It is true that their 13-year-old daughter was taken to a police station on Monday, in an exaggerated police operation after the girl tried to help the family
by stealing a couple of school supplies
in La Pampa.
However, a good part of Natalia's problems did not begin now but in 2021, when her husband, the breadwinner, died of Covid, neglected by the health system.
Natalia is 36 years old, lives in the Pampas town of General Pico and in her WhatsApp profile she looks devoted to the baby she is holding upa.
She is one of her three grandchildren.
The youngest is five days old.
The mother of that baby (Natalia's second to last daughter), 18. In addition, the woman has five other daughters: one 22, another 17 and the three youngest, 8, 11 and 13. In total, there are six daughters
and three grandchildren
.
They all live with Natalia, who she rents.
At this time, the family is trying to recover from the episode that exposed them to the media on Monday, when the 13-year-old girl
was taken to the police station
for having stolen "a small box of fiber and a box of pencils."
It was in the middle of a police operation that seems exaggerated, according to the viral images and Natalia's own story: "There were two patrol cars, two motorcycles and four foot officers."
“The truth is that I don't know why there were so many police officers or why the operation was so big.
“Sometimes really bad things happen and they
show up after an hour
,” she noted.
After seeing how her mother for the first time returned from buying school supplies for the start of classes with only part of the necessary purchase, her daughter, "who is about to start first, that is, the first year of high school," thought that stealing could help.
“I had gone in the morning to buy the basics - folders, sheets, notebooks - but
I only had enough
for what some of the girls needed and not all of them.
Since I was missing things, I was going to borrow money.
My daughter didn't know that I was planning to do that and she thought that by stealing she could help me.
“She took a little box of fibers and one of colored pencils from the Chinese,” Natalia clarified, alluding to one of the typical polyrubro stores that exist in many neighborhoods.
According to the woman, the Police told her that her daughter was "delayed and that she would be taken to the 4th Police Station."
“I ran and arrived before her, which luckily meant that I didn't spend much time there.
It would be 7 in the afternoon.
When we saw each other she apologized to me and she
told me that she was ashamed
, that she regretted it and that she never thought she could do something like that.
“She knows very well that stealing is wrong and that it is always preferable to ask,” she said.
Disappointments from the pandemic to inflation
Natalia was silent for a long time, but finally remembered: “She was 42 years old when she died of Covid.
It was in 2021. I had a hard time remembering how old she was.”
Since the death of her husband, the woman
has run the house alone with six daughters and three baby grandchildren
.
She grabs jobs as they arise: “Whatever there is: sometimes catering, bachera;
sometimes cleaning or taking care of children.”
She receives her Universal Child Allowance for her four youngest daughters: “Today it is 82,000 pesos in total.”
Her husband was a security employee at a flour mill.
She contracted Covid and the infection led to severe pneumonia.
“We saw that it was very complicated and I got tired of calling the ambulances.
We only managed to get them to listen to us once he wasn't breathing.
"He was drowning," he recalled, and continued: "Just then they admitted him to the public hospital, but they didn't put him in intensive care immediately and when they did it was too late.
The pneumonia was very advanced.
Three days later he died.”
Like Natalia, the oldest daughters in the family (two young mothers) were able to finish high school, “but since they are breastfeeding, they cannot work at this time.”
In Natalia's voice you can see a simple, unpretentious person.
After Monday's episode, she tries to get her girl to overcome the
disparaging comments
from some of her classmates.
Other people, on the contrary, were helping them with school supplies and clothes.
“Because of the increases sometimes it gets complicated for me.
You buy what is fair and necessary because you cannot do more.
Maybe before I bought yogurt or cereals but nowadays you can't afford that luxury.
It is preferable to buy noodles,” he considered.
Then, he closed: “Sometimes everything is exaggerated with prices.
But the economy depends on the presidents.
They are the presidents who touched us.”
P.S.