Que Cheto Sos!

Really, no matter how you cut it, learning a language returns you to the frustrating impotencies of childhood: Why...can't...I...say...that...without...thinking? Thus, doesn't it make sense to teach anyone learning a language, even adults, with kindergarten tools like colorful posters? (A lottery seller's booth in the Tribunales subte station has a children's poster of 100 different animals--with their spanish names--that I especially covet.) And now that I'm thinking about that, shouldn't those sort of primary-color explanatory tools also be available for slang. Hell, that would help in English--a big cartoonish diagram of a 'peckerwood,' for example, or 'metrosexual'.

This is all a long, tortured way to get around to the fact that I just came across this awesome schematic cartoon of one of my favorite bits of Argentine slang--cheto (flash, chi-chi, swanky, etc.). And man do I love it.

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30 Years After: The March

A few impressions after a quick visit to the Plaza de Mayo to see the 30th anniversary march of the 1976 military coup: It was a very quiet and tranquil event with more families and kids than I expected. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo were out in force (sign to the right with Mothers hallmark scarf says, "No one step backwards") as were the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and a variety of leftist groups. The biggest controversy of the night: the leftist groups read a document that criticized the Kirchner government, the handling of a recent petroleum industry strike Patagonia, the IMF debt payoff, Argentine poverty and the U.S., and backed the Palestinean cause. The Mothers and Grandmothers complained that it was a day to mourn the 'disappeareds', not for all and sundry political projects and political theater. One leader with the Mothers said, "Ayer quedaban nuestros hijos y familiares completamente olvidados, eso es lo que sentimos." ("Yesterday out children and relatives were completely forgotten, that's what we felt.")

More pictures below:

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For No Visible Reason

The top of my head in the bathroom at Sucre.

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30 Años Después

As we noted three weeks ago, we were fast coming up on the 30-year anniversary of the military coup that began the Dirty War and, by many counts, left 30,000 dead (recently declassified documents show at least 22,000 dead and 'disappeared'). Well, the day has arrived: last night thousands of people joined a Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo-led vigil in...the Plaza de Mayo (AP photo above).

Today has been declared a national holiday and President Penguin will appear at the military college (at noon), foreign minister Jorge Taiana plans to visit the main Navy Mechanics School torture center, and at 5 p.m. there will be a huge march to the Plaza de Mayo.

Yesterday a friend sent an email of what is a sort of totemic anti-dictatorship document: the open protest letter the writer Rodolfo Walsh (right) posted to the military junta the day before he himself was 'disappeared.'

One oddness about this holiday: it is commemorating the beginning of the military dictatorship, not the end of it, much like for Americans celebrating Pearl Harbour instead of the 4th of July. But, hey, it marks an important day.

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You Know You're in Argentina When...

The latest education controversy in Argentina has nothing to do with class size, the condition of the facilities (which is sometimes seriously bad), teacher strikes, or teen pregnancy. Nope, it's the 2006 World Cup. The polémica? The authorities in the provinces of Mendoza and Córdoba are letting students watch Argentina's games in the classroom, while the rector of the University of Buenos Aires, Guillermo Jaim Etcheverry, scathingly mocked the decision: "If there were groups interested in hockey, they could do the same during their championships. And why couldn't school be suspended for someone to go to the opera or a movie?"

Nice try Etcheverry, but by the time the World cup rolls around in 78 days, I'll bet anyone the kids will be watching in downtown BA too.

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That Whole Privatization Thing? We Were Just Kidding.

As we noted in our last post, Argentina's current administration sometimes acts slightly at odds with its stated goal of increasing foreign investment in the country. Before we're accused of being wildeyed Washington Consensus types, let me just say that the main goal of a country shouldn't be keeping international capital happy--it should be caring for its citizens. Still, sometimes money and welfare have similar interests. Like, say, exporting beef from beef-producing Argentina, which can create jobs, etc.

Yesterday's invest-in-us-well-don't news was that Kirchner et al revoked the 30-year contract it had with French giant Suez to run Buenos Aires's water service, Aguas Argentinas, and turned it back into a state-owned utility. Now, this had been expected for a while--Suez had been agitating for price increases ever since the 2001 currency crisis cut the prices they could charge by 2/3, and in September they announced they were going to leave--but the fact that Kirchner couldn't find any other company to take over the service suggests the lack of corporate eagerness to work with Argentina. This analysis piece in Clarín points to the apparently improvised nature of the government takeover, the recent history of re-stating utilities and services, and the rumors that the national airline, Aerolíneas Argentinas, and the former state petroleum company, YPF (now part of Spanish firm Repsol), will be next.

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In Control, Or Lack Thereof

One of the wonderful things about Argentine is how it seems so delightfully out of control. It's also one of the worst things about the country. Sadly, the last few weeks has seen a good deal of the downside. Like, for example, on February 6. That's when a clash between police and oil industry protesters--the protestors blocked a road in the Patagonian town of Las Heras, the police arrested a union leader--ended with a cop clubbed and shot to death when the protestors tried to bust the leader of of jail. Or more recently, take yesterday's events in Misiones province. There, 3,000 demonstrators--demanding money to make up for losses caused by a recent drought and the resignation of the mayor, attacked the municipal building. Police shot rubber bullets and tear gas and a small, violent group of demonstrators burned down city hall (above).

Wackiness is by no means only the province of demonstrators--the government indulges too. In the most recent example of "Uh, now how does that work?", President Nestor Kirchner suddenly announced that in an attempt to lower beef prices inside the country he was banning beef exports for six months. Yes, the same administration that talks and talks about the necessity of attracting foreign investment does the single thing most likely to hamstring one of its most productive industries and drive away foreign investors. What's even better, it's very possible it won't work: cattlemen may just fire a bunch of people (they painted a doomsday picture--as businesses often do--of 30,000 layoffs) and withhold meat until the price goes back up. The government then threatened to extend the ban for a year. Pero, bueno...¿qué sé yo? No soy economista.

Of course, recent uncontrolled craziness has not all been bad: yesterday, for the first time since 2004, the Perito Moreno glacier had one of its periodic, spectacular ruptures, where a piece slices off and falls with a resounding 'crack!' (left).

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Fifth Avenue Soup Kitchen

You can't accuse Raúl Castells (right) of not knowing how to make a splash. The leader of a piquetero group--a union of demonstrators, originally formed during the Menem regime to protest lost jobs, who block roads to press demands (some have since been co-opted and corrupted by various political parties)--Castells opened a sort of soup kitchen in the midst of Buenos Aires' wealthy and, to my opinion, soul-less Puerto Madero neighborhood on Thursday. (According to Clarín, the comedor was originally supposed to open March 19, making it one of the first things in the history of Buenos Aires to open early.) Castells, the subject of Raúl, the Terrible, gained some fame after engaging in a hunger strike after being arrested for "extortion" for blocking a B.A. McDonalds and demanding 50,000 food rations for poor children.

On Friday we dropped by for a visit and happily found Castells walking table to table taking orders as he was trailed by a photographer. The location was plastered with his mug and the slogan "Luchamos por una Argentina donde los perros de los ricos dejen de estar mejor alimentados que los hijos de los pobres" (translated at the site, more or less correctly, as, "We fight for Argentina to be a country where the dogs of the rich stop being better feed [sic] than the children of the poor."). The place was full and food was indeed being prepared and distributed, the atmosphere was expectant, and the motif perfectly Marxist-Ironic. Running with the McDonalds theme, the fries are "McCastells", the "Employee of the Month" is President Nestor Kirchner, and the uniforms are, well, McDonalds yellow (La Nación foto, left).

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Ibarra Out

Buenos Aires mayor Aníbal Ibarra, who was impeached in November over the allegation that his poor management of city services allowed the 2004's fatal Cromagnon nightclub fire to happen (194 died), was found guilty in a political trial and fired from his position just minutes ago by a vote of ten for conviction, four for absolution, and one abstention.

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Gustavo Santaolalla Wins Oscar

Last night we took in the Oscar telecast via TNT at an Argentine friend-of-a-friend's house in Recoleta. After attempting to answer our host's questions--Is this really very important in the United States? Why is he named Oscar?--we settled in for the show. Here in Buenos Aires, the question was not so much Gay Cowboys v. Racism in Los Angeles (though we have been asked more than once here, 'Why would anyone want to watch a movie about gay cowboys?') or Huffman v. Witherspoon, but rather would Argentine musician Gustavo Santaolalla win for Best Score (for Brokeback Mountain). The room exploded--"Boludo! El único, y ganamos! Barbaro!"--when, as La Nación noted, Salma Hayak corrected pronounced Santaolalla's name as the winner. But the roof really came down when in his acceptance speech Santaolalla said, "Dedico este premio a mi mamá, a mi país, Argentina. Para todos los latinos." Latin media noted that Santaolalla was the only winner to speak spanish. He also has a history of dedicating his work to mama--and of being photographed while napping on her lap (right).

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30 Years Since the Last Golpe Militar

March 24 marks 30 years since General Jorge Rafael Videla led a coup that ousted President Isabel Perón (who took over for husband Juan Perón in July 1974) and installed the 1976-1983 military junta that oversaw the killing of up to 30,000 Argentines (known as the desaparecidos) in the Dirty War. Following the fall of the junta, Videla was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1985 for his involvement, but was pardoned by President Carlos Menem in 1990. He was returned to prison in 1998 and then quickly released to house arrest, where he remains to this day. The flyer at right from H.I.J.O.S. (Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio) advertises a protest against the junta and Videla. The title, Escrache a Videla, literally means Put Videla in Evidence and the flyer says, "Effective and perpetual imprisonment in regular jails for all those who committed genocide. No to VIP prisons and house arrest... We will not forget. We will not pardon. We will not reconcile." The flyer also lists Videla's home address.

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B.A. Invades NYC

In another sign of the invasion of New York City media by all things Buenos Aires, the marriage of fellow B.A.-based freelancer and good guy Brian Byrnes to Macarena Di Dio (office manager for another B.A.-based correspondent, the Chicago Tribune's Colin McMahon) is featured in today's New York Times Styles page. All your beats are belong to nosotros!

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