Friday, March 20, 2009

CASO CERRADO

El siguiente texto fue inspirado por un capítulo de Caso Cerrado, con la doctora Ana María Polo. Al narrarle por msn el caso a un amigo cercano, que casualmente vivía una situación similar a la del caso expuesto (no puedo poner su nombre porque anduvo pataleando... ) terminé narrando el caso casi completo, omitiendo sólo algunos detalles irrelevantes. El texto que aparece a continuación es lo mismo que escribí en msn y decidí rescatarlo en el blog, por lo que le falta afinar hartos detalles...
A continuación necesito que cierren sus ojos e imaginen un escenario presidido por una jueza. A cada lado de ella hay un hombre y una mujer: la pareja demandante y la pareja demandada. ¿Qué pasó? léanlo a continuación.





(Video de presentación)

LOS DEMANDANTES : "nuestro hijo no puede estar con esa mujer... podría ser su abuela"




EL DEMANDADO: " yo ya soy mayor de edad.. puedo hacer lo que quiera"


DEMANDANTES: "doctora, le pedimos que anule ese matrimonio"

(Comienzo del juicio en el escenario)
PADRES: nosotros estabamos en el salvador y josé pedro se vino... nos dijo que estaba todo bien acá., y la última vez que lo llamamos nos contestó el teléfono esta mujer, luego llegamos a la casa y nos abrió la puerta ella... preguntamos por josé pedro y dijo "sí está, es mi esposo"

LA ESPOSA: nosotros nos queremos.. ya llevamos 3 años casados... no pueden anular el matrimonio, doctora.

LA JUEZA: ¿Cuántos años tiene él? ¿Cuántos años tiene ella?

JOSÉ PEDRO: yo tengo 21


ESPOSA: y yo 40.

MAMÁ: ¡¡ pero José Pedro no la quiere!!! nos lo dijo hoy... se casó con ella para tener papeles y poder vivir en USA...

ESPOSA: yo no sabía que él no me quería. Él es mi esposo y nos llevamos muy bien.

JOSÉ PEDRO: bueno, nosotros hicimos un trato... nos conocimos en el trabajo y ella me arregló los papeles para estudiar acá y que el gobierno me dé dinero

ESPOSA: ¿qué trato? tú no me has dado nada, ni dinero, ni nada....

JOSÉ PEDRO: ¿¿y mi cuerpo?? quedamos en que lo haríamos 3 veces a la semana y eso lo he cumplido hasta ahora
... y a cambio yo consigo mis papeles para estudiar

LA JUEZA: (a los padres) y uds. quieren que josé pedro anule el matrimonio y no pueda seguir estudiando??)

MAMÁ : prefiero que no tenga nada a que esté casado con esta abuela!!

ESPOSA: nosotros estamos felices así... él es mi bebito y nos queremos (haciendo el amague de besar a josé pedro)

MAMÁ: no lo vas a besar en frente de mí

LA JUEZA: un matrimonio se puede anular por dos motivos: que uno de los conyuges lo desee, o que cuando se contrajo el matrimonio uno de ellos no haya tenido la facultad de decidir, por ejemplo si se encontraba bajo la influencia del alcohol o las drogas
...pero acá no hay ningún motivo para anularlo... él arregló sus papeles, y le da su merecido a ella 3 veces a la semana. Llevan así 3 años y él ha cumplido bien, por lo que ella dice...
así que CASO CERRADO y no hay nulidad del matrimonio .

Saturday, March 07, 2009

No title yet !!!

Writing a supposed-to-be-funny story with Linny ... 1 paragraph at a time. Journalists have to do this all the time, so why not to try it?

Francisco writing:
It was a hot sunny day and the stadium was empty, except for the two guys who woke there up after partying during the whole night and were still too drunk to walk, so they silently watched the game and from time to time shouted unintelligible sounds that nobody heard.
Now Juancho was in front of the ball, looking at the goalkeeper's eyes, twelve steps ahead of him. It was his opportunity to tie the score. He was the best player of the team but his experience in penalties was unfortunate. He still remembered what happened last year, when he was so nervous that he peed his pants, and after a general laughter he shooted and scored: the goalkeeper did not even react because he was still laughing at Juancho.
After thinking about it for a while he managed to forget about the shameful episode and took a deep breath, while all the other players were looking at him. Nobody knew what was about to happen.

