Hay que saltar

Yesterday we participated in the march commemorating La Noche de Los Lápices: Night of the Pencils. In September of 1976, ten high school students in La Plata were kidnapped and disappeared for their political activism and affiliations. Several of them were kidnapped on September 16, the so-called Noche de los Lápices- the march is held each year on this date. Four of the students survived and the rest killed. You can read more about this here.

Since I promised a less gloomy blog post this time, I am not going to focus on that tragic night. Instead I want to talk a bit about the university culture here and the student activism- this march was a perfect example. I feel like there's a lot of apathy on U.S. college campuses. I don't know why this is, but at WM I feel like it's almost impossible to get people to a fundraiser; organizing a protest or march of this magnitude would take an act of god.

Here, it's exactly the opposite. There are constantly marches, protests, different manifestations lobbying for a wide variety of things. Lately a big point of contention has been a proposed raise in the dining hall price-- from one peso to five pesos. Walking to the Comisión, I see a ton of graffiti insisting "No al aumento del comedor! El comedor es un derecho!" (No to the price increase of the dining hall! The dining hall is a right!).

The attitude towards university here is very different from that in the U.S. There was an extensive university reform in the first half of the twentieth century that guaranteed that public higher education would be free of cost, have free admissions, and be autonomous from the state. Thus no student here pays a cent of tuition, there are no entrance exams or admissions process, and the state cannot intervene in how the university is run. On top of all that, the level of the education is very high and internationally recognized- contrary to the "more selective is better" mindset that we have in the States.

At first I was confused by the disparity in student activism between Argentina and the U.S. You would think that students (or their parents, ahem) paying $40,000 a year in tuition would be more invested in their education than students paying nothing, wouldn't you? But a possible explanation occurred to me. The system in the U.S. is set up such that going to college is a privilege. Here, it is considered a fundamental right. Thus, perhaps the students here are more insistently active in their education because they are defending their right to higher education.

Back to the march. What surprised me even after almost two months here was the activism of the high school students. I would never ever imagine high school students in the U.S. planning and executing a massive march! Furthermore, some 30 high schools in Buenos Aires were "taken over" by the students this week in protest of terrible learning conditions, problems with the physical state of the schools, etc. The students do not permit classes to be held until something is done to meet their demands. Imagine that! Just imagine for a moment that the student body of an under-funded, under-staffed, crappy high school in some U.S. city took over the school. I think it would make an impression.

Here are some photos of the event:

Addressed to Scioli, the governor of the province of Buenos Aires: "We (young people) are not dangerous. We are in danger."

The governor's building and another protest sign: "Scioli, we want youth scholarships."

Stenciling the plaza with various political messages...

... like this one: "The walls are the printing presses of the people"

Socialist youth: high school students. (WHAT? There are actual socialists??? Like, not just the far-right calling Obama a socialist, but real live flesh-and-blood socialists? And what's more, some of them are in high school? Incredible.)

To give you an idea of the magnitude of the parade.

All in all, it was a wonderful experience to march in a parade full of activist high school and college students. The students played music, danced, and sang, including one protest song that's in the title of my blog. They sang "hay que saltar, hay que saltar, él que no salta es militar." (In its awkward translation: One must jump, one must jump, he who doesn't jump is a military man!) I love the logic; unfortunately I didn't quite catch the ending and so I didn't jump. Hopefully they don't think I'm secretly a military man.

note: In case you didn't realize, you can click on the pictures to see them in an enlarged size. Besos!!!

Parque de la Memoria, ex-Olimpo

Last week, we took another field trip with the Comisión: the three of us from WM, Bettina, and a group of volunteers from the Comi. We went to Parque de la Memoria, a huge space dedicated to honoring the memory of those disappeared in the last dictatorship. The focal point is a huge monument, very reminiscent of the Vietnam monument in D.C., that features the names of around 9,000 disappeared. However, the monument contains around 30,000 bricks, symbolic of the real number of people who were disappeared; as they keep confirming more cases, they will keep adding more names.

The park is still under construction, but contains several other statues in addition to the monument. Several of these were very powerful; here's some pictures of my favorites.

One statue, based off the real figure of one disappeared man, stares off into the Río de la Plata. The park's location on the river is symbolic because of the enormous quantities of prisoners that were dropped, still alive but drugged, into the river on the so-called "flights of death."

Pensar es un hecho revolucionario... Thinking is a revolutionary act.

This installation of street signs depicting different aspects of the dictatorship was incredibly powerful. This one's pretty self-explanatory.

While some priests and nuns risked their lives and were even detained and killed due to their progressive social activism, the institution of the Catholic Church was, as the sign says, complicit. At its best, it turned a blind eye to the atrocities committed, and at its worst it played an active role.

Sign listing the distances to several of the most notorious camps. We visited Olimpo that afternoon.

Camp Olimpo was originally a bus terminal before being converted to a clandestine prison. Right in the middle of a working class neighborhood, neighbors describe hearing the prisoners' screams from inside. Frankly, there is not a lot to photograph because the police, who still used the space until it was appropriated in the 2000s, attempted to eliminate any evidence by tearing down the part of the building that housed prisoners. Also, as you can see, the beautiful morning faded into a torrential downpour by the time we got to Olimpo; the weather seemed to mirror the much more somber place.

Here you can see where the walls of the cells were; the cells were probably about 6 by 5 feet with two or more prisoners held in each. Despite their best efforts, the police inevitably left traces of their past crimes. Combined with survivors' testimony, pieces of evidence like this have allowed them to understand the exact layout of the prison. It goes without saying that this was a powerful trip; there's something surreal about standing in what used to be a cell, a torture room, a kitchen staffed by forced labor.

Next post will be more cheery, I promise!

Solitary Rambling through Zombie Paradise

This weekend I hopped on a train to Buenos Aires to enjoy the beautiful (60-something and sunny) weather. It's almost spring, and you can tell! I started the day off by walking the entirety of the world's widest street, Avenida 9 de julio. It was not as exciting as it sounds (read: not exciting at all) but still a pleasant stroll. More importantly, the good long walk helped me internalize the geography of the city a bit more.

I ended up in Recoleta, a perfectly lovely neigborhood. Starving, I stopped by a street fair (common in any given plaza on Saturdays and Sundays) where I could be sure to find some cheap and delicious food. I tried for the first time pan relleno, stuffed bread: ham and cheese baked into a calzone-shaped bread. Yum. After enjoying the music and artisan stands for a while, I headed up the hill to see the famous Recoleta Cemetery.

Now, first I should tell you that I really like cemeteries, especially really old ones. I love the cemetery in downtown Downers, and like seeing cemeteries of different cultures when I travel. But man, I was really not prepared for this cemetery.

First of all, it's gigantic. Secondly, it's filled not with tombstones like any sensible cemetery, but with giant mausoleums constructed in various styles. The grid arrangement of the tombs, with tree-lined passageways, gives it the distinct feeling of a city-- a city for the dead (insert appropriate sound affects).

Note what I mean:

So these mausoleums are, perhaps predictably, filled with dead people. What was a little shocking was the creepiness factor of how they are arranged and honored. Namely, the coffin just sits right there, on a little shelf or right on the floor, and there are creepy artifacts all around it. Lots of crosses, pictures, even one ceramic piggy bank that was downright demonic. Here's a picture (taken through the cross-shaped opening of a door-- note, no glass or anything to keep the zombies in!) of a pretty typical one:

Now, up to this point I was not too surprised. Yes, it seems fairly ridiculous to go to such excesses just to show off how rich and powerful you are, but I guess that's kind of the point. What I really wasn't expecting was how many mausoleums have fallen into total disrepair- no doubt due to old money families losing their money or dying out.

So I'm walking along, noticing some rusty doors, some broken glass, some cobwebs. All kind of creepy. Then I see this beauty:

DO YOU SEE THIS? Do you see how the doors are just gaping wide open, and the coffins are all falling off of their shelves and busting open, and the vampires can totally just escape, no problemo? I absolutely could not believe it. And of course was morbidly fascinated by it, so here are a couple more choice pictures. (If you find this distasteful, you might want to skip to the bottom of the post. Because I got really into finding delightfully creepy things to photograph.)

I was half expecting a hand to fall out!

Creepy demon bird, probably possessed by the soul of whoever's coffin that is.

Maria Isabel is coming for you...

After indulging my morbid side (I'm a little worried that a flock of vampires is going to come after me for taking these photos), I made the requisite visit to Evita Perón's grave:

Then I finally left the city of the dead and returned to that of the living: a vibrant, lively city in the late afternoon sun. I walked a good deal more, stopping to enjoy this gorgeous modern statue just a couple blocks away from the cemetery:

The giant steel flower opens every morning and closes every night, operating on some kind of hydraulics system. Lovely, no? And on that much less ghoulish note I leave you, dear readers, until next time.