe it. That is a lie, except you send a small team of scavengers-journalists to once in their lives dirty their feet and look for the worst of the local human landscape, which of course exists and no honest inhabitant of Chaco deny or hide.
Also they lie when they say that the province of Chaco has stopped publishing official data on poverty and extreme poverty «more than three years ago.» And the proof is that the data in this article is official and it has been downloaded from the internet and/or demanded to the Ministry of Health.
