The world stopped at 7.27 last Wednesday when it was still night, that hour when houses and the street seem to be out of focus.
The sun was going to rise at 7.39. The last thing she saw will have been the wet edge of the street or the face and voice of the street sweeper who came to help her, but it's hard to say because after the blow (they hit her hard, very hard) I don't think you can see anything too clearly.
I was 11 years old and very afraid. I read last night that a Pakistani activist, Malala Yousafzai, says that "there are few weapons in the world as powerful as a girl with a book in her hand." What book would Morena Domínguez have in her backpack? Would I have any books? Has he wanted to change the world? Have you dreamed of being a princess? Which boy at your school did you like? Have you been in love with a child who didn't even hold her hand?
The English say "fall in love" (fall in love, but it would be "fall in love"), those secret and definitive loves of children. We'll never know. Now her body hurts a lot and she is very afraid and is lying on Molinedo Street at 3,200 Villa Giardino, Lanús, province of Buenos Aires.
On the diagonal of the scene are the larvae. The larvae (as defined by Nahuel Gallotta in the note published in Clarín) that grabbed a stolen motorcycle the day before and took drugs all night that is now about to become day.
"Going out to larvear," Gallotta writes, "means committing one of the lowest acts of crime: stealing from a short worker or someone defenseless, an old man, a woman or a girl like Morena." The larvae are kids that are dead but still walk. They kill because they don't care, because it doesn't produce anything for them anymore.
"Matanenas" will be baptized by the prisoners. The larvae were "ranching" in the corridors of Acuba 1 or Acuba 2, two of the three villages surrounding the scene, until they decided to go hunting. One of the larvae had an arrest warrant, but we already know that Justice is idiotic or crazy and never leaves her cave to look for nadie.
As this scene does not happen in Capital but in Province, where people are worth less, the ambulance took 40 minutes to arrive. And Morena died at 8.30.
I have here, on my right, a report with about 14 pages full of words. The words say "Juvenile Penal Regime", "Juvenile Criminal Responsibility Jurisdiction of the Avellaneda-Lanus Department", "institution", "magistrate on duty", "discretion", "youth", "factual containment network" and they go on like this. The words have long been empty. "Accused", "Neighborhood Police Division", "cover", "prevention", "dependency".
I can't stop thinking about the little princess lying on the floor, about the street sweeper who went to help, about the kids from the Almafuerte school who now crowd at the door, about the 40 minutes of waiting with the ambulance that never arrives. Would she have been alive? The larvae have already escaped. At what point in the morning did they learn that they had become Matanenas?
It must have been at the same time that Argentina fell like a house of cards: everyone started beating their chests, politicians suspended campaign events, hid for the first time from microphones, officials and police needed results, an army of gray and frightened men went looking for culprits.
"Justice for Morena," read the posters that began to appear on television and were written by hand, on an A4 sheet or anything. And within a few hours they stopped the larvae. And that's when this story intersects with mine: a kid looks at the camera while he is stopped and says:
"I'm going to kill you all, cat!!
It is the Polaquito. He is 17 years old and turns the age of majority next month. A note by Rolando Barbano in PPT showed him at 11 and generated a scandal. The Canal 13 team arrived at Villa Diamante following the story of a kindergarten that suffered constant robberies. While Rolo was recording the report, the terror of the neighborhood appeared. An eleven-year-old boy – whose face appeared bluntly in the air – said calmly, although with some excitement, that he had killed "a Paraguayan transa" and that he liked weapons.
"I'm not afraid of anything," El Polaquito told the camera at the time. He had his mother addicted and his father imprisoned. He himself was already taking drugs and lived in a house without a bathroom where they used a paint bin to relieve themselves.
The Tribune of National Hypocrisy came out to beat its chest: how did they show a child like that on television? It was to revictimize him, to stigmatize him. The Ministry of Social Development intervened. Juan Grabois said his group was going to take care of the boy and the mother.
In fact, El Polaquito spent a short time in a rehabilitation clinic and escaped. He was arrested several times: in 2019 for the theft of a motorcycle. His file was processed in Family Court 4 in charge of Judge Estela Morano who "prioritized his relationship with the family." What family? The addicted mother and the imprisoned father. The last appearance of the State in the history of Polaquito was a subsidy and the rent of a roof for his mother in Avellaneda.
And there the Polaquito returned, to ranch with the larvae in the corridors of Acuba 1 or Acuba 2. Although he doesn't know it, the Polaquito is dead too.
In the Judicial Department of Lomas de Zamora in 2022 there were 3,339 investigations for crimes of minors. In only 190 cases, prosecutors asked for any measure of coercion. That's 5.6% of the total.
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