Monday night the streets were angry and loud. Car horns honked, in unison and then not, frustrated, together, a way to get out their voice against the government. In neighborhoods such as Recoleta and Retiro - i.e., the upper-middle-class ones - people stood out on their balconies, clashing pans together with a sense of reserved ferocity, reminiscent of their predecessor cacerolazos, the ones that through the same method of protesting caused the president to resign in 2001. People headed down to the Plaza de Mayo. It was reasonably intense. My host mother, as far as I could tell from what she was saying to me, stood on a street corner clapping her hands in solidarity with these anti-Kirchner-istas … on her way back from seeing Sex and the City in theaters.
Today, however, the president Cristina Kirchner (who was preceded as president by her husband, Nestor) had her retaliation: thousands of her supporters filled the Plaza de Mayo, waving signs and flags and being generally enthusiastic. Drums, fireworks, colored smoke, the occasional troupe of trombones…you know, the usual…filled the square. These were the working class. The poor. The huddled masses yearning to breathe free. It was absolutely ridiculous, the flood of people there, cheering, clapping, singing first the national anthem and second a Peron song. Here are a couple of pictures of the crowd (taken discreetly, because I didn’t want to seem touristy). This is the same Plaza de Mayo I photographed earlier, but it’s so much more purposeful now!
This sort of thing is just so unfathomable to me, yet so … perfect. Intuitive. Logical in an emotional way. I feel like I could never live in a place where such passionate manifestations of shared political sentiment are not the norm. Even though we left while the president was still speaking in order to avoid the flood of people (and plus, we couldn’t understand anything she was saying, what with it being both in Spanish and over an echoey loudspeaker), it was still a really, really neat experience, and not at all as dangerous as the COPA people had made it sound when they told us repeatedly and forcefully to go straight home to our houses after school (which closed early, at noon, because of aforementioned protesting).
Anyway, I’m really glad I went. It was fascinating. I still don’t entirely understand the situation, but I’m getting there. If you’d like me to explain what I do know - or at least, what I think I know -, I’d be happy to.
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In other news, yesterday I went with C. to Caminito - a colorful, touristy street in La Boca (a neighborhood of Buenos Aires). By colorful, I mean actually colorful:
I have no idea what its purpose or history is, and Wikipedia does little to aid that lack of knowledge, but it’s a really cute place. The colors make me happy and for some reason it seems gypsyesque, which is always a good thing.
The not-so-good thing is that I spent A$12 (~$4 US) on a set of four small, more-or-less uninteresting magnets just so that I could pay with a ten and a five and receive a two-dollar note and a one-peso coin back in return so that I could take the bus back to Recoleta, the neighborhood in which I live. Mind you, this was my third try or so that day to get ahold of one. Stupid coins. It’s infinitely frustrating.
Anyway, I also bought a colorful painting of a bandoneón-player. There has been altogether not enough live tango music yet in Buenos Aires; I need to figure out how to amend this.
Other than that, not much. Classes are continuing as usual except when they're not. Etc., etc.
1 comment:
So I'm going to ignore the main points of your post and comment on the fact that you found the colorful neighborhood "gypsyesque" and apparently mean that as a good thing. Well, there are a lot of gypsies here in Granada, and let me tell you that they are not the fun, colorful, carefree nomads that you apparently imagine them to be. They are in fact pushy old women with gold teeth who shove rosemary in your face in an attempt to get you to let them read your palm, for which they will demand money. Also, they apparently will occupy peoples houses when they leave for extended periods of time, and police are required to extract them when the owners return. I've also heard that they break into peoples houses to steal their stuff, which I think was probably exaggerated but could possibly be true. Anyway, there's the truth about gypsies.
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