Our maddening naturalization of theft

01/12/2021 10:22 PM

• Clarín.com

• Opinion

Updated 01/12/2021 10:22 PM

The video is one of many that are shown on television every day.

A woman parks her car (somewhere in the suburbs. Accuracy is unnecessary because it can be anyone), and when she

gets out she is snatched by jet engines

.

The scene, repeated in the news, this time has something that attracts attention, which without noticing it in the foreground distinguishes it.

What is different?

The sequence continues.

The thief takes her car keys and handcuffs her purse.

In the slight struggle his helmet falls off.

The victim looks.

The criminal walks unhurriedly towards the car he is about to steal and, before entering, bends down to look for the helmet.

When he walks away, the woman turns on herself, opens the door of her house and enters.

In this final movement an atrocious and at the same time ordinary truth is revealed:

the naturalness with which victim and perpetrator experience the moment

.

The thief looks so used and

safe -

what a paradox - that on the run he takes the time to pick up his helmet.

The woman assumes the theft with the resignation of what is expected.

That is why her next decision, after being stripped, is to enter the house as if nothing had happened.

The scene synthesizes the painful extreme that we reach: having reached the point of accepting as normal a situation that should be absolutely infrequent.

Surprising?

In much of the suburbs, no one would dare to consider a robbery as an exceptional event.

On the contrary, it is seen as a near possibility that

"sooner or later can happen".

That conviction won over consciences and is assimilated with latent fear and shared discouragement, but also with the certainty of the almost inevitable.

According to a

Clarín

own survey

, in 2020 there were 156 deaths in episodes of insecurity in the province of Buenos Aires (the statistics include criminals and police), of which 124 were due to gunshots and on the occasion of robbery.

Of the total, 45 involved motorcycle jets and starters, 24 were in house robberies and 37 in car thefts.

Only one of the dead fell in a bank robbery.

Among the victims were retirees, bricklayers, merchants, teachers, delivery men, bakers and the unemployed.

The numbers show and help to understand that

the target of this daily violence is the ordinary neighbors

.

Those who have no alternative, perhaps, but to get used to it.

If a violent death should be enough, 156 (almost one every two days) build the conviction that no one is safe.

How to live with that reality?

For most, taking refuge in the desperate consolation of the lesser evil: if not a few assaults are accompanied by extreme violence and murders, those

who emerge unscathed from a robbery experience it as a lucky episode.

Transform the anguish into the grateful relief of being alive.

It is nothing new and can be understood, but it is also the symptom of extreme abnormality.

What an idea of ​​privilege that we were able to achieve.

The naturalization of violence and robbery hides a double face that is also dramatic.

Those who live with the possibility of being attacked can resort to extreme plot strategies:

"I give everything up"

or

"I grab an iron."

Of the more than 150 dead last year, no less than 22 were criminals who were killed by bullets fired by their victims.

Because the other side of resignation is irrational and also deadly rebellion.

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Video: disguised as policemen, they targeted a 3-year-old boy in the middle of a robbery in Bernal