Dia de la memoria

Dia de la memoria here in Argentina is an important remembrance day.

On March 24th, 1976 a Military Coup D'État ousted Argentina's president and took over the government in what would become one of the dirtiest dictatorships in Latin American history over the next 7 years. A Military Junta would later disappear some 30,000 people and torture countless more people who were suspected of having opposing views of the extremist right-wing government. The excuse? The fear that Argentina would go the way of Cuba and become communist. Who helped? The USA of course, trained and funded not only this dictatorship but similar dictatorships that popped up all over South and Central America around the same time. (Chile, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, etc....) Hence some obvious resentment to the US and its policies.

The disappeared and political prisoners, many of them had children, or gave birth in concentration camps. Obviously they couldn't keep their children with them, so many of these kids were adopted out to military families and government workers who were involved one way or another in the torture and murder of their biological parents. These kids today are in their 30's and some still don't know even. The ones that do have found out because of the Organizations "Madres y abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo" "Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo or May Square" A group of women originally that had either children or grandchildren missing because of the dictatorship that helps with things like DNA tests reunite these kids with their biological parents and find out who they really are.

On March 24th, thanks to a new law, it's an observed holiday, not to celebrate, but to commemorate and remember the actions of the gruesome dictatorship's actions. And being this is Argentina, and demonstrations take place on a daily basis, you can imagine how big the ones are on days like this.

Blocking world´s widest avenue with burning tires.

 

La Bomba del Tiempo..... and class changes.

Two nights ago, on Monday night, I got the chance to go with some new Texan friends that are studying here in BA to an amazing Drum-Concert-Inexplicable thing. It's called La Bomba del Tiempo at a local open-air club in the Once neighborhood called Konex. (FYI: Once neighborhood is a good place to buy cheap and fake name brand clothing and stuff like it, but watch your wallets because there's a lot of people and a lot of pick-pocketing). We got there about an hour late, but it was alright because we still had about 3 hours left of the show! there were a ton of people, and the band/drum group was amazing. They kept the rhythm going that whole time with various beats and everyone dancing away. To my understanding this occurs every Monday night, or once a month or something. I will go back before I leave.

There were other international students in the crowd as well from Universidad de Belgrano. Everyone had a very good time. I heard stories about a girl getting her wallet pick-pocketed though, and another girl had a seizure, but she's fine now.

Also, as it had a hippie vibe, there was quite a business of everything having to do with marijuana being sold just at the line waiting to get into the club... especially brownies, which seemed to be popular in the crowd. Quite interesting, but you'd be stupid to try anything like that in a foreign country especially!


Anyways I have changed my class schedule that I mentioned in the earlier blog. Instead of Latin American History, in it's place I'm now taking Latin American Cinema. And instead of Latin American Gender studies, in it's place I'm taking a different Latin American History class.


That's all for now, I'm off for a 4 day weekend. It's Dia de la Memoria to commemorate and remember the atrocities of the military dictatorship of the Late 70's and Early 80's. More to come about that probably in a few days... and a better explanation of the history... and the U.S.'s big part in it.

By for now. 

First week of school and some home sickness.

So I just finished my first week of school.... it was mostly good.

I have met some cool people in my classes, mostly Americans, but there are people from all over the world.

Belgrano is so far, a pretty good University, I think that most of the teachers are pretty engaged... they really try and ask and make sure everyone is understanding them... but that gets somewhat redundant after a while.

My classes are as follows:

Mondays:
Latin American Cultural Studies 1pm-2:30pm
Latin American Gender Studies 2:30pm-4pm

Tuesdays:
Latin American History of the 20th Century 1pm-2:30pm
Latin American Literature                            2:30pm-4pm
Portuguese 101                                           4pm-7pm

Wednesdays:
Latin American Cultural Studies 1pm-2:30pm
Latin American Gender Studies  2:30pm-4pm
Advanced Oral Production         5:30pm-7pm

Thursday:
Latin American History of the 20th Century 1pm-2:30pm
Latin American Literature                            2:30pm-4pm
Portuguese 101                                           4pm-5:30pm

So far... I think my favorite class is Portuguese or Latin American Cultural studies.... But we'll see how that goes.

The international night is coming up for school too on the 15th of April, that should be pretty fun!

Another thing that has hit me pretty hard this week... is well... feeling a little homesick. On top of it being somewhat difficult to make some friends at first, I miss my family and friends, and well, my life as it was.
I hope it passes, today was really hard, but thanks to some good people it made it less difficult.

As well as things like Facebook and Skype that allow me to talk to the people I love help as well!!

I love you all and miss you all!

Argentina's immigrant past and present.

Today I had orientation at the University and we got a bus tour throughout the city. Our tour guide was great at explaining everything about Argentina's history and the reason for the way everything is the way it is (to put it in a round-about kind of way).

