[Reader-list] Argentina Today, India Day After Tomorrow ?

Shuddhabrata Sengupta shuddha at sarai.net
Wed Mar 13 23:06:58 IST 2002


Dear Readers

"In bad times, one must always have one eye looking elsewhere"
Old Patagonian Saying

I thought that it would be useful to have one eye of this list turned to 
other places, especially as these are bad times in our neighbourhood.

Every four years, Whenever the World Cup Football championships happen, some 
neighbourhoods in Calcutta discover that they are actually Argentinian. They 
fly the Argentinian colours and do a Bongo version of the Tango. They forget 
afterwards and go back to being fish eating Bengalis soon after Argentina 
either wins or loses the world cup. How fickle.

Just as what Bengal thought day before yesterday, India did yesterday, what 
Argentina is today, India may be day after tomorrow. 

I just thought that we should be prepared for that when it happens. (like the 
football fans in calcutta) 

So here is a posting forwarded by someone called Diana McCarty from someone 
called Lisa Garrigues on a list called Undercurrents 
(undercurrents at bbs.thing.net) about what it is like to be living in Argentina 
today.

Cheers(?)

Shuddha

__________________________________________________________________________________________
ON EVERYDAY LIFE IN BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA

From: lisa garrigues <lisagarrigues at yahoo.com>
Date: Friday, February 15, 2002 4:51 PM
To: lisagarrigues at yahoo.com
Subject: more cazerolazos

Dear Friends,

I'm writing this in a public locutorio, surrounded by pre-teen boys who are 
all playing attack video games and shouting to each other back and forth about
"killing terrorists."  This for some reason makes me think of my own 
president Bush, who seems to be finding terrorists all over the place with 
the same fervor as this kid who shouting next to me.

Funny, isn't it?  Seems like the more of 'em you kill, the more they just 
keep popping up all over the place. Yesterday I read that the FBI considers 
our very own home-grown organization  the Earth Liberation Front, who has a 
history of damaging the equipment of corporations who want to cut down trees, 
one of the "most dangerous terrorist groups in the country." So now I guess 
you don't even have to have a foreign accent to be a terrorist.

Down here in Argentina, we all read about the CIA naming Argentina as one of 
the Latin American trouble spots. The U.S. is also now planning a nuclear 
plant of some kind in Patagonia, in the South of Argentina. That should 
really help calm things down here, you bet.

Meanwhile I continue to watch, listen and participate in the changes 
occurring here.  The citywide cazerolazos, which initially started out as a
spontaneous outburst, are becoming a regular Friday evening event, with 
thousands of people gathering in their barrio with kids and dogs and then 
marching to the Plaza de Mayo, chanting, singing, dancing, banging
on pots and pans.  And during the week, there are continuing protests in 
front of banks and industries, and the private homes of corrupt officials,  
as well as roads being cut by the unemployed workers called
piqueteros.  Though people continue to be nervous about marching to the Plaza 
because of the past violence and deaths there, the last few cazerolazos
have occured without incident.  In fact, in one of them, a young man who 
threw a bottle at the police was chased down and surrounded by an angry but 
nonviolent crowd who prevented him from provoking any further
violence. 

Watching the neighborhood assemblies evolve has been a fascinating 
observation of direct democracy at work. My own, Colegiales, (web site:
colegiales.tripod.com.ar) started about six  weeks ago, when a guy named Fede 
spray painted "Assembly Meeting tonight 10:00PM on the sidewalk.  Six people 
showed up.  Now we average about two hundred, everyone spilling out onto the 
street, into the intersection. Commissions and subgroups and workshops have 
evolved from that first meeting, and neighbors have been coming together not 
only to solve immediate situations like how to get food and medicine to 
people who need it, but also to discuss the overall direction of the
assemblies, and their relationship to the existing government.  For the 
moment, the majority consensus on the latter point seems to be "let them come 
to us if they want to, the sons of bitches."   For many, the idea of the 
assemblies is to build power from the bottom up, and some have compared  
themselves to existing movements like the zapatistas, who have no intention 
of "taking over" the state. It's a young movement, with as yet a lot of 
questions still being asked.

As such, people in the assemblies and commission meetings have a tremendous 
need to talk, which means meetings can sometimes go on for hours without
anything at all getting "accomplished", everyone talking and shouting over 
everyone else.  At a recent meeting the "talking stick" was suggested to get
everyone to slow down and pay attention to each other. Since we were in a 
cafe, we used a cappucino spoon. It seemed to work; the atmosphere changed
dramatically, and people actually listened to one another, though there were 
occasional flurries of everyone talking at once, and at one point the
cappuccino spoon went flying across the table. 

My assembly, which is in a small neighborhood bordering on several larger 
ones, contains people of all ages and classes, from the 74 year old Peronista
who identifies himself as  "definitely working class" and remembers the 
speeches of Evita in the Plaza de Mayo (" She was the real freedom fighter, 
not Peron") to the woman in her forties who insists that the assemblies, as a 
largely "middle class" movement differentiate themselves from the working 
class piqueteros and their tactics, to the 21 year old woman who wakes up 
every Thursday morning thinking "Oh boy, another neighborhood
assembly! I wonder what will happen tonight!"

Fear continues to be a big topic of conversation. Recently, one friend, 
Anibal, who lost his brother during the dictatorship, says the older 
generation is fearful because they remember the deaths and tortures
of the proceso and the younger generation is fearful because they were born 
in an atmosphere of fear.  The rumours and overall insecurity of the 
situation here don't help much to alleviate the fear.  Recently someone 
emailed a picture of a dead body to some members of the assembly along with 
the words "Up with the Military".  And someone else received an email
about English mercenaries being sent in to foment civil war.  It's difficult 
to know what to believe in a country where all your money has been taken from 
you by your own bank, if you are lucky enough to have any money. "The banks 
used to have signs in them that said, 'Your money is safe with us' one woman 
said recently.  'I notice they have taken those signs down.'

