after mid-term election, turtle necks, planting leftist pine trees, central american coup,more bus rides

So, unlike the States, people vote on Sundays and it's a legal obligation.  Some people have never changed their residency from when they last moved and don't travel from BA to the interior to vote (although a lot of people do travel election day weekend so as not to break the law, or, I don't know, a sense of obligation to your nation).  Bars cannot be open after 8pm the Saturday before, and I believe that places stop selling liquor at that time or a few hours earlier.  On Friday I talked to a cab driver, as I often do, about his sticker for Pino Solanas (my personal favorite).  He must have been a fiscal (don't know how that would translate in our system), so he had the ballots for Pino in the taxi with him.  Each party has fiscales in different districts who are responsible for distributing the ballots for their party.  The candidates are not all on one list.  You enter the voting place (usually a school, like it is for us) and wait on line.  You are handed an envelop and you go into a room where each party has their own ballot that has their list on candidates.  You choose one paper and put it in the envelop (which has been officially signed, so it can't just be some envelop you snuck in with).  The ballots can be cut in half.  One half of the ballot has the list of candidates to be national representatives for the autonomous city of BA on one side, while the other half has the list for the representatives on the provincial (in this case local BA city) level.  You therefore have the option of choosing one party on the national level and another on the local.  I've heard that this is rare.  If, for example, you want to vote for Pino, you go the table with the ballots for his party (Proyecto Sur).  The ballot has the name of the party and down the middle a dotted line indicated where to cut if you so wish to do so.  You can only cut in half, though, so when you cast a vote on the local or national level, you are voting for a list of people.  Pino debated with three other candidates, each from a different party, and depending on the percentage that a candidate wins, they select a certain number of people from their list to take sits in the legislature with them.  So the ballot has Pino's name in large letters, followed by another known name is slightly smaller font, followed by a longer list in what is probably the equivalent of type 14 Times New Roman.  It is the same on the right side, except with the list of those running on the local level.  Pino's name is the largest of all the names on the entire ballot, although his real first name, Fernando, is in about type 14 also above where it says Pino Solanas.  Nobody knows him as Fernando, and he has been around for years.  He has been making documentaries for a very long time, and no one, as far as I have heard, has referred to him as Fernando.  Pino is the word for pine tree,a nd you would see small Proyecto Sur posters that said:  Pino se planta.  I thought they were so witty.  Plantarse can meen to plant, as in a tree, but it also means to stand firm, as in against larger forces or for a cause.  En serio, Pino se plantó.  Until two weeks ago he had not a chance in hell, on Sunday he came in second.  Everyone knew Gabriela Miccheti would come in first, but she did by far less than expected and Pino's not-too-far-off second place through everyone off.  Gabriela gets five seats in the national legislature, Pino gets four, the Radical candidate Alfonso Prat-Gay three and the Kirchners' candidate, Heller, one.  A student of mine told me it's called the Dont system (that's how he spelled it), which just speaks for itself in more ways than one.  This outcome is remarkable.  Pino is of the left and Capital can tend towards being quite conservative.  What is more interesting is what the election really means overall.  The Kirchners lost...by a lot.  The husband/ex-president came in second in the Province of BA, which is quite the upset.  The interesting aspect to all of this is, although the Kirchners are quite fake leftists, they provoked such strong feelings of disdain that the country has really shifted to the right.  I had gotten all caught up in the frustration with CFK, too, but what has this reactionary approach left Argentina with?  I was happy to see her husband lose because I think Kircherismo needs to die off, but or that to have happened, someone to right of him had to beat him, and that is exactly what came to pass.  Maybe it can also be read as giving a truer left a the voice of real opposition.  If the country is moving to the right, the more conservative politicians can no longer play the victims and Pino, as he is already trying to do, can build a coalition of opposition that brings together a real left that will actually reinforce public hospitals and education.  It's very interesting to watch all of this with quite a militant socialist.  My friend F.  was a fiscal for La Frente Izquierda, which had no chance of really making any impact percentage wise.  The candidate was from the PTS (Partido Trabajadores Socialista), which my friend is a dedicated member of.  He goes to meeting about four times a week.  For him, Pino is from the center, but he was very happy about the outcome, although a bit hesitant to show it.  He pointed out that usually first and second place winners are not so different in their convictions, but the first and second this time have almost nothing in common.  He also pointed out that Argentina went the way of Europe, pointing out how the country has moved to the right significantly, but that mainly people voted against "the couple" and that was how they thought about their vote.  I was thinking about how much CFK and her husband have discredited the left with their words and by using that language.  