Back during the late 1800's, early 1900's, about the same time of the great wave of European immigration into Eliss Island in New York, a similar and some even argue an even bigger wave of immigration was flowing into the port of Buenos Aires. Most of these immigrants of Spanish and Italian descent, the Italian influence is BIG here, the food, the hand gestures, the intonation of the Spanish spoken by Argentines and especially porteños (name for inhabitants of Buenos Aires, lit: people of the port), and even the ice cream. There were also many people of British descent that went to Patagonia, in fact the largest Welsh speaking community outside of Wales is in Argentina, as well as Germans like the village I visited explained in my last post.

The city's most famous Barrio is la Boca. It's in all of the travel guides and it's the typical picture you're shown when someone is talking about Buenos Aires. Colorful houses, Tango dancers, etc... This barrio was actually the port where these immigrants arrived to (think Eliss island, only not an island and in Argentina). Many stayed in this Barrio, mostly Italian immigrants, and lived here for many years. There were so many people from Italy living in this barrio at one point, that they actually tried to become the "Independent Republic of La Boca," and of course Argentina's national congress just laughed at them, but they were serious. To this day you can see signs or references to the neighborhood as "The Independent Republic of La Boca." However, most of these Italians have since moved on to the rest of Buenos Aires' nicer neighborhoods, today la Boca is still inhabited by immigrants. This time of a new variety: the South American kind.

Argentina has seen a growing immigrant population (some illegal, some legal) since the 90's from neighboring poorer countries, mainly Paraguay, Bolivia, and some Peruvians. (Actually Cristina, the cleaning lady of my apartment is from Peru).

So waves of European immigrants that form what is now a great portion of what makes up Argentina's ethnicity, and now a days waves of Latin American immigration that could change that whole ethnic make up of the country.... Sound familiar to anyone?

It's crazy to me how similar many parts of Argentina's history is very parallel to the United States. (They've even kicked out and fought off the British... they're still technically fighting with them... but that's a blog a little later down the road).

I know leave you with some photos of La Boca:

The houses were originally painted all of those colors because it was from whatever left over paint they had from the ships coming in to the port, and the houses are made from old ship parts and whatever scrap they could find. (Now I'm pretty sure they keep up the colors for the tourists). Further more... although this looks like a cute, nice little tourist area... it's not recommended to find yourself here after 6pm, which is when everything closes and it gets a little sketchy around there.

Córdoba, Che Guevara, Germans, and Shakira.

So this last week I spent in Argentina's second biggest city Córdoba.

I took an 8 hour bus ride at night to get there and meet up with Jessi. She showed me around the city where she lived 4 years ago to study. Its a big city, but it seems small, very cool network of pedestrian streets only, and vendors a long the streets.

The city is very nice, and very walkable. Its got a colonial feel with a cool river running through it in a man made stone riverbed called the Cañada.

While I was here I also attended my first Boliche (this is the Argetnine word for nightclub or discotheque)

This was a cool experience. In one room they played U.S. Hip Hop music and in the next room (the most popular) was really loud Techno music. The drink of choice at the club? It was either Vodka and Speed (no, not speed the drug, think the Argentina equivalent to Red Bull) OR it was big plastic cups full of Champagne with ice and at least two straws to share with your friends (classy right?)

The number one reason for the trip to Cordoba was to see ThePopFestival a tour headlined by the Colombian Pop-Sensation herself Shakira but also included La Barra, a cuarteto band from Cordoba, Ziggy Marley, son of Jamaican music legend Bob Marley, and my personal favorite Calle 13, rap/reggaeton group from Puerto Rico. Very political group that at one point started to criticize the United States on stage... which made me feel a little pointed out in a crowd of 25 thousand South Americans, even if I did agree with what they were criticizing. I also got my wallet pick-pocketed at the concert, however, right before leaving to go to the concert, I had the brilliant idea to take everything important out of it, like my credit cards, drivers license, insurance card, passport number etc... So all I lost was about $230AR pesos (about $70US dollars), in other words, it could have been MUCH worse.

Shakira

My last day in Cordoba, Jessi and I took an excursion offered by the hostel to Alta Gracia, Villa General Belgrano, and the Sierras of Cordoba. In Alta Gracia we got to see the house where the Revolutionary Che Guevara grew up.

The Motorcycle Che road through Latin America

After Alta Gracia we made our way through the Sierras surrounding Cordoba and saw some very large lakes which we found out were man-made.

And our last stop on the excursion was a little German village created by 7 families of German descent and later grown by Nazis fleeing Germany after the second world war. It's now a village who's income is based almost entirely by tourism.

Now I'm back in Buenos Aires, I got back this morning. One day until Orientation for school begins. It should be fun! I'll update again after that.