The woman stopped. Something behind her on the busy sidewalk pulled at her thoughts like a toy with an invisible pull-string. Pedestrian traffic continued past the woman as she stood, hands clutching at her purse. Eyes looking forward, mind looking behind, a decision was made. Turning, she sidestepped a child dragging a wheeled backpack and quickly unzipped her purse. A senior woman, sitting in a nook between sidewalk and bank, focused on crafting small doll chairs out of discarded wood. Unkept gray hair with splotches of color from dirt, not youth, wisped about her tanned face. What youth the elder had left resided in her fingers as they worked the wood like a skilled musician.
The younger woman dug into her purse, pulled out a few small peso bills as worn and weathered as the senior in front of her, and extended the money outward. The older woman looked up, hands rolling to a stop, then reached for the money. Less than a standard dollar, she smiled, what teeth remaining glistened as if having absorbed the sheen of teeth no longer present. The younger woman stepped back into the current of pedestrians and was lost from sight, yet the new owner of the old bills continued to smile, her hands clasped together as she offered words of thanks to god or the woman or whoever would stop to listen.
Slipping the bills into a pocket, her hands returned to their familiar task, carving out chairs for dolls under the watchful gaze and gummy smile of the elder woman.
Humanity in Homelessness
In a city of 16 million people, Buenos Aires has its own homeless problem. Combine rental rates nearly doubling since pre-COVID with inflation rates expected to hit triple digits by the end of the year, and you’re left with a recipe for more people sleeping on streets and begging for money.
And yet, homelessness is different here. It doesn’t have the same stigma as what I’m accustomed to in the United States. People aren’t looked at as individuals who don’t want to work. As leeches on society. They are seen as those who have been consumed by the local economy, struggling to claw their way out of it.
Two blocks down and around the corner, a man sets a slender mattress down under a street corner awning. He spreads a sheet over the mattress, arranges his collections of belongings behind a box, as to offer greater protection, and curls up for the night. In the morning, the mattress is moved, the blankets are folded, and assembled on top of the box. He leaves the box there, every day. Nobody touches the box, nor do they take his blankets. Nobody looks to move his few coverings against the nightly cold in hopes of him going away. Some instead leave small bags of food. A few pesos. Socks. It’s an altar to a man down on his luck. A man not asking for assistance but someone the local community wants to help.
He’s not alone. The same story happens on other street corners and other blocks throughout the city. Sometimes it’s a single person. Other times a small family. Always an altar. Always an offering.
Hopeless
There’s very much an anti-homelessness stigma in the United States. Regardless of city, state, or region. Benches have random partitions to prevent sleeping, and that’s if there are even benches offered to begin with. Some new facilities offer backrests for people to lean against, which makes it not only anti-homeless but anti-pregnant and anti-disability. Spikes are added to flat surfaces, and city ordinances make it a crime to remain in parks after dusk.
Some of these are for safety, but most are to prevent people from trying to sleep. For many, the homeless are a drain on society. They leach on and refuse to move. They are eyesores and cast-offs lingering too close for comfort. There’s no altar, and there’s certainly no offering.
And yet, it’s not all the fault of everyday citizens who think this way. There are false homeless panhandlers working street corners, who later drive back to their homes at the end of the day. They play off the compassion of people who think they are helping. There are the false violin players in Walmart parking lots, who mime bow strokes as an attached speaker plays an instrumental track. There are homeless who are aggressive, who become visibly frustrated when not gifted money, who become upset when not given their food of choice.
Walking past a supposed homeless woman on his way into a sandwich shop, a friend of mine purchased a second sandwich, offering it to the woman on his way back out. She looked at it, then muttered she’d rather have pizza. With a pizza joint next door, he said okay. When asked what slice of pizza she’d like, the woman proceeded to order the most expensive, full pizza on the menu.
To my knowledge, he hasn’t offered food to anyone else on the street since. At the time, he didn’t have much money. Struggling through college, paying his own way, he wanted to help but instead felt taken advantage of.
I know others with similar stories.
In Argentina, or at the very least, in Buenos Aires, there’s no faking homelessness. There’s no standing on street corners with cardboard signs and outstretched hands. Cardboard is too valuable in Argentina. Recycle centers pay for the material. If someone was homeless or struggling with money, they’d recycle it for the pesos.
Nobody mimes homelessness here. Perhaps that is why women stop on sidewalks and hand bills to seniors carving wood chairs for dolls. Or why locals offer blankets and bags of food.
Maybe there’s just more humanity in being homeless beyond the borders of the United States.