Buenos Aires: the subte.

When I first arrived in the city, our apartment in Palermo was about a seven minute walk from a subway stop. The subway here is nowhere near as extensive as the subway in New York. It also only operates till 10pm (which will make the fact that NYC's is available 24 hours seem refreshingly liberating). The subway was my primary mode of transportation, followed by city busses, but the subway system was very clear and easy to use.

One thing I found to be interesting about subway culture here is the way in which people try to make money on board. On New York City subways, people sing, they breakdance, they do backflips inside moving cars, they play guitar, they stand up and tell you that they have no job and a pregnant wife...all kinds of things. But in NY, they DO NOT do what they do here in BA.

People buy things in bulk -- like packages of travel tissues, socks, candy bars -- or illegally reproduce movies, CDs, etc. They carry the items onto the train, and walk around setting one pair of socks on everyone's lap. They cover the entire car, wait for a moment, and then go back to where they started from and either pick up the socks or the money if you want to keep them. Here, if you are planning to get off the train while you still have a pair of socks on your lap, you just leave them on the seat when you get off. I have a feeling if someone walked around and put socks on New Yorkers' laps, they'd just keep them when they jumped off the subway. It has been funny to see the small differences here...

And then the strike began. Yesterday was the first day the subte reopened after a 10-day strike. Subway workers striked for a pay raise to match the 28% inflation rate. The cost to riders nearly doubled shortly before I arrived in Argentina, but apparently none of this increase in price for riders was transferred to workers to increase their salary.

When the strike began, I could immediately see it everywhere in the city. Everyone who normally took the subway was now above ground -- standing in lines a block long waiting for city busses; crammed into busses like I've never even seen people crammed into NYC subway cars at rush hour; bringing cars into the city and increasing the traffic volume; and cabs became impossible to catch (because everyone else wanted one), and once you finally hailed an empty cab, you could probably walk faster than the driver could creep through the outrageous traffic. I'm certain the cab drivers loved this.

The strike lasted so long because of a political power struggle between the local and national government. The city of Buenos Aires is an autonomous city, similar to how DC isn't actually a state, so it's confusing as to who has the responsibility to regulate what within the city. To make this more complicated, the local government is very conservative, while the national government is 180-degrees in the other direction. This made resolving the strike a messy situation.

Thankfully, the subway reopened yesterday. I still haven't heard about how exactly it was resolved, so I will have to add more on that later. I was glad that I would at least be able to use some of my 6 remaining subte tickets that I had already purchased...

More details on the drama here.

Buenos Aires: Memory

Get ready for the biggest understatement of the century: 
Argentina has a crazy, confusing, complicated, messy political history. 

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Argentine government kidnapped, disappeared, tortured, and killed some 30,000 people. Mostly between the ages of 18 and 35, the victims of State terror were  disappeared off of the streets or taken from their homes. The government took those believed to be associated with activist groups, including trade-union members, students and professors, those who had uncovered evidence of or outwardly discussed government corruption, and those with leftist political views. Many were never heard from again, the remains of many have been uncovered in mass graves or in the nearby ocean, some were released, and many children who were born to pregnant disappeared women were adopted by military personnel to grow up with false identities. 

While there are certainly two sides to the story, it is still an intense history to fully understand. It is difficult to imagine how real and how recent this is for so much of the population here -- I'm sure I walk by, sit on a bus next to, or ask directions from someone who they themselves or their mother/brother/son/daughter/neighbor/friend/cousin were threatened, taken, tortured, or in some other way deeply affected by the "Dirty War" every day. 

Even since I've been in Buenos Aires, new findings are still coming out. About six weeks ago, the Argentine president during the time of the disappearances was finally convicted for leading these practices, and earlier this week a grown man was reunited with his biological family. 

Last weekend, I visited both the Parque de la Memoria to see the names of those who were disappeared during this period, and ESMA, an old military school used as a undercover torture center for the victims (similar to a concentration camp tour). There was a man participating in the tour of ESMA who had been a survivor. 

It must have been unbelievably painful to return 30-some years after he was picked up, blindfolded, and taken off to spend the night in the torture center...At the same time, his commentary made the situation feel so much more real than reading that ESMA was the country's single largest detention center where over 5000 individuals were taken. Statistics are shocking but individual stories give me goosebumps.

