encounters with the ultra-right, perverse tourism, a criminal inequality

Went to birthday two weeks ago. It was in Barracas, a residential neighborhood, but filled with either older people that probably aren't rich and working class families. It is very close to my house and quite nice. Very comfortable, not too dangerous, but it is close to my neighborhood, which is relatively safe, but five years ago was not, and two neighborhoods that can get quite rough. One is La Boca, with the famous football team, the origin of Diego Maradona, a national hero. La Boca, during the day, is filled with tourists, but not really the part where people actually live, one street that is like a Disney World attraction. La Boca is actually quite poor and not very safe. You go on a tourist bus, are charmed, and the tour guide talks about how lovely it is and quickly throws in, but in a grave voice, that it´s not a place for after 6pm. A recent trend, from the last few years, are the villa tours, which take you to different villas (slums) where you can taste hearty authentic locro (a traditional Argentine stew). How charming! I remember being on safari in Kenya and feeling such a visceral reaction by talking to an English tourist that expressed her complete lack of interest in leaving the hotel to be around people. In other words, her only interaction with Kenyans was to be with those dressed in suits and obligated to call her ma´am. A way to live like a colonist would have, assigning the people roles in which they are servants, or simply part of the background, while running to one side of the bar to see a baby cheetah in the distance. At least a villa tour obligates a the tourist to at least see how many people here live. Then again, there is a perversity to a tourist who is dressed well, will go shopping in Palermo tomorrow, and is having the 'authentic' experience of trying locro in a slum. I wonder how much they realize that it is a luxury for the people that live there, that their experience is really not authentic at all, that it is rare, because they are trying something for the first time and eating probably as much as they want. It is exoticising poverty and turning something quite horrific into a peverse voyeurism that plays on pity and romanticizing. I have admittedly never been on any of these tours, but I can´t imagine ever doing one, except to observe the people taking them more than the probably unreal framed reality that they are depicting.

Interestingly enough, although I thing all Argentines I know would find the villa tours ridiculous and perhaps offensive, the person who brought up the topic, to ask me what I thought of it since I was the only foreigner at the birthday party, was the first self-proclaimed fascist I have ever met. Someone told me it was part of having a ''a more complete latin american experience'' to meet an ultra-right winger from a military background. I have met very conservative people here, some that are from military families, maybe even proud of their family, but very cautious about bringing up their background. In a coutry with such a painful past associated with a military government, especially that only ended in 1983 in which maybe up to 30,000 people were disappeared, it is not a popular side to be on. It was fascinating to meet someone who bragged about being the son of a military father, who definitely served during the dictatorship. It was a parody of ultra-right nationalism, yet cannot be simply reduced to parody, it is a strong reality in this part of the world. There is a dark history which is not condemned by everyone. This was a young guy. I would say between 30 and 34. He had a bracelet that was the color of the Argentine flag that said Malvinas. In my experience, most younger people don't really feel any emotional connection to the Malvinas/Falklands, it is the generation before that actually has very vivid memories of the war. This guy kept getting drunker and drunker and talking about how he was a fascist, how the last military leader of state was a real man. He did so knowing that everyone else in the room strongly disagreed with him. He went on to talk about how the people that live in La Cava, one of the poorest and most dangerous parts of Buenos Aires, a part of provincia not to far outside of the city, choose to live a specific lifestyle. I was there for a party once, but I was with a large group of people.  I was both scared and intrigued.  The province of Buenos Aires, in general, is much poorer and less secure than Capital Federal (mostly the parts bordering the city).  Provincia is a contradiction within itself.  Right next to La Cava you have San Isidro, a very exclusive and posh gated-community like neighborhood.  Since I have arrived in Argentina I have read countless stories of families that are robbed and killed, often by criminals as young as 14.  These young men tend to be from La Cava.  Lack of security is less connected to poverty than to inequality.  People don't necessarily kill because they are poor.  I can never assume to know what it means to kill, but I can only imagine that the desire to be violent, as some sort of cathartic experience;  literally having the ability that is the most godlike--to take life, arises from a frustration that borders on a frenzy madness.  Perhaps it is like some sort of sacrificial ritual in the modernity of socioeconomic inequality.  La Cava is a huge center for narcotics trafficking, specifically paco (a cheaper equivalent of crack consisting of the processing chemicals to cut cocaine, supposedly effectually burning the brain), and there is obviously a huge relationship between taking a drug that increases the likelihood of a "frenzied madness" and erases the ability to understand or care about consequences and the potential to inflict some seemingly pointless harm that hits any human being as atrocious.  It is a catharsis that comes out of fear and inflicts more fear, so that the world of economic insecurity breeds one of social insecurity.  It is not easy to grasp that a young adolescent kills a man for 10 pesos, but there is no truth or insight to be found placing such acts in the discourse of common sense.  After all, common sense fails us so very much of the time.  However, as a human being with some sort of common sense, I could never say that anyone chooses to be from such a place as La Cava. And, if one is from there, growing up there, how many choices do they have to create such a distinct life for their families when they are older?  How can we expect such sector of society to overcome so many countless injustices?  Argentina, in terms of natural resources, is very rich country.  The Pope recently spoke out against the "scandal of poverty" in Argentina.  In a country so rich, there is nothing more criminal than having 40% of the nation's population living under the poverty line, with a government denying this fact.   There are so many people living on the streets in Capital, and we passed for a few weeks of record low temperatures.  How much can people choose?  No one would reasonably choose to live in poverty, which is the greatest crime of all, a true terrorism inflicted by the State.  Is that not the most atrocious crime?  To have a government that uses rhetoric that supposedly supports the workers and the less well off, but that has seen it's poverty rate increase greatly in less than a year? This has all occurred during the two Kirchner presidencies in which their income has increased to almost three times more than that with which they entered office (according to one news agency, though all numbers are politically motivated, so perhaps I'm reading a number an opposition that may not be any better).  For someone to be proud of being connected to such a dark shadow on Argentina's history, to condemn those that have nothing as "horrible" when he comes from one of the most upper-class parts of BA, strikes me as perverse.  How can such atrocities as fascism and classist contempt not exist without living and breathing individuals that you can encounter at a party?

