In our previous article, What Do You Want, Cipriano, we addressed a topic that concerns all human beings: age and ageism, understood as the stigmatization of older people.
We also recalled the Pan American Health Organization’s intention to fight this form of discrimination.
In ancient times, the elderly were highly valued because they were considered the repositories of knowledge and experience.
As auxiliary memory systems appeared and technology developed, the social usefulness of the elderly declined.
Today we need an eight year old to help us properly use a cellphone.
The perception of when a person is considered old has changed over time.
In early twentieth century Uruguay, life expectancy was 46.83 years for men and 49.03 for women.
Ten years later, things had not changed much.
Eduardo Zamacois, a Cuban born Spanish journalist and writer living in Argentina at the time, interviewed José Podestá.
Podestá had become famous for portraying the character Juan Moreira, and Zamacois interviewed him for the Madrid magazine Por esos mundos.
At one point, Zamacois expressed his desire to see a performance of Juan Moreira.
The writer, who was then thirty six, recounts that Podestá sank into his chair as if he had just felt the weight of his fifty years fall upon his strong athletic shoulders.
He adds that the old actor seemed to hear his memories sliding through his soul.
In 1930 Carlos Gardel recorded a tango with music by Francisco Pracánico and lyrics by José Zubiría Mansilla titled Enfundá la mandolina.
The lyrics need no further comment.
What do you want, Cipriano, you’re not producing juice anymore.
Your fifty springs weigh on you,
and along with the hair that fled your head
went the charm that will never return.
And what about that tango character by Petorossi who said
Forty years of life chain me,
white hair, an old heart.
How old would that so called dirty old man have been who spent his money getting Lulu drunk on champagne.
Fifty, like Cipriano.
There is nothing original in this perception of time passing applied to poor Cipriano.
What is interesting is the coincidence around the age of fifty.
But that was before.
Today Ciprianos are alive and kicking and the word mandolin sounds frankly outdated.
Pedro Camacho, that unforgettable character by Vargas Llosa, defined fifty as the flower of life, although later he expressed some doubts.
Let us hope that the Pan American Health Organization, which with these projects feeds a lush and well paid bureaucracy, achieves its goal of eradicating ageism.
Despite good intentions, expectations are best met sitting down.
But hardly on a bus.
Now the increase in life expectancy appears as a problem.
Thus, with the approval of the euphemistically named Dignified Death bill, left wing senator Constanza Moreira said in Parliament.
She began by triumphantly reviewing the so called Agenda of Rights, abortion, same sex marriage, drug liberalization and so on.
She stated that they had completed a very significant advance, the regulation of assisted death.
Invoking the right to dispose of one’s own life, though not for the unborn, who lack that opportunity.
She added that we are not living in a global conflagration that wants us to die young, but that we live too long and reach a point where one is no longer self sufficient.
She said that Uruguay, a super aged country, must have a policy to regulate these things.
This reminds me of Bioy Casares’ novel Diary of the War of the Pig, where youth groups went out hunting old people.
Which some characters believed was a government sponsored policy.
Next February Moreira will turn sixty six.
By now she should already be feeling what pilots learn quickly.
Life goes by flying.