The End of an Era

The parks here in this city are incredibly underrated. They are few and far in between, but when you stumble on them they are absolutely phenomenal. My local oasis, Parque Centenario, is a circular park right in the middle of town. It has everything, from a soccer field to a skate park to a merry-go-round (Argentines seem to have an obsession with merry-go-rounds, as I see them just about everywhere there is 50 square feet of open space, including the equivalent of the national mall) to an amphitheater to a lake. With ducks. Going to a park is the best way to get a perfect cross-reference of the population of the city. You have your families having a picnic, couples taking a stroll, jugglers and other performance arts people practicing their trade, friends sharing a mate, and several people playing various tunes on the guitar. Don't forget the local entrepreneurs trying to make a mango (buck is to dollar as mango is to peso) by selling superpanchos and ice-cream. When you stop to look around you on a busy day (just about every day the sun is out), the diversity of what's surrounding you is pretty astounding.

Multiply that by a factor of about 10 on the day of the census. A few days ago Argentina took its bi-centennial count of its population, and it was probably the most boring holiday out of them all. Everyone is asked to remain in their homes until one of several-hundred-thousand census workers come around their homes and ask the usual census questions. The entire country is closed from 8pm the night before until 8pm the day-of. Everyone is off of work, but with nowhere to go since everything is closed. I wondered what everyone would do, because those that gave their name and number early in the day couldn't just sit at home all day, this being the social capital of the world that it is. Answer: Parque Centenario. I got there early in the day since all classes were cancelled, and it was pretty empty. I looked up what felt like five minutes later, and I couldn't see the grass. It was a sea of guitar-players, mate drinkers, and guys over 65 in nothing but a speedo trying to get a tan.

The day was not all fun & games for most, however. Néstor Kirchner, the ex-president and husband of the current president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, passed away that morning. He was quite a polarizing figure, but it didn't seem so that day. Just about everyone I saw or talked to was sorry to see him go. That was before the conservatives came out of the woodwork; a lot of them were actually happy to see him go. It seemed a little twisted and wrong to hear people talk about being happy that someone died, but they take their politics seriously here. Let the record show that exit polls, with 75% reporting, are showing that 99% of the students at UCA (Universidad Católica Argentina) don't care too much for Néstor.

That night a couple of us went against all common sense and decided to head to Plaza de Mayo to see the manifestaciones championing the political agenda and accomplishments of Mr. Kirchner. The subway itself was quite the experience, with people banging on windows and singing patriotic songs all the way into the center of town. It got to such a point that the subway operator gave up stopping at every stop and simply went straight to plaza de mayo. Popping up onto the street brought me face to face with just about every political activist in the city, which means just about everybody. I would say that every political group was represented there, with a multitude of flags, banners, drums, clapping, singing and yelling filling the night air. It was wall-to-wall people down each of the three main avenues leading away from the Plaza. We worked our way over to the barricade in front of la Casa Rosada, which was covered in messages to Cristina and Néstor. People had climbed up just about everything there is to climb. When they opened the barricade to let people in to start lining up to see Néstor lie in state the next morning starting at 8am (we got there at 8:30, so these people were going to wait almost 12 hours), it was like a stand-by free-for-all at the United Customer Relations desk. We retreated back to the border of the plaza, spent a few more minutes observing the gongshow before calling it a night before things had the opportunity to get really out of hand.

The next day was even more out of control. People were lining up in what I later found out was a 7-hour line to see Néstor at la Casa. The line probably went for about 10 blocks, winding down several streets. There were so many political parties and groups marching down la Avenida de Mayo it seemed as if a revolution was around the corner. For all I know, there was. When you cancel the league football matches for the weekend, that's going to cause some problems, no matter what the reason. As I walked down the street I couldn't help but notice all of the posters saying 'Fuerza Cristina!' (Strength, Cristina) or 'Néstor con Perón, Cristina con el pueblo' (Néstor with Perón, Cristina with the people). If they could mobilize the same effort that put the hundreds of thousands of posters up in one night to tackle some of the other city problems, like maybe collecting dog poop, this city would have an even brighter and glorious future than the one it already has.

All in all, the whole experience was pretty amazing. The closest thing I've ever seen in terms of scale of a public reaction to something political was the inauguration of President Obama. Even then, I feel like the porteños took it to a whole other level. It remains to be seen where Argentina will go from here, though. Mr. Kirchner was a key part of Cristina's administration; he was often called the power broker behind the government, the one who made the wheels turn and who kept this oft-politically unstable country together. All I can say is whoever raises the minimum height for restaurant awnings will have my vote.