Pablo gets up every morning at six in the morning and the first thing he does is start cooking lunch; a tart, noodles, rice with tuco or milanesas. Then he prepares some mates, eats a couple of toasts with candy and says goodbye to his eight-year-old daughter, Valentina, with a kiss on the forehead, while the baby continues sleeping. When she leaves her house, she makes sure to pass by her neighbor's window, an older woman who is preparing breakfast for her husband at that time, and remind her that her baby is sleeping. A couple of hours later, Valentina is going to wake up, prepare a glass of cold chocolate and have some cookies for breakfast while she sees the pictures. The TV will stay on for the rest of the morning and, unless he ends up having lunch at the neighbor's, it will also stay on during lunch, when he eats alone, in front of the little cartoons, what his dad cooked earlier in the morning, or sometimes what was left over from the previous dinner.
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Pablo, who is 38 years old, works loading and unloading food, touring the city of Córdoba in one of the thousands of white vans that feed the gondolas of the warehouses and supermarkets that keep others supplied and isolated in their homes. He will only return at five, sometimes five thirty in the afternoon, in a routine that is repeated from Monday to Friday, since the mandatory social isolation measures were decreed in Argentina on March 20.
Pablo says that he had to teach his daughter to hold back and not run to hug her when she enters the house; teach him that after a full day of solitude he has to wait for his dad to take off his clothes, take them out to the backyard, take a shower. Just there the hugs, the enthusiasm, the sadness, the pose, or the whim, depending on the mood of a girl who has not been contemplated in health policies; depending on the tiredness of a father who spent the day carrying and unloading bags, listening to the complaints of others about the increasing prices, risking his life. Earning a thousand pesos - just under ten euros - per day. "I would like to be able to stay at home with my daughter, but what am I going to do to her, unfortunately this is life," says Pablo before continuing to unload packages of yerba mate from the van to take them inside a crowded supermarket in the neighborhood of Alta Córdoba.
Pablo had to teach his daughter to hold back and not run to hug her when she enters the house
The quarantine has been communicated from the Argentine Government as a feat that requires the commitment of the entire population to deal with covid-19. In his speeches, more than once, the president referred to essential workers and the pride they should feel for their work. That climate of deed, which in the first days translated into solidarity for those who work, a month after the quarantine was declared, translates into boredom and a general state of vigilance.
The climate of deed may have brought a certain sense of dignity to these workers about the importance of the role they perform, but that dignity in the vast majority of cases fades when the pay arrives. Janitors, cashiers, cadets, assistants, cleaners and security guards, jobs of eight or ten hours a day, are rewarded with salaries that hopefully reach 30,000 pesos - less than 300 euros with the last devaluation of the peso - something that does not even come close to the nearly 40,000 pesos indicated by the Argentine National Institute of Statistics and Census (Indec) as a monthly budget to support a typical family on the poverty line, about 400 euros.
All these jobs have a low formality index, and even less unionization. Better organized workers such as those in the garbage collection service have managed to keep the tone, even to joy. The collection service wages start at around 500 euros per month and can escalate much more. "They gave us several training talks on how we had to take care of ourselves and reinforced everything that is protective clothing, rompers, gloves, chinstraps, masks ... In that sense we feel protected and, the truth is that saving the fact that we are going three in the truck, we have no exposure, ”says José, who has been a collector for 12 years in the municipal service of the city of Córdoba, on how the pandemic is facing the company. "Today we have more responsibility than ever," says a colleague of José almost from a truck. In Córdoba and in other towns, the collectors unequivocally raise their fists up in front of the camera.
Deeds are easier with organization and dignity
When there is no organization, and dignity matters little, the workers entrust themselves to God. Like Miriam, who works cleaning in an outsourced service at the Vicente Agüero de Jesús María Hospital. At the time of the interview, a former provincial judge from Santa Fe was hospitalized with coronavirus, who became famous locally for skipping the quarantine to which he was forced after a trip to Italy, fleeing and hitting a power line pole. leaving tens of thousands without electricity for hours on the first Saturday of confinement.
