And now for something completely different

DISCLAIMER:  I didn't take this photo. Sigh. It is, however, an image of one of the beaches within walking distance of my friend Ana's house.

It's summer here in South America, and all of the kids are out of school. Or at least they will be until about Wednesday. Carnival will be over, and people get to work. 

When I was in Buenos Aires, I kept thinking something looked different to me about the folks there and their kids. Finally, it dawned on me that there were no strollers. Everyone carried their children in their arms, on the street, on the bus, in the car, everywhere. Coming from New York, where you almost never see anyone with a child in their arms, this was actually a big change. It made me wonder:  is it better for the kids to be held all the time? Certainly it's not safer for them in cars, but I did wonder about everything else. If nothing else, I guess that it would build upper body strength in the parents.

On a different note, I've been in Florianopolis, Brazil for almost a week. Although Floripa doesn't have a Carnaval like Rio or Salvador, it is still a big deal here, and I've gone to a few events (complete with drums and dancing) in the neighborhood where I'm staying with my friend Ana. 

Today I got a late start to the beach, and, unfortunately, my skin is letting me know that it does not approve of such sloth. I'll just have to postpone my afternoon swimming and body boarding session until the sun is a bit less intense.

While I noticed the thing about carrying children in Argentina, here I've noticed women who are probably in their 60s wearing thong bikinis, or at least bikinis. Gut and all. I love it. I love it that regardless of age, women here are fine with showing their bodies. Since I've been doing a lot of water sports, I went shopping for a new, more robust suit, and I realized that I didn't want a one-piece because it really would make me look soooo old and prudish. Note to self:  must find one of those beach volley-type things.

Brazil apparently is the country with the most plastic surgery operations in the world, and I hear that eating disorders are an issue, too. So, clearly, this is not body image paradise. However, comparing this to the taboo on physicality in the US, particularly if one doesn't have a movie star's body, I have to say that I appreciate the fact that people with "normal" physiques show their stuff at the beach, too.

En la Pampa Argentina

Last weekend I traveled to Irazusta, a tiny town in the Province of Entrerios, about 3 hours North of Buenos Aires. It was like traveling back in time. The roads leading to Irazusta are dirt, and when it rains, they turn into mud. In fact, one of the problems that we had navigating them, although it was dry, were the deep furrows that had been created by trucks traveling on these roads when they were muddy. The bottom of the car was definitely not happy about those ridges of hardened mud.
The train travels through Irazusta twice a week. Only about 300 people live there, and, as you can imagine, everyone knows everyone.
Irazusta is one of the places where the train still travels after Menem privatized the Argentinean railroad in the 1990s. The country went from having 40,000 Km of rail lines to having about 8,000. One of the results was that many small towns like Irazusta simply disappeared because once their connection to the outside world was gone, the railway, they couldn´t survive.
It´s hard to imagine what people in Irazusta do for a living, but there is a local butcher who slaughters cattle that graze in the surrounding fields. There are also people who do light construction work. A few people have factory-style chicken farms, which are a stark contrast to the area´s old-fashioned pastoral scene. I saw a rooster and a couple of hens taking refuge from the sun in the shade of a bush by the side of the road on Saturday morning. What a different life from that of the chickens who never got to walk freely and who are pumped up with antibiotics and hormones.
Making a living is a big issue in the area, and not just for people from Irazusta. As a result, many people who own tracts of farm land are renting those tracts to large companies that use them to plant soybeans. The last census reported that 17 million hectares in Argentina are being cultivated for soy beans. The majority of this is shipped abroad for use as animal fodder or other products.
While farming soy allows smaller landholders to earn something from their property, the cultivation requires immense areas without trees or other vegetation. It´s no surprise then that flooding and landslides have become an issue in different parts of the country. Last week, in fact, one of the main news stories in Argentina were the flooding and mudslides that had taken out a large chunk of an area called Tartagal, in the Northern province of Salta, which borders Paraguay and Bolivia. Roughly 60 people died, not to mention all the destruction to the land, like the loss of topsoil. The same thing happened in this province last year, so people aren´t holding their breathes for "La Presidenta", Christina Kirchner, to do something that will produce a substantial change.
Again, the issue comes down to money. Soy creates a cash crop for Argentina, and people need the money. Renting 6 hectares of land for soy cultivation will bring in the equivalent of the minimum government pension. Obviously, the more land someone has to rent, the more money they can make, with no capital investment.
What will happen to Argentineans, though, if the soy market crashes, or if the crops are destroyed? The country no longer produces the food that it needs to be self-sufficient, an irony for a country known for its gauchos and rural life.

Che!

Many people in Latin America consider Argentineans to be stuck up. The other night, Hector, Luisa's boyfriend told a joke about how an Argentinean commits suicide: he climbs to the top of his ego and hurls himself off.

Here I am in a Southern suburb of Buenos Aires called Avellaneda. It's been 6 years since I've been here, and I'd forgotten how much of a developing country Argentina really is. On Saturday night, some people broke into the factory downstairs from my friends' apartment and stole whatever money was there. They pulled up some of the tin roof tiles and got in that way.
Another reminder of "development" is dysfunctionality. There are protests going on right now because the taxes on gas, water and electricity have gone up tremendously, but the increase depends on how much you use. So, if you have a family with a couple of kids, you could be looking at a 200% increase in your payment, whereas if you are just one person, the increase would probably only be around 8 or 9%.
My friend, Luisa, has been an activist here since she was a teenager. In fact, her father sent her away from home at one point so that she wouldn´t be taken away by the dictatorship because of her organizing in school. These days, she is working in one of the slums on the edge of Buenos Aires, in addition to teaching disabled children and organizing with indigenous communities in the North of the country. (For those of you who read
Spanish, see: http://indoafroamerica.blogspot.com/) The good news today is that one of the indigenous leaders that Luisa is working with has managed to get the money for 4 tickets to Cuba. These tickets will go to 4 young people from the indigenous community so that they can study medicine. Once they arrive in Cuba, all their needs will be taken care of, but they have to get themselves there. Over the last 5 years, Luisa and her group have sent 16 young men and women. Once they finish their studies they'll return to help their communities, which are poor and marginalized, often not even having the rights to their own land.

Personally, I'm fine. I finished reading "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," and I'm on to "Motherless Brooklyn". I think that I'm going to look for work that allows me to combine social issues with the arts. Another thing that I'm consider is spending just a few weeks in Brazil and going to New Orleans for a couple of months to do community/arts activities there.
This weekend, Luisa, her partner, Hector, and I will go to visit Luisa's family in a region of Argentina called Entre Rios. We'll go hang out on the beach at the river there (it is summer here, after all), and maybe I'll get to ride some of the families horses. That's something I haven't done in eons.

Ticket to Bollywood

Here is the link to my latest video, a silly one about 5 minutes long about a white woman who discovers Bollywood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyriAuwQfU0