You know you are living in Latin America when… (Part Three)

SOCCER

You know that you are living in Latin America when
your TV only gets good reception when there is an
important soccer game being televised.

Seriously, when there is a major game, all the bars
and cafes are full of men glued to the TV. The Copa de
America is going on now in Paraguay. When the two
major Buenos Aires teams, River Plate and Boca
Juniors, play each other, the winning team’s fans go
on the street honking their horns and scream and sing
in joy and my television gets better reception on ALL channels.

You know that you are living in Latin America when… you turn on your bathroom sink and the shower turns on!

THE ECONOMY AND DEVALUATION

You know that you are living in Latin America when the fear of currency

devaluation is in the air….

I think it was in late May when the multi millionaire,
foreign currency speculator, George Soros made a
slight comment at a Chicago economic meeting about the
Argentine peso being overvalued. He made the comment
on a Thursday or Friday and started a frenzy in
Argentina as people became worried that the country
might devalue. Most contracts for rent are in US
dollars, so if there is a devaluation, people will be
stuck paying in dollars while their salaries will have
been converted to a devalued peso value. It is true,
the peso is terribly overvalued as it is pegged to the
dollar. After the devaluation in Brazil and the
depreciation of the Chilean peso, Argentina has not
been able to export as much as it used to within the
region and the world being of its lack of price
competitiveness.

The economy here leaves much to be desired. After the
government privatized all of the national industries
in such a corrupt way that the mostly European
multinationals can walk away with all the profits and
not have to reinvest in Argentina, the people have
been robbed of all of their country’s resources. The
national oil company is about to be sold off. There is
very little left which actually owned by an Argentine
company. Potentially one of the richest countries in
the world, Argentina has been stripped naked.

Those who have Italian or Spanish grandparents, try to
obtain European citizenship. Some go to Europe just
for the adventure, others go because they see no
future in their own country. I have spoken to many
disillusioned people my age who are looking beyond the
borders of their country for their future careers.

The question of the external debt is huge. Politicians
are arguing over how Argentina will be able to pay its
debts without severely cutting back on public
expenditures. Leftist groups who promote themselves in
the university call for the government to take a stand
against the forces of First World imperialism and not
pay back the debts to lender nations. In the eyes of
these political groups, First World countries just
lend money to developing countries to get them into
debt and to make them poorer. This is a very simple
way of explaining Argentina´s economic problems. The
IMF and World Bank are not to blame for Argentina´s
internal corruption and inefficiency. If the loan
money is used for construction of fancy mansions for
government officials or ends up in Swiss bank
accounts, it is the fault of the Argentine government
and not that of the lender states.

(Re-reading this in May 2007, I see that lender states have to put restrictions on loans and have to monitor how they loans are handled to avoid other Latin American debt crises, Mobutu fraud incidences and the like. The money lent to Argentina was during the undemocratically elected military dictatorship, so it is not totally fair for the current population to pay for the financial sins of the previous tyrants. )

STRIKES AND DEMONSTRATIONS

You know that you are living in Latin America when demonstrations are a part of everyday life and you have no idea if tomorrow the bus you need will operate because of transit closures due to mass protests on the street.

During the two months I was working at the US embassy, we had to evacuate the building five times for anti-NATO demonstrations.

There seem to be strikes, rallies and demonstrations
all the time. I didn’t have class for two weeks because
the students were on strike protesting proposed budget
cuts enforced by the International Monetary Fund
(IMF). One day, I went to class expecting another
boring lecture and I was met by police blocking the
block near the university building. Students and
professors, were having class on the street as a
public protest. I wanted to take a photo since I had
seen nothing like it before. Students from all of the
public university buildings in the city were walking
from their buildings to the Casa Rosada (government
house, like the White House). The distances in this
city are huge. I didn’t join the rally, but I decided
to walk home anyway. On my walk, I ran into a
political party office which had photos of Evita Peron
everywhere. I didn’t realize that even to this day
Evita is idolized by mostly low middle class and low
class households. I went into a fruit and vegetable
stand/butcher shop to buy an apple and was so
impressed by the butcher who randomly started to talk
to me about the philosopher Schopenhauer. How many
butchers in the US even know who Schopenhauer is? The
cultural level of the people here is incredible. As I
got closer to my house, near the Congress, I ran into
the demonstrators. The blocked entire avenues and
major intersections. As I walked towards 9 de Julio,
the widest boulevard in the world (imagine two Los
Angeles freeways stuck together), I saw the marchers
coming from all different directions on their way to
the Casa Rosada. WOW! Talk about social mobilization!
San Francisco´s Gay Pride Parade is the largest rally
I had ever seen before and it was nothing compared to
the Argentine student demonstrations.

LEGACY OF DICTATORSHIPS

You know that you are living in Latin America when fear of past dictators and their tyrannical murders still instill fear in people and silence many…

From the relative calm of Chile and Argentina and
without previous knowledge of South American history,
one may not be able to tell that people of these two
nations are still suffering the trails marked by
previous brutal governments. Both nations have
thousands of people who are considered ¨missing¨ from
the time of the dictatorships. Since the military
governments refused to openly admit that they took
people illegally from their homes under weak
suspicions of communist or anti-government activity
and then tortured them, these people are called
¨desaparecidos¨, disappeared. One of my friends,
Gerardo, nonchalantly told me that he is the son of a
desaparecido. He father was taken by the police when
Gerardo was four years old because his father’s brother
was a member of an opposition party. He is still
afraid to tell people at his work about his family
history because he thinks he will be discriminated for
work. If there is another military coup d´état, he
fears that the will have to leave the country because
he could be a target of aggression as he is a son of a
disappeared person. Another friend of mine from
Chile, Jose, told me that his father was imprisoned in
a Chilean concentration camp during Pinochet’s
dictatorship. After being released his father refused
to eat lentils because in the camp, lentils were mixed
with human feces. Some people I speak to don’t know
anyone effected by the brutality of the dictatorships,
while others have family members and friends who
perished.