Between Two Seas

Am now in Santiago, Chile, after three days in Vina del Mar/Valparaiso, Chile. If we had enough internet access like we'd been promised, maybe this damn thing wouldn't be so long between updates.

I'll write about and backdate the previous days over this weekend, though. I remember clearly enough. Nothing much happened today beyond class and visiting the Santiago court, but aside from watching the opening statements of a robbery case (not unlike opening statements of the same in the United States), there wasn't much interesting or striking about it.

I did have my first real iced tea in two weeks, though! My classmates, being interesting in their dinner choices (read: not at all) decided to go to Ruby Tuesday's in the mall (!!!) so everyone had to spend way too much money. Thanks, guys. But at least there was iced tea.

Once we get to Vina again, not only should I have better internet access, but it's only one more week until the homestay, and I intend to blog every day about that.

We did this yesterday. I have needed a day to process, for obvious reasons, so I held off on commenting about it. It was very interesting, to say the least.

We drove up to (Rio de) La Plata, the capital of Buenos Aires province. It's a smaller city, and much less touristy. On the way there we passed probably thousands of little huts that looked like cardboard boxes used to look after my dog was done chewing on them. Shantytowns abound just at the perimeter of Buenos Aires, but we hadn't directly driven past them until now. People were up on rooftops because that was the only place that they could go to get a little fresh air, I guess, or living quarters away from other people. The whole area looked like shit. It's a harsh way to say it, but entirely true.

Once we were clear of the shantytowns, we went to La Plata. The city seemed to be organized around a central park, much the way I would imagine Buenos Aires used to be. On the way there, Jorge, the guy who had lectured to us on Friday and who would be our translator at the prison, pointed out that La Plata was never a real city. It was one of those artificially designed cities, sort of like Washington DC, and very new. It had been built at least a few decades after Buenos Aires first became really big in the middle of the nineteenth century.

While in La Plata, we picked up Carolina, who works for the human rights organization there and who would be our non-English-speaking guide through the prison. Her friend spoke some English, but Jorge was more fluent. (And I forgot her friend's name.) One thing I did notice was that, as they were not Portenos (another term for Buenos Aires people, as they're near a port), Carolina and her friend both were much darker-skinned than Jorge. I wonder what the racial mixture is like further out in the country, although Ignacio, who lives in Mendoza in the far west, is very fair-skinned.

Done with that, we went to Olmos Prison. I have a single picture of it (obviously, we could not take pictures inside the prison) that I will post when I get back to the States and/or to Chile and have the chance to post more pictures (we're heading to Uruguay tomorrow, and we fly out on Saturday, so things are pretty jam-packed for the next few days.)

Olmos was built a good hundred years ago, from the looks of it. To get across an initial idea of how execrable the conditions are inside the prison: Until a year and a half ago, there was no hot water inside the prison. Until a year ago, the four spokes of the wheel-shaped prison that have glass in the windows didn't have glass; they were just open spaces in the shape of windows. Two spokes of the prison - a third of it - are still without glass.

The guards took our passports, and we initially went around the prison's outside, touring the soccer field, hospital, kitchen, and some of the workshops and classrooms that serve as reform facilities. While we were walking, Carolina and her friend asked a lot of questions in Spanish of the prisoners; they work in human rights law, after all, and wanted to make sure that the prisoners were treated fairly by Argentine standards. As we were soon to find out, those honestly weren't much standards at all.

The first thing I noticed: Everywhere we went, the walls were in disrepair. Big, gaping holes of unfinished concrete, or places where the paint had chipped away. Electric fences around the gardens inside the prisons with signs saying 'No pisar.' (No trespassing, not 'no pissing' as I first guessed.) Not that the prison looked that great outside - but if you can imagine, say, a prison in deepest Mississippi in the US on the outside, stuff you hear about on MSNBC - this was about five orders of magnitude more evil-looking on the inside.


And then we went inside the jail itself.

So today was the big shopping day.

At first we went to Tigre, an open-air market where we only had 30 minutes to shop. I wish we'd had more, as I'll bet there was some nice stuff that I didn't get to see.

All the same, I got a handmade alpaca scarf, white, with small brown stripes for only $10 (25 pesos). It's very soft and fuzzy.