Back to the cab driver:  He gave me some ballots because, as he said, there is always fraud, always good to have extra.  It's true.  Often times ballots of one party are stolen.  Each party also has to pay for their own ballots, so a party like the PTS doesn't have nearly as many as any of the main contenders.  As a result, I have four Proyecto Sur ballots.  I got to see a whole pile of F.'s ballots, and from what I can tell, all ballots are printed on what is the equivalent of poor quality paper towels from public bathrooms.  I kept joking that I wanted to use my four votes.  When F. had to return to help supervise the counting of ballots (part of the job of fiscales is to prevent fraud, although it's quite relies a lot on trust), he told me that the person who is supposed to monitor everything as a non-partisan supervisor passed by less than twice every hour.  It would be very easy to commit fraud.  I had explained to the cab driver that I wasn't Argentine, but he told me to take them for my friends who were, in case they showed up to vote or Pino, but there were no ballots for him.  That is how I came into my four authentic mid-term Argentine ballots.  I was so tempted to throw them into F.'s pile, but his sense of humor would not have extended to that theme.  I joked about committing fraud all day and then, as I was reading, I overheard on the news how a group of people up north, indigenous and some barely able to read, had their national ID cards seized.  They were told to go to a certain place to retrieve them and were told to vote for a certain (I believe government, at least Menemista [from the Carlos Menem branch of Peronismo]) candidate upon arriving.  The man who was calling into the news to expose this incident explained that perhaps many of the people involved didn't realize they were being made to vote.   I have used both the words Kirchnerismo and Menemista in this post.  Peronistas, those who follow the the political ideologies of Perón, and a broad group.  So broad, in fact, that when I have asked (as I have done so several times) that a student mark political parties, or just peronismo, on a line that ranges from left wing to right wing, they immediately tell me it is impossible before even trying.  As a result, people claim branches of peronismo and we are talking about a cult of personality that is interpreted in many ways by different people or political moments  The man himself ranged from left to right.  He was a revolutionary for sure, but he is either so demonized or deified that he never seems to be humanly depicted in a conversation.  As one incredible human being told me, who also happens to be a student, he/she is not against peronistas per se, nor necessarily all of what Perón did, but he/she hates what peronismo has done to Argentina.  A fascinating statement, and said inoffensively and directly.  I'm sure some people would be outraged by such a comment, and for that I will not assign this paraphrase to a name. You can be a peronista and you could be from the left, right or center.  In a documentary, not meant to be comedic, about Argentine history, Perón is talked about as being inspired by Trotskyite socialism, Franquismo, Mussolini, the USSR and the Catholic Church.  Enough to make your head spin around ten million times.  

On Sunday there was also a coup in Honduras.  Here, probably for having had to live under a military government (more than once), such an event strikes a chord.  I was reading comments from readers on Huffington Post and was shocked by how people were actually defending the removal of an elected leader by the military.  The most common point made in defense of the military's removal of Zelaya is his relationship, or even similarity to, Hugo Chavez.  I don't have the exact quote, but thank you to the comment that basically said:  I don't care if he was friends with Charles Manson, militaries don't choose governments.  On BBC  many Hondurans talked about supporting the military's actions.  I think it's important to imagine the class of people who have access to BBC online in a poor country.  He was taken out of power after he declared that he would hold a public referendum to allow him to run for re-election.  It is also interesting to know that there are people who have lived under a military dictatorship and yet still support a military that is so powerful that it, within days, deposes and appoints a president.  When I explained this to my Spanish teacher, he said, you just don't understand the Latin American mentality.  Zelaya is not really even that much of a leftist, but when people feel that their interests are at stake, they will accept any action that makes them feel like that immediate threat, perhaps to their pocketbook, is removed.  I respect my teacher immensely.  He is great intellectual, and also the only person I really know who is honest about having voted for the kirchernista Heller in the last election and who openly agrees with CFK, even about how she dealt with the farmers.  I respect that he is honest about liking la presidenta when obviously in one moment many, even a few from Capital, did, but, like with Bush, all of sudden people pretend they had nothing to do with the person who is really screwing up (or at least you know that's how everyone else thinks, so you pretend to be in agreement).  I was so shocked when he told me he was going to vote for Heller and how he felt about "the couple".  He is not in love with them, but he does at least like CFK, which is rare for Buenos Aires and also shows an independence of thought.  Also, like Pino Solanas, and many Las Vegas 70's lounge singers before him, he has a proclivity for the turtle neck.  