Walter Benjamin, Borges, Freud, The disappeared on newsprint

I don't have Walter Benjamin in front of me at the moment. Illuminations is on my bookshelf, but I'm not there, so everything that I can say about him is coming out of memory at the moment. In Illuminations there is part called "On Storytelling" or "The Storyteller" in which Benjamin, who celebrates Kafka for this, explains that the true storyteller derives his power from "death". I don't think that in such a context the word "death" is so simple. It is, afterall, the inexplicable and human unknown that is the source of all fear and power. That which we do not know scares us, and yet it is the most mythologized and the center of religion, if you look at different religious perspectives as all finally helping the human psyche try to make reason out of the ureasonable. To approach the unknown without explaining it away, to approach that which scares us to give us power, rather than disguise it so as to push it away (which, according to Freud, only haunts us even more as the inner and outer spheres of being can collapse in one moment and create a trauma that is rooted in our archaic fear of death, which we have sought to overcome through modernity [the Uncanny]), is to become the storyteller. I was thinking about how this connects to how Borges, who is the Argentine favorite son of literature, or at least the most internationally known, and his obsession with The Double.   I have long felt that his poetry is never emphasized enough, or at least not as much as his essays or stories.  Some of them are not of a great poet, but others are truly beautiful in their darkness and ability to convey the atmosphere of Buenos Aires, to translate his sensory experience into words.  Death is a central theme to many of his poems, and he draws death into the realm of the Buenos Aires, or perhaps I have it backwards.  The Buenos Aires of Borges is inhabited by death, and by ghosts and meditations on a seemingly mystical realm of myth.  

In "Remorse for Any Death" ("Remordimiento por cualquier muerte" I find a resonance with Benjamin's discussion of the proximity of the storyteller to death.  

Free of memory and hope,

unlimited, abstract, almost future,

the dead body is not somebody:  It is death.

Like the God of the mystics,

whom they insist has no attributes,

the dead person is no one everywhere,

is nothing but the loss and absence of the world.

We rob it of everything,

we do not leave it in one color, one syllable:

Here is the yard which its eyes no longer take up,

there is the sidewalk where it waylaid its hope.

It might even be thinking

what we are thinking.

We have divided among us, like thieves,

the treasure of nights and days.

