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We have settled into teaching a little bit, although this will be the first week where we both have to teach about 20 hours of classes, which I am sure will be a little stressful. However one of the benefits of working in the same job is that we are able to swap lessons pretty regularly, and because almost all of our students are intermediate level business people, we can even recycle a lot of our old lessons. One thing that has been tricky though is that there was a subway strike last week and so the 1 million or so people that take the subway everyday were all cramming into buses, taking their cars or hunting desperately for free cabs, which made getting from one class to another somewhat difficult. This is sort of par for the course though as strikes are incredibly common here. Here are some of my favorite strikes.
I read somewhere that the school bus drivers went on strike a few years ago and drove like 50 school buses through the heart of the city blocking up traffic.
In front of one of the larger phone companies in Buenos Aires protesters decided to have
what must have been one of the funnest and most obnoxious protests in history as they set off round after round of large fireworks, threw eggs, and played music from incredibly massive speakers.
Last year some time there was this big travel agency that closed down and ripped off a couple hundred college kids who had put down big down payments on various vacations and so these college kids decided that they would protest in the plaza de mayo until they were allowed to talk to Kirschner, they honestly expected the President of Argentina to personally get their money back for them.
This isn’t really a strike but one of my friends (who is a socialist who has actually taken part in many strikes) was on a bus that wouldn’t let an old woman on because she didn’t have any money and the old woman decided that President Bush was personally responsible for her persecuted state.
Of course though there are also a great deal of issues which I think the people are legitimately justified in protesting. During the massive devaluation here a few years ago the government froze peoples private accounts and limited the amount they
Protests
Drums are always used in connection with political events were able to withdraw from their accounts each week and often eplaced their investments with government issued bonds that were almost worthless. (Somewhat liking having confederate money in 1865) And even worse, even though a dollar here was worth about 10 pesos at the beginning of the devaluation, the banks refused to give more than 1.4 pesos for every dollar that people had people put into theirs savings accounts/portfolios. So since this happened and millions of people got royally screwed, every Monday and Friday these 6 or 7 old men and women (one of whom is wearing a duck hat for some reason) go to the main offices of some of the larger banks which are located right downtown and take small hammers, wrenches, and pipes and bang the shit out of the metal frame that surrounds the entrances to the bank. I mean for like 8 hours straight, two days a week they pound away going from one bank to another, no stopping, just a rhythmic metallic thud which can be heard for at least block in every direction. They have been doing this without stop for 4 years and I honestly believe that they will not stop until they are either dead or till they get their money back. Sometime I will take a picture of the frame of the banks for you.
One of the banks HSBC is a prime target for picketers and they eventually had to put up huge medal barricades surrounding the bank. Some of my students who work there were telling me "yeah they used to picket us everyday, one day it would be customers, the next it would be different political groups, then once a week the palestines would come by."
To which I replied, "did you say palestines?"
"Yeah the Isreali embassy got blown up a few years ago so they moved into our building."
Of course the most interesting picketers/protestors of all are the Mothers of the Dissapeared. During the military juntas here in the 70's the government dissapeared close to 30, 000 people that they deemed to be politically threatening. They would do things like torture them in effort to gather information or simply take them out over the middle of the ocean and drop them out of helicopters. They were actually building an overpass in San Telmo when they discovered the remains of numerous people who had been tortured and murdered by the government and then buried there. Many of the individuals who were taken were young people and eventually the mothers of these individuals who were murdered/dissapeared began gathering a few times a week in the Plaza de Mayo and together they would hold silent peaceful protests. This was a real difficult situation for the government because while they might have been able to at least partially justify cracking down on young radicals in front of the international community, these were sweet middle aged mom's who were just standing there every tuesday and thursday afternoon waiting for information about their children. During our first month here in January, they offically ended the protests after 30 years of protesting every Tuesday and Thursday as they felt as though they were finally being listened to by the government. They are now seen in the same way that Americans view Rosa Parks. Abbey rightly pointed out that not only were they able to raise awareness about these injustices around the world but they were also able to establish an incredible support group from one another. I mean who else could appreciate what it would be like to sort of but not really know that your child had been murdered other than someone else who was going through the exact same thing.
Another interesting thing here is that every year since the end of the military juntas there have been nationwide protests that in effect were trying to make it clear to the government that while we may not live in a dictatorship anymore we still have a long way to go towards having an honest and transparent governtment. However, Kirschner decided to turn the day of the annual strikes into a national holiday and basically spin the message from “look how far we still have to go towards real justice” into “your government hasn’t actively murdered its citizens in nearly 30 years, isn’t that great, aren’t you so happy that I’m not like those other monsters, hell, I even gave you the day off work!! Yeah Argentina! Yeah Me!” Some of our friends and Abbey and I sat on a roof over looking the Plazo de Mayo on the day of the protests and watched as 80,000 people protested and celebrated several hundred things. My favorite was the group of communists carrying pictures of Chairman Mao. I wanted to run down and give them all translated copies of the Beatles Song “Revolution No 1. “ where one of John Lennon’s line is “if your going around carrying pictures of chairman Mao, then you are not going to make it with anyone anyhow.”
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la socialista
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No moneras, no peace!
I have an issue to take up with the government: moneras. Nobody will f-ing dame moneras! Everytime I go to a Kiosko and give them a bill with hopes of receiving bus change I get, "¿Algo más chico tenés?" followed by a death stare when I shake my head nervously. I'm frequently refused sales because "no tenemos moneras" is their position and, as a bus-rider, "yo tampoco" is mine. Eye contact is minimal during these exchanges because the cashier is peering into my open wallet and I into his open cash register, both of us captivated by the shiny little moneras that neither party is willing to give up. It's time to stop the animosity caused by this scarcity. It's time to unite and make our voices heard: "We all want moneras, goddamit!" ¡Vamos a la plaza!