One day I will write a book on Buenos Aires buses.  I'm not sure how to organize the chapters. I don't know if I would do it by bus line or hour of the day, maybe even by the music the driver chooses.  Different lines certainly have different characters (both the feeling of the bus and the literal meaning of the word character when used to describe its passengers).  A bus at rush hour can be a dreadful thing.  Last week a woman, well-dressed and with all appearances of decency, shoved me out of the way to get on the 22 ahead of me.  She prevented me from stepping onto the bus so that the could pass me.  

I must be off.  I have to write about plastic bags, must remember that I must share a conversation I had about that with my PTS friend.  

I am not proofreading anything I'm writing.  Sorry, but after Columbia I just don't want to care so much and let it flow.

mothers of the disappeared, OHB's inauguration, I'm from an empire

With very few exceptions, I have guessed who most of my students are voting for.  It's been an interesting set of conversations.  On the whole, unlike in the States, Argentines don't find it inappropriate or rude to talk about politics.  There are protests all the time, which is an interesting juxtaposition to resignation, or even apathy.  The apathetic individuals shock.  In the States I'm unfortunately just very used to it, but there isn't the kind of constant political mobilization going on.  For example, Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo, who are a group of mothers of the disappeared who march around the the plaza every Thursday at 3:30.  The Kirchners made them part of mainstream political culture by inviting them to the Casa de Gobierno (aka Casa Rosada, trans.:Pink House)  during the husband's presidency.  When I went to go see them for the first time, with Ben Lieberman, it was a mixture of many different and strange images:  There were these old women circling the plaza with signs.  Some were selling crafts, including mates with the organization's symbol on it (I have a keychain), memorialization, ghosts, grief and politics.  After the marching, one of the mother's made a speech.  It was  the Thursday after Obama's inauguration.  The mother giving the speech, I believe her name is widely known, as the group has become associated with a left leaning ideology.  I would love to learn more details about the group.  Perhaps a future post.  During the inauguration, CFK (Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner [I live with a Cristina, I need to be careful about being clear about who I'm talking about]) was in Cuba and a made a point of giving a speech at the University of Havana the same day.  She was obviously trying to make a political point, but I don't know if she realizes that most people in the States don't know she is, she is not necessarily the most popular head of state even in this region, and even the people in the States who might know who she is probably didn't care.  I didn't.  I remember the inauguration so well, it was a beautiful day, I didn't care where Cristina was, she is always traveling anyway, and as much as I think the U.S.'s policy towards Cuba is ridiculous, that day was electric for me.  I have not been exactly over the hill about many things the Obama administration is doing/not doing, but it was a beautiful day in BA and it was an amazing moment.  Ben and I watched it dubbed over in Spanish with two friends we made five minutes before.  Two people, who live us, could not fit into a place that was holding a watch party, and ended up in a psychedelic cantina-esque place (acid drip colorful and more oddly decorated than my Mom and Stepfather's apartment on the Upper-East Side) with two middle-aged people, a man and a woman, all of us, except for Ben and I, previously strangers to each other.  We begged the owner to let us watch the inauguration, which was on Argentine news.  She agreed, but we had to watch it on low volume so that it wouldn't drown out the loud salsa music.  One of our new friends bought champagne and bread.  He had us eat bred together as a sign of friendship, and given the early hour for drinking, we were all pretty buzzed.  The simultaneous translation was hysterically monotone and non-dramatic, which was made funnier by the profundity of Obama's facial expressions and the droned out sound of his miraculous speaking voice.  

