Entre Rios and Voting

Last weekend I was lucky enough to have my host family offer to take me with them to go to another province of Argentina (provinces are similar to states), Entre Rios, so they could vote and visit family. Though it's only about 3 hours away from the busy city we live in, it was like a whole different world. My host mom's family all lives in or around the city of Concepcion de Uruguay, which is really quite lovely if you get the chance. 

The most striking thing when we first pulled into town was that it felt like a different country completely. The trees were different, the houses were built totally differently, side roads were made just of dirt. Unlike Buenos Aires, which has a very New York vibe to it, this place looked like nothing I had ever seen before. Which quite frankly, is probably why I enjoyed it so much. 

Roque, our dog enjoying the indoor courtyard.

One of the first things anyone from Argentina will tell you about Buenos Aires is that it's not what Argentina is like. It's like the equivalent of going to New York and assuming that, that is what the rest of the US is like. No one place can embody the complete essence of a country, but I believe the rural areas can give you a better idea of the culture. 

I remember being confused when I got here at the hustle in bustle of the city and the lack of siesta time that I had always heard about in Latin culture. Well, turns out that the rest of the country does do that! In Concepcion everything, I mean everything except restaurants closed at about 1pm and didn't open back up until 4pm. Banks close at 1pm and don't open back up till the next day! The pace of life here was much slower and much more what I had been expecting to see in South America. 

The reason we were in Entre Rios was not only so my host parents could vote, but was also because it was my host sister Sofy's 13th birthday! Because of this we had a huge party that lasted the whole day basically and involved all of my host mom's 6 sibling family and cousins and family friends, all speaking in Spanish and trying to feed me more sweets. I swear that I ate my body weight in sugar from all the tartas and macaroons and cake. 

The party was One Direction themed!

While getting to meet everyone was great (I'm the first student they ever took there, so yay me!) but it was also exhausting. My brain was trying so hard to keep up with all the Spanish and when I did understand, by the time I had thought up a response it was past that conversation. Also, it's just really intimidating to try and speak a second language (poorly) to a large group of people. But luckily, they were all very understanding and loved using the 2 or 3 words of English they did know to me. 

On Sunday, we went to vote in the senate primaries because the use the schools for the voting polls, voting always happens on Sunday in Argentina. At first it seemed relatively normal, people lined up in their sections got a paper ballot which they took into an empty classroom to fill out. Then they dropped it into a box. The part that threw me off was when I noticed the large amounts of police and military men around, and the unsettling observation that the military guys were holding what looked like older model machine guns...

Now before you freak out (MOM), I asked my host parents about this pretty scary sight. My host father is pretty high up in the military and let me in on a secret. The guns were fake, they just used them as a scare tactic to keep people in order. In reality, Argentina's army was much too poor to actually afford that. Though I felt relieved, I was still a bit uneasy knowing that they felt the need to scare people with machine guns. 

Political graffiti, basically saying that Hugo Chavez lives in all of Latin American and then it says go Victoria, which is the current president's party. Her and Chavez were tight. I thought this was super interesting. 

As the primary results were announced I discovered something else different about Argentina's fledging democracy (only 40 years old), versus ours. There aren't any real competing parties, at least no significant leaders. Here they have Peronists and Federalists, but each of those parties is divided into at least 6 different subsections which seems to make getting anything down pretty difficult. I'll explain in further detail in a separate post but basically, even though it's a democracy people generally think the government is corrupt. In their defense, they have an awful long history of dictatorships and military rule to back up their concerns. But I'll get more into that later!

Overall, I think that if you visit a country you have to see multiple cities to really get a feel for what that country actually is like. Otherwise, you've only touched the tip of the iceberg!

F Word and Oil Spills

Tonight, when I walked into the kitchen to eat desert I was shocked to hear the Lily Allen song, F*** You playing on the television. Running across the screen was pictures of the shows viewers giving the finger, adults and children alike. While all this is happening, keep in mind that my host sisters that are 8 and 12 are both sitting in the kitchen not even noticing.

I was a little taken back by it all. Even though the use of profanity isn't particularly immoral or terrible for me to listen to, it was the fact that it was playing on regular programming at 10PM on a Sunday. It was just one of those, I don't think I'm in the United States anymore moments.

The host of Periodismo Para Todos

I asked my mom about the show, called Periodismo Para Todos (which means Journalism for All), and she said that for most Argentinians the f word wasn't that bad because they generally had no understanding of what it meant. To them, it's like saying damn rather than something generally offensive to most people.

After I got over the fact that the show's logo was a hand flipping the bird I starting actually watching and found out that it was really awesome. The talk show is on every Sunday night and the host investigates corruption and the truth behind what is really happening in Argentina with the government and other related organizations. In fact, it's a highly respected program and not just a lunatic with conspiracy theories.

Tonight's show was about Chevron/Texaco's impact in Ecuador because they are beginning to drill here in Argentina, and the host wanted to show what possibly could happen here. Though it was all in Spanish I could understand enough and see enough of the visuals to see that it was showing the Amazon river, thick with petroleum. It was absolutely disgusting. Imagine when you see the oil filled puddles on the road, except blown up into country wide proportions.

But seriously, this is awful. Source

All I could think about was how even in Argentina, they are willing to recognize and talk about the damaging effects these US companies are having on the rest of the world. Though we are perfectly within our right to discuss these atrocities on television, we don't. If a river in the United States was quite literally turned black with oil there would be an uproar.

In fact during the BP oil spill people were outraged! Yet, essentially the same thing is happening with Ecuador and we don't give a shit because it's out of sight out of mind.

I really respect the fact that people and newscasters in Argentina demand the truth and demand issues to be talked about. At least with my host family, they are anything but complacent. I really wish I could take some of that tenacity back to the US with me!

So this essentially turned into a minor rant but I think it's just a really interesting comparison between our country and the rest of the world. Also it's another reason living with a host family is great because you get to really understand the politics and social issues of the country. If you made it this far in this post than thank you!



Besos!
Hayley