Truth and justice taken to the streets

In Argentina, March 24 is a national holiday, but it's not a celebration.

The National Day of Memory for Truth and Justice marks the day in 1976 when a military coup led by General Jorge Rafael Videla took over the democratically elected government of Isabel Perón (Perón's wife after Evita), starting the Guerra Sucia, or Dirty War.

Over the 7 years of the dictatorship, an estimated 30,000 people were "disappeared," a chilling euphemism for "tortured and killed." This was all part of the even more Orwellian-sounding "National Reorganization Process."

The Madres de Plaza de Mayo and the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo are the two primary groups seeking out information about the missing people. The madres (mothers) began by standing in the Plaza de Mayo every week, waiting in a very public and brave way to get information about their "disappeared" children. They wore white kerchiefs on their heads; this is now the symbol of the movement.

See white kerchief on the dark banner, at right

The abuelas (grandmothers) work to reunite the roughly 500 illegally adopted orphans of the Dirty War with their families. These orphans, now our age, never even knew they were adopted. The people they have always thought were their parents may actually have been complicit in their real parents' deaths. It's hard to imagine what it would be like to find this out. Most orphans, we're told, choose to go back to their biological families, even if they've never known them at all.

The two groups organized a major march today along with speakers and singers. Argentina's president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (who is definitely worth her own blog post) spoke as well.

Taking over Buenos Aires' biggest streets

"30,000 reasons not to pay the foreign debt"


Che and the Subte

We arrived at the Plaza de Mayo and it was so full we couldn't even see where the stages were, much less get close to them, but the action in the streets was more interesting anyway.


Marching tunes


Street theater


"For the right to abortion [that is] legal, safe, and free" As in almost everywhere else in Latin America, abortion is not legal in Argentina. According to the country's health minister, 80,000 women are hospitalized each year due to complications from clandestine abortions.



A few things we noticed, some in contrast to San Francisco (also a place accustomed to frequent marches and demonstrations):

There were really no police to speak of; the atmosphere was militant, though upbeat; there were a lot of young people; many of the people marching seemed to have darker skin and hair than the people we see on a daily basis in the center of the city; there were quite a few anarchists; there were lots and lots and lots of socialist groups (indistinguishable to us based on their various acronyms); and of course, as you'll see from the photos (especially the last one), there were some distinctly Argentinian touches.


Lots of big explosions and smoky flares, some releasing a lot of pink smoke. It is hard to imagine this happening in San Francisco without people getting alarmed and police clearing the streets. Here only the pigeons seemed to mind.


Very Argentine snacks: Quilmes (the national beer) and meat sticks of some sort


Where there is socialism, there is capitalism; a dexterous beer vendor weaves rapidly through the crowd


Enjoying a pedestrianized Avenida de Mayo on the walk back to our apartment


No march would be complete without mate

Allergies, Art, Architecture

Trees and windows: a picturesque combination and probably an allergenic one too...

Elizabeth and I disagree on this, but at some point each morning (M: 5 am, Z: 7 am) a tempest of allergens invades our room forcing us, bleary-eyed and awkwardly coiffed, to get up and start honking like migratory geese. We haven't pinned down the culprit, but when we do it's going to make extraordinary rendition look like child's play. Watch out, wind-pollinated organisms! (Yes, that was Elizabeth talking in that last sentence)

In news beyond our noses, we've been treated to a bunch of color the last few days.

First, we headed to Centro Cultural Borges (intriguingly but not unpleasantly housed in a shopping mall) for an exhibit of Steve McCurry photographs. You may not know his name but he's taken what is arguably the most recognizable photo in the world, below. (For some back story, read this.)

Sharbat Gula, the Afghani girl with the piercing green eyes

At the exhibit, the images were powerful and the colors intense. Reading the captions, we realized that this year we'd been to many of the places photographed by McCurry -- Kashmir, Cambodia, India, Thailand.

We also realized that McCurry had taken the cover image for William Dalrymple's In Xanadu, a book Z gave me for Christmas, about an Oxford undergraduate retracing Marco Polo's journey from Jerusalem to Mongolia. The book is very erudite, quite funny, and very English.

A couple of days later, we visited La Boca, an extremely pictureque neighborhood that is famous both for being colorful in the sense of the visual and in the sense of being unsafe for tourists after dark. We didn't investigate the latter claim, but the former was easy to verify.

La Boca is a working-class neighborhood that grew up around a port and the jobs it offered. The neighborhood's most character-filled houses are made from tin sheeting -- aluminum sheeting, I guess we Americans would say -- and painted with colors left over from painting the ships. On a bright morning they really pop.