Linny writing:
Juancho dried off a couple of sweat pearls from his forehead with the back of his hand. He always started sweating a lot when he was nervous. His hair looked fat and dirty after a failed attemt at shaping it as Ronaldo's, and his T-shirt was soaking wet.One of the drunk guys yelled something in a non-understandable language. Probably just drunk-ish. Juancho knew he had to concentrate, but he couldn't. The other players, the heat, the unicorn. Wait, what? He blinked. The goalkeeper was replaced by a unicorn. He felt dizzy."U-unicorn!" he screamed, and pointed a shaky finger at the creature eating the white painted grass at the goal line. Then it all disappeared. When he woke up, all he could see was faces. They were speaking, but he couldn't catch the words. "What happened to him?" a voice said. "Probably hyperthermia," another answered. He felt a wet rag on his sweaty forehead, and his mind became clearer. "Did we win?" he asked. The face closest to him, which must have been the referee's as he was clearly not in shape to play soccer, smiled sympathetically. "The game isn't over, but you're not playing more today, young man," he said.The other players helped him up, and the coach followed him to the dressing room. "You should take a shower. Roberto will replace you," he said.Juancho waited 'till the coach had left, then he sweared out loud. Why could he never ever get anything right? He picked up his cell phone from his bag. Maybe something there would cheer him up.

Francisco writing:
There were no new messages, so he just started to play Snake as a way to avoid thinking about his bad luck with penalties. The game was finishing in 15 minutes and his team was still losing. There was nothing he could do for his team, or there was? He took is T-shirt off and improvised a drum with a trash can and started singing and yelling like a crazy. The drunk guys didn't give a shit about the game, but joined him , so the three of them were jumping and yelling Ra-ra-ratones galácticos!! Then one of the unknown guys got so excited that he started running and yelling all over the stadium and nobody could stop him. He was moving so fast and suddenly he was in the field and running faster than any of the players he took the ball under his arm and jumped outside the stadium with it. There was no other ball to finish the game, so the referee, the players, and everyone had to run after him to get the ball back. The referee got tired after a few blocks, and one of the players had to put him on his back while they chased Manolín the fast, who didn't even know why he was running and with so many people following him. Then he looked back and saw that it was not just the people in the stadium chasing him, but half the town. He thought: "mhh I must be like Forrest Gump for them... so I can't stop running" so he went out of the town, while more and more people joined the crowd. While thinking all this Hollywood-like stuff he dropped the ball, a stray dog bit it and everyone came back to their houses dissapointed.

Linny writing:
One of the people going back to her house was Adriana. She was tall and pretty, but not in the shape for running. Her hair was dark brown and knitted in a ponytail and she had long, side swept bangs that always covered her eyes. The house smelled of paella. Her mother was one of those typical housewives who always cooked and cleaned like she'd never done anything else. She probably hadn't either for the past 20 years. Adriana ran up the blanket covered stairs to her room. It was a typical girl's room. Posters of shirtless celebrity men on the walls, lots of papers on the floors with unfinished drawings and poems. Adriana was very artistic. She practiced the violin and the guitar every single day. She picked up her cell phone. No new messages. She'd been waiting for Juan Pablo to contact her for two days now.

Francisco writing:
Juan Pablo played in Los ratones galacticos too and he used to be friends with Juancho, 'till one day he borrowed Juancho's bike and returned just the front wheel, promising he would help Juancho build a monocicle, which he never did. Now Juancho had another reason to hate JP, since he secretely loved Adriana while she barely noticed his existence: she only had eyes for JP. Juancho didn't even know what to do for her to notice him, so he wrote the most romantic letter one could ever imagine to her. The only problem was that the letter was anonimous and she thought JP had written it... so Juancho had to develop a new plan. He thought "if I had scored that penalty today I would have been a hero in this town and she would love me... so I really have to do something big and I'll get her love". He had heard that to get to someone's heart one must start getting to someone's belly, so he decided to cook the best pie ever for her. He spent all his savings in the best ingredients he could find and cooked "something big"... an enormous pie she wouldn't have been able to eat in a whole year. The plan had failed again.