The dead body stands it for the concept of death, it is the sum of that which it represents.  The individual is no longer important, he is the nothing more and nothing less than a mystical phenomenon that haunts us with its darkness.  The corpse is "abstract", "unlimited", and full of future possibilities.  It is closer to life than the living; it holds more potential, more power.  The dead person, or Death itself, is ubiquitous:  "the dead person is no one everywhere".  It is the "loss and absence of the world", yet it is full of contradictorily part of this absence and the possibilities of the future.  In my opinion, the robbery, at the end of the poem, is really the robbery of the dead body, or Death itself, of its proper and mystical place.  It is robbed of its "treasure of days and nights", for it is truly the underlying power to everything, the light and the dark, the loss of the world and its future.  It is like the underestimated "God of the mystics". 

Perhaps to understand the melancholic part of the Buenos Aires air, is to see the city as largely inhabited by ghosts.  To revisit my last post, the mournful resignation, or perhaps even indignation, towards the present, is the presence of ghosts, either from a past or a constructed past (are they ever really so different?).  There is a newspaper, Página 12.  It is very much government propaganda, although the quality of writing is extremely witty and often is accompanied by a literary supplement.  Everyday there are, I guess what you could call adds, put in by families to mark the anniversary of their loved one's disappearance.  You are reading these beautiful little boxes with a photo and a strong message from the family that demands that justice truly be sought, that the perpetrators not be pardoned.  Sometimes you realize the young age of this person, who now would truly be in adulthood.  It's when I look at the date and feel this collapse in time that occurs in which years matter, to see that each year goes by since a family has lost their loved one, and to think that in the mundanity of my everyday activities there are several memorials on paper in front of me,  that I feel that there is nothing more powerful than the death I am witnessing (in memorial form) in front of my eyes in newsprint.  These are both tragic stories because they are individuals, but also part of this Death energy, that encircles me as a reader.   These "adds" are so very close to the storytelling in which Walter Benjamin finds authenticity, truth, and yet they are not even really "stories" or "vignettes".  They are photographs with a small note to a disappeared loved one, a note filled with anger and passion, that will never be read by the individual it addresses, but which also is meant to address all of us.  There is an authentic type of storytelling here, it collapses space and time, it is about absence and the unlimited future.  And this all provides frustration and catharsis simultaneously.  

memory, resignation, passion, frustration, nostalgia, national identity

Someone told me that I sound angry from my posts.  I don't mean to convey that all.  Frustration perhaps.  I feel like no one is neutral about anything here, which puts me in my element because there is are strong opinions and a passionate tone used to assert them.  This forcefulness is juxtaposed an imposing sense of resignation.  There is joke that there is a protest everyday in Buenos Aires, which shows that there are people who want to march and bang pots and pans about something, but it is mundane and nothing out of the normal.  A protest doesn't shock or even necessarily draw attention.  I'm still slightly frightened when I hear the small fireworks commonly set off during protests here, loud noises have always made me a bit on edge, but the most elegantly dressed of people can walk past a group holding banners with Lenin's face and the sound of something potentially dangerous without so much as a bat of an eye.  Everyone seems quick to complain, as if complaining is some way a manner of working through the hardship of living in a place that seems to be both fantastically exciting and overwhelmingly chaotic.  The chaos and excitement are one and the same, it depends on how you choose to look upon it in any given day, or perhaps in an singular situation.  Just walking through the business district yesterday I laughed as I heard a Guia "T" (the essential guide to the buses that everyone needs to get around) salesman suddenly shout "Que país este!"  I have no idea what provoked this comment, but it something commonplace to here, and yet never ceases to entertain me.  I have come to say such things about the States when I have to explain certain things to Argentine friends about how our health system works, or how, of course speaking in generalizations, the progression of politics works.  When it seems so strange to a someone that we do not have a public health care system, among other things, I have to resort to "I come from a very strange country."  Yet no one inside the States, with the exception of few, would say that we are resigned to something in the States, but we invoke it's identity as a beacon of liberty.  I can't think of a single time I have heard someone have a simple interaction on the street during the day and say, in a resigned and tone, as if speaking of the condemnation we are fated to by living in our country, "What a country we live in!"  We here our politicians make such statements to talk about how great we are.  Our national identity is not used as an explanation for how things are not working efficiently or how people treat each other without respect.  When someone is rude the nation is the scapegoat.  A population of people who talk about how awful their home is, their politicians are, the citizens are.  It is more complex than any one line explanation.  I was discussing these kinds of comments with an Argentine friend who gave me an answer I think is worth sharing, maybe not as an answer that explains away the question of why people blame Argentina or Buenos Aires (often with a shout and smile simultaneously), but as a possible window into a mentality that many people her do have.  He said that such expressions of frustration are a result of a population (talking only about BA) that wants to think they are first world, but is, more than once a day, coming up against reminders that they are really third.  I am not saying that I feel we the terms first or third world should even be used anymore or ever, but this explanation made me think about how the sometimes flippant or humorous reference to how broken the country or political system is is often is followed by what seems like an eagerness to say that we are in the third world.  Comments that draw this geographical space into a geopolitical one identified with under-development, are often coming from people of the middle-class, not from people starving on the streets.  My friend made reference to the European architecture that makes the city different from La Paz or what is universally identified as a poor country (poor Latin American or South American city) and the contrast with a change system that actually impedes one's ability to travel through the city.  So, according to his theory, you have a group of people that want to believe they are European, but are reminded that they are in, what they themselves are so quick to label, the third world because they experience an inefficiency that would be an absolute absurdity in a city like New York or Paris.  It's a desire to be somewhere else or a part of BA from a more economically sound past, probably never actually experienced by this individual, that turns into a frustrated resignation with a daily and simple undertaking (in his example needing coins to get on a bus).  Nostalgia, a memory of mythical past (a memory that is only mythical for those that reminisce about an experience that they feel they belong to without having actually lived through it), and the frustration with a far inferior present.  A "European Elsewhere", as Michael Taussig would call it (see The Magic of the State);  a South American country that could be many places, but I think is a fitting analogy for Argentina.  Taussig does not give the name of the country on which this ethnographic work is based on, I will not disclose it here, mainly because his theory is to be applied to not one specific nation-state confined by fixed borders, but a concept of such a nation-state that exists strongly in this part of the world (perhaps even in other continents).

looking towards my homeland, las venas abiertas de américa latina, la gripa porcina (oink, oink, fever)

To begin with: Sarah Palin.  The drama with this crazy continues.  She has become this cultural symbol.  I hear her with her accent out of Fargo and I realize how strange my country can be, how strange that such a personality could attract such strong feelings ranging from religious fervor among her supporters, and those who cannot stop reading about her or watching her even when it gives them a sense of disgust.  I belong to the latter group.  I can say that during the end of the election season, I had a mixture of feelings watching her interviews.  I wanted to simultaneously laugh (at her stunning lack of intellect) and cry (how could the part of the public rally around this horrifying person?).  I know that I irrevocably lost my respect for John McCain.  I highly recommend the Vanity Fair article that is in the August edition.  It is very well written and reads like a drama out of a movie.  I have to say that after her selection as a vice-presidential candidate, watching the election from here was like watching the strangest movie you could imagine unfolding.  And then again it's not so shocking. She is more than a person.  She is the apotheosis of a political trend that selects people like Bush.  It is a politics of personality that shuns all that is intellectual.  What a strange trend fora country to have.  The idea that those that read and are somehow out of touch with the reality of the country.  How can the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world promote such values that reject erudition or a type of elitism based on one's intellect.  Bush is the epitome of the Fortunate Son, and Obama, who had to live part of his young life on food stamps, is an elitist.  This bizarre mentality brings me to my next theme, one which I cannot stop thinking about:  Honduras.

