Argentina’s self awareness

Friday, October 07, 2005

The most popular article in today’s La Nacion – according to the online count – is “Nadie te cree, Argentina.” Prompted by yet another doping scandal for an Argentine tennis player, the article is a laundry list of what’s wrong with Argentina’s credibility in front of the world. Let’s see: Debt default, rampant tax evasion, bribes for votes, scoring a very important soccer goal by hand... I have to say, I like the fact that Argentina is so self aware and almost eager to chastise itself. There’s a column that appears regularly on page 2 of Clarin called “Como nos ven” – how they see us – that reprints (in Spanish) some foreign country’s take on an Argentine issue. Usually it’s from Brazil, Chile or England. I wish there were something similar in U.S. papers... But maybe the paper goes too far with its regular look at what its readers think of yesterday's paper: "El juicio final." It lists the very specific likes and dislikes of some Clarin reader re: yesterday's news. I suppose all this self-reflection is not surprising coming from a city with more shrinks per capita than any other city in the world.

1 comments:

Andrew said...

I like the idea, too, but there are some complexities...

a) Who is "they?" Most Americans (I'm getting bold as I approach expatdom) don't understand, or, worse, don't acknowledge, that any other "they" worth considering exists

b) We've been trained that self-awareness is a great thing, but only as long as it "builds self-esteem". I haven't seen much evidence that we're ready for self-doubt as a result of self-awareness.

If Argentina is already there, one of my thoughts is "More power to them."

 
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