WE ARE ALL “MARICARMEN”

Advances in medicine and widespread access to healthcare have led to an increase in longevity in recent years. On the other hand, birth control and the individual choice not to have children have resulted in declining birth rates. As a consequence, we are now faced with increasingly aging population pyramids. We are, therefore, confronting a reality in which the disparity between the number of elderly people and children is striking.

However, growing old—despite representing an achievement and reflecting a long journey in combating certain diseases—is not always synonymous with quality of life. Recently, journalist Luís Osório dedicated one of his daily columns to aging: “To be sure, reaching old age means unexpected aches, joints on strike, and bone spurs, but it is also the possibility of being in less of a hurry, of seeking depth, of rediscovering slowness.” It is above all this slowness that is least understood by younger generations, who lack the patience to deal with the pace of lost youth, because—and to continue with Luís Osório—“Aging is muscles emptying, acquiring the fear of crossing the street, of falling in the bathtub, of being hospitalized, but it is also arguing less, sacrificing the madness of ambition for well-being.”

The crux of the matter lies in the kind of well-being each person desires, especially when we are so often confronted with the number of care homes shutting down due to degrading conditions, and the terrifying number of elderly people living in vulnerable situations without any support. Some are denied their most basic rights when unscrupulous entities, under the cover of the law, evict them without pity or mercy from the homes where they spent their entire lives.

In recent days, we watched live what happened in neighboring Spain with Maria del Carmen, who mobilized an entire population in a protest against the glaring injustice committed through the insensitivity of those who still view old age as a distant milestone. Maria del Carmen Abascal, better known as Maricarmen, is 87 years old and had lived in a rented house since 1956 in the Retiro neighborhood of Madrid. In other words, for 70 years, she knew no other place than the one where she grew up and grew old. The lease agreement had been signed by her father; after his death, it passed directly to her mother, and in 2005, to the daughter, subject to rent adjustments. Meanwhile, the property was acquired by an investment fund, Urbagestion, which legally contested this final transfer. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the company, thereby allowing it to exercise its right to evict her. The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights had asked the Spanish state last June to guarantee Maricarmen a housing solution tailored to her situation. She was offered an emergency spot in a care home, which Maricarmen declined. Consequently, the company felt entitled to proceed with the court-ordered eviction. On the day it took place, we could see her, lucid, being carried out on a stretcher, while hundreds of people gathered in a protest outside the building to try to prevent it, seeing their efforts completely thwarted.

Some might argue that the company acted with the backing of a judicial ruling. True! However, the question we must ask ourselves is: to what extent is such a decision just? Because a home is not made of walls, but of the people, the objects, the environments that embrace us, and, above all, the memories we lived in them, where every corner reminds us of moments from our lives.

Forcing someone to turn their back on 70 years of a life is an act of atrocious violence. And it does not dignify us as human beings.

Aida Batista/MS

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