It is difficult to understand how truly recent this was; that bodies are still being recovered and real people in their 30s are being told they've grown up with a false identity; how civil society organizations have formed around this in collective memory, like the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo who to this day march around the main plaza of Buenos Aires in solidarity and protest, many of these women now in their 80s and 90s; that genocide still exists elsewhere in the world; that the ESMA building was reclaimed as a place of memory less than 10 years ago, and the ways in which Argentina remembers are still being formed. 

Buenos Aires: Cooperatives

It's been really nice to get back to a city where I feel that I'm fully communicating with people and I know my way around. This time around, I'm staying in a temporary apartment in a different neighborhood, Recoleta, which feels far less residential than my old Palermo Hollywood. NYU does have a site in Buenos Aires that is within walking distance from our apartment where we have been holding most of our class meetings.

One of our site visits this week was to a recovered factory called IMPA. Worker-recovered factories have a pretty wild history in Buenos Aires. The country had very few workers' rights laws until very recently, meaning that in times of crisis, a factory owner could stop paying workers when he knew he was no longer making money from the business and basically shutdown a plant overnight, leaving workers jobless. 

In several cases, the workers would join together to form a cooperative and reopen the factory. The State would send officers to remove the workers from the factories, but the workers continued to fight for the right to work to make a living. While many of the cooperatives were taken down by the State and police forces, others have survived. The successful worker-run factories, however, still fight for State recognition, and many are in a vulnerable position in which the factory could still be shut down at any minute.

IMPA was particularly interesting to see for two reasons --

1. The factory is in the process of opening a cultural center/museum to share its history with the local community and general public. The building and the fact that there were only 4 or 5 workers in the entire plant made the cooperative feel that it could be choked off at any minute. Nearly 10 years ago, the State cut the building off from receiving electricity, but the factory has since been running on private generators. It's hard to imagine such a lack of rights and protection for businesses. Part of the reason for starting the cultural center is to create awareness, and -- theoretically -- to help revive interest and integrate into the local community.

2. Another way in which the factory is active in the local community is by running a bachi popular inside, essentially an alternative high school for kids who had dropped out of traditional school and adults who never had the opportunity to complete high school. The school is free to attend, and I was surprised by how much power and voice students have. Students take ownership in taking care of the space (i.e. painting the rooms, collecting random bits of furniture to use for a student lounge etc.), create rules in collaboration with teachers (apparently everyone was onboard with smoking in the classroom...), and some of the students told us that they hold each other accountable for their actions when they misbehave in class. The students also helped the school's teachers to gain State recognition, accreditation, and State-funded salaries for the teachers. The school provided a "second chance" for many students who were unable to integrate into the traditional system, so the students all seemed to really value the fact that they could be there and making progress toward a high school diploma.

We also visited several elementary schools in small groups. I went to a school called Mundo Nuevo, another cooperative school that was founded 40 years ago when a teacher at a nearby school was fired rather than granted maternity leave. Teachers and parents decided they wanted to build a different kind of school in the community and founded Mundo Nuevo as a workers cooperative. ]

Mundo Nuevo was quite different from IMPA, first of all, in that it charges tuition of 1500 pesos per month (somewhere around $350). The building itself was nice, well maintained, and it didn't have nearly the same "hanging on by a thread" feel that IMPA did. The school had been requesting State funding, but turned down an offer for State salaries, worried that this would cause too much stratification within the organization and would cause them to lose sight of the things that made the business a cooperative. Rather, they are still pushing for State funding in terms of a block grant from which all teachers can be continued to be paid under the same pay scheme and not be forced to default to the salary differentials as defined by the State.

More on other highlights of the trip soon---

FLORIANOPOLIS, BRASIL

The Coveted Acia: Frozen, Blended
Acia Concentrate with Banana
Slices and Sprinkled with Granola. 

I booked my flight to Florianopolis right away when I realized that it would not only be a great place to relax and enjoy all kinds of outdoor activities, but that it would also be only about $100 more to fly to Brazil, pay for a week at a hostel, and buy groceries than it would be to spend the week in Buenos Aires. Cost of living is relatively high in Buenos Aires, so I figured I might as well put my Brazilian visa to work. 

Floripa is a beautiful, hilly island off the Brazilian coast, and it is well known for its beaches, surfing, trekking, and other outdoor activities. Unfortunately, it rained much of the time I was there, but I was still able to spend a few days biking, kayaking, sandboarding, and hiking through the hills. I took it as a personal challenge to have my favorite tigela de acia ("acia in a bowl") every day. 