Then we are at Plaza de Mayo and the mother giving the speech said that he seems like the "best of the worse," which was meant as a compliment.  Ben turned to me and said something like:  "They really do hate us don't they."  "Yeah."  It's not an insult about Obama, it takes living in another country to see how the States is seen in the world.  I've had that experience numerous times before, but it's different to be really living in another place where the public attitude, in general, is quite negative of my country.  I share almost all of these views, I'm even more critical of the States than some of my students.  Many times I doesn't bother me when I receive the criticisms directed at me because I'm from there, mainly because when I give my opinions I'm not what they assumed me to be.  But there are always a few who manage to get under my skin.  I can only think of no more than one or two examples.  Cases when it was someone who was saying something about the States to sound smart or cool, but actually knew nothing about.  It's easy and popular to criticize certain places or people, but I need more than just a categorization without a real discussion, otherwise I find that I'm not intellectually engaged at all.  I'm not much offended as someone from the States, but as a person, for having to have heard something that was said just to offend a person they don't know personally and to feel intelligent for doing so.  I make negative generalizations about my own country all the time, and I don't mind if Argentines do, I mind when they assume what my own political convictions are without asking.  Even reflecting on this subject makes me see how hypocritical I'm being, but I'm not an ambassador, and sometimes I'm put in that position.  I don't even want to defend the States.  My country is responsible for such awful things during Bush, but it would be naive to pin it all on that.  The States has not been such a power for good here.  It has supported some awful, awful political leaders, it has overthrown democratically elected ones who did not want to support our business interests (i.e. Allende in Chile).  The States, at least at some point, aided the last military gov't here, responsible for possibly "disappearing" 30,000, mostly young people.  Disappeared could involve torture, though not all that were tortured were disappeared.  People disappear when they are picked up in bottle-green Ford Falcons and thrown out of airplanes over the ocean.  

And you see these mothers, that come out every Thursday, and they seek justice.  Part of their speech was all about how great Cristina was, and you realize that besides the oddity of the souvenir table, there is a very uncomfortable politicizing of the movement.  It is not simply left, but it is tied up with this specific gov't in power now.  That's very much understandable, to feel affection for a gov't that brings these women into the spotlight, but I question the altruism of the intentions and reduce it cynically to politics, the type that helps you win public admiration and elections.  Ben and flipped through a book on the souvenir table called Nuestros Hijos filled with hundreds of pictures of the some of the disappeared with dates of when they were last seen and paragraph of biography.  Ben said he didn't want to look at it anymore, I couldn't decide whether I felt the same sort of terror, or if I wanted to continue looking at the faces of these young strangers.  It's like being at some sort of funeral/protest/seance.  Death is in the air, but it is living.  The images keep the dead alive, but they are kept alive because of their very death.  They are made remarkable because they are no longer with us, yet the are maintained in our sphere through of the living through photos and bios publicized so that we cannot forget them, or moreover, the larger, point what happened to them systematically.  Or, maybe that is  a backwards interpretation, and it really is about these individuals, and it really is, and will always be (despite political allegiances), these mothers who had their children taken away.  They don't have the closure of cemeteries or details of what happened to them.  It seems unbelievable to think that one day perhaps a friend is never to be seen again; into thin air.  

The Madres are no fans of the States, but is worth mentioning that their Thursday appearance is a quite the tourist attraction, and many of these tourists are from the States and go by the souvenir booth and take photos of the mothers.  Photographs are such a large part of keeping the disappeared alive, that it is interesting to interpret what it means to want to memorialize a moment of memorialization and commodify it (although the first memorialization, that of the disappeared themselves, have become circulating commodities and political messages against repression).  It seems strange to see tourists and foreigners, myself included, at a somewhat intimate event.  Of course the speech and the public aspect of the march is very much a defining part of the Mother's activities, but the death of one's child is such personal and painful experience.  We were both in a public and private space at the same time.  We were at a protest and memorial service simultaneously.  Página 12, a newspaper here, everyday runs small "adds" of the people who were disappeared on this specific date.  For example, today were a few of these "adds" for people disappeared on June 24th during the years of  '76-'83.  I can never stop reading them, but I get emotionally strange when I do.  Not just sad, but overwhelmed, like these few inches of photo and text are taking over all the space around me.  Sometimes there is a quote, like a poem, etc.  Always a short message from those who put the add in, such as family, who have some comment about how much they miss this person, how they keep fighting for justice in his/her memory, and it becomes the personal conversation provided for public consumption.  It is so nobody forgets.  Many of these people were around my age.  They were often university students, sometimes even high-school.  Even in the Iliad the heartbreaking unnaturalness of a child's death before that of the parent's appears.  

