two years in and lessons learned, observations made, world cup social effervescence

Monday, the 14th of June, was my two year anniversary of being in Buenos Aires. I have not returned to the States, not even once. I spent most of my time here decidedly not missing the States, and after two years, becoming more comfortable with the idea of eventually returning. Honestly, I don't know if the two years in Argentina is weird because of Argentina or two years, my bet is the latter. More than the sheer craziness of having moved here and stayed, time has passed so very quickly, it is actually unbelievable to the point of feeling like some dark comedy. I realize that what I've done seems completely hippy or misguided, and really for the most part, I don't feel that anyone I talk to thinks I'm out of my mind for being here...the only person who did make me feel that way was only able only able to do so until he then switched the conversation topic, unprompted, to his ivy league business school grades. Yes, I'm probably nuts, not more so than before, and much more grounded than ever, but nuts, and always will be, but hopefully not eclipsing-any-sense-of-self-reflexivity. I realize that starting graduate school here seems so strange, but making excuses for it isn't fair; it's far too good of a program to ever have to be rescued by "first world" reassurance. My school friends are some of the smartest and most interesting people I have ever met and come from various countries. Starting school was the best decision I ever made in terms of a social life, and gave me access to an entirely different world in ways that are very specific. For example, how I have started to think about the government: Cristina Kirchner is so easy to parody, especially as someone from the outside who lives in Buenos Aires, where no other Peronista could probably ever be like anyway, but I will defend against the ridiculous hyperbole (even more so when it comes from foreigners who know nothing about the history of Argentina, or realize what the government is or isn't doing). I'm sure she's corrupt, but I can say that the quality of public education is so high that the academic class of Argentina, which has always been respected, seems to be undergoing some sort of high-energy period that is so exciting to be a part of. In some ways, as a foreigner, going to school here is some of the best fieldwork I could get done about nationalism, observing the effort to construct a class of thinkers. The educational aspect of the national project is quite tangible, especially in anthropology, which is really being invigorated by this government. These are thoughts I have to be very careful about verbally expressing if I don't want to cause a violent hail storm reaction among most of the people I have known in Buenos Aires. Around some people, I go out of my way to talk about how much I love Cristina (and I use the word "love" just to be extra provocative) just because I know it is such an easy way to get the other person so irrationally bent out of shape, with others, I just don't say a word. The reaction that a name or an image can provoke is fascinating and scary, and the force of the reaction can come from the spaces and individuals that usually demonstrate reason. I am starting to think that it is just so easy to see things and be comfortable with that perspective, and that it is this very comfortability, not necessarily a fear, that leads to incredibly strange and bizarre turns of events. I always assumed that so many bad things came out of fear, but I think that so many come out of the desire to actually have convictions, especially when we get so comfortable with our own ideas of morality that we see what is bad and forget the cynicism that tells us that the other possibility really is worse. Idealism and cynicism in their appropriate moments, universalism and relativism, irreconcilable ideas that should always be in the head and at play with each other. It's really how I think of voting for politicians in the States anyway.

A lot of things I've learned have been from not trying to. I would say that my idea of Buenos Aires and Argentina has not really changed in the last year or more, but I'm trying to remember what I was doing last June. By then I already had a very fixed routine, whereas two years ago I almost remember the details better because everything was new. I spent my first month living with my cousins. When I look back on that experience I can laugh, at the time I cried, but I was pathetically thin-skinned on account of having just come to a new place, and I was legitimately living with crazy people (and really crazy, because even in hindsight they seem crazier than the average Argentine).

So for more than I year I have thought that I love in a place that is so beautiful and nostalgic and aesthetically and culturally incredible, but also incredibly tragic, and all of this punctuated by an ironic humor that is so brilliant it demonstrates a striking ability to be present.

The classism is intense. There is no royal family, but the aristocracy is almost treated as such, or acts like it. The gossip magazines are ass scandalous as the British ones, and there is a huge readership for them. I can't tell if there is a desire to emulate the British class system or the French one, I'm leaning towards believing the former.

