Glimpse - Your Stories from Abroad

As my companion slowed to a stop before a smiling, generously armed police officer, I was reminded that the crumbled road was indeed part of route 9, Argentina's main highway. From Córdoba to Tucumán, roughly six hours through a level and desiccated landscape, I had stared intently through the passenger window as bold white streaks of salt stretched between the occasional tree.

Stopped at a checkpoint only minutes from our destination of Santa Ana, a village in the province of Tucumán, we had assumed that this officer would shake an arbitrary amount of pesos from us in penalties for an arbitrary violation. Instead, extending his hand, he pointed to a squat, smiling woman in pink socks and white shoes. "Can you carry this teacher on with you for a few kilometers?"

Relieved, we opened the back door and exchanged greetings with the woman climbing onto the seat. I relished her young, mischievous face—a welcome sight after hours of scrutinizing nothing but the dry, stark salt flats. “What are you doing in Santa Ana?” she asked.

Our driver embarked on a long-winded explanation of his purpose. A North American-Argentine doctor, he had been sent by private donors in the United States to establish contact with the hospital in Santa Ana. The poverty of the village, he explained, had been detailed in a Washington Post article last summer, and a philanthropic group of people were anxious to deliver money and whatever supplies were necessary to keep the hospital functioning.

“Yes, everything is degenerating in Santa Ana,” the woman confirmed.

Soon the woman pointed to a small intersection, right outside of the boundary of Santa Ana, and readied her things. A bulky purse, a few thin, glossy schoolbooks. We exchanged farewells as she climbed out of the car, then continued on into Santa Ana, past verdant parks and the intent gazes of pedestrians.

I looked with surprise at the laden fruit trees that adorned the dirt path to the hospital. Once there, we were greeted at the entrance by two doctors, smiling almost shyly, hastening through the standard introductory kisses and hellos. Anxious to begin the tour, they seemed full of that awkward humility that accompanies many transactions of charity. I felt some discomfort, too, as a complete stranger ready to peer probingly into the intimate rooms where these doctors labored every day. They began by pointing us through winding halls and explaining the utility of every room and its contents.

The conditions, true, appeared meager, but everything was admirably organized, spotlessly clean. Catholic shrines stood guard over every door. Patients smiled from their beds and greeted us as we passed. The hospital was carefully guarding its dignity despite the enormous pressures of its poverty. As the doctors discussed in detail the semantics of the donation, my mind drifted back to the Post article and the conversation in the car, weighing the contradictions.

One of the doctors offered to take us through the town, show us the school, the neighborhoods, the old factory. She had grown up and lived in Santa Ana all her life, she admitted, and though a doctor might find opportunities elsewhere, she was too committed to her hometown to leave. Looking out a car window once again, I began to understand why. Even the crumbling houses exuded a certain luminosity, and were oftentimes surrounded by well-kept gardens.

Culminating the tour was the sugar factory, abandoned for decades. At one time, the doctor explained, sugar made this part of the country rich, active, worthy of its nickname, "the garden of the republic." Standing in the shadow of the structure, which indeed had the chilling look of something once marvelous that has since deteriorated, the garden appeared more like a graveyard, and the desolated factory stood with the haunting stoicism of a tombstone. Frozen, permeated with weeds, stray animals, fallen bricks, and trash, it was an image that seemed strangely complete.

As we separated from the doctor, still in her white lab coat, I lit a cigarette in a meek effort to postpone the ride back to Córdoba. I thought of the hours that lay ahead, forced to sit with nothing to do except plumb the monotony of the passing landscape for a sign of life.