porteños react to tax rises

farmers were protesting here for 16 days by blocking the roads with their tractors because of huge increases in export taxes (up to 45% according to BBC) that were recently implemented by their president. after about two weeks, the B.A. residents got involved and hit the streets with their pots, pans and flags. these photos are a block from my apartment, where they blocked the road. add tons of relatively unorganized banging and honking, and that's about the gist.

there was about 100 or 200 people on my corner, but the bulk of people were down at the Plaza de Mayo where most protesting goes down. the large majority of people protesting in the city are middle upper and upper class citizens, but the farmers they are protesting for are in the lower classes.

my host mom told me that the porteños are protesting a lot to show their support for el campo because there is a general idea that the government and the city of Buenos Aires doesn't care about the rest of the country. but in addition to that I think they are getting mad about the price increases of all Argentine grown product. the president said she wouldn't hold any discussion until the farmers moved out of the roads so they have done that and hopefully something good will happen!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7316126.stm

Semana Santa

here's some fotos from Tandil. about 5 hours into the middle of nowhere, from Buenos Aires. I was with a group of about 40 people from all over the world at a campsite full of Argentine families. it was a pretty relaxed experience... made some rad raviolis over a fire, drank a lot of mate (it's a kind of tea, mom, don't worry) and learned about the Guatemalan civil war.

impromptu circus

tidbits.

people smoke inside of my school. I haven't yet seen it in a classroom but I won't be surprised when I do.

I'm going to take up capoeira, it seems like the right thing to do. I was at a park this weekend, photos included, and it took me just a few minutes to realize I was pretty much inside of a circus. capoeira, tight roping, poi, juggling, drum circles and that weird Cirque d'Soleil stretchy rope that hangs from the ceiling (or in this case a tree) acrobatic act. last but not least a man dressed like George Washington playing the recorder.

I went to an amazing art exhibit. the artist had taken old photos and recreated them with the same people in the exact same place. the catch comes because the people in the fotos originales, or some of the people in them, were disappeared during the dirty war. giving the newer foto a rather eerie feel. some of them had no one, some just just a child grown, and some had parents without their children. the artist was Gustavo Germano and they were at the Centro Cultural Recoleta, if you have any interest in looking it up. acá es un video de youtube, y después un sitio del web con muchas de las fotos.
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5180459258498676229

http://weblogs.larazon.com.ar/fototeca/archives/2008/01/desaparecidos-hombres-y-mujeres-con.html

anyways, these pictures are from my day in Recoleta, a neighborhood in Bs. As. the cat is not dead, contrary to popular belief, and she was in a cemetery... full of cats. the entire place is above ground like New Orleans but I think it is more for prestige than it is for reasons of soil climate, because a lot of them have glass doors so you can see inside, and they have big marble staircases going down. I assume they put people down there, but there are also shelves on the upper levels full of coffins and photos and flowers also. it was the creepiest cemetery I have ever been in. some had been broken into and you could see where people had put crowbars and stuff into the edges of the coffin. only the richest of the rich go there and Evita is there. though her casita was not nearly as extravagant as some. I have a lot of other cool pictures from there but I haven't gone through them yet. more to come.

This weekend I'm going to Tandil with a bunch of local and non local couch surfers to go camping. there seems to be some sort of body of water that you can at least kayak in. can't wait.

well, Argentina

the rain finally left and it has been magnificently sunny the past couple days. I sat in a park all day and ended up meeting some friends. everybody cool I meet is real into heavy metal which kind of sucks cause I don't really want to go to heavy metal boliches... not that that would exist. but I don't know. they are cool. some of them go to UBA which is the best school in Argentina and also free. some of them are just musicians and I think they said that they play some sort of gypsy rock. one of them plays some instrument that was kind of like a sitar.. but not. I'm not sure. and they are all vegans. I cannot imagine being a vegan in this country. but it gives me hope, even though I have pretty much given up on being a vegetarian here. I could definitely do it if I wanted to, I am just kind of addicted to these ham and cheese tostadas at school. I started classes... nothing too exciting to say about that. I still have one more week where attendance doesn't count and we can go sit in whatever classes that we want, so I will probably test out a few more. my schedule right now is just Cultura y Tradiciones de Argentina, Ética, Tango: La Expresión de Buenos Aires (Danza y Teoría) y Gramática de Español Profundizada B. all of those classes are with international students and I would like to take at least one with regular Argentines. I sat in on the history of political movements and it was cool but it was 30 pages of reading for each class, which would be near impossible in Spanish. Anyway here are a few photos from today. the white balance was ridiculous because it's so sunny. oh, what a difficult life.

Baños

Here is a delayed update of my pictures from Ecuador. they're all in Baños. Borat mustache man included.