Last Thursday I went to a protest outside of the Honduran consulate.  It was incredible.  People of all ages and all classes (although those of the higher classes are more likely to not care about the coup, or even support it.  Excuse the awful generalization, but sometimes awful generalizations have truth to them).  I was playing a bit of devil's advocate with my very leftist friend, F.  He expressed his disappointment with the fact that Obama has not said enough.  Obama did actually call what happened, as of yesterday, in Honduras a coup.  But what actions will he take if any? I felt that I should defend Obama, even though I'm mixed about how much I believe what I said.  I do to some extent, but just reading websites like Huffington Post and seeing how little attention the coup is getting in U.S. news as compared to Iran or Russia is such a disappointment.  I am not geographically closer to Honduras, but it is all over the news here.  It should be in the States, too.  The U.S. is part of the Americas and needs to give its fellow American nations airtime.  In response to the accusation that Obama is making a mistake by not commenting enough or doing enough, here is my response:  Those of you in the States are well aware of the fact that Obama is on a bit of a publicity tour to garner support for his health care plan.  He has already been called a socialist during the campaign and even more so now.  He cannot lose sight of the prize.  I dream of being a citizen of a country that finally views healthcare as a human right.  I selfishly really want that to pass, and perhaps any distraction loses that possibility.  The label of socialist will catch on even more if Obama is on the side of Chavez.  Obviously it is being on the side of what is right that really matters, but the States is a strange place.  I think for the first time those that have too often voted against their economic interests because elections have often become culture wars (I think Sarah Palin is someone who symbolizes this type of political strategy), are realizing that they have been denied their right to healthcare for too long.  It has taken a long time for a Democrat to sine their support, and being linked with Chavez could destroy it.  Secondly, Obama, as demonstrated in his speech at Cairo University, is an insightful student of history.  He understands how the States is viewed in many parts of the world, and knows that Latin America has too often been treated as the States' backyard, and knows that it's citizens don't look at the U.S. as having altruistic aspirations in the region.  

I have to say that on many news blogs I have been horrified by some of the comments I have been reading.  Yes, Zelaya did something illegal, but it is more complex than simply discussing the law in simple terms.  A correspondent for The Economist, no left wing publication by any standards, said that Zelaya broke the law, but the constitution does is not clear enough that it states any manner of having a non-binding referendum legally.  This is an extremely important point.  Illegality means something a bit more blurry when there is no legal route provide.  As I have said previously, it was a non-binding referendum to see if the public would allow for the possibility of having more than one term per president.  Honduras is the only country in the Americas that limits presidents to one term with the exception of Mexico, and Mexico has six year terms, not four, as Honduras does.  Anyone who has said that the military simply followed the law by arresting Zelaya is mistaken.  This is a coup, I'm watching it on television.  The Honduran constitution does say that the military is under the president's control and cannot depose elected officials.  The government in Honduras is in no way legitimate.  It is barely a story on the U.S. news.  I watched as the constitutional president tried to return to his country by airplane yesterday.  Before his arrival the military turned on the protesters.  It was a fiery group, but non-violent.  I saw bursts of tear gas and heard gun shots...a lot of them.  At least two teenagers were shot dead.  HufPo said that the presidents who wanted to enter Honduras with Zelaya decided to go to El Salvador because they were scared for their safety.  Probably, but their supposed fear comes out of the last minute retraction of the permission to enter the country initially granted by the military government.  I saw awful violence against protesters, blood, ambulances, soldiers in combat position on the international airport's runway ready to shoot and kill whoever tried to get closer.  The military blocked the runway and Zelaya could not land.  As he approached you could hear the cheers.  He was threatened with military interception upon an attempt to land.  It was an unsuccessful return.  He had to go to Nicaragua, and then perhaps to El Salvador to speak with those who had volunteered to accompany him.  His country has been suspended by the Organization of American States.  The best clips have been of people saying they did not vote for him and never would, but cannot sit as their country is seized by the military once again (by generals trained in our very own School of the Americas).  These are not necessarily marches in favor of Zelaya, but a public outcry against an act completely contrary to the concept of democracy.  Right now I hear voices yelling "asesinos" at the military during a protest/march of mourning for the two young people killed yesterday.  I had the conversation with F.  before the violence.  The States must say something after the violence of yesterday.  Chavez (surprisingly complimentary of Obama) had said that no military government could assume such power and ignore the international community without the support of the "imperialismo yanqui", but said that Obama had nothing to do with it.  Unfortunately, anything could be possible.  I would not be too surprised if a reaction to Zelaya's turn to the left, which has become anti-business, had not angered some of those from the U.S. doing business there.  The U.S. is the number one trading partner of Honduras.  Maybe all of this becomes so much harder and yet disgustingly fascinating from a country that sees itself as part of an American community, one which is quite opposed to the States and shares the common history of military dictatorships.  Probably I also feel the need to deal with some sort of self-loathing that comes from being from a country that is responsible for so much damage.  I haven't supported it per se, but I have benefitted from it.  I was not alive at the time that Kissinger and the CIA helped orchestrate the coup in Chile that did away with Allende and replaced him with Pinochet, but it was out of business interest that the States did so, and have I not been able to enjoy a standard of life that derives from a capitalist society that goes after its own business interests without the regard for democracy, human rights, etc.?  Maybe I am so fascinated by this coup because maybe I perversely feel that by caring, or reading about it, I will somehow excuse myself for my nationality.  People from the States, for the most part, are not thought of well in Argentina.  There is a Buenos Aires arrogance that has no problem stating that.  My best friend's mother (Argentine), told my father, when she first met him, and without intending any defense, that for years the States just didn't exist on the map for her, that she didn't want to see it on a map!  This is a particularly stubborn individual, but she is not so unique in that sentiment.  When I lived with my Argentine cousins they commented on how smart I was for an estadounidense because I knew who Louis Pasteur was (said with a sense of humor).  I am not at all offended by these comments because I understand them.  The only time I was ever incensed, and I mean truly disturbed, was when a comment I made was dismissed with the line:  That's so something that someone from the U.S. would say.  It was coming from an ignorant person (I say that not based on that comment, but on knowing him) and it was in response to a comment I had made about a subject I knew about more than him, and I'm not ashamed to say it.  It was a dismissal that made me so very angry, the sentiment behind does not, but I want to have an intelligent conversation.  If someone does actually take their time to speak to me they may be surprised be some of my convictions, especially as someone coming from the Hand of Imperialism.  I had a friend profusely apologize to me when she sent me a text message she intended to send to her friend to invite her out to have a drink with us.  The message said she was going to have a drink with the yanqui.  I was not offended at all.  I found it endearing because I understand the intent of it, which was in no way malicious.  I have fun with it sometimes, I comment on my long expired visa and how funny it is to have a North American illegal in the South.  