elections, sausage sandwiches, propaganda, more reflections on dead people

It is obligatory to vote in Argentina, and illegal not to.  It's one of the laws that's taken sort of seriously, although a student of mine this morning told me he never changed residency from the interior, so he is not voting.  It, like all laws, can be broken, although less so than, let's say, working here without a valid visa.  However, the candidates do not need to debate.  The election is on Sunday.  All liquor stores and bars must be closed while the polls are open.  The top four out of the more than a dozen congressional candidates, for Capital (Capital Federal is the autonomous city of Buenos Aires) had their debate late last week.  It was impressive and fascinating, and of course, like all politics, somewhat a theater of the ridiculous.  Everyone, though, has their eyes on the elections for the seats in the Province of Buenos Aires.  The people from Capital have their own representatives, they do not vote for the candidates in provincia. The leading candidate in provincia, although by very little of a margin, is Néstor Kirchner, the predecessor and husband of the current president.  Polls show that he is at a tie or a just barely ahead of one of his contenders.  If he wins, but with only a small margin, of course it will be some sort of victory, but not a very good one.  Provincia is stronghold of Peronismo and where "the couple" tend to be the most popular.  It reflects on how weak Cristina (Fernandez de Kirchner) is.  If, even in their stronghold, they can barely win, they are failing.  They have alienated many Peronistas with their aggressive political style.  Her first two years do not look so good.  When I first got here I was caught up in spontaneous protest that was taking place throughout the country.  It was my first or second full day here and my cousin had taken me for coffee in Belgrano, a mostly upper-class neighborhood.  It was had been 100 days of the farmers' strike.  They had stopped allowing agricultural commodities from moving from the rural areas where they are harvested/manufactured.  It was a response to a completely inappropriate use of executive power.  La presidenta had raised taxes on agricultural goods by a ridiculous percent (somewhere between 30 and 50, lamentably my memory fails me), but without passing at as a law through the congress.  She bypassed the legislative process and then, when el campo went on strike, she refused to negotiate with them.  The people were not protesting the farmers, they were protesting the absurdity of refusing to negotiate with them on the part of the government, a stubbornness that a weak economy based on agricultural commodities does not need in this global economy (even if a year ago was when only tremors of the economic earthquake to come).  As a result, the country's agricultural sector was a at a standstill for about four months.  There were posters all around the city of the military dictatorship that ended Peron's first presidency, when the military flew over Plazo de Mayo with bombers.  The message intended was that the farmers posed the same threat as a military coup.  Peronistas are not popular in Capital, so the president works in a city in which she is mocked and deeply disliked.  The candidates in the provincial election have not debated because her husband refuses to, he knows that in the face of arguments and questions he will look bad.  This government is spending.  I am all for nationalization, after all I did go listen to the Soviet anthem, but so are many people here, they just care about who is doing the nationalizing.  Like when this government nationalized pensions, without a blink and in a matter-of-fact way I was told by so many students:  well, there is a need to for campaign money for the congressional elections in June.  Or, Cristina did say she would pay off the Paris debt (after quoting it's number as much less than it is).  None of these people believed that nationalization was wrong, none believed that there money was not going to spent quickly for anything less cynical than politics.  Not the kind of politics that debates an issue, the kind that chooses Sarah Palin to garner support from evangelics for a republican presidential candidate who was never too popular with that group.  The farmers' strike ended in a great Argentine drama.  When Cristina ran, she made a big deal out of choosing someone from the main opposing party, a Radical.  Julio Cobos was very much ridiculed by many in his own party for accepting the position.  When the situation with the strike got so bad, Cristina finally decided to put the tax increase through the senate.  It was a fifty-fifty vote.  The constitution is based on that of the States, so the VP, in the case of a 50-50 senate outcome, casts the deciding vote.  "Mi voto no es positivo"...he voted against his own running mate and got a quote put on t-shirts.  A very dramatic line on a very dramatic day last winter.  He was the accepted back into the fold of his own party, and Cristina has pretended like he doesn't exist.  There are no juries on trials here, so the equivalent type of service is working at the ballot box.  I was speaking with a girlfriend of one of my students, who is from the provincia de buenos aires, though a rich part.  She said that suddenly boxes filled with ballots saying Cristina arrived to her station.  Given the political profile of the country, she probably did win fairly, though it is known that politicians give the poorer people in provincia money, or a sausage sandwich and a bus ride to Capital to protest in favor of the government.  Hundreds of pesos for people that have very little, and the basic, but traditional, choripan, a fixture at football matches, up north, as the Virgin was descending from the mountains to the tune of Sounds of Silence with indigenous flutes, hot off the grill, and at election time.  

