Predictably, the playpen was full of straw and dry debris, and the heat was scorching. Now no one knows how to put it out because there is very little water in that house, just a few buckets that are committed to the garden to save some of the meagre harvest. The surrounding neighbours have wells, but they have never given them permission to draw a drop of water from them. And not because they are bad people or unsupportive, no, but because their respective harvests, and therefore their survival, also depend on what is left in those wells, which is rather little. The drought that has been ravaging the region for the past five years is already taking a cruel toll on the well-being of families in this increasingly poor area on the outskirts of the big city.
How could the Cypriot owners of this farm have allowed such a build-up of straw and dry offal in their farmyard? Did they not know that a build-up of that size was reckless? It was only a matter of time before it caught fire and endangered other neighbouring farms. The flames can reach such a scale that, with the strong wind and dryness of the environment, they can easily spread throughout the periphery, threatening even a neighbourhood in the capital. The Cypriot farmer has considered all possible options, and has called in a Russian acquaintance of his who has a large water well. But he is not making things easy for him and wants to take advantage of his desperate situation: he has hinted that in exchange for bringing him a few trucks of water, he will allow him to set up a nightclub, a whorehouse, in his own house, next to the farmyard, and the farmer's young daughter serving drinks at the bar. The farmer's face is unhinged, but for the moment still arguing on the phone and neither of them has hung up.
In the meantime, the other farmers, the mayor, the sheriff and even the minister himself are discussing the measures to be taken in the capital city, shouting and shouting like so many times before. They are running in all directions, like an anthill in a state of emergency. Bringing water from the city centre to the outlying farms is not feasible, as the mayor flatly refuses to spend his water resources on extinguishing the miseries of the periphery. He accuses them of having negligently, carelessly and recklessly piled up their dry waste in poultry pens that are now a powder keg. And he is right. But the fire is still burning and the flames can already be seen from the capital.
Fire is unforgiving, and the laws of physics, like those of the market, are implacable. Some farmers blame the damn fire, the damn drought, the damn mayor or the damn minister, ignoring their negligence and the fact that weather conditions are the same for everyone, in the city and in the periphery. Maybe that's the problem. City dwellers enjoy a dry, warm and sunny environment in their swimming pools, because their flammable products are well distributed, stored, controlled and always with a fire extinguisher at hand. But in the periphery, with their bad habits and lack of rigour, they need a different, more humid climate. A climate that does not threaten their miseries piled up in their little pens and allows them to survive in the long term, despite their bad habits.
When the farmers moved to settle on the outskirts of the city, they believed that everyone would benefit from the proximity. They thought it would be all advantages, like going to the city cinema on Sundays, shopping, and some even did business with the city tourists who visited their farms from time to time. But they did not consider the disadvantages: The city's hot, dry climate was detrimental to their farming, and fewer and fewer farmers could afford to go to the movies or shopping in the city.
So what advantage is there for these families to have moved to the dry climate of the outskirts of the big city, and what advantage is there for the citizens to have farmers on the outskirts demanding water to put out their very dangerous fires? It is true that the farmers bought their farming tools from city businesses, but they have less and less money to spend in the city. And it is no less true that for a few years, the inhabitants of the capital were able to go to the suburbs to buy local products. But today, the risk of the fire spreading throughout the periphery, which could also reach some of the city's neighbourhoods, is already creating too much tension between the two sides. Perhaps, in an unprecedented show of determination, the authorities will banish the Cypriot farmer once the fire has consumed his house, but that will not prevent other neighbouring farmyards from catching fire in the near future. It is only a matter of time.
No one now knows how the Cypriot farm fire will be tackled, nor how much longer it will take for water to arrive to control it (no one aspires to put it out any more), nor whether it will be in time to prevent it from spreading to a neighbouring farm. What is certain is that it will not rain and that the weather will remain torrid.. For the time being, the doors of the burning corralito have been closed for 5 days now to uselessly contain the flames, which are getting bigger with each passing minute. Because you know when a corralito closes, but you never know when it will open again. Everyone has an old Argentinian farmer in mind who had something similar happen to him, but nobody wants to talk about it now. After all, despite the fire and destruction, the aesthetics of Mad-Max are still a long way from this metropolis and its periphery.