Let them all tell you what happened. Mercedes Pescador

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      All this because of Carmela

      Jhonny Castillo

      Montevideo, Uruguay

      These days I haven’t stopped thinking about a course on historical demography about the black plague which I attended a few years ago. There we took some time to analyse the prologue of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron. The Italian author, who belongs to the humanistic school of thought, besides writing about the scourge that was decreasing the population in the 14th century, he talked about the cruelty of abandoning the sick to avoid infection: on the third day of showing signs of the plague —among them, stained spots on the skin—, the convalescent patient would die. These stains are the equivalent to cough and fever nowadays. The isolation and the social distancing are now being battled with the use of technology, but the vulnerability of the species is still the same.

      And, talking about vulnerability, Uruguay became news to the world for not having any patients with the virus. They all blame Carmela for the disease reaching the country now. This small country ended up honouring that popular saying which reads «small country, big hell». The theme of conversations now is not the weather or crime, but the virus, and three key words: Milan, marriage and Carrasco.

      It turns out that a fashion designer was in Milan and she says that when she returned to the country she requested to be tested for coronavirus at the airport. She didn’t get an effective reply from the public officials so she continued with her life as normal, in the bubble of her world of furs. A few days later, she decided to attend a wedding with over five hundred guests, and after that she found out she had coronavirus.

      Carmela told her story to the newspaper El País, putting the blame on the government forces for their health inefficiency for not having done the appropriate tests. However, she has been heavily criticised, especially for her lack of common sense and caution. There was a leak of a few recordings where some of Carmela’s acquaintances accuse her of being stupid and showing a cold and absurd individualism where the “I” prevails over the “we”.

      I’ve turned a bit sceptical since I arrived in Uruguay two years ago. But it’s kind of odd that the virus appeared on Friday 13. Everybody talked about Carmela more than the disease. They said: «It’s all Carmela’s fault, it’s because of her that this is happening to us». As Carmela is posh and lives in Carrasco, one of the wealthy neighbourhoods of Santiago, there have been recommendations not to go to that particular neighbourhood, but also not to go to poor areas where for sure nobody there had been to Milan….

      What started as just factory gossip has turned real and there are now fifty cases of infection. I was sent home, teleworking, for being asthmatic. You see know the fast pace of people in the street. I live with three friends and in our home there’s an unprecedented revolution taking place: we all clean with enthusiasm. There’s a smell of chlorine, soap and isopropyl alcohol.

      I told my colleagues of the quarantines we had in Venezuela: «You could go out, yes. But, in times of social conflict, your life was in danger. If you demanded your rights, you were in risk of ending in jail or injured. That’s why we had to be prepared to stay at home. You would buy and eat whatever was available». In war times in my country, between 2014 and 2017, you knew that it would all end when either the people got tired or when the government yielded. It was always a case of the former. This situation is different because it comes with pure and hard uncertainty. For now, we will remain isolated, without personal contact, like in the times of the black plague. What started as the union of two people in marriage, today is separating us. Thank you, Carmela.