The story below was published in the April edition of the Luciérnaga. I know that it isn´t grammatically correct, it´s just a translation. Also, I know there are a lot of run-on sentences, but that´s part of the language difference. And seeing how these days my brain is functioning in a bastardized version of Spanglish, it makes sense to me. So if there´s something that doesn´t make sense, please let me know! I´m still learning, and this is my first big translation, and any input/criticism from a set of fresh eyes will only make it better.
The story isn´t mine, but the photographs are. I wanted to post this story because a.) it´s a dose of reality that most of us can´t even begin to wrap our heads around. b.) I think it´s a compelling lesson in the role of state institutions and how easily people can be thrown by the way-side - especially in developing countries. c.) It gives good insight into some of the work that I´m doing here in Argentina (no, it´s not just wine, shopping, and polo, as much as I would like it to be). And while most of the guys that I work with at the Luciérnaga aren´t in as tough of a situation as Cristian, some of them are. This interview shows the importance of the Luci to these guys - it gives their lives a bit of structure.
Finally, these photos are some of the only ones that I´ve taken this entire trip that I´m somewhat content with, and I think that they work well with the story. I didn´t do anything for them, I found some nice light, made sure it was in focus, and I pulled the trigger. Cristian did it all.
"Imprisoned in the Street"
Cristian Garro, from a very young age, was left by his family beneath the tutelage of a juvenile judge. In this manner, he passed his childhood in various state institutions that gave him shelter, but no protection. A type of neglect that in the long-run resulted in the most extreme violation of rights: being left in the open. He learned everything that he knows to be able to survive in the streets, which liberate but fight back, and don´t offer many opportunities. This story is part of a complicated, risky, and violent road, travelled by a youth who fights, but often feels like a "prisoner of the streets", bound by invisible chains to extreme exclusion.
Cristian is 26 years old and believes that he is to blame for what has happened to him. To me, it seems that he is more a victim of political decisions whose objective was to control the impoverished child, partially imprisoned, beneath the perverted discourse that it was for his own good. The story of Cristian Garro serves at least to outline the enormous challenge that we have today to turn the page from the old ways, to take charge, and to understand that the problems of childhood aren´t resolved any other way, so that they don´t result in diminished rights for the impoverished, and take into consideration that above all else, the family is the primary place of affection and education.
- Where did you sleep last night?
On the sidewalk. I found a corner beside some stairs where I keep my cartons to sleep on. Before, I walk a lot. That´s how I try to make myself tired, and that´s how I get to sleep. Then I cover myself from head to toe with the cartons and try to stay totally covered. I try to make it so that no one from the sidewalk will notice that beneath the carton, there is a person.
- Do you sleep quickly?
Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. Before, when I was a "guacho", I drank or got high to sleep, but those times have passed. In the end, that wasn´t the solution either. The remedy was worse than the disease. Now I walk, but there´s a risk that I will be picked up by the police. I´m exhausted to live this way.
- How do you think you came to live like this?
I was raised since I was very young in the juvenile system, I went through a lot of institutions. I tell the truth, at that age, I didn´t understand why guys would live in that place that resembled a school in the sense that we were a bunch of little kids and we were separated by age, and because the people who were caring for us were said to be "teachers". Some teachers were really good, and others were there because they were incapable of having any other job. They were there for the salary, we said. So the truth is that we were taught very little. The only thing that was important to them was that we were quiet - in silence!! Haha, impossible... with all of these "guachos" crammed together. Like that, they seemed more like prison guards than teachers. I realized that when I was incarcerated. Those institutions also were functioning as homes because that was where you would eat, sleep, and play. So I would think, "this is a school? This is my home?" I think I could never answer all of those questions. Because, I swear, I never went to school, and in my house, my family never wanted me. I don´t know what a family-Christmas is, I swear.
- It was supposed to be a boarding school?
That was my confusion. Imagine that I was six, seven, eight, nine years old, and I was growing up inside there. On one side, it´s supposed to make adults think that it was a boarding school, but in reality, it was neither a home nor a school. It was a jungle where the strongest ate the weakest. And if you didn´t learn to be a son-of-a-bitch, they would violate you. They would seriously violate you.
- Why did they put you in there?
I don´t have the slightest idea. I suppose it was for being poor - what fault did I have?
- Learning to be violent is the only form of survival?
Violence is only one more form. The easiest way is to find a superhero to protect you. Mine, and the one of my closest friends was called fana. You say "faneás" and nothing hurts you, you laugh at reality and, if you want, you create your own reality, but you´re going to die at the sight of it. The first violence is against yourself. The other violence I learned almost without noticing - until one day you see yourself already so deep into it, and you don´t know how to do anything other than fight, rob, beg, and abuse others or let someone else abuse you.
- How is that?