Saturday, October 25, 2008


Learning about life...

Sometimes things happen that make you see everything in a different way... the myth says that Newton saw the apple falling down and then he started thinking of that, until he understood why that happened, and he saw it was worth trying to develop this new way to see the world he had learned about. If he had not seen that apple falling down nobody would know about him in our days, but that little fact changed his way to see the world and his discoveries will stay alive forever.

Lito doesn't know anything about Newton, he just lives in a small town and lives a life like everyone does: he just works everyday to support himself and doesn't have much of anything. But one thing makes him different from the rest of the people: he has a dream...he dreams of being really happy someday and enjoy himself in a way he hasn't done until now.

One day Lito wakes up and decides he wants to go to the park, 'cause he likes going there every week and enjoys watching everything around there. He likes seeing the birds and the trees... he also likes seeing children playing and from time to time he himself spends some time playing foot-ball with them. He loves that feeling of peace he gets in that park and he doesn't know why, but he feels like it would be perfect for him to live in a place like that...

When asked about the things he wouldn't be able to live with, he would say his piano, his books and that piece of stone he got from Jerusalem... after that would come his weekly visits to the park, 'cause that's one of the things he enjoys the most and make him feel good...

One Sunday Lito wants to go to the park, 'cause it's been a while since he went there... he has had a lot of work to do and it's been impossible to do it before... but when he gets there he finds nothing.

He can't understand, he looks everywhere and wonders if it's just a nightmare... the park SHOULD be there but it's not... and then Lito starts thinking. He thinks about all the good times he spent in the park, and all the good times he could have had if the park was still there... he thinks about all the things he enjoyed there and why he likes that particular park so much... and he realizes the park is more important for him than he thought... and now he would give everything just for being able to be there again... unfortunately, there's nothing he can do now. If the park was there now he would work in order to make it better... he swears to himself that if he ever finds a place like that, he will do everything for it. He realizes he cannot live without seeing that park anymore... and he doesn't understand why he did not know before that it was such a fundamental part of his life... and now he goes there everyday to see if things are bck the way they were before... but they are not.

When Lito wakes up, he goes to the park... and brings a shovel to start working to make it better. Lito is not Newton, but one single dream changed his life...

Sunday, September 21, 2008

This is how it began...

It was late. I didn't want to go out that night, cause I was a little sick and moreover I had to work the next day. Anyway I decided to go to that party where I did not know anyone 'cause I didn't feel like staying at home when everybody was out... my plan was to come back home at midnight and get up early the next day. It was friday and I hadn't had much to do at school by then, 'cause the semester had started just 2 weeks ago.
I needed to go to the 19th floor and the damn elevator didn't want to work, so I just decided to climb the stairs... it was a long way but sometimes I just don't feel like waiting... life os not just waiting... you need to fight for the things you want to get all the time, no matter if they are bug or small.
There was nobody I could talk to... I was one of the first persons to get there. I was just going around and then all of a sudden I decided to go to the balconi before leaving. It was 10 minutes before midnight and it was time for me to leave. But then when I crossed the door to the balconi this girl said hi to me. I had seen her when she came in, but to be honest I did not pay much attention to her. We talked for a while and as we talked I felt like it was not by chance that we had met that day. It was something that was written somewhere... and I am sure she felt the same...

