It was a night like any other at the Agudo Ávila Mental Health Hospital, better known as Suipacha, although a little disturbed by Jimena’s screams, who wanted to cut off her arms. Sometimes self-inflicted pain is a way to get what you want, or a way to get attention. In order to continue listening to the presidential debate, we turned up the volume on the television.
“It’s good to hear it like that, loudly,” says Tomás, who is not crying now. He cries almost every day.
—Why are you crying, Tomás?
—Because in 2019 I asked Jesus for a wish and he still hasn’t fulfilled it.
—And what was your wish?
—My wish is to disappear.
He has not voted for several years, lives on the streets and has addiction problems. I say “addiction” and not consumption because in this consumerist society we all have consumption problems of some kind. The figure of Milei, rigid on stage, articulating identical speeches to those he said in the other debates, contrasts with that of Massa, who is seen more loose, dominating the field, stepping on the ball and looking at the camera.
“Look at Milei’s hair,” says Tomás, and laughs. He would vote for Massa if they let him leave, because he intends to sign up for the delivery of lots announced by the Unión por la Patria candidate. If the elections were only held here, Massa would win by a landslide. It is logical: it is a public hospital, one of the targets of the 15% GDP adjustment proposed by Javier Milei.
They are going to let me go out on Sunday to vote, because it is a personal matter, almost of life or death. But the rest will have to stay here, while others decide for the future of Argentina. Paradox of a country in which a madman can become president, but madmen cannot vote.
Oriana, a patient who was brought by her family because she was doing nothing at home, wonders if our confinement is not also political. And she complains about how spectacular the debate is:
“It looks like the delivery of the Martín Fierro family,” he says.
“And yes,” I reply. There are those who say that we live in the society of the spectacle.
“So, if you don’t know how to act, you have less chance of surviving,” she says.
—And yes, knowing how to act helps you —I respond dryly, and indicate that I want to hear what the candidates say on the television.
One of the two acts well, the other tries to play the character of himself, but gets lost among all the masks he wears. He remains a failed imitator of himself, a plagiarist, as Massa accused him and can be seen in the book Crazyby Juan Luis González, already cited in another column of this magazine entitled “Another crazy man who wants to be king.”
“It’s ugly for a president to be a copycat,” Tomás tells me.
“Yes,” I say. It looks ugly.
It’s time to sleep, the debate ends, Jimena is tied to the bed, I offer her a cigarette that Oriana puts to her lips. I go to bed relieved, with faith placed in a victory for Massa and in a clinical defeat of the candidate who should spend a period in a neuropsychiatric hospital before returning to public life, because, as Patricia Bullrich said, he is a bad madman and dangerous. The elections are in a few days. The medical board informs me that they are going to discharge me after the runoff because they fear that Milei’s victory will destabilize me. According to what my friends tell me on the phone, everyone outside is a little uncertain about whether Argentinians will lean toward sanity or choose madness.
*Published in Belbo River.
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