The debate I watched:  The candidate who will probably come in first, who we would call the vice-mayor, but has way more power because BA has autonomy from Provincia de Buenos Aires, is a well put together woman.  I'm sure she is intelligent, but she didn't have responses and voluntarily walked into a debate in which she knew she would have to be on the defensive.  She is representing the current government of the city, the other three have a track record to attack her on.   Gabriela Michetti...She will probably come in first.  The guy who will probably come in fourth, because "the couple is so disliked here, was a very good debater because he used the language of the left, where he is originally from.  He has to defend fake leftists.  His ability to attack Michetti was very good.  Easy:  Mauricia Macri, the head of the government in the city, ran as an opposing ideal to the Kirchners, but the congress, which is very much controlled by the couple, for all of their posturing, has passed almost (if not all) of Macri's proposals into laws.  They talk about the horror of the neo-liberalism of the awfully corrupt 90's, but have not done anything to reverse the trends established under Menem.  Out of the top four, I like the most to the left who wore turtle necks with blazers in weird colors and looks older than his age and makes great documentaries.  He sold me.  Plus, it was very funny to see him go after the kircherista candidate who was pretending to be on the same side of the political spectrum by just telling the truth.  Argentina used to be looked at as "ahead" of all of its neighbors.  I have students that have travelled for work to Chile and Brazil.  They talk about how those countries are going forward while Argentina falls lower and lower while the government lies about it.  The president of Chile is a serious woman, Bachelet, a person more than a parody of women.  Cristina never wears the same outfit twice and dresses in theme.  When she was in France she wore her hair a certain "French" way, when Bill Clinton was here recently, she went to dinner with him in a "90's fashion."  She always displays different members of her extensive hand bag collection.  Her make-up is the butt of political cartoons, and on one of the most popular TV programs, which satirizes all the main politicians, she is played by a man.  She as that drag queen sort of flair with her dramatic self-presentation.  Brazil has Lula.  They have more poverty, but it's a bigger country, and it seems to be going forward, and he seems more regionally and internationally credible.  I found it so offensive to call the president her first name, very sexist.  However, there are two President Kirchners, and she insisted on changing the word la presidente to la presidenta to further feminize it.   Uruguay is considered one of the least corrupt countries, maybe least corrupt in South America and less so than many countries in Europe (according to the Spanish newspaper El País).  

I was here when the first president after the last military dictatorship died.  Raúl Alfonsín died right before I went up north.  Not perhaps the best politician, but his death was another way to look back with nostalgia at a time when politicians were not corrupt.  That would mean maybe less than five out of the last more than fifteen years, and he mismanaged the economy.  His death put Reagan's to shame.  His body was put out in the congress for a day and approximately 70,000 people went to go see his body.  I went.  I went because I felt like I could experience something truly historical in my time here:  The person who symbolizes the return of democracy's death, something larger than myself.  He was a Radical, a very popular party in Capital, the leading opposition to the Peronistas.  Grown men were crying, the city was a at a stand still.  But BA is always still BA, and portenos will be as they are.  The scene was chaos at the congress.  An uncountable amount of lines crunched into the length of two blocks.  There were, police, but the weren't managing anything.  Perhaps a sign that I have embraced the humor here, but it was quite funny: Two older women who were obviously skipping a section of the line by accident because it was impossible to discern any organization to the line system.  You have people in a state of mourning, and then you have men no older than their early thirties yelling at them, saying "Old Peronist Cows, stop trying to skip everyone and go to the back of the line where you belong."  Unbelievable.  I never made it into the congress because I wasn't prepare to wait seven hours.  I had weird reasons for going.  Maybe a bit perverse.  I find the whole putting-the-body-out-for-thousands-of-crying-people thing totally bizarre, I felt like I was in history and watching how people act and react in scenes like that is amazing.  My best Argentine friend was not even born when until the end of his presidency and she stayed in her house crying for a whole day about his death.  This theme of romanticizing when it seems to be something that was never personally experienced is everywhere, and it is so powerful.  If affects elections, emotions, language.  I keep coming back to this concept of nostalgia.  All states rely on some mythologized past, and perhaps the past is nothing more than myth, but a daily life (everywhere, but manifested in different forms) that is constantly making references to past that is conveniently mythologized in the lamentation of the moment, brings us to constant state of mourning, and the contradiction between passion and resignation.  

