Lydia ha
02/06/2021 12:59
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 02/06/2021 12:59
“What do people always expect here?” Asks a man on a bicycle who stops at the corner of
Av. San Juan and Pichincha
.
But his restlessness lasts as long as the light of a traffic light changes and is diluted in the chaos of traffic.
That scene that is always repeated is the queue of dozens of families who come to
look for bread
, at the end of the day at the confectionery opposite:
La Helvetica
.
The bakery closes at 8 pm but two men dressed in white come out carrying generous bags of bread like Santa Claus in the middle of summer.
At
8:45 p.m.
, Mariano and Sergio's work begins.
They are the bread distributors.
“I have been distributing bread for 8 years.
I am from the countryside, from Santiago del Estero, and it has been 15 years since I came to Buenos Aires.
I started out on the street and later I was able to rent a room near here.
So grateful for what I have to live, I come to distribute bread here from Sunday to Sunday.
Before they gave it to the Garrahan hospital but with a friend we told him to distribute it to people and that's how it came out.
They usually come between 100 to 200 people.
We do not discriminate against anyone
.
Once a judge even came, who was unemployed.
But here we are not asking.
The
food is health
and we are here to help each other ,
"says Sergio.
In the Helvetica bakery in San Cristobal about 50 people wait to receive the bread, bills and other products that were not sold during the day.Photos Emmanuel Fernández
Except for one, of the 50 faces that make up the line,
none are in a street situation
.
But economic hardship is common to them, exacerbated by the
crisis resulting from the pandemic
.
The bread is distributed twice per person.
But it is only the first round.
They pass as many laps as many times as necessary.
It is the way they managed to make the distribution as equitable as possible.
Within an hour, the cloth bags are full of bread and bills.
“I am retired and I live alone.
So when I have left over, I freeze it or
distribute it among the neighbors
.
In the 1980s, the baker at the confectionery lived in the same building as me.
And he told me that the owner gave him a lot of gifts, that's how generous he was.
At one point, we wanted to get together with the neighbors to give the owner a recognition plaque, but then we couldn't ”, says Stella Maris.
La Helvética bakery, an example of helping others, Photo: Emanuel Fernández.
"This had never happened before," says the lady who follows him in line.
It is the first time that he comes to queue but the confectionery keeps memories of his childhood.
“The upper floor that will now serve as a warehouse before, I tell you in the 70s, it was a beautiful party room and
there I had the party on the 15th
.
Even if you go to the bakery, you see the marble columns that you don't see anywhere, ”he recalls nostalgically.
The loaves are still distributed to such an extent that it is hard to believe that they are the leftovers of a day.
And it is that, in the same silence that the initiative arose from La Helvética,
other neighboring bakeries joined to contribute with their breads
.
This never ceases to amaze Carolina who recently came from Venezuela and never believed that a voluntary distribution of bread was a possible reality.
The image that is repeated every night in La Helvetica.
Emanuel Fernandez.
Among the adults, there is a woman who shies away from camera lights.
It's Florence, 19 years old.
“Before,” he says, “I worked in the download part and then I applied to another download job as well, but after 4 months of
thinking about it
,
they told me I couldn't because I'm a woman
.
Always in the CV they require a minimum of 5 years of experience, which for me is impossible with 19 years, and just that I have it in the download area, they tell me no.
It is very difficult with the pandemic but
I am desperately looking for a job
.
I live with my grandmother who had a stroke last year and what the remedies come out is crazy.
I stopped using the networks but one day I reopened them to see if they could donate food to me and the truth is that people I didn't even know helped me ”.
One of the last to arrive is Mariela: "Cleaning work - she counts - but among the medicines that I have to pay because I have lupus, the rent and that there are 6 of us who live in the house,
this bag of bread is a huge help
because You go anywhere and it comes out like 150 pesos per kilo. "
The line is adding new faces.
The turns of bread do not stop.
And between the darkness and the honking of the cars, silence and order reign.
“Before I was in line, when I was out of work and I was on the street.
But it's been 3 years since I have come to distribute, even now in a pandemic, with these clothes that we get to make everything safe.
I help and they give me help because it is good for me that today a person is going to put something in their stomach.
No one is denied bread
, ”Mariano, the bread delivery
man
, closes with pride.