Janitors, cashiers, cadets, assistants, cleaners and security guards are jobs of eight or ten hours a day, rewarded with salaries that hopefully reach 300 euros a month
“I am not going to be infected because I believe in our Lord Jesus Christ and he protects me. Because if it is for the company ... We are very exposed. I was given a mask for the week, just when I left to clean the room where they have it to the judge I threw it in the trash, because for that they are, they are disposable to prevent you from getting it, but for tomorrow I have no other. I have to go ask, see if they give me one; the gloves they give us break in two minutes, we have to buy ourselves from the good ones. And now he is a single patient, I don't even want to imagine what happens if people start getting infected, if we start getting infected and we take this to our families, "says Miriam, who misses being able to go to mass and who thought of leaving work in the wake of the pandemic. Her husband ended up convincing her not to do it, that she couldn't, that without their salary they don't come.
“At first this was chaos, then everything was organized, they dictated the mandatory quarantine with all the measures of how many people could enter, how far they had to be and there the climate became supportive, people collaborated. Now it has changed, everyone is fed up, there is a lot of bad vibes, mistreatment, each one behind his chinstrap. I'm tired too, this mask makes my head hurt; You are stressed all day, it is horrible, ”says Nadia, a cashier in a hypermarket in the small mountain town of Salsipuedes, in the great Córdoba, before the security officer interrupted her saying that she did not have permission to speak to the press. . Florence, in a smaller supermarket in the same town, has a similar experience. That many are already too crazy about the running of the bulls and they grab it with them in the supermarket, which is one of the few places where people go out and download their frustrations.
One of the largest outbreaks in Argentina, so far, is the geriatric Santa Lucía, in the small mountain town of Saldán, in the great Córdoba, where around thirty, both residents and medical personnel who work there, tested positive of coronavirus, taking the lives of two residents so far and infecting at least 20 more people in the town.
There is a lot of bad vibes, mistreatment, each one behind his chinstrap
Nadia, a supermarket employee in Salsipuedes
Mariela and her husband have a small store and butcher shop less than a hundred meters away from the nursing home. Mariela says that when it became known about those infected, the two employees they had resigned, out of fear. "Panic everywhere. This was panic. The first days nothing of people entered, I do not know if they thought that we were infected also by being so close or what; then they did start coming back. We thought a lot about closing, but we would be eaten by fixed expenses, tax burdens; the truth is that we don't have that opportunity. Our children already know that we are exposed, their grandparents live next door and we have to beg them not to approach them, because they can end up infecting them. We have already resigned from the butcher, who lives with an older lady, and the lunch box because he has asthma. It's scary, and I understand it, ”says Mariela about the reaction to this, about the dilemma between working and exposing yourself or closing and exposing yourself, but financially.
Monica, who has a chicken shop a few blocks ahead and works all day with a mask that covers her face completely, says that if the infections get worse, she will have no choice but to close, “I am very afraid; I have high blood pressure, heart disease. If this gets a little worse, I'm going to have to close and eat the merchandise, ”he says.
The Córdoba supply market, from where several million inhabitants from all over the province and several other regions supply fresh food daily is, for these same characteristics, a crucial space. If it closes its doors it will be chaos. If it becomes a focus of contagion, it will be chaos. On April 9, authorities reported that there was a positive case of coronavirus and that others were under study.
Of the economic ecosystem that populates the market, changarines are the lowest link. They earn between 10 and 15 euros per day for unloading the trucks and taking the goods to the stalls. To work there you have to go through a filter that needs references, be associated with one of the cooperatives, know someone. Despite the fact that they are poorly paid jobs, the possibility of taking fresh food every day (sometimes even to sell a little in the neighborhood) makes it attractive, especially for young people without formal education, mostly parents, who they know that if they ever leave the post, there is a long line behind waiting to fill it.
Luciano is one of those young people, at 30 years old, he supports his family of four by laying his back all day. With other colleagues as witnesses who agree with his statements, Luciano rants against the authorities for not completely closing the market in the face of this first contagion, completely disinfecting the establishment and forcing everyone to quarantine. Faced with the panorama that this would generate, Luciano says: "I understand that food would be lacking for a time, for us too, but they have to close, because here people come from all sides, and we do not know who is the next to jump sick, or how many is going to spread. We do not know if we will not be infected. And what if you bring this into your home and kill a loved one? I prefer to starve myself before someone I love dies. Maybe we have to starve ourselves for a while, but that is better than death, that does not come back. "
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