Saturday, July 05, 2008

It's a hard life

"(en el amor) las oportunidades hay que aprovecharlas...porque se van y no vuelven nunca más"
(El abuelo / huaso Retamal)

Today, my dear friends, I am gonna talk about love... a beautiful but sometimes tough word.
The above quote was taken from the movie Promedio Rojo, when abuelo tells how he met the love of his life, how he fell in love with that woman and fighted for her love, but most importantly, how he realized she was the love of his life and that he needed to take that opportunity, because otherwise it would be gone foerever. He realized that love is always a bet, and maybe the most important one in life, 'cause most of our happiness depends on it. How can we sometimes be blind before true love? It's hard to know... the only thing I can say is that you never know what you have until you let it go... and sometimes it's too late when you realize that you cannot live without it... but everything is ten times more difficult when you have strong feelings involved, and when you feel your love hurts you, you can start hurting her, even if you don't want to do so. Now you can just promise yourself that you are not gonna make the same kind of mistake again. Bet when you have to bet.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

It´s nice to see the sun again

...and the time flew by. Those freezing days are now part of the past... and the streets of Santiago are just as hot as last January, although they look, at least to me, pretty lonely. Of course the circumstances are diferent now. One year ago I was counting the days, ´cause I knew how many days I HAD TO wait, while now I don't have anything to count... I am just WAITING. The city looks also a little diferent: there are more green bus stops and everything looks very quiet. The sun is shining all the time and the sky is wonderfully blue....
The first glass of water I drank here tasted so bad.... now I understand why they say water in Santiago is sooo bad... I was so used to it before leaving that it was impossible to feel any bad taste, bu t now.... huff.. . =P
It's weird to walk alone on the same streets one year ago I was with somebody else... hand in hand, hearing a tender voice all the time... when at the end of every day I knew I was going to see YOU...
Anyway, it was so cold out there that it's really nice to see the sun again... but it's not the same when you are not here...


Wednesday, October 03, 2007




Happyland

Smiles...smiles everywhere. The first thing that surprised me about this country was that everyone is smiling. Many of you might thing that I shouldn't be surprised about it, but at least in Chile it is not very usual to see so many people smiling at the same time. I just remember a few times when something like that happened, for example, when Chile qualified to the 1988 FIFA World Cup, after defeating Bolivia by a score of 5-0. The Athens 2004 Olympic games are also one of the few examples of that. Everyone suffered a lot while watching the doubles tennis final match, between Chile and Germany. The German team had 4 match points, but Chile recover impressively and finally won the match, and the gold medal (the first in our history...and the second came just one day later) .
However, the happiest day for the whole country, I think it was in 1998, the 29th of March, when the great Marcelo Ríos defeated Andre Agassi (considered by many the greatest - or at least one of the greatest- tennis player of all time) and got to the number one in the world. Those were the days when everyone in Chile smiled. What about the rest of the time? People have to eat, buy clothes, have a place to sleep, etc. and when they can't, smiling becomes impossible.

Let's go shopping

There is an enormous difference between being a salesperson in Chile or in Sweden. Let's suppose, for instance, that la señora Margarita wants to buy a pair of shoes in Santiago. She enters a shop. Christopher Guajardo, the salesman, looks at her, and remembers that he still needs to sell at least 100 more lucas (US$200) that day to earn 5 lucas (US$10) after 7,5 hours working (He gets just 2,5 % of the total of his own sales. Thus, to get 5 lucas a day he must sell 240 lucas, from which taxes are deduced, and just after that Christopher's salary appears).
Christopher has a wife and two children. If he gets 5 lucas a day, it means that his salary is around 150 lucas a month.
La señora Margarita asks about a pair of shoes in the shop window. Christopher brings a pair of Margarita's size. After trying them, Margarita says that she needs to see other shoes. She is there for half an hour, trying different shoes, and after that while she decides that she is not going to buy anything. Christopher gets upset, because he LOST a lot of time showing different kinds of shoes for nothing. He can just think things like "vieja culiá...vino a puro webear y no se llevó nada", but he doesn't say a word. And he still needs to sell 100 more lucas.
Ulrika Johansson wants to buy new shoes and she enters a store in Stockholm. Daniel Lundberg, the salesman, shows her different kinds of shoes, and after half an hour she decides that she won't buy. Daniel says: "No problem. Maybe in that store (pointing to a neighbor store) you can find what you are looking for. Have a good day!!" smiling while he talks. Smiling like everyone does in this country. The difference? it's obvious.