Meanwhile the prices of food and other articles have shot up overnight as a 
result of devaluation, in some cases doubling, while salaries continue to be 
cut and often paid a month or two late. Unemployed professionals I know are 
giving up the apartments they can no longer afford, and moving in with 
friends. Others have literally run out of food and are having to depend on 
friends and or families to eat.  The long line of people in front of second 
hand store on Cabildo selling off their vaccuum cleaners, microwave
ovens, casseroles,  twenty year old cameras, and other belongings gets longer 
every day.

And this is in Buenos Aires, where people generally have it a lot better than 
in the provinces.  Though one man I met from Salta said he was going back 
there because "here, it's just too hard.  At least in salta if you get hungry 
you can get your gun and kill an animal. " I figured he meant a wild animal, 
but recently I have heard stories about people killing cats and dogs to eat.

Politicians continue to be insulted and spit upon by the regular folk. 
According to an article in the local paper, La Nacion, the Argentine 
ambassador Carlos Ruckauf was recognized  by fellow passengersas he
boarded an airplane, who began to yell at him.  As a diplomat, Ruckauf of 
course responded diplomatically--he showed his middle finger to the
crowd and snarled, "If you don?t want to fly with Ruckauf, you can fucking 
well take another plane!" This is the ambassador, folks.

Another target of rage and protest is the Supreme Court, whose members not 
only have a long history of cronyism and corruption but also are excused by 
law from paying any taxes. .  And banks, many of them international, are not 
only getting spray painted by  angry neighbors, they are also being 
investigated by government officials like Elisa Carrilo for "running off with 
all the money", leaving the small time savers to stand in line for hours only 
to be told  at the window that "there are no dollars left." In a recent
article in Pagina 12, Citibank was named as one of the many banks who 
transferred huge amounts of dollars out of their Argentine branches into 
places like the Cayman Islands, New York, and Chile, emptying the
dollar deposits of small time savers, who now, if they receive anything at 
all, will receive it in devalued pesos.

The IMF  ("International Misery Fund") and multi-national corporations are 
also coming under increasing attack by the local populace. Many
Argentiens feel taht over the past twenty years the country has basically 
been "sold off" to international corporations,  who have done nothing to help 
the ARgentine economy.  A recent op-ed article in the Buenos Aires Herald 
suggested good-naturedly that the solution to Argentina's debt was to simply 
turn the country into a corporation run by "independant advisors" and convert 
the debt into equity, backed by land and "development potential".  I'm sure 
this did nothing to allay the Argentines fears that their country is a prime 
example of globalization run amock, a country which is being eaten alive by 
outside interests.

This is probably why you see so many Argentine flags around these days, why 
so many people are shouting "Argentina Argentina" in the streets.  It may be a
last ditch effort to save what's left.  In a country which has already 
suffered years of disappearances, it must feel at times like the entire 
country is disappearing from beneath  the ARgentine's feet...public utilities 
have been sold to multi-national corporations, money is disappearing
from the banks, children have grown up and gone  away to countries with 
better prospects, medicine and routine medical equipment is disappearing from
hospitals, jobs are vanishing,  food is disappearing from the kitchen table.
 Only the people are left.  Even people who had planned to emigrate to other 
countries can no longer do leave, because, well, "the money just isn't 
there."  An immigrant people who have historically looked to other countries 
for their identity--Spain, Italy, England, the U.S.,--are being forced to 
stay and make it work. So, in the barrios, they continue to talk, organize,
listen. The barter economy continues to grow, people are buying food together 
to save money, and now, despite the dire circumstances, people have begun to
organize street festivals because  as they say, "we won't let them take our 
happiness away from us too". 

And me?  I have to admit that living through all this with these people, and 
having what few dollars I own in the corralito along with every one else,  is 
making me feel just a little bit Argentine.  The other day at the Plaza de 
Mayo cazerolazo, an old woman was selling small Argentine lapel flags.  I 
bought one and put it on.  At first, I felt a little ridiculous, but then I
saw a young Argentine with a t-shirt with the American flag on it, and 
thought about all the emblems of my culture that I had seen on people's 
bodies since I've been in Latin America...not just the flag, but Nike
and Coke and Visa logos.  So far, culture and its emblems have filtered down 
from the rich countries to the poor, or to put it more bluntly, from the U.S. 
to just about everyone else.  Maybe it's time for a change.  Maybe it?s time 
for those of us in the "rich countries" to learn from the countries where
capitalism and neoliberalism has clearly failed, because who knows, we could 
be next. 

The other day I ran into my friend Alejandro as he was riding his bicyle 
across the intersection of Cabildo and LaCroze.  He stopped, and we talked 
for awhile standing on the streetcorner in the warm evening air about 
anarchism, and Buddhism.  We both agreed that the neighborhood assemblies as 
they are now taking shape are very close to the original Anarchist
philosophy, which eschews a national state in favor of local community power 
which forms and reforms itself according to the dictates of the community.  
And Buddhism?  Well, honestly, I don't really remember what we said, so it 
was probably something ungraspable and Zen. Except I remember Alejandro,with 
his young and serious and bespectacled face, did say something about a 
certain kind of flower, which  can only grow in the mud, in the places where 
everything has become rotten and broken down.  And this flower, he said, was
very strong, and very beautiful. 

Regards,

Lisa

PS.  This is the third of three cazerolazo letters I've sent out: 
cazeralozos, cazerolazos part two, and more cazerolazos.  If you didn't 
receive any of the first two and want a copy, or if you don't want to
receive anything at all, please let me know. 



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