Dagmar Corales
San Fernando, Argentina
May 26, 2008

I remember a certain time ago, when the “Channel 13” 8 p.m. News Team had a special feature on out-of-the-way school teachers they called “Los Gigantes” –The Giants.
Way up north in Argentina in the very poor provinces of Jujuy, Salta, Formosa and Santiago del Estero the thin line between knowing something and total illiteracy sometimes depends only on a bravely dedicated school teacher.

You have different groups of farmers dispersed in a very large area and one God-forsaken school. The children attending this school have to weather long ways through a very inhospitable environment, usually accompanied by an adult. In one report we saw a few adults with a group of school children in their unmistakable white knee-long buttoned-down aprons even wading through water and going by boat, on their way to the school.

These schools are manned by one “Seño” (señorita), who has taken on a one-woman-suicide mission, following a call of the Government and she knows it as well. There is nothing there and nobody else to keep her company other than her school-children, whom she is dedicating her life to. Some of the “Seño’s” have planted a fruit and vegetable garden with the help of the school children, where they sow and harvest as a common school project. They usually keep a bed and a few personal items in the very humble school building, because the Seño is staying at her school just like in the old days a soldier would man his fortress or a nun would upkeep her convent.
A school teacher’s life in the remotest areas of Argentina’s countryside isn’t all that different from the life of a regular nun of old. She’s married to her humble school building, raising the flag and singing the National Anthem with her children in the morning and taking down the flag together with the children in the afternoon.

To have a family of her own? Almost impossible.
That would only be happening as a result of, let’s say, two best-case scenarios:
Scenario one: a local farmer rides up with his horse, or his beaten up ‘70s Ford to her school and—over some mate tea with crackers—asks her THE question: “What’s a good-looking hard-working woman like you doing in a God-forsaken place like this?”
Scenario two: It’s one of the National Holydays and the next town is preparing for it with a decent “Asado” (barbecue), your average country folk “Fiesta” with country folk dancing to some “chicky-chicky-chiky-chiky music”. There she meets the man of her life…
But those are very unlikely scenarios. Most likely the “Seño” will stay in the place for the next 30 or 40 years dedicating her entire life to the teaching of out-of-the-way country side children, so that they may have a better future.

Everybody deserves a future. Very often the humble, totally underequipped school building somewhere in the middle of nowhere is THE difference between no future and some future. And the school children are grateful and keep the memory of their “Seño” as something they will treasure for the rest of their lives.