At the same time there seems to be a determinedly anti-intellectual bent in the upper-middle class social milieus. I was out in Palermo at some place that looked like it could be anywhere, like so many places in Palermo. I was with a friend of mine who went to Columbia, but we didn't know each other then and met here. It is hard to describe how it manifests itself, because it really is just an aura, but the whole place reeked of superficiality. One of the most irritating parts of New York City is the pretentiousness and the desire to demonstrates some sort of depth, which is its own type of superficiality, but I actually see it as sort of admirable in that even pretending to have read a book or article puts symbolic capital in the act of reading and accumulating knowledge, when I'm in Palermo on the weekend with awful music (which I avoid at all costs), I look around and just feel that there is some sort of pride in being dumb, or at least just not caring about anything except for clothes and make up and plastic surgery...basically my unfair stereotype of LA. When I am with an aristocratic acquaintance, he often compliments me by telling me that I am intelligent, and I wonder if he has ever said that to a woman before. I assume that the answer is no, and not because he can't think of women as intelligent, but rather that he is never with women that would take that as a deep compliment, because being seen as intelligent is not one of the objectives. I wonder what that means for him, to tell me I'm intelligent and to feel that he is saying something really sweet, because in his mid-thirties it must be strange to be around somebody wh0 comes from many many different values, worlds apart. When I tell him he is smart, which he is, I wonder if I am one of the only people who tells him that, or values that, who isn't someone who works with him. It's so strange to think, because at Columbia so many people were considered attractive because of comments they made, or their ability to write, and then I see the opposite of that value system. This is one of my favorite people in Argentina, and even our lives in Argentina are based around completely different ideas and people. I just got back from watching Argentina beat Mexico to go to the quarterfinals of the World Cup with one of my university friends. We spent the game drinking beer and talking about the ethnographies we had chosen to write about for our final project for a class while clapping at the goals and analyzing the teams that have made it thus far and the future match ups. My friend Carlos is from Venezuela (all names are pseudonyms, often times ridiculous ones) and is brilliant. He is the only guy in the first year masters anthropology program and probably the most brilliant, or at least interesting and creative student. At the same time, the aristocrat, Rafael, was in some super expensive part of Buenos Aires province at the house of a shitty telenovela actress, who is really famous because of her last name, long legs and scandalous tabloid stories. We exchanged messages throughout the game, and I made fun of him for being there while I was with a "real live chavista", wishing him luck before the game started with a "fuerza Cristina". Maybe when he calls me intelligent he means daring to screw with him, and that probably isn't normal for a woman here, and it throws him off, and sometimes to be thrown off is beautiful.

Carlos and I were in a very traditional and not-touristy restaurant surrounded by 68 yr. old Argentine men shouting "peronista" at the television screen every time Diego Maradona made some ridiculous comment during the post-game press conference. I had hugged a self-proclaimed peronista this past Tuesday who had offered me a spot to sit with him and and his friends to watch the game in one of my favorite cafes. There is always the political with the football, or rather, Perón and Maradona/football are ubiquitous and inescapable parts of Argentine cultural memory. There were no seats left and they squeezed me in because I made them laugh by telling them I was English and winking, then adding on that I was part Brazilian (making me the ultimate football enemy). "Qué mala que sos!", and then I was given beer and a free lunch. With the aristocrat I play with his identity all the time, and the political is a huge identifier. Any person who can be stereotyped as part of the strata of society he comes from is most definitely conservative, probably scarily so. For his birthday I bought him an Evita magnet and a magnet/paper-doll Che, which he agreed were probably the best gifts that he would get. I go out of my way to read a pro-government newspaper when I see him just to ruffle his feathers, and talk about the "proyecto nacional" and how great it is just to play with him.

So, through anecdotes about football, an aristocrat and the weekend, peronismo has come up several times. It's not to talk about politics, it is that he is always here, or Eva, as are the old men that smoke cigarettes and complain about the state of the country in their Argentine dialect with it's Italian lilts and crescendos while shouting at Maradona and reading newspapers. Carlos and I watched the game with them on a small screen, not in some nice house with glittery people, but with newspapers scattered around and foul language, that every gender and class uses during football, and cheap beer. I turned to Carlos and said "sometimes the Argentines are just so Argentine." He knew exactly what I meant, and we laughed and watched Messi answer some questions from reporter and commented that he was only so quiet and understated because he hadn't grown up here; an Argentine who knows he is the best football player does not speak in a low voice, he is like Maradona before all of the absolute insanity, but showing some early stages of emotional instability mixed with arrogance. As Carlos and I walked out after paying the bill I said that I thought Maradona was the perfect representation of Argentina: brilliant, tortured, self-destructive, cult-of-personality-inspiring and completely bipolar. He smiled and agreed.