one year on

This is my way of making up for the year of being having lost touch with all of you and trying to share my experiences of last (more than) twelve months that I have been in the crazy world.

I am in the land of the absurd.  I mean that without condescension, as I believe that I left one crazy country to enter another.  I live with hyperinflation on a daily basis.  I am not living the life of luxury that many foreigners come to Argentina to enjoy.  I have a depressingly small amount of dollars and live on weak currency whose value changes almost daily.  It's a cycle:  people go into panic mode and save, instead of in a bank, in dollars, which they keep somewhere safe.  It is a result of two things:  1) Until the last financial crisis the dollar and the Argentine peso were 1:1 and it suddenly changed to 1:3 overnight.  2) During the crisis people were unable to withdraw their own money from banks.  When there is a global financial crisis, a crisis mentality that already exists, and no confidence in one's own currency, it drives the value of the peso down further.  It is psychology mixed with economics.  There is a crisis mentality, as the economy tends to meltdown approximately every ten years.  It is a reality, and it creates a different type of panic than that which probably exists in the states right now.  People here say that they are accustomed to thinking this way.  There is this feeling of being constantly traumatized by the economy and a political system that seems far too often like a farce.  There is a neurosis that is, at moments, overwhelming.  Fact:  Buenos Aires has more psychoanalysts per capita than any other city in the world.  Sometimes it just seems like a fashionable activity.  I try to reschedule classes with students, but they can't possibly do it on that day because they have a very important appointment to go to a shrink, as they do at least once a week (of course I'm talking about people of a class that are able to).  Other times I think it's completely necessary because the city, and its citizens, are completely nuts, and they admit it openly.  I am not the sanest of individuals, but I have never felt more balanced in comparison to a population before.  I feel a lot of sexism.  I'm used to having a lot of male friends, and that really is not very common here.  I've gotten myself into some uncomfortable situations as a result.  I do feel that my ideas matter less with some people because of my gender.  It gives attitude.  Everyone here has it, a bit of aggression and cynicism, but a sense of humor that cuts through melancholy with a ironic and nostalgic tone, perhaps even bordering on bitter (or more than just bordering).  

Another ridiculous fact:  There is a coin shortage.  It started about a year ago.  Everyone pretty much depends on the buses to get around the city, but the buses only except change.  In fact, the bus companies horde the change instead of putting it back into circulation and sell it at a higher price than its value.  There is literally a black market of coins.  It exists near the natural reserve not too far from my house.  Wealthy  people drive there to picnic on the weekends.  Poor street children find them parking spaces for a coin.  They sell the coins for real money.  It's a business.  A cab driver told a student of mine that he has to go to Puerto Madero, where the reserve is, to get change to be able to give change to his passengers.  You have to find creative ways of finding coins, often by buying unnecessary things. But nobody wants to give you the coins.  Sometimes you are asked to pay in higher bills so that they can give you change in cash rather than giving you a single cent.  Sometimes, instead of change, the kiosko owner offers me caramelos or some small candy as change.  Sometimes, at the pharmacy, cough drops (it is flu season after all).

Fantastic memories:

Going to May Day in Plaza de Mayo where all of the socialist parties convened at once (of course there have to be a gazillion, as the left always needs to be factioned so that we can never accomplish anything).  The soviet anthem was sung in Spanish.  People of all ages pumping their fists.  It was quite beautiful, actually.  Also, something that I would never experience in the states.  Socialism actually exists here.  I have gone to public hospitals and received good free health care.  

