Orange Juice & Cream Of Tartar

In Pinto, Santiago del Estero, women have more pregnancies than children. Endemic poverty forces them to deliver their babies. Liz's case is repeated in a town that seems to end.

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The landscape is so stripped that at times the look is tired, tired of the plain takes the form of desert where the only role of the wind whizzed dry land. Pinto is embedded in this geography naked Santiago del Estero, on the edge of Route 34, the only way that guarantees a minimum of vitality. Step is a town where all they know who they decide to stop is the supplier of the service station. Since it was founded in 1890, its historical link with the outside world was the Mitre railroad, but more than 15 years that the station is only part of the melancholy of its 4,700 inhabitants, who live through by one certainty: poverty that cuts life of 80 percent of Santiago del Estero de Pinto. The guarantee for survival with dignity is given a seat on the municipal or provincial state. The rest are doomed to end poverty because no hay otro modo de subsistencia que no sea por medio del dinero que se cobra de un cargo público. Sólo les queda el rebusque en el campo; pero cuando hay sequía, como ahora, el trabajo rural queda reducido a la cría de chivos o la recolección de leña, con el que pueden sumar unos pesos al plan Trabajar, cuyo padrón de beneficiarios varía según haya o no campaña electoral. Los carteles con la cara de Emilio Rached, el senador radical que cambió a último momento su voto y apoyó el proyecto oficial en la guerra gaucha, todavía resisten al viento. Rached fue intendente de este pueblo durante diez años.

Pinto empezó a sonar in Rosario this week because there lives Liz Benitez, a 30 year old woman, mother of Bruno Valentin, the baby born in April at the Provincial Hospital and was released on an irregular basis for adoption to a family that would have paid between 35,000 and 40 thousand dollars to a man about 60 years, with two sisters of 53 and 56 years who received the girl in Rosario Pinto, are arrested.

Liz was born in the countryside, in a hut located about ten miles from town, which is next to a deserted rural school boys. His father remained there, accompanied by her grandson 14 years Liz's eldest son. She finished primary school No. 737 Monsignor Joseph Weismann, where, he recalls the deputy Elsa Pacheco, who was the teacher Liz brought her every day her mother, who died three years ago after a long illness which was treated in Rosario, where he was traveling with her youngest daughter from Pinto.

Liz recalls that three years ago met a Rosario at the home of her sister, Cristina Vargas. Clothing sold by the people of the area. "I do not know where she knew him, but was having relationship with this man" Liz says on the door of his house, while one of their children through the patio on a huge bike. Then, the seller of clothing began to be followed by a visit to Liz, who gave him shirts and trousers for boys. His clothes had been very good. The only support I had this girl was a work plan of 150 pesos, which charged intermittently. Occasionally, she says, her partner-who are unemployed and the gleanings with odd jobs of various types, is absent from the house and she stays with the kids and no money to buy food.

In a seller's visits Rosario, after earning a certain confidence Young, Liz heard a timely offer. "If you become pregnant, let me know," he said. And this happened last August. Two months later, in one of the visits of this man, said she was expecting a baby. Hesitated what to do with the boy but he recalled a night he had thought how to dress or feed their children, and decided to give it. "He asked me if I wanted to give it he could get a family in Rosario that he was going to raise it. I was not going to miss anything, "he recalls. She accepted. Liz says that there was no money involved. At least she did not receive a penny.

In December, the "Rosario" Pinto arrived in his white Traffic and told him he had to take in order to make prenatal care. He loaded her four children in the van and began the journey to the city. And there began another nightmare.

MONUMENT TO FIELD.

"Bruno Valentin, nor the name let me put it," laments the low Liz, but what hurt him most was how people began to change that led to Rosario to supposedly help. Traffic's partner promised he would find a good family and brought her to give birth to the Provincial Hospital of that city. Then they locked her in the house south in Chacabuco to 3400. He lived there for over a month with their four children. They slept together in a double mattress lying on the floor of a room.

In those days, Liz wanted to know the name of the adoptive parents and was denied. Requested at least one phone to keep in touch with them and there was no case. When he started asking questions, they took his cell phone. From that moment, wanted to return to Pinto, but "the papers were not yet finished." Almost nothing was left with the little money he had taken and the kids kept asking for things. "One day I decided to go with another woman surgeon who was in that same house, "says Liz.

addition to marriage, there were other people in the house where he was staying. The sister of the hostess and a girl from Chaco, who was a daughter of four years and that Liz does not know why he was there, but says she was not pregnant. He went out with a chango of supermarket surgeon in the city, looking for bottles, cardboard or other valuables, and came to the Monument to the Flag. "So I met him. It was the first time I saw him, "he says with a smile, from the house where he lived for 16 years, when he left it to his parents and had a son and two years.

She stresses that wants to get his baby, and admits he regrets having handed. "After everything we went through, would have preferred to raise it as another", says looking for a kind of moral forgiveness, except that the media does not make sense to propose. So in Pinto, Liz is relieved of that burden. Even though everyone knows what happened to your baby, the town seems to absorb and understand the history of this woman who is part of the 80 percent of the inhabitants of a town that lives in dead-end poverty. The only difference is that Liz's case became public. The Secretary of Government Municipality, Fabio Cordoba, admits: "It is very common that you see a girl pregnant and then see no belly and without the child," he says and adds: "What people will say the people? ".

A black Ford Fairlane, filled with earth, tuning a hearse parked in front of the church that is meters away from the plaza and diagonally to the Municipality. In the parish still hang balloons of all colors of the walls. A few minutes ago that ended a baptism. And it remains a wake.

A sadness that is custom made and it is not surprising

Liz blurred image is at the top of the provincial newspaper El Liberal who gives a guy on a bike. But the scandal made public its history to not have a counterpart in Pinto. There, the pregnancies are far more than the known children. And what did the young man of 30 years is an old habit. Give poor kids when mothers can not keep it, it's almost an unwritten rule.

This is recognized from the Municipality and Pinto's school, where they have similar stories to that of Liz, but without giving any importance. "The case of rumor she started two weeks ago, but she came Rosario Police. If here is not normal. There are many reviews of similar cases, but nobody talks about, "acknowledged the local government secretary, Fabio Cordoba.

"When I was a girl and a pregnant woman was heard for example that it was ready the family who would care in Rosario. To me that was fine. If the mother was poor and could not keep the baby, it to be given to another, "said the deputy director of the school Monsignor Weismann, Elsa Pacheco.

Beside, Silvia Cespedes, Grade 7 teacher and several years as a rural teacher, said she met a few cases delivery of babies. She told, "no gangs or traffic, as they say, but the mothers and in general they are silver. The problem is when someone, a relative or a lawyer, says that pay little or another woman who was paid more, and then complain there. " "It's sad what happens, but poverty is very high," he added.