At San Telmo, where I was before, I shopped a little more. I got four mate drinkers (two matching hand-decorated ones for my parents, one bigger one for my cat-sitter, and one hand-hammered one in silver for me), a small little piece of pottery (honey jar) that's brown with a blue bloom on it, like my mom likes, also for my parents, and matching silver rings for my mom and myself. I also bought two CDs from a really good swing/jazz duo of guitarists. All of this cost about $60. In case it's not obvious, things in Argentina are very cheap.

That done, I had a hot chocolate at the cafe across the street and came back here. I'm now watching Penn & Teller's Bullshit! which airs on basic cable here - the last one was about germs and school violence and other things we scare ourselves with; this one is about hypnosis.

Pam just came in and went out, finding a cafe to read as I am watching TV. That's good. Maybe I'll get some writing done.

Today, we went to Prof. Santiago LeGarre's estancia, or ranch, and had an asado, a traditional Argentine barbecue. It was primarily meat and bread - chorizo, chicken for Pam (as she's picky and doesn't like steak), steak, and blood sausage which looked too forbidding even for me to try (the Argentine professor's telling us that even he didn't like that stuff sounded like assurance that I didn't actually have to try it, and wasn't missing much, so I didn't go near it. None of the Americans did, in my defense.)

There were four students of Prof. LeGarre's at Catholic University of Buenos Aires that were also there. They were very reserved and talked mainly in Spanish amongst themselves, but I did chat with two of the three guys for a little bit. Mainly, I listened, though - I tend to either be extremely outgoing or extremely reserved in social situations, depending on the timbre, and I didn't want to bore the Argentines, but wanted to fit in, so I stayed silent.

Prof. LeGarre is rich enough that he bought half of the old Las Rosas ranch. Las Rosas was one of the old families here in Argentina back when Argentina had money, and you can still see some evidence - just in the layout of the fields - how very big the ranch must have been. Now, LeGarre owns half and his best friend owns the other half. If my count is correct, ten people - LeGarre, his parents, his sister and her husband and two little girls, his brother, and two servants - live in the place.

Having domestic help there that you weren't supposed to speak to was weird. I would not be comfortable living in that situation, as it seems very unequal. I managed to slip in a gracias or two and thought that was sufficient without burdening the maid.

LeGarre has a polo field and a full-fledged golf course on the grounds, and his estancia is comprised of five buildings, all but one of which are fully repaired (he bought them in disrepair). They're low-slung, and very Mediterranean-looking, and the field is very flat and looks like the Midwest (we were about an hour and a half outside of the city of Buenos Aires proper, although still in Buenos Aires province).

The meat was pretty tasty barbecued, although a little drier than I had expected. It was crackly, though, and that was good. My favorite was the little jam-filled pastries with flaky layers the consistency of baked phyllo dough. They're a traditional Argentine dessert, although I forget the name.

They also had proper mate, although I was only one of two out of the Americans to try it. It was in a little gourd, and passed around. I think I will try to get a gourd while I'm here. It should not be hard, as they sell them everywhere. After the mate, Ignacio brought out his guitar and gave us a little six-song, six-string concert while the sun was setting - it was really nice music, and the sunset was really pretty. All in all, a very nice day.

(We also went to see 'Senor Tango', a very Hollywood tango show, on Thursday, but besides the incredibly cheesy finale of 'Don't Cry for Me, Argentina' (complete with Argentine flags unfurling from the ceiling and glitter!), it wasn't really worth writing about, I thought. The music and dancers were very good, of course, but the whole thing was very glitzy and Vegas-y. With something called Senor Tango, you expect it to be, but still, not really worth an entry.)

Tomorrow, we go to Tigre, a big open-air marketplace just outside of Buenos Aires. Friday sucked (long story), but this weekend, at least, is turning out well.

So last night I was waiting about forty minutes for the boys to go out to eat at an Indian place, after I'd stressed that we needed to leave right away, and that things were packed. I had told them I was wearing my suit, and they refused to wear theirs, despite me pointing out that I had asked Prof. Santiago LeGarre where was a nice place to eat that I could wear my suit in.

So, forty minutes later, clad in T-shirts and jeans, they arrive, both looking like hell. I drag them across Avenue 9 de Julio and to this place on Avenales where, of course, they should have worn their suits.

Thanks to them, we look like total gringos entering the restaurant. Thanks to them, we sound like it too, because they refuse to use Spanish despite one of them knowing it with some fluency. They send out the poor English-speaking camerara (waitress) to deal with us, because of them, when I could have handled myself well enough.

Prof. LeGarre had given us a really expensive (for Argentina) place to eat at. The food was good, but it wasn't worth 250 pesos ($80) for three, including a bottle of wine that the boys shared and an appetizer for one of them. They both got expensive stuff - seafood of some ilk for one and lamb for the other - while I just had the $11 American dal makhani.

It was good, but again, not worth the bill, and not worth the boys. Why is it that none of my classmates refuse to at least try to fit in, refuse to experiment, refuse to learn the language, refuse to at least experience a new culture? Pam spends all her time studying (seriously, that girl is scary - home at 3p, studying 'til 9p, lights out at 10p when most of the restaurants have just opened, Buenos Aires being very much a night culture). The boys spend all their time sleeping in the hotel room. They're in their mid-20s to early 30s. Where's their sense of adventure?

I got the picture of Defensas Ave. that I wanted! Unfortunately, it's on my second disposable camera, so it'll be at least a few days before I get it up here.

Today was spent going to class - labor law is seemingly not as deadly as it sounds - and wandering around Plaza de Mayo again, taking pictures that I didn't get the first time.

I actually got asked for directions twice, which is a good sign - it means I'm blending in, and not looking like a tourist to people who are at least South American, if they're not Argentine or BuenAires (the term for people from Buenos Aires.)

The dark hair helps.

This internet cafe is nice. The hot chocolate is good and bitter. They offer azucar with it, sugar, but it tastes better without it.

Something that struck me at San Telmo both on Sunday and today (San Telmo is just to the side of the Plaza de Mayo) was the racial difference between the people walking on the streets and the people begging or selling stuff on them. The people walking on the streets are uniformly dressed well (a lot of leather coats!) and are white. Some even have blond hair! The people begging or selling stuff are at least moderately dark, if they aren't mestizo or fully native, and the difference kind of stands out.

There are a lot of posters around for right-wing political parties - one with striking black-on-yellow text that reads "for each attack, a poster", but there were also huge posters around Defensas proclaiming gracias for President Kirchner, who is a Peronist (and thus presumably left-leaning, despite the Peronists' historical adoration of nationalism). I wonder what the left-right split is in the country, although I'm sure that it's nothing like the split in America.

... namely, today, was taken up with classes and getting adjusted. As I had expected, there isn't much room to find a plug in the room; there's no wireless connection (of course) and the computer lab we were in after class has about ten computers for a college which is, I suspect, the size of Mt. Holyoke or Valparaiso - small, but not small enough that ten computers would be sufficient for American students.

I think I'll be doing all of my internet stuff at this internet cafe that Andy and I walked to today. It's almost easier to do it there than to mess around with doing it at the school, and it's close enough to the school that I would feel safe walking there.

The class was OK. Professor Bruch is nice, although the lecturer we had before her was doubly hard to hear - first, because of his heavy accent, and secondly, because the room echoed so badly you couldn't understand what he was saying. We have an Argentine kid - a full-fledged lawyer at 22, if memory serves - auditing the class alongside us, named Ignacio. I feel bad, because I didn't have a book, and he actually gave me his copy for free, although I offered to pay him money. He said he had the same book in Spanish, but I still felt bad for doing that.

We just had human rights law today. Tomorrow, we have both labor law and human rights law, and Wednesday, just human rights law again. We'll see which one I like better when the week is finished.

After my plane arrived a day and four hours late, I settled in yesterday to the hotel in BsAs (the common abbreviation for Buenos Aires). Staffed by a cadre of women who don't speak English all that well (though my Spanish is even worse), the hotel has shared rooms which have hideous flowered bedspreads, not a lot of plugs, and - apparently - free booze.

We spent the day wandering around Buenos Aires on a half-guided tour by a guy named Fernando who was animated and interesting, even if his English was not that great. We went to all different places, from La Boca - a small, artsy district that's also the poorest general area in the city - to the Ricoletto cemetery, the place where all the rich people got buried when they died.

There are stray cats and dogs everywhere, from the poor places to the rich places, and even the rich places here are nothing like rich places in America. Still, everyone seems to be more comfortable - maybe it's the places we went, but I don't think so. Even in La Boca, there aren't many homeless, or people asking for money.

We also visited one of the old houses which during the colonial era housed visitors in the front, rich people in the middle, and servants in the back, not unlike a Roman villa. Today, it's a kitschy little antique market.

