Born in Salta, fled his home at eleven years old and married against their will at fifteen. Today, Carmen Montero is retired, clean chemical toilets and all income goes to a dog shelter in abandoned barracks, which held since 2002 The first time I went to something Carmen Montero equipped with engine, seats, wheels, was to travel the six hours that separated the town of Gaona, Salta, in the locality of the foulbrood, and escape from the grinding stepmother Shock. If now, fifty years after that time, Carmen Montero leaves the house where he lives, making the 59 and runs smoothly half hour separating it from the shelter of the neighborhood of barracks where she cares for more than twenty dogs abandoned, this time in Salta, believed he was dying. I was eleven, knew no other means of transport than a mule, had spent the night hiding in a horse corral and had the smell of dung stuck in the stomach. But that was not what made her vomit.
"I had never traveled by bus. I grabbed a throw that I thought I was dying. It was because I knew I would never return. And that
was only the first steps Carmen Montero gave a life that would take forever, away from home.
is this: every day, since 2002, Carmen Montero boiled chicken carcass with giblets, rice, minced meat. After separating the bones of the meat, add two cups of feed, load everything in a couple of pots and pans, a couple of bags. Cross the July 9, reaches Tacuarí, take the 59 low at 3000 Smith Avenue and extends to a land that belongs to the railroad where a few years ago erected a huge kennel, living there twenty dogs that respond to names like Angela, Bicho, Chiquito, Flaco, and are a hindrance to a municipal eviction that in 2001, brought hundreds of people in an area located on Avenida Garay and 24 November. The land where dogs live in barracks, is state and, as mandated by the NABO (National Asset Management) should be evicted soon. The house where Carmen lives in Montserrat, has nothing, and she remains there only because of home work, know that you will ever need to go.
But none of this is new to this woman who belongs to the lineage of those who never had anything to call their own, no place to call home.
first thing you hear when you ring the bell in the house Montserrat is the barking of dogs. Then you will see that there are nine, prefigured by giant bags of food along a marble staircase that rises like a stream of dirty bones to the center of this house that once had windows and pitch pine floors, and now is a succession peeling walls, floors, corroded by acid in the urine, rooms that are dog pen.
- Chiquito! Basta!
A skinny greyhound obeys and throws himself at the feet of Carmen. Behind him is a room where live a cuzco. A few meters, the bathroom with no light, no hot water. In this room, making a living, there are five furniture: a table, two chairs, a sideboard which supports a Sharp stereo dirty and old, a shelf with pictures of grandchildren, children, dogs.
"Here I have nine dogs. In Barracks I have about twenty, but I got to be sixty-something. Now I'm tired, but one took responsibility and has to take.
all started when, in 1998, saw on TV a group of people protesting at the gates of the Pasteur Institute, where, they said, were made slaughter of animals.
"I wanted to die. I went there. There I met a couple, we found the phones. One day the man calls me and tells me that on that side there are many dogs neutered. I went to Pasteur and was told well, find out and give you innings.
And so one day 2001 Carmen appeared on the campus of Avenida Garay and November 24, belonging to the Ministry of Education of the City since 1998, and was taken a long time.
-The municipality was going to evacuate, because there were drunks, drug addicts, rubbish, alcohol, everything.
Everything he says, as if that list would, indeed, the same everything. Anyway, that day came, he went to the dogs, organized shifts. The Pasteur was moving five times, but she returned to care for puppies, dewormed.
"Two or three months after came the eviction. The they came for with trafics , but people did not want to take the dogs.
That day she was there, watching government employees and furniture are carrying children, mothers and siblings, parents and bicycles. Then he thought he had to do something for such an injustice: he had to fight for these dogs that no one had.
, grabbed the door and I tied a wire to them not to leave. I started going every day to bring food.
took months. One day he discovered he was missing eight dogs and, following their trail, came to barracks. There he found the eight, but found, also, weeds, open.
"I said oh, how cute. I went to the Lord to watch and say, "Look, cars are killing me dogs, I get out of there as is." And he says, "Come over here." He shows me a place and I said yes, yes here. Carmen
returned with one of his sons. Clears, debris removed, nailed wood, sheet set, armed kennels, took his dogs. No one knows whether any of all those days recalled his own eviction: when, in 1976, left in the street because the owner of the piece where I lived decided to quintuple the rent, she was determined not to pay and ended up sleeping on stairs. In those years, Carmen had no dogs, but four sons, Nestor David, Jorge Daniel, Norma Beatriz and Carmen Rosa, aged 13 and 7 years and three jobs to keep them: six to twelve, in a construction company from twelve and a half to seven and a half, at the Ministry of Agriculture, and by the morning, cleaning offices until sunrise.
- In Salta had a quieter life?
-In Salta I suffered more.