Sometimes the young "guachines" of the street seek protection from someone "grande" that also lives in the street. They seek it because this "grande" defends them from all of the other sons of bitches that are going to force them to the worst things. But they also sleep with the "grande" that takes care of them, and he touches them, and he abuses them. They prefer to be abused by only one, and not to be the woman of everyone. Why do you think that in the streets there are really young kids with such a strong odor of shit all over them? It´s so that no one gets close. So that nobody messes with them.
- You grew up in the streets or in juvenile institutions?
Half and half. In the institutions, they let you escape, but the teachers put "fugative." I have more than 140 escapes. So, as a fugative, you´re going to the streets as if you were going to freedom. Always with a group. And you have everything - all of the good, all of the bad. And when we got in trouble again, before the sentencing, we would be presented in juvenile court and we would say that we want to return to the institute and then they would have to send us there. We would return to the institute, we ate, we caused trouble, because we were on the fringes. After awhile, we would escape again, and later return to the institute. I lived like that until I turned 21 and they wouldn´t send me back to the institution anymore. I wasn´t a minor. Immediately, I was incarcerated in Bower prison.
- The streets were the freedom that you all were imagining when you were in the institute?
At first, yes. It was a place to play by our rules. Between the cars, in the river, making a camp in some abandoned house or getting high. But the time comes when bad things start happening to you, and then the time comes when the bad outweighs the good.
- For example?
When one of your friends dies, when you´re obligated to beg or to rob. Then the street is no longer freedom. Today the street is my only place. Even though I´ve tried, I don´t have anywhere to go. I´m imprisoned in the street because I can´t escape it. I have a family that doesn´t want me. I have acquaintances, and some care about me, but I know that I don´t have a place with them. I can´t work because of the face that I have - it´s frightening.
- Can you remember something nice that has happened in your life?
I´m going to tell you something that nobody knows: the nicest thing that has happened in my life happened in jail. I was in love. She was a psychologist of an office much bigger than me. When I was with her, I forgot the hell that I was living in the pavilion. She was sweet, she listened to me, she asked me questions, and I felt that somehow, she wanted me. So I decided to let her know that I also wanted her. I couldn´t say it directly because I ran the risk that they would send me to the punishment cell. So I wrote her poems. She received them and laughed. I started to think that I was important to her. Then I was released. I began to look for her outside of prison, but never could find her. I never saw her. I wanted to die. I started using drugs again to try to forget, but I couldn´t. One time I snorted rat poison and ended up in the hospital, but I couldn´t die either. Do you know anyone who has been to Hell twice for love?
- What Hell?
Jail
- What?
I did it. I´m crazy or I´m not crazy. But I got tired of looking for her outside. So I got sent to jail again, and I tried to get a second sentence.
- And were you able to see her again?
No. I went to jail for nothing. What a moron! Sometimes I think that the judge didn´t sentence me for the crime but for being a moron. I got tired of asking that the psychologist sees me and never came. Today I know that she teaches in the University, but I´ve already given up. I don´t look for her anymore. But the truth is that I would like to talk to her, just one more time.
- What are you looking for today?
Survival. I wake up early, take breakfast at the Luciérnaga, and I go to visit people. Almost always they give me something. With that, I eat. I ask for a free bath, and I bathe. I find clothing in a community clothing center every three or four days to be able to change my clothes and throw away what I´ve been wearing. I always have only one set of clothes.
I don´t know if it´s because of the age or because of everything that´s happened to me, but I don´t feel hatred against the world. Before, I was person without feelings, and nothing mattered to me. But that stage of my life no longer makes me proud because, unfortunately I changed. I say unfortunately because I think that I can see the son of a bitch that I was, all of the bad that I did. But to notice that now doesn´t help me at all. I can´t turn back time. And today, I´m paying for it.
- How?
Does it not seem to you that being sentenced to wake up in the street every morning isn´t paying in real life for all of the bad things that I did? And I´m telling you that "waking up" is a manner of speaking because there are nights that I don´t sleep. When I was in a camp in Sarmiento Park with other guys like me, they wanted to set me on fire while I was sleeping. All because of an argument. Do you see? Anyway, I´m not going to a shelter. It would be like being in the institute, but for old alcoholics. Furthermore, for those of us who aren´t old, they don´t have space in the shelters. They probably wouldn´t even let me enter. Sometimes at night, I start to wonder how the world would be if I die.
- How would it be?
I´m not sure. But I think that a lot of people would miss me. I think that if I die, everyone at the Luciérnaga would be sad. That a lot of people that I´ve met in jail would cry. That the hundreds of teachers that have come in an out of my life, if they bury me, they´re going to suffer a bit for what they did for me, and for what they didn´t do for me. I´ve cared for a lot of people. Even my worst enemy will cry, because he won´t have anyone to hate.
When one has to learn to survive, he isn´t allowed to learn how to live. Maybe that´s the trade one makes.
