Cristian Pity Álvarez made his own descent into hell. One of the promises of Argentine rock, adored by its followers, admired by great musicians like Fito Páez or Andrés Calamaro, plunged into the ill-fated world of drugs, gradually drowning between syringes, whistles and synthetic substances that lost their place, populated their World with ghosts, paranoia and violence. The music, which in many cases was a savior, was left aside and her space began to be populated with scandals and denunciations of kidnapped and beaten women; Screams, threats and a murder that ended the career of what was destined to become a legend. “I’m not free, I don’t enjoy every moment, the desire to make music is gone. This is a very big faint and on top of that I realize that I can’t stop. It’s like being dead because this drug in my being makes me isolate myself from everything,” Álvarez confessed in a letter he passed from hand to hand at one of his concerts. The Story of the Rise and Fall of Pity Álvarez – as she’s known in the Argentine music world – is now being rescued by Spotify on the ‘Intoxicated’ podcast, which goes into great detail on how her life has gone wrong and the dangers her addiction poses.
Álvarez’s oral trial is scheduled to begin on February 22. On that day, his face will again be in the news and on the front pages of newspapers, like the morning of July 13, 2018, when Argentines attended the news that the idol was involved in a murder. Álvarez appears on the news and turns himself in to the authorities, confused, gone, like a zombie who doesn’t understand what’s happening or what he’s done. “Too bad, are you innocent?” asks a reporter. “I think so,” the musician replies, stunned. His defense and experts hired by the family argued that the man was not in his right mind and conscious when he fired four shots at his victim. The drug had worn him out and thrown him into a state of paranoia. He acted “in a controlled, considered manner” in the victim’s defense and “poses a risk to society,” and authorities reiterate that this is a crime for which he should be prosecuted.
Cristian “Pity” Alvarez in Buenos Aires, 2008. Gustavo Muñoz (Getty Images)
The scene that changed Álvarez’s life happened 24 hours before the morning when the press stunned him with questions at the entrance to Police Station 52 in the Villa Lugano neighborhood of Buenos Aires. The man, who went around armed in his paranoia for fear of being robbed or killed, had spent part of the night with his girlfriend at his apartment in the Cardenal Samoré blue-collar housing complex, south-east of Buenos Aires. According to authorities, Pity had been on drugs addicted to base paste, a crack-like addictive drug made from leftover cocaine and processed with kerosene. The drug has wreaked havoc on the slums of Buenos Aires since it first circulated in Argentina in the second half of the 1990s, at the height of the economic crisis under the government of Carlos Menem.
That night, almost at dawn, Pity and his girlfriend came down from the apartment to attend a tropical music concert. As they walked to the car, the couple passed a group of men including Cristian Díaz, a 36-year-old man nicknamed El Gringo. Díaz, a taxi driver, had accompanied the musician a few months earlier to buy drugs in a neighborhood in the capital. Pity had accused him of abandoning him – he walked the three miles back to his house – and stealing money from a backpack he was carrying that day. Díaz faced Álvarez that winter night in Buenos Aires, who tried to mediate with the man. “You didn’t respect me,” he snapped. “You know who I am, you remember me. Do you remember when I brought you to the mansion? You said you’re missing things from your backpack. I’m not a crawler [ladrón]. You went around saying you were going to shoot me because you were missing things from your backpack,” Díaz continued. The musician tried to calm him down, according to witness statements collected while intoxicated. Using force, Díaz began pushing Pity and reproaching him for the allegations he had leveled against him. He also asked him to shoot him. “If you’re going to shoot, shoot, cat,” he yelled at him. Too bad Álvarez drew her revolver and shot him in the head. Then he finished it off with three shots. “What have you done Cristian?” his girl said nervously. They both got into the car, a Volkswagen Polo, and on the way he told them to drop the gun. Then they went to the tropical music concert.
Álvarez’s life was associated with drugs from an early age, when he was barely a teenager. He grew up with his father, a construction worker, and his grandmother, whom he adored and whose death came as a shock when the boy was 15. Although Álvarez lived in a working-class neighborhood, he was enrolled in a private school. The boy was a good student according to his former classmates, who say that Álvarez helped them with tests, mainly in physics, which he was good at. However, the boy could not endure school. “He didn’t go to school,” says one of his former classmates. “I had behavioral issues,” he adds. Pity added 25 cautions, earning him the sack. It was around this time that an older cousin introduced him to the music of AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden. When the cousin left him alone in his room, Álvarez searched his drawers and found cocaine, a metal syringe and a heater.
Too bad Álvarez, left, at a concert by Viejas Locas Guido Adler / Official Facebook Viejas Locas
Rock and drugs began to populate the boy’s life. In 1987 he bought a boy from his neighborhood a drum kit, his first instrument, and it was the beginning of a one-way journey with music. A few years later he formed his first band, Viejas Locas, which found its way into Argentine rock. In 1995 he recorded his first album and success followed. “There is no such thing as good and evil for me,” warned an Álvarez, overwhelmed by the onslaught of recognition. They recorded a second album, opened for the Rolling Stones during a band concert in Argentina, and their fame grew. He would later start a new group with which he would find complete success: Intoxicated. Fito Páez cataloged his music in 2007 as “emotional goldsmithing”. “His emotions, his interpretative quality always impress me,” he said. They filled concert halls. His music was everywhere. But hand in hand with fame grew addiction. Álvarez was dependent on base paste and suffered from mental disorders. His companions watched as the drug consumed his life. He had already been imprisoned for an act of violence, failed at concerts and two women accused him of having locked her up without their consent, brutally beat her and threatened her. So did a neighbor from the neighborhood they lived in, who said Álvarez hit her after failing to recognize her. A prosecutor had already requested his “urgent and involuntary” hospitalization given the risk he posed to himself and others, he said. Until the 2018 tragedy when he fired four bullets at this man in Buenos Aires.
The Spotify podcast, co-produced with Anfibia magazine, is also a critique of the Argentine authorities’ inability to deal with addiction and mental disorders. Several experts consulted in the six-part program explain how cheap and highly addictive drugs have devastated entire generations of young people in the slums of the great capital, hit by the constant economic crises that have plagued the country and are affecting them have let down . With drugs, violence and even more death came, in a spiral that Álvarez also fell into, the promise of rock, praised by the greats of Argentine music, who made his own descent into hell in the intoxication of drugs.
You can follow EL PAÍS TELEVISIÓN on Twitter or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
Receive the TV newsletter
All the news from channels and platforms, with interviews, news and analysis, as well as recommendations and criticism from our journalists
REGISTRATION
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits