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.