Javier Firpo
01/09/2021 2:38 PM
Clarín.com
Police
Updated 01/09/2021 2:52 PM
Ethel, the neighbor who lives on the other side of the dividing wall,
cannot believe how her friend Sara came "in that state"
to the door of her house, knocked insistently and rang many bells ... And even exclaimed "Open me, open me, I'm me".
Ethel cannot understand how Sara walked almost a hundred yards, walked through her little garden and went to ask for help being so battered.
93-year-old Sara had just been
assaulted, beaten, and tortured for an hour and a half
, but her strength overcame her injured body.
"Call the police and then call my son,"
Sara Carmen Dodardo almost ordered, true to her personality and temperament, to Ethel, whom she has known all her life.
It was getting light, it was not yet six in the morning on Saturday, January 2.
"She was wearing a bloody nightgown, barefoot, her hair was messy and her mouth was sore, but
she didn't want to enter my house, she insisted that I check her scalp but on the sidewalk
and I was scared to death," Ethel describes (82) still flustered.
Of course, the wonder had to do with that Sara had been beaten throughout the body, getting kicked and pineapples in the head and once lying on the floor, "the beasts followed kicking to compromise him
the lungs and break his hip.
It They fractured her and Sara came to my house standing up with a broken hip, do you understand? I
only ask the little virgin to resist, she does not deserve to leave like this, I pray every day that she holds out and that the police catch those disgusting scoundrels. "
Ethel, a retired teacher, sometimes loses her composure and apologizes,
Gesture of pain and helplessness.
But Sara does not let up, as little by little she is getting ahead, thanks to the attention of the Sanatorio Modelo de Quilmes.
In Bernal, on Cerrito Street, between Dardo Rocha and Falucho,
the Chola is the symbolic character of the neighborhood
.
Everyone knows this woman who has lived there for almost 60 years, respected for her love of work and generosity with people.
She is simply "la Chola", the supervisor of her factory - next to her house - of plastic bags for onions that
she opens every day at six in the morning and receives the employees
.
Until her son arrives, she takes care of herself because - they say on the block - "she owns an autonomy and independence that she defends tooth and nail."
No one goes unnoticed by the presence of Chola, that is why the criminal attack she suffered at the hands of two criminals
provoked the indignation and anger of the neighbors who approach and want to ask how
the woman who is admitted to the Sanatorio Modelo de Quilmes.
"Those scoundrels are going to pay for it," says a Carrefour employee in front of his house.
"She is a lady, a very dear client,
imagine that we trust her ... Who is trusted today in this country?"
, lets a cashier know.
Alejandro Cancela (52) is the son who opens the door of Sara's house and, making a lot of effort not to fall apart, invites
Clarín
to go through it and describes how the abominable events were.
Sara's humble home is
turned
upside down,
the criminals entered through a light bulb after four in the morning
last Saturday shouting "where are the dollars, you fucking old woman?"
In shock, between asleep, Sara did not understand what was happening.
At the nape of the neck, Chola received blows with the edge of the knife.
Alejandro Cancela at the door of his mother's house.
Behind, to his left, the windlight where one of the savage criminals climbed.
Cancela, with his gaze fixed on one point, chews anger but
talks about his mother with emotion and above all with moving admiration
.
"My old woman used to tell those sons of bitches: 'do what you want with me, but don't touch my employees.' The boys who come in at 6 were about to arrive and my old woman, destroyed as she was, was worried about her people,
the same people who collect the salary that she counts and gives them by hand
. "
From the austere little house to the machine shop where three employees keep the equipment running.
"This does not stop, this continues, as Dona Sara would like," says one of the employees
.
There is a lot of junk and trinkets around, two massacotes that are old open safes that act as storage for tools ... It surrounds simplicity, no ostentation.
Up to the side, there is a camera that recorded the vile and cowardly aggression that Alejandro tries to reconstruct.
"How is she?
She is fighting her, she had a little evolution, she is lucid, but very sore
and she has a long recovery time for."
Cancela can't believe the nightmare she's living.
He spits anger over "
the bestial attack on a 93-year-old old woman, what a need for such hatred!
"
Alejandro believes that her mother's strength and energy keep her alive.
"I stay to sleep with her in the room and they have been rough nights, she at times felt that she had no oxygen because she suffers COPD, in addition to the blows to her lungs causing considerable injuries."
Friends and neighbors hug and say goodbye to the son who seeks comfort in the affection of his surroundings.
Chola's modest room, where she was surprised at 4 a.m. on Saturday, January 2.
Always flirtatious, Sara had her nails painted.
Here is the swelling of his right hand from kicking and stomping.
A smile lights up Alejandro's face, who remembers midnight on the 31st, when mother and son spent alone.
"Incredible, it was just nothing and we had such a good time, what would I suppose that a day later I would suffer that ordeal."
He says that he
surprised his mother that night with a spiedo chicken with grid potatoes
and a red wine and then a champagne.
Mom has a very good stomach and she likes everything, of course she ate half a sweet bread.
It was so nice that night together, the two of us, talking about everything ... ".
Alejandro trusts his mother-oak, he knows that key weeks are coming, in which the focus will be on his recovery.
"She was always very free, she never wanted to be tied down, that is why I think it will be
essential for her to have patience, something that I as a child will have to help her cultivate
. There are three aspects in which we must pay attention: the respiratory, kinesiological and psychic. I trust his willpower to weld his hips and walk again. "
Many times Alejandro - married and with three children - wanted to take Sara to live with him in Belgrano, but the answer was always the same:
"If you do, I'll report you to the police,"
he snapped with a frown.
Other times he tried to get an employee to help with household chores at home.
"In my house I do the cleaning and eating."
Nothing moved the ammeter, Sara had gotten used to doing everything since her husband Gerardo Cancela died in 2002.
Sara, a few weeks ago, with her grandchildren Lucas, Carolina and Mora.
"Chola" was born in Concepción del Uruguay (Entre Ríos) in 1927, the year in which his reference, his beloved Mirtha Legrand, was also born.
"
For Mama Chiquita is everything, sometimes she imitates her in her coquetry, in her way of dressing, in
addition to always following her and listening to her. She likes to put on makeup, look pretty, put on necklaces and bracelets, she was always a beautiful woman and became Queen of Spring ... and up until five years ago she wore heels and openwork stockings ... a goddess. "
At the age of 20, he came to Buenos Aires from Entre Ríos, with one hand behind and one in front, with the sole objective of finding a job and sending money to his parents.
Shortly after settling alone in the big city, she entered a school as an undergraduate teacher
, later she worked in a bakery and also took care of children, which made her look full.
"She never conceived of vagrancy, she was always a woman of arms to take, a maker, just like my old man, and they both made a family and built this factory in 1955", Alejandro reviews.
Character and personality
coincide with some curious people who approach Cerrito al 700, to define the Chola of the neighborhood.
Alejandro nods smiling "because that's the way it is, just like that. And sometimes she moved in with me because during the strict quarantine I would come and bring her things from the supermarket and ask her please not to go out. But
she said that she was not going to get the covid because he had breakfast with fernet
... Seriously, every morning he took a measure of pure fernet and said that this not only inoculated him with energy but also killed all the bugs in his body, "he recalls with nostalgia.
Alejandro reveals that Sara
from her bed in the hospital asks worried about her two thirty-year-old parrots
and her puppy that ten who hurt and her son calm her, in addition to using an effusive tone to express that "you are in all the news, you are more famous as Mirtha Legrand ", which steals a smile from Doña Chola.
"Do you know what would lift my mother? Calling her Mirtha would give her a high that would make her jump on top of the bed
. It would be a wonderful gift."