The little hands that fed Berni every morning now hold pencils to write what their voices cannot express. At Bernardino Rivadavia Elementary School in Hernando, children wrote letters about the pain, incomprehension and anger they felt brutal murder of the calf who they considered part of their school family.
“Which city are we in? Why did they do this to Berni?“wrote one of the students in a letter that arrived on the desk of Mariela Paschetta, the director of the institution. The boy’s words summarize the emotional collapse that the educational community experienced after discovering that criminals entered the institution at dawn, slaughtered the animal with machetes and left its remains in a backpack in the heart of the city.
When seven children from the patrol responsible for feeding the animals went to the farm on Friday morning, they discovered that the fence had been cut with pliers and Berni was missing. “They started screaming: ‘They stole our calf, they’re going to kill it, sir,'” Pashetta recalled that moment, still moved, describing the minor’s desperation.
While Pashetta went to the police to file a report, the remains of the calf turned up. “These people did this with complete impunity,” denounced the director in an interview on the show Last question Radio station Continental Cordoba.
The discovery confirmed the worst fears: Berni, the barely 150 kilo orphan calf that had just started school a few days old, was murdered with unimaginable cruelty.
The trauma that goes beyond the classroom
The emotional impact on the children was devastating. Over the long weekend following the incident, numerous families contacted the principal to inform her of their children’s disruptions. “A lot of families have talked to me and told me that The boys had trouble sleeping“Pashetta revealed.
Driver arrested in Oliva: The company denies alcohol and accuses failures in controls
But what was most heartbreaking were the questions the minors asked their parents and teachers. “They asked them if the same thing would happen to them, if people would come in and take them away and they would kill them and dismember them like Berni did,” the director said, showing how the event frightened the children.
The letters the students wrote reflect this terror, but also a deep sense of injustice. The lyrics express the need to respond to violence that invaded the space they thought was safe.
Berni, more than a pet
For Bernardino Rivadavia’s school community, the little calf was not just any animal. It was part of “Vivoescuela,” an educational project that incorporated agri-environmental practices and farm animals to learn various curriculum areas. Berni was born an orphan, barely a few days old, and from the very first moment he was in contact with the students who fed him and watched him grow up.
“Berni was our mascot“, explained Paschetta. “Berni was one of us in the institution.” The whole neighborhood also loved the animal. “Like a good milk calf, a little calf that was alive and asked for food, everyone brought it with them, the apple, the biscuit, the stale bread,” the director recalled.
The children waited on patrols for their turn to feed him each day. This routine, which taught them responsibility and respect for animal life, was brutally interrupted early Friday morning when the criminals cut the wires with pliers, lifted the fabric and took the calf.
“It wasn’t because of hunger, but because of evil.”
The director strongly ruled out that the act was a response to a need for food. “Even if they were hungry, I can’t eat my neighbor. Berni is a pet, I can’t eat my neighbor’s pet,” he explained urgently.
Anyone charged with fraud in a travel agency can continue to work; there is no express ban on his conditional release
According to Pashetta, those responsible acted deliberately. “They took pliers and cut the top and bottom wire strands of the fence,” he explained. Two and a half blocks from the school, in a house, they waited for the animal and They killed him with machetes “With a coldness, with a betrayal that I have rarely experienced,” said the director.
The level of violence against a nursing calf – too young to be used for its meat – caused Pashetta to question the parameters of society. “What risk are we taking with people like that? Because today it’s Berni, but it could also be a child, it could be a young man,” he warned. “We are distorting the parameters of society,” he said.
About The Author