I think that it's worth mentioning the swine flu outbreak in Argentina.  I do not think that panic is necessary, although the media here is great at playing on the paranoia of its citizens.  If you're not naturally a paranoid person, I recommend watching the news in BA.  It really seems like they just want to create a wave of panic.  

I knew that there would probably be a lot of la gripe porcina when the first cases arrived in April or May.  It's a situation that does not have to be as bad as it is, and I get angry just thinking about how it has gotten so bad in Argentina.  I am well aware that it became quite an issue in the States, but Obama talked about it early on and there was a lot of information that recommended basic but necessary steps.  None of that happened here.  There is a president who cared more about paying attention to the elections than to any health crisis.  The issue of health was ignored and the flu was treated as no big deal until two weeks ago, or right about voting time or after.  The situation was left completely uncontrolled.  The numbers of the dead are unknown and rival politicians have varying statistics.  The information about using alcohol and washing your hands constantly has only recently been publicly encouraged, and that's after thing have gotten quite bad.  A lot of the people that have gotten sick, or died, are poorer and from the province.  They were simply ignored and no one cared enough to tell that their symptoms were of something much worse than they seemed.  If they had gone to a public hospital they might have been treated, but no one goes to the hospital when they think the have a seasonal flu.  I am outraged that elections took precedent over the health of a population.  It's quite criminal, which is something that many people are saying quite strongly.  As my boss told me in response to a comment I made in relation to the government's responsibility for how bad the flu has gotten (as representative of the imperialismo yanqui I feel a bit guilty making such a comment):  "The problem with Argentina is the government."  Now people feel helpless and overly paranoid.  No one should fear leaving their home to walk on the street.  I still take public transportation and so far none of my students have had there work cancelled.  However, it is funny that certain companies have made it a policy to stop doing the traditional salutation of the kiss on the cheek.  It's like being a cold New Yorker again.  There's a moment of hesitation when you say hi to someone now.  Do they want the kiss, do they not want it.  After having had to get used to embracing and kissing to the left of a stranger's cheek, it's difficult to have such distance between humans again.

Last thought:  Death of Robert McNamara.  I recommend "The Fog of War" to anybody, but there was the last part of it posted on the bottom of the short article you will find through this link to The Huffington Post. The article is no great shakes, but the five minute clip from the movie is, especially when he quotes T.S. Eliot.  I think what makes the movie so hard to watch, besides the theme of war, which is really the theme of often preventable death and destruction, is that it makes this easily hatable person too human for us, too frail.  The last minute or so are just incredible.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/06/robert-mcnamara-dead_n_226043.html