Fainting after receiving a cortisone shot in the butt to help with some lung pain.  First of all, the ones in the butt go there because they are large and filled with gel, not liquid, which is to say they hurt like hell.  About five minutes later I walked outside of the hospital doors and fainted on the street.  Typical Buenos Aires, no one helped because they probably assumed that the poor girl just didn't make it on time or that I was drugged.  The later makes sense, as I supposedly had a smile on my face.  I knew to protect my head, but I don't remember that, and I hit the concrete hard.  When I came to, for half an hour I talked about my favorite colectivo (bus) for 30 minutes non-stop.  With the nurses, with the person who had accompanied me.  Poetically.  About the color, it's route, it's interior.  I do love the number 10, but I don't usually feel the need to aggressively tell people they need to use it and lecture them on it's benefits as a bus.  I then took the 10 home, walking like a duck.  

Going to the Northwest of Argentina.  It is a different world from here.  There is actually indigenous culture, not Italians like here.  As my father said, this is the whitests city ever.  Teh north is mountainous, colorful.  The mountains of seven colors in Purmamarca, Jujuy are incredible, Las Salinas:  Salt flats that give you sun burn because you are in this world pure white that reflect the desert sun right back up at you.  Not having sunglasses was a bit painful.

Living with Samantha Cooper for a few months.  She was my roommate.  Maybe she will read this maybe not, but I respect her so much.  So full of energy and fun and thoughtful.  She was traveling the world, so not someone who lingered too long, but she taught me a lot.  Also deserves credit for giving me the best explanation of portenos (meant with spanish n with thingy over it, it's the name for the people of BA):  The neurosis and paranoia of Woody Allen with Italian hand gestures.  Perfect!  I can't capture it better.  

Doing La Ruta de Vino in Mendoza with one Nicholas Hayes and insisting on walking it, rather than biking or doing a driven tour.  Wine tastings and desert sun plus quite a few kilometers results in strange behavior.  Singing Cole Porter through the streets, during which I face planted on the sidewalk, without the knowledge of my dear friend, who continued to sing and walk ahead of me.  

Eating a diet that is not natural for me.  The first few months after going to an asado (traditional Argentine BBQ) I would be sick for 4 days.  That's a lot of time in the bathroom.

My student who is 71 and an ex-supreme court justice.  His passion is literature and is an accomplished novelist.  On his birthday he played me a Chopin piece and it brought me to tears.  Gustavo is one of the most incredible individuals I have ever met.  He was a justice during what is considered the most corrupt supreme court in history, under the presidency of Carlos Menem.  He was appointed by the opposition.  I don't think he enjoyed being on the side of the majority opinion very much.  Most justices from that time cannot walk in public because they are so hated and known for taking bribes, etc.  He still works a lawyer, does international work, and is constantly giving interviews or writing editorials, or walking in the street to the club across the street, perhaps to dance tango with his wife Ana (he told me he secretly hates to go dancing, but won't tell Ana because it means so much to her).  He has no grandchildren and we have this incredible relationship.  I feel so lucky to have met him, even when it is difficult to teach an older person who does not have a high level of English.  

There is so much more to say.  This is just the beginning.  I have a lot to say about the present, and much more about the past.  Perhaps that's very Argentine of me.  There are so many ghosts here.  The pictures of Evita, the idealization of past that is compared to an what is seen as a lamentable present.  30,000 disappeared during the last military dictatorship.  Conversations about how Argentina used to be an economic powerhouse.  It is true, but hasn't been for many many years.  It is a present that is constructed by a mythical past without any firm timeline.  Everything is blurry, but whatever It was, it was better than now.  "Este país de ladrones.  Este país de mierda."  Which politician do you feel was was a true statesman?  How old were you then?  Oh, you weren't alive, it's a name that means something, but you never lived during that time.  And so conversations go backwards, not forwards.  The clock is turned back and everything is perfect, but we are presently sitting in a café in the midst of shit.  This theme of memorialization, nostalgia, ghosts, etc. is what has made me want to start writing about living here.  To share insanity is to share beauty, and often time that which is ugly.  They are intertwined here.  

Stay tuned for what happens in the next few weeks.  We are in high midterm election season.  June 28th: congressional elections.  My shoulders need a rest as I do not have a desk.  So much more to say.  A year's worth of observation, thoughts, living in a different (sur)reality.  

Les mando todo mi amor.

X,

Fierman