It was nice to practice my Portuguese :) I definitely understand it better than I can speak it, but I had pretty minimal communication troubles. My fallback, which works the majority of the time, is to use a Spanish word and say it with a Portuguese accent. Most words between the two languages are very similar and many Brazilians understand Spanish or use some degree of Portunol (think Spanglish but with Portuguese/Espanol).

One of my funnier language interactions was tagging along for some shoe shopping. I met a Canadian who spoke French and limited English, so he asked me to go along to buy a pair of shoes one day. It ended up that he was talking to me in a mix of French and English and I was passing his message on in a mix of Portuguese and Spanish to the very patient Brazilian man helping us. 

A View from a Morning Hike

My lovely Home for the Week

The hostel was most definitely THE very best hostel I've ever seen. The house itself was very nice, well maintained, and the staff was constantly cleaning -- something that doesn't often happen in many hostels. The beds were extremely comfortable, didn't move/creek/groan when the person in the top bunk climbed up or rolled over during the night, and so many little details made the stay much more enjoyable -- like personal lights and hooks by each bed, soap and clean/dry towels by the sinks, tupperware available to store leftover food, etc. It very much felt like staying at a friend's house rather than renting a cheap bed at a hostel. A+ in my book for Submarino Hostel!

This was also my first experience traveling alone, and I was a little nervous about it, but almost everyone who passed through the hostel during my time there was also flying solo, so it was nice to have people to go exploring with during the day and to watch movies with on cold, rainy nights. I really can't say enough good things about the hostel.

The View from just Outside the Hostel

I also did a lot of Graffiti-Hunting in Floripa

When it came time to leave, I decided I had enough time to take the cheap route: the local busses. There was no direct bus to the airport from my neighborhood, so it took nearly two hours to get from my hostel to the airport, which would have otherwise been about a 40-minute cab ride. My journey to the airport entailed a 20-minute hike up a very steep hill (Colorado training) to the Lagoa bus terminal. From there, I had to catch a bus (company name: Transol) to the main bus terminal in the city center, about a 35 minute ride away. At the main bus terminal, I had to change from terminal A to terminal B to catch a bus run by a different company (Insular) to the airport, which was another 30-minute ride. Each bus ride was R$ 2.85, so it was less than $3.00 to get to the airport as opposed to the estimated $25 for a cab. The whole thing was pretty easy, I just kept asking and reconfirming with people, and everyone was quite helpful. 

Mais Arte

I had a near disaster when I got off the bus at the airport. During the bus ride, my wallet had fallen out of my pocket and was laying on the seat next to me. As I was getting off the bus, the fare collector (When you get on a bus in Florianopolis, you pass the bus driver and walk about three seats back to the fare collector who sits on an elevated seat collecting bus fares and letting passengers through the turnstile. You don't necessarily have to pay immediately when you enter the bus, but because you have to exit through the back doors behind the turnstile, you do have to pay before you can get off) called out "beautiful" to me. I realize that saying "hermosa" to someone in Brazil is about the equivalent of someone calling you "hun" in the Southern US, but I still don't like it. Anyway, he called out to me again, so I turned around, and he pointed to my wallet that I had dropped. Thank you, fare collector. Eek!

It was a long day of flying to get back to Buenos Aires with connections from Floripa to Porto Alegre to Sao Paulo and finally back to BA! But it was still better than taking an 18-hour bus ride, so I'll take it. The day actually went pretty fast, because my first flight got delayed almost an hour, which meant I had to run straight onto my second flight where we were stuck on the runway for 45 minutes before it was our turn to takeoff, which meant I had to run straight onto my third flight. I got onto my final flight at last call, but once I got on, a little boy in the row behind me got sick, so we had to open the doors back up and wait for nearly an hour for a cleaning crew to come clean the mess, replace the seat cover, and spray the entire plane with disinfectant. Anyway, I made it back to the city, hopped a city bus (once again, taking the $0.30 route as opposed to the $8.00 route) and got dropped off one block from my hostel, which thankfully still had a bed open for me at midnight :)

Spanish now seems like cake after a week of Portuguese! After two nights in a hostel, I will check into a hotel/temporary apartment on Saturday with the rest of the group from NYU coming down for the two-week course. 

View from Floripa's "Mirante" - a lookout point over the lagoon that I stumbled into while wandering the city!