Rogelia Carmen Montero, it is said, was born in Gaona, Anta department, Salta. Born in the countryside, was born the day of San Roque, born in a small farm where his father, Trinidad Montero, and his two sisters, Rosa, Petrona-working-as she harvested corn, chickpeas and rice. One day Guillermina Gonzalez, her mother started making sweet dumplings.
"I was little and wanted to eat dumplings. But my mother fell ill and went to bed. The look, I see her on the bed and pulled her arms to give me the patty. And my mom was already dead. Do not let me see it when veiled. All I saw were the candles, the bed where it was evening, pieces of tacos of my mom's shoes. The block was cut in the field because they say that the soul can return it, and not to make noise. The
older sisters went home early, and the father took a woman to help him with food, the girl child.
"The woman ended up staying with the father. It was bad. He beat me a lot.
Carmen is still the scars from when her stepmother plunged her in the head an ear for a day of taps. At eleven, tired of his fists, his sister asked him to take Rosa with her.
"My sister came to rob me the one o'clock. In the left window. The dogs we wanted to eat raw. I hid in a horse corral, because my dad was looking. And I cried because I knew I would and would not come back. Dawn I led the group that dropped me at the train station of The Shed, a small town out there where I was going to get my sister. I had never traveled by bus. I grabbed a throw that I thought I was dying. It was because I knew I would never return.
Carmen came to the railway station where, in fact, waited her sister and husband. Traveled to Rosario de la Frontera. Then, still, thirty miles to a place where it was harvested snuff. That night, while sleeping in a barn with the growers, Carmen felt her hands crawling through the legs.
"He was the brother of the husband of my sister. I threw him out, but I was scared. One day we went with my sister to La Merced, a place near Salta, in a store and the woman says: "What a beautiful baby. Do not want to leave here for help my niece?" And I stayed because I was afraid that I would get my brother's brother.
retirement Carmen has won three hundred dollars as a home. To feed the dogs used, per day, three kilos of rice to two forty kilo. To travel to the refuge of Cabins spend, per day, four dollars and twenty in groups. Runs every night, Alsina street restaurants stirring trash looking for shells. Sometimes, things like that, you fight with the pickers. Go home, always, at dawn.
In La Merced, Carmen's world was a more or less straight line: the counter of the store where he worked at the bank of the warehouse door where he worked, with intermediate landing in the room where lived. One day decided, in his little room of bondage, a little white chocolate and a can of peaches natural treats. I was at it when it opened the door and was Castillo, the man of the house. Long underwear. "What are you doing, baby," he said.
"I begin to shout:" No touch me! ". He went and I dam the door. I told the nephew of the lady, and I said:" I told my aunt because they will believe you. "
But while Castillo again do nothing, the fate of Carmen was repetitive.
"One day a man came to the store and said," What a nice girl, do not want to be my cuñadita? ". Then came my sisters, who still were not my sisters, and became friends. One day I was invited to a football game where he played my husband, who was not my husband.
And it was there in that football field in La Merced, where Nestor Nicolas Alfaro had first time and went to greet her. That same week he started going to the store, sit with her on the bank of the street. But Carmen Montero, Nestor Nicolas Alfaro did not like. Nothing.
One of all the grandchildren of Carmen is now 25 years and is also his godson.
"It hurts a lot of that grandchild. Because it came ...
makes a gesture of contempt in the face, another hand gesture confusing.
-... sex.
- Homosexual?
"Yes. A guy so nice. When we heard came to me as an attack. Screamed. I went to Salta, where he lives, to find him. They showed me the piece. Full of women's clothing. He said: "I came to look for you a treatment to heal. Are you going?". He said: "Yes, because I love you, Grandma." The suit, brought to the Ramos Mejía Hospital and Clinics. In a place I told the doctor: "No, ma'am, he chose this, you have to understand." I had him here three years. The man wore, he did work in masonry. I was happy, had straightened enough. But one day he left. Could it be that one is born that can not be cured?
first thing Nestor Nicolas Alfaro was done by force kiss her.
"I took the square, twisted my wrists and kissed me.
Soon after, insisted on accompanying her to the store. And then, in the main square of La Merced, in the night:
He used me.
Carmen did not return home from the Castle that day or the next. Nestor Nicolas Alfaro led to his and in vain it turned out, when asked if he gave his permission to marry, his father, Trinidad, said no, I do not. She was married to the man on witnesses who did not want, do not even like it.
"But I already knew the man, I had to get married.
