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FerFAL,
In your book and elsewhere you write about Barbarita, a young starving Argentinian girl who was interviewed and didn't want to be anything when she grew up, and about what this interview meant for people in Argentina. Do you have any links to this video? I'd like to have a copy or at least to see it.
Many thanks!
I transcript what the little girl tells in my book and try to describe it in detail but the images are much more powerful. She’s a girl that in 2002 was starving in Tucuman, and cries because she’s hungry.
It’s hard to explain, but we see footage of people that are starving frequently. It’s just that it get’s more personal when it happens in your own country, and the children crying speak your language.
Reporter: What did you eat this morning, right now, that we saw you were eating something?
Barbarita smiles.
Barbarita: Tortilla
Reporter: And yesterday for supper?
(Barbarita’s smile starts to disappear as she starts to cry)
Barbarita: Nothing
Reporter: Now that you’re going to school, do they give you food?
Barbarita : No
Barbairta starts wiping the tears off her eyes
The shocked reporter asks a stupid question.
Reporter: Are you sad?
Barbarita: Yes
She cries for a couple seconds.
Reporter: What are you thinking? Tell me.
Barbarita: We haven’t eaten anything, we don’t have money.
The scene is cut and then continues.
The camera is close and you see that Barbarita is not only thin: She’s skin and bones and the skin has a grayish color. The big eyes are deep into her skull and you can see wrinkles around her eyes.
Reporter: How old are you?
Barbrita: Eight.
The reporter asks her last stupid question, and Barbarita’s reply puts a significant nail in the coffin where the future of this country was buried.
Reporter: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Barbarita: Nothing.
FerFAL
5 comments:
Man, that reporter could have given her half the calories he consumes and she would have been just fine.
When I know this kind of thing is being caused by a small group of people looting whole nations, it makes me ANGRY.
I just hoped you were lying in your book and googled for this clip to make sure you were. Fuck, you didn't!
Here in Eastern Europe "holodomor" (ang. death by hunger) in 1932/33 killed whole viliages. My grandma was born in 1910, and she was 22-year-old when it happend.
I was about 16, maybe 17 and dare to ask her about her experience looking for some, well honestly, a good story. She just slapped me across the face, start crying and run out of the room. I did not try to talk about it anymore.
My grandma always keep a bit of supper overnight and have strange condition to keepe every small pice as long as it was edible. She also store a lot of food in home. Many food was found years later, when her memory was much worse, in places we didn't even consider for food storage.
I hoped it no longer happens. It looks like it no longer happens in europe, at least on huge scale. I did not expect it can happened in any G-20's major economies (Argentina is a one of, and no country from Eastern Europe is considered to be). This shocked me!
I don't even know what to say...
I think that's the saddest thing I've ever seen.
It's way after the fact, but since then I've been under the impression that she's been used as a propaganda tool along with all the false reporting going on.
There's a couple videos, i.e. 'Vision Siete: Barbarita Hoy' and 'Barbarita Flores, 6 anos despues'
While it's good to see that she is still alive and at least a little bit better, even if for likely disingenuous reasons, the skepticism is apparent even in the comments of the videos, from what I can make of my meager Spanish.
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