Llueve en Buenos Aires

It's been raining in Buenos Aires for more than a week now which apparently the city can't handle -- there's flooding and power outages all over the city (and there were even 2 tornadoes on Sunday!). And of course it's worse in La Matanza where many streets of the dirt streets are impassable some schools, which were supposed to open on Monday, still haven't opened.

The news here, when not talking about the rain/flooding, is mostly focused on the conflict between Colombia and Venezuela/Ecuador and Cristina's attempts to negotiate a peaceful solution (she's just met with Correa and Chavez).

And I've taken the time to finally put up some pictures from the last couple of months.

Support the Kindergarten CIEL

We're still trying to raise money for the Kindergarten for the upcoming school year -- below is a summary of the fundraising letter and a link to donate money online:

The Movement of Unemployed Workers (MTD for Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados) of La Matanza emerged in the mid 1990s as part of a national movement in response to increasing unemployment, high inflation and continued neoliberal policies of the Menem government. The MTDs were an alternative to traditional union movements that were (and still are) highly corrupted and represented some of the most vulnerable sectors of society. In an attempt to tranquilize this increasingly powerful movement, the government began offering small unemployment subsidies of 150 pesos a month (Plan Jefes y Jefas de Hogar). The MTD La Matanza, unlike most other MTDs, decided not to accept these small subsidies arguing that they did nothing to solve the deeper problems of unemployment and poverty.

In 2001, the MTD La Matanza occupied an abandoned building in the locality of Lafererre in La Matanza and soon afterwards opened CEFoCC - Center for Education and the Formation of Comunitarian Culture (Centro para la Educación y Formación de Cultura Comunitaria). Today CEFoCC consists