She was fifteen. The first son was seventeen, when cleaned and cooked for fourteen in the family that was not hers. One day she escaped and went to the plaza, take the bus taking the baby, but her husband saw her and ran to stop it. He took her back to knees, shut her up. Soon after, Carmen was pregnant with her second child. They moved to San Pedro de Jujuy, where she found work as a cook and Nestor as a municipal inspector. Lived rent free in the house of a sawmill.
order to receive donations Carmen founded the Association for Pets Abandoned. Its donors are a bank employee gives two hundred fifty pesos per month, a woman who organized a fair to benefit American, one who lives in Turdera and organized a raffle. Carmen hoped to raise more money to buy wires, improve the kennels. But in January, told him that ONAB can not do that, you have to leave. Now, he says, what he needs most is a field.
long Nestor Nicolas Alfaro told his wife that the reason he returned to his home for long periods, three weeks was that it was investigating cases of cattle rustling. Carmen, who believed became pregnant again.
"When I saw the baby was five months. Then I became pregnant with the second and I knew that was with a Paraguayan. One day he appeared at nine o'clock at night. And that comes Paraguay. They began struggling and went out to the sidewalk and then closed the door. Since then, never again. He was and we began to starve.
Time passed and one day he came to the house of starving the father of Nestor Nicholas, father of Carmen. He told her daughter, I brought you here told cayote, some rolls, he said a few mates, I say why not clothe me the monkeys and took them to the city of Salta, I have to go shopping. Carmen said good. The two men dressed, combed their hair hard, I said goodbye, they leave with the grandfather. And not to be seen again for four years.
"There was that my father's come to bear. I had to put lawyers fight to get my children. At that time a woman had no rights, so at least to me stole it. Carmen
But first went to Buenos Aires. A woman offered him a job in the capital-employed, in bed, and she thought she could make money and win back her two children. He left the girls with a sister with whom he got along well, and went to town.
"The work in this woman's house was slavery. I spent a month and I left. To find a piece I had to sleep in the Retiro station.
curtains worked in factories, in shops. Finally, when the boys were 0:10, managed to travel to Salta, bring them to Buenos Aires. Arenales Uriburu lived-where they were evicted, in Belgrano and San Jose Avenue. Carmen had three jobs and, if it ever came close to having something he could call his own, a place to call home, it was then, was in those years.
"He was a civil engineer of the building where I worked in a flat 17. She fell for me. Tall, blue eyes like the sea.
The Bay came and went Blanca a Buenos Aires. Paseaban, viajaban por el país. Carmen ahorraba para una casa propia. Pero duró poco. Duró hasta 1985.
-Nos íbamos a ir de vacaciones el 4 de enero. La última vez que lo vi él cerró la puerta y escuché el ascensor cuando bajó. No vino el 4 de enero. Yo enojada. Ocho días después llamo por teléfono a Bahía Blanca. Me dicen: "Ay, señora, usted no se enteró. El ingeniero falleció, un infarto violento". Yo no lloraba. No podía respirar.
Se fue del piso 17 sin llevarse nada. Se mudó a la casa donde vive ahora, empezó a hacer las veces de casera. Dos años después, en 1987, el banco donde guardaba sus ahorros quebró and Carmen lost everything. And so, back to its natural state. A lack.
past month, and every Saturday, a group of volunteers piled up by Facebook (as a result of a flyer distributed in Palermo Carmen during the fair americana) helps cut the nails, you carry detergent, food. In what was once the fourth of her children now live and crooked black sausage. In what was once a living terrace cuzcos now two more. The room and terrace are full of hair and sand bags and dog shit. Some time ago, to earn a few pesos, Carmen went to work cleaning toilets in a chemical company The rent for events. When the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo are an act or a performance Catupecu Machu, Carmen is there. To clean up what is foreign.
After that night in the corral of horses, Carmen did not see his father until he was nineteen. That day he appeared Gaona without notice, and Trinidad Montero and is not expected, she embraced twenty minutes and did not stop mourn.
Since then it was followed: all trips taken to Salta, and there were many. Until, years ago, did the usual: he walked across the field, opened the door of which was been his home. And there were his stepmother, his three half brothers, lunch. But her father.
"I say," Sit. " I say, "No, okay, I came because I was thirsty to see my sister. And I drank water quench that thirst." I say, "What about Dad?." No, he says, in July the father breathed. "And I say," Why do not they tell me? ". And he says," Because you live so far. " And I said: "It's my father should have warned me."
shut the door hastily and left. Let's see what remained of the piece of land where she was sleeping.
-A piece of hard ground, it was . The years I lived there I had my tree, paradise, a slice of paradise. I climbed, I rocked. I collected flowers, leaves. But all this was nothing left.
little that was not hers. What remained was, once again, a stranger.
By Leila Guerriero
revista@lanacion.com.ar
How to help
Association for Abandoned Pets
3000 Smith Avenue 4381-8889
15-3314-8727
The technology also works to help: a group of volunteers met for a month, through Facebook, to bring help and donations to Carmen.
Photo: Martin Lucesole
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ6YZsG4XG4 (note Channel 9 Argentina)
Note extracted from the blog: http://elperroperfecto.blogspot.com/
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