Fragile are those bodies each day slimmer.
Fragile are those minds incapable to find meaning to life.
Fragile is family bonding.
Fragile this society.
-Fragile - deepens in the problematic of Paco consumption in Buenos Aires. This new drug with a residual characteristic its obtained by a process of transforming CBP (cocaine basic paste) in cocaine hydrochloride (pure cocaine) capable of generating I high dependence after the first consumption, finding and ideal habitat in the delicate society of a post crisis 2001 Argentina.
Today, after ten years of the biggest social, economical and political crisis in Argentina, the paco consumption turned out to be on one hand an indicator of the leading part of Argentina as a cocaine producer for the international drug market and on the other the sad allegory of social exclusion.
Sold by less than a dollar a dose, the paco is the most evident symptoms of poverty of Argentina´s urban periphery. I walked down its street, grey and desolated, afar from the ideal welfare of Buenos Aires. I´ve worked with mothers and family of those that are today suffering, trying to reach their heart and through my lens what prejudice that avoids us seeing; the tenderness of their faces, the sadness of their look, the abandonment of the children and adolescents who fell into addiction, even before having the tool to defend themselves and choose.
Since the beginning of the year 2010 I started reaching young addicts and followed them in their lives with the will of crossing the barrier of that is invisible, trying to understand what is the before and after of addiction.
Darío inspires with intensity the improvised aluminium pipe that holds in between his lips, burnt due to the heat of combustion.
With only 14 years of age, an immobilized mother lying in bed with HIV and a father who he wishes not to talk about, knows exactly what he is doing; letting himself die. The drug went into his life before childhood, filling the emptiness with an ephemeral sense of pleasure but talking the most important thing, the will of living. As Dario, thousand of children wander through the streets asking for a penny as an exchange of a quick window car cleaning and taking refuge in the dark corridors of the shanty towns. They abandoned their house causing anxiety in their families who look in vain the judicial support to save the lives of their loved ones or ran away from their parent incapable of reacting to the selfishness and manipulative's of what their children have become due to the consumption.
They are victims of an aching society, overwhelmed by the devastating effects of social inequality where only in Buenos Aires 10% of the upper class has an income 35 times higher in relation to the income of a 10% of the lower class.
Whilst its still under debate the harming chemical composition of the paco (acetone, ether, hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, kerosene) and media emphasizes in the need to develop and facilitate the access to rehab centers, all of those that constantly live with the pain of family and addicts fight to show that the paco is more than one drug: is the expression of the profound discomfort of today´s society.
