I was lucky. Sometimes journalistic chronicles are built on a moment of absolute fortune, about a combination of spells that, linked together, put the journalist in the exact place and moment in which things happen. The subway that arrived at a certain moment and not at another. The line to get in that took an exact number of minutes. The zig zag between the people who outline a route and not another that could have passed three or twenty meters from it, and then the postcard will be left to someone else or nobody. But I was lucky.
“Daddy, what is democracy?”I heard her ask. I didn’t find out her age, better not interrupt. I guess seven or eight. She was walking next to her father and the stroller in which that father was carrying, I estimate, a little brother or sister. They were starting to get into the tunnel of the book Fair, which serves to join the ocher pavilion, which is the one that is entered through Plaza Italia, with all the other pavilions, which are reached through Sarmiento or Cerviño. A passageway that might not exist and that for many years was used to hang the posters of the sponsors main features of this Book Fair, but this year it is used to exhibit a sample of photos that review and celebrate the forty young years of uninterrupted democracy that Argentina meets in December.
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Then, as I was lucky, I heard the question asked just after baby, dad and stroller passed the sign announcing the exhibition and which says, obviously, “Forty years of Democracy.” Since I ran into them head-on, and as luck must be helped, I turned and began to walk close enough to hear them and far enough away so as not to inhibit the scene.
I saw a father take a breath and time to decide where to start. He used the tunnel to talk to your little girl about the existence of the popular vote and, immediately, to answer the question that followed the first: “What is the popular vote?”.
“When mom and dad and grandparents and uncles go to vote, many other people also go to vote, people from all over the country. Each one chooses who they think is best for President and then Everyone’s votes are counted and the one with the most wins.and then he is the President until we vote again”, he replied, while pushing the stroller and looking at his daughter with a face of “how wonderful that we are talking about this” and also with a face of “please, what the next question Don’t be too complicated.”
She was lucky or explained well or both, because the third question was easier: surrounded by the photos taken by photojournalists who make up, her little daughter asked her to tell her the names of those who had been Presidents. “That’s not because it’s Messi”, he anticipated when he saw the image that sums up our 2022 and that has our great captain lifting the Cup in Qatar.
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One by one, he told him: “This is AlfonsinThis is MenemThis is of the RuaThis is Nestor KirchnerThis is Cristina FernandezThis is Mauricio MacriThis is Alberto Fernandez”. Macri, his predecessor, and Cristina, who had held that position and who became vice president that day, are also in the photo of Alberto’s inauguration. “There are three Presidents here, not one,” she challenged. “It is that they were at different times because we were voting for them at different times. Every four years we will vote among all to choose ”, he replied with the stroller parked in front of the image.
At the opening of this book Fairthe writer Martin Kohan He emphasized the importance of readers in this marathon that lasts days and kilometers of walking. Not the authors, nor the publishers, nor the industry, nor the journalists who cover the Fair. The readers. she talked about how transform into something else what the author left written, of the fight that must be given to achieve one, ten or one hundred minutes of silence to be able to get the desired book, and how the presumed connection with absolutely everything that surrounds us prevents the true link with almost everything that surrounds us. Also with the stories that come packaged in the books.
The opening ceremony of the Book Fair is, every year, full of adults and empty of children. It is an institutional call in which any child would get bored and then there would be a risk that a child would yell, cry, say “I want to go” and all the adults who want to leave at that moment would listen and laugh. The Fair, although there is another event designed especially for children and adolescents, has everything for children: literature, activities, a place to look for them if they get lost.
The readers who are the stars of this Fair and those who must be vindicated may be the adults, who need to disconnect from all the work they do to make ends meet, and from all the chats they have to, one day, have time for it. time that a friend or a friend has time to have a coffee or a beer together, and all the fleeting stimuli from which they recommend that we stay away two hours before bed to rest more or less well.
And the readers who star in this Fair are also like this little girl. She looks up and while reading a sign she discovers a word and, she still doesn’t know it, but she is just beginning to hear the answer to the huge and beautiful question with which she has just surprised her father. she, also discover the world and confirm that With memory I don’t know if it can be cured and eaten, but it sure educates.
I was lucky. I saw all that happen in front of me.
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How do we talk about democracy and dictatorship with the little ones?
Book Fair: how much does the entrance cost, who enters for free and what discounts are there to buy
