We are the elderly in the midst of the revolution, but unlike those tribes that had “elders’ councils,” to whom changes are led today, it matters a damn what we, who have accumulated “experience and wisdom,” could bring. You, to your sarcophagus, told me a colleague recently admitted to the School of Public Health of the University of Chile, where I have been serving for years thanks to the infinite institutional tolerance and the fact that I was not tempted by retirement incentives.
And here we are, irrelevant, fading away with our tale in tow. We are inconsiderate – we are not considered, I mean. Not only that. We are guilty of the unjust country built over the last 30 years that is now being dismantled, for having been built with condescending social – if at all – mercantile and individualistic dimensions deployed by the military dictatorship and for not having had the courage to change them. We are the self-flagellants – or just flagellators, if we resort to the definition of the Royal Academy of Language. We’ve simply “craped” it. The backhoe once enthusiastically called by close colleagues will today take us all, including those members, into limbo in one fell scramble.
However, the old ones are among the priorities of the candidates for president, in their campaigns for the primaries. Indigenous peoples, gender, senior citizens. elderly? Yes, but from an asistencialist perspective. Kind of like what to do with these old men? where to put them in the care of someone who allows us to be carefree and feel blameless? Decent residences! wheelchairs for everyone! who is to change their diapers? In no case is it said what are you thinking of what is going on? What things will they have learned that they can teach us to do better? Nothing of the sort. There is no room for that in this youthful revolution. The cognitive blindness of the aspirants to lead the country is maximum in this matter, without exception. The people, in fact, are young, very young. Hopefully a couple of old people over the age of 65 went to the constituent assembly, but their representativeness is proportionally less than what they have in the general population.
Anyway. Having said all this, I go out into the street and run to meet “la pelá”, who has long had my eye cast. I tell him things like the ones that Nicanor, who lived more than 100 years, told him, so that he does not believe that things have to be easy. What the old woman doesn’t know is that at this point it doesn’t matter. The old ones are perfectly useless. Even her.
The content of this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.
