Every Wednesday, for almost two years, around the Nation Congress, Buenos Aires, congregate retirees who go to protest Against the policies of the milei government.
Grandmothers and grandparents march to demand an improvement in their poor pensions and the restoration of subsidies to medications that were cut, among other measures that affect this so vulnerable part of society. What has not changed is the government’s response: repression.
On Wednesday, July 30, while the demonstration covered as a press, the scene was repeated: the police, with hydrants, shields, tons, rubber bullets and tear gas, were present to fence protesters and frighten them. In the midst of that violence, a grandmother decided to face them; But in a way nobody expected.
The lady left the retiree column and headed directly to the squad of uniformed. One by one, he hugged, kissed and stroked with his fragile hands the closed cuffs of the agents, whose faces remained unpunished behind the acrylic mask of their helmets, while they were firm and in position, as if the order to repress was imminent.
One of the officers, apparently a superior, shouted with contempt: “It’s a crazy old woman!” She didn’t stop. He continued to distribute kisses and hugs, until he finished traveling the row. Then, with a slight smile, he danced with total naturalness.
Although it was just minutes, that brief period was enough for that grandmother, that leather figure furrowed by time and a tender stamp, disarmed no less than with kisses and hugs to a whole body of police, which seemed taken from a Hollywood film.
Grandma had achieved, with her tenderness, neutralize violence in an unexpected way. Then, however, repression unleashed furiously: pepper gases and tear, fasteners and gum bullets.
But unlike this, which unfortunately we are already used to, the grandmother’s scene and her kisses continued to resonate in me and result, for some reason, even familiar. As if I had lived it before.
It was then that I remembered a song by Silvio Rodríguez, “The strange man” who dedicated Victor Jara in his mythical concert in Santiago, Chile in 1990.
In her, Silvio sings about a man who “kissed everything he found in his path,” and how the sane locked him up, they wanted to disappear. “They say that in his cell / kissed his shoes, / his cot, his bars, / his mud walls,” says the lyrics.
The grandmother, at that brief moment, reminded me of the strange character of the song, who sowed love everywhere, even beyond her own life: “One day, without warning, that strange man died” and “from the sky, the birds discovered that the world / lips were born.”
A photo of the shared grandmother on my social networks quickly went viral. He became the “grandmother’s kiss,” although I had baptized her “the strange grandmother.”
But behind the photo, I found much more: several people told me that the grandmother is called Delia and she is the twin sister of Jorge Donnone of the greatest Argentine dancers. Jorge interpreted the Ravel bolero In the final scene of the French film The one and the other. In his honor, since 1994, he has been celebrated in Argentina on the day of the dancer, every February 28, his date of birth.
When Delia and Jorge arrived in the world, in 1947, fate seemed to draw very different paths. She weighed just a kilo, her fragile body barely moved and her crying was almost imperceptible. Meanwhile, his brother, with 3 kilos, reached the world full of strength and energy, as if he already knew that his destiny was marked by vitality.
Given the uncertainty about Delia’s health, doctors did not hope, but the midwife, they have, with a confident look, he said: “The girl has a good heart,” foreseeing, despite referring to the organ, that Delia’s strength would file more than in her body, in her spirit.
In a recent interview, Delia shared: “Having a good heart has been the leitmotiv of my life.” It is not surprising, then, to continue giving kisses, hugs and dancing.
He also had humor: “I had three husbands and I was a widow three times. No one wants to come now, they are afraid of me.” Despite adversities, he never stopped learning. “Before my third husband died, he taught me computing and dedicated myself to studying. I did half of the free law career. I am a disciple of the universe. I look for the truths of all the spaces and times that exist, existed and will exist. That is why many people tell me that I am wise.”
Jorge, his brother, died in 1992, at 45, recognized worldwide as one of the greatest dancers in history. Delia, on the other hand, is still here, between the sane and the insensitive, hugging and kissing police in the middle of the barbarism; demonstrating, in its own way, that love is the best form of resistance.