The neighborhood, at least right around the pedestrian-only Caminito, is full of outdoor restaurants, several of which offered live music, sometimes complete with dancers.


A little lunchtime entertainment

We found a nice shady tree-filled courtyard and, together with our housemate Seth, partook of salads and various ways of melting cheese. (For example, we discovered that the dish called the provoleta is a large slab of provolone that is grilled until it rolls sideways slightly.)

Seth enjoying the rewards of knowing what the word "remolacha" means

We were intrigued by this building's function... is it related to all that cheese?

La Boca is also a neighborhood famous for its soccer club. This weekend there will be a match between the city's greatest two rivals, the neighborhood teams of La Boca and River. We were debating going -- could be a little hairy -- but found out that tickets are going for over $100 US, and that was that. Maybe we'll catch it in a bar.

In the meantime, the kids play on.

People asleep upstairs. Party downstairs.

Some of us, I'm sorry to say, were absent that day in fourth grade when rhythm was handed out.

But all hope is not lost.

If there is one thing that Buenos Aires might have more of than steak and adverts for liaisons that end in "adult situations" it would have to be opportunities for dance. The town is lousy with tango practicas (chances to learn) and milongas (chances to learn, perform, or maybe just watch).

Last night we went to our first tango lesson at the very fine DNI dance school.

The lights went out inexplicably throughout half of the school and so we all shuffled down to a room in the basement. But our high-energy and good-natured instructors weren't fazed.

We spent a couple of hours listening to a rapid-fire mix of Spanish and English while learning to make circles with our upper bodies, relax our shoulders, keep our hips back, walk to music, turn one another, and sort out which are the right parts of our arms, hands, and "dorsals" to hold. And trying to dance while doing all of the above. And laughing. We swapped partners constantly, and even saw a friend from a Spanish class back in January.

It may have been awkward at times but we did all right. We stayed upright. We weren't asked to leave and our toes are intact. We think we'll go again soon.

Search the interweb and you'll find some pretty good written guides to the dance and no shortage of videos of sultry tangos from the neighborhoods of Buenos Aires (San Telmo in particular.) This is one, though, that is charming in a whole other way.

Back to the end of the world

We've been in Buenos Aires for two weeks now -- an eternity in travel time -- but what with all the irregular Spanish verbs and whatnot, we're a little behind on the blog. (As you might have noticed.)

But now from the heat and cacaphony of the city, it's the perfect time to wax nostalgic about our last adventure at the cool grey fin del mundo.


Obligatory shot of the Andean condor, the world's largest flying bird
(this one looks small, but its wingspan is about 11 feet across!)

We spent our final few days in Tierra del Fuego camping at the national park. Under dramatic skies we tromped around through woods and along lakes and then relaxed at our campsite (when an Argentine dance party wasn't going on from across the campground).

On the first day of our trip, we walked to Chile.


Looking out over Lago Roca to Chile

It didn't take long, just a couple of hours on a quiet forested path to reach the most understated international border either of us has ever seen. And we've seen quite a few borders lately.


That's it, just a sign, some graffiti, and a lot of spectacular scenery on both sides


Not even worn out from the trip


Did we walk a few steps past the sign in flagrant transgression of international borders? No comment

We got to see a lot of Magellanic woodpeckers, which are, according to the Patagonian museum in Bariloche, the largest woodpecker in the Americas.

I'm finding varying information about its "biggest" status online, but it's a very big woodpecker one way or another. Also, quite loud. And it's related to the famous ivory-billed woodpecker that is thought to be extinct but some people claimed to see -- and fuzzily videotape -- a few years ago.

The video below may be a little fuzzy but I think it's incontrovertibly a male Magellanic woodpecker.




Orchids!

We hiked up to a lookout on our second day -- not quite to the very top, as the trail got so muddy we turned around rather than sink in up to our hips. We got to see an impressive range of mountains before the clouds closed in, though.



The weather was never warm but we were quite comfortable.


Happy hour with white wine, tent style

Our campsite was visited by various animals, including a very soft black dog with pale blue crossed eyes (it was quite friendly at first but after we fed it bread and cheese I think it dumped us for carnivorous campers).

We saw more of the slightly vulture-like chimangos and also saw bigger, related birds called caracaras. Wikipedia describes these as bold, opportunistic raptors, and that sounds about right.

We'd seen a lot of these along the roads throughout Patagonia, often on the ground, which seemed a little odd for a raptor. The dark cap they sport makes their heads look very square, and I thought perhaps they were eagles, but no, they're more scavengers than hunters.


A female (I think) obligingly posing for us -- the males are a bit more striking

The birds aren't the only bold wildlife in Tierra del Fuego. Back in 1946, the powers-that-were decided to try starting up a fur industry in Ushuaia, and imported 50 beavers from Canada.

As any Hawaiian, or Australian, could tell you, it's important to think these species introductions through carefully. Or not do them at all. They're hard to undo.

Surprising perhaps only their introducers, the beavers escaped and spread and adapted very nicely to Tierra del Fuego, industriously damming up rivers by taking down acres and acres of trees. Their logging and the flooding their dams create are bad news for the forests. The beavers' current population is over 100,000, about the same as the human population of Tierra del Fuego's two biggest cities combined.


How beavers wreak their havoc: they create little closed-in areas and use dams to raise the water level so that these areas can only be reached by swimming through a tunnel -- very ingenious

Maybe because all the beavers were lounging in their high-security dens, we didn't get to see any, but we were able to see the dam they'd created and were taken aback by the scale of it. Below, each branch-like object is actually the trunk of a tree, say 10 feet long or more.



Dam-age

On our walk to try to see the castores and their dams, we also reached our very furthest point south ever -- 3,078 kilometers (1,912 miles) away from Buenos Aires on Route 3, the highway that runs all the way down the east side of the country.

The sign pictured at the top of this post is the very end of Route 3, 1 km later, and it points out that Alaska is 17,800 or so kilometers (11,090 miles) away. America is very long.


Down south

And then it was time to pack up and do the Amazing Strong Man trick with the tent and catch the bus back to Ushuaia.


Step right up, folks, and see a man lift his whole house!

Once back in Ushuaia, we went straight to beer. I mean lunch. OK, both. Showering could wait. We walked over to Ramos Generales, a local institution that started as a general store in 1906 and doesn't seem to have changed its decor since, although its prices have gone up a bit.


The cozy interior


The local brew looks like cider but they call it a pale ale -- either way it was quite nice

Ramos Generales is also somewhat famous for having a French pastry chef. I don't know if he's responsible for the penguins.



We settled on something a little more Gallic. It did not disappoint.




Mmm, the great indoors

Muchos verbos: dolor de cabeza**

Humbling. That seems the best way to describe my efforts to learn Spanish. We've grown accustomed to eating later, waking up later, and even the humidity is getting a little easier to deal with. But, for me anyway, there just seem to be too damn many irregular verbs.

Or it might just be that teachers have a hard time being students.

When she's not studying, Z plays badminton in our bedroom...or at least with these ceilings, she could

In any case, we've decided to stay for the remainder of the month in our shared flat in el centro, a mostly business district that seems to me a bit like downtown Oakland dotted with old European architecture. Or, after dark, like something out of Terry Gilliam's Brazil. Early this morning it rained like it meant it, and apparently serious flooding is not uncommon in certain areas of Buenos Aires.

En la lluvia*: llueve (it rains--present tense), esta lloviendo (it is raining -- present progressive), va a llover (will rain -- one kind of future tense), llovió (did rain -- one kind of past tense)

No doubt there will be more street demonstrations this evening -- they seem to be part of the porteño cultural landscape. Empanadas will continue to be our snack food of choice though our opinion of salsa blanca filling (read: Elmers glue, only less flavorful) has not improved on greater acquaintance. The coffee, we are happy to report, is strong and dark.

A Thai peanut-coconut-milk-eggplant-with-peppers-and-tofu dish I whipped up

Back to those pesky conjugations. Ever wanted to say "I refuse to buy coffee at Starbucks!" en español? Here's how, ¡Me niego a comprar en Starbucks!

According to my teacher, Buenos Aires leads the world in per-capita visits to psychotherapists. Why is that? My money is on the lack of sleep and a morbid fixation with steak. But I could be wrong.

An altar our housemates erected to bring suerte to the Peruvian contender for best foreign picture at the Oscars -- sadly, it lost, but we hear the Argentinean film that won is very good and are trying to figure out how to see it with subtitles...

So, to sum up,

Buenos Aires es una cuidad muy linda. A los porteños, se encanta el carne. Y ellos no duermen. Elizabeth y yo vivimos en un barrio con mucho ruido, pero pensamos el tango es un baile fantastico. Nosotros bebimos muchas cafe y vino blanco. Español es dificil. Yo tengo dolor de cabeza. ¡Yo necessito un helado dulce de leche!

*This asterisk is a handy reminder to click on all our links, especially those containing Soul Train performances from the 70s. There is really no excuse for not watching The Dramatics at the height of their powers.

**This asterisk indicates that my editor regards this post as "grouchy."