We ate dinner very late, as is the custom here. We were finished at 12:15 at night, and it was delicious and paid for. Argentine food seems to be very fattening - a lot of meat and potatoes, and I had a pretty good bread pudding for dinner. I wonder if Chilean cuisine will be any different.

We haven't seen the Atlantic Ocean yet, only the river that heads into Buenos Aires - the most polluted river in the world, as Fernando told us.

Today, we went out to lunch at a small cafe across the street, and I had my first empanadas - little pastie-type pastries filled with corn and cheese, for the "humitas" version, and just cheese, for the "queso" version. I still have not found iced tea, and doubt they serve it here.

Done with that, we went to the San Telmo marketplace, which is a street antiques fair that goes on here every Sunday. There were a lot of street performers - some good musical groups, and one guy dancing with a dummy of a tango dancer (female) and doing a Buster Keaton-esque routine. He was quite talented, and it's interesting that he does that for money - in America, he could easily make it on Last Comic Standing or what have you, as his timing was that good.

The market also housed a really good tango couple, whose movements were spot on and expressions were priceless. Tango dancing is interesting. The women are much more aggressive in their movements than they might be in, say, a waltz, and go through the whole thing with a very stony, determined face. The woman is much more the leader of the dance than the man is. I wonder if that's something that sprang from a matrilineal society, as (I think) Argentina and most of Latin America is.

We also saw the Plaza de Mayo, the main plaza in BsAs, where you can still see the bullet holes from what is always called "the crisis" here. There were a lot of pigeons on the circle that the Mothers of the Disappeared walk around, and a lot of kids.

I missed taking a picture I wanted to take - a sign for Defensas Ave. on an old building, with a bunch of plaster falling off the building, so that it looks war-torn. It was facing a little artsy market on our way to San Telmo, and I tried to snap a picture of it, but the others were moving on. It was really striking, though, so I hope we make it back to that corner (I think it's the 800 block; it's one beyond the Plaza de Mayo).

Fortunately, there are also a lot of Argentine and Latin American tourists walking around BsAs, so we did not stick out as much as we might have. In fact, were it not for my roommate, I think I might not stick out at all. I have dark hair and dark eyes - they're blue, but you can't tell that immediately. Pam has strawberry-blond hair and light blue eyes, so she definitely sticks out. Worse, today she wore a shirt saying "Illinois College" with an American flag on it. She says she's never wearing the shirt again, and I can't blame her; in San Telmo and on the walk back here, she got a few wiseass remarks tossed her way.

After that, she and Andy sat around and drank wine, and I drank orange juice (I don't mind wine, but the stuff they had was far too dry for me), and we talked while I did reading for tomorrow. Now, we're sitting in the bedroom watching CSI: Miami with Spanish subtitles. The show is just as awful here as it is in the States, like that's a surprise. They just aired a commercial for David Caruso's godawful movie 'Jade,' too. I hope the Argentines aren't David Caruso fans like the Germans love (cue Norm McDonald) David Hasselhoff!

(For information about what this journal is and why it is up, please see my bio.)

It is the first full week of June, 2007, and I am seated on the leather sofa in the den of my parents' house. The retriever is asleep at my feet, and the cat is sitting outside, sunning herself on a chair. The TV is on, and my mom's favorite show (Trading Spaces, much to my endless chagrin) comes on in a few minutes.

Considering it's summer, it has been cold here throughout the past few days. It generally is a little colder in upstate New York than in other parts of the United States, so that isn't surprising. What's surprising is that where I am headed will be colder still.

In South America, winter has come. Maybe it's crazy to spend your summer vacation somewhere where summer is half a year away, but it's where I'm going. I'll be taking two classes there - International Human Rights and South American Labor Law - that I haven't got the readings for yet. They start next Monday. I fly down there on Thursday, so I have a few days to explore Buenos Aires, where we start. Classes will be from ten to two each day, and we'll have field trips to various places, with a heavy emphasis on Operation Condor-era history.

I read Isabel Allende my sophomore year of college, back in 2001. I wonder how much of that will be true for the places I'm going. Allende wrote The House of the Spirits the year after I was born. That publication was twenty-five years ago. Is the South America of today still as haunted by the ghosts of Pinochet and Videla?

I freely admit a lot of ignorance of South American history, so what I write might be stupid or ill-informed at the start of the trip. I can only hope that it won't be at the end of the trip.

Stay tuned.