“Carné d’idá”


In the popular slang of my little planet, this is what we call the Identity Card (DNI).

This slang has been adopted by the police. Almost all the members who make up this repressive body have been imported from the eastern provinces; in general, people in the capital refuse to participate in this work. The police are almost always characterized by the low educational level and equally low stature, where normally it could be resolved with just one, well that’s one way to reduce the unemployment numbers.

Yesterday was one of those days when it took all morning, or all afternoon, to settle a little matter that really shouldn’t have taken more than hour, as they brag in the propaganda posters in these offices: Rectifying a mistake, even if it’s their fault, as for any other kind of issue, means you begin by standing in line. Soon a voice emerging from somewhere over there says, “Number three.” You go into a little office, where they ask you what you’ve come about, your name, et cetera, which they dump into a computer. Then they send you out again to wait, until they call your name. After a great deal of time has gone by, another voice from the back of beyond calls your name and takes you to another office where you are asked the same questions all over again. Then they take your old card, three photos, two stamps at 5 pesos each, and tell you to go down to the end of the hall and wait to be called. I was with my sister who is physically disabled, which no one seemed to notice despite its being completely obvious, since she can hardly walk on her own.

There, in the final waiting room, we stayed nearly four hours. Each time I approached an employee to explain the physical condition of my sister, they told me her card still had not arrived. It was as if to get from the little office at the entrance to the last room of the building, the paperwork had to make an inter-provincial journey on the back of a turtle.

Finally, after checking the new card, and correcting the accent which was missing from her last name, they had taken my poor sister’s ten osteoarthritic fingerprints twice, which is twenty prints as if to say, AY! We left there at noon, happy, despite the ordeal, to have had issued a new and correct carné di dá.