Now that I’ve got something posted on Mozambique, I want to step back and talk about my time in Argentina. Again sorry for the lack of photos, I have not been able to upload any from Argentina either. But if you go to my flickr site, I do have some images from my time in Mozambique last month. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tweisemann/
I’ll first say that I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Buenos Aires. I really fell in love with the people in Buenos Aires. It’s a very interesting city. Its economy has been struggling to get back on its feet since it fell to pieces some years back. It’s has a unique mixture of Latin American and European culture.
Since I traveled with Team B, I got to stay a few days extra and was really thankful. I attended a rally put on to celebrate Forty years of what I think was a political party or group of woman that help protect kids in Argentina. I never really got a clear picture of what was going on exactly.
Another group marched around the Plaza carrying photos of dead children and beating a drum and chanting. They tried marching around the Plaza but were stopped by the Police on the left side, so after a few minutes they turned back around and past the back of the rally and walked a block to a small stage with a speaker and they quietly called off the list of names of young men and woman that had supposedly been killed by the government in the last three or four years.
Weeks earlier I briefly read an article online that talked about how Buenos Aires had been shut down due to strikes or protests after a young man was killed I believe during a protest. As the group was reading the list of names, I saw a young man carrying a sign with a picture that looked just like him. I have a feeling that it might have been his twin brother. His whole family was the most visibly shaken; throughout the reading the young man’s parents were crying and embracing each other. After the names were finished everyone began to just love on them and encourage them. It felt like a little community had formed of people who had lost those they loved through violent acts of the government.
Elections in Argentina are in June so it was really a very politically active time in the city. They next day was May Day and all throughout the city there were rallies led by the Communist/Socialist party. Flags with Fidel, Che and even Mao were being carried all throughout the streets of the city. The next day I learned according to an American who lived in Argentina, that the Communist party bused people in from throughout the area and paid them a small amount of money to March around town.
But I really loved the feeling of the people and the culture of the city of Buenos Aires. I went to my first soccer/futbol match and loved it. So far it wins the award for my favorite city of the World Race. I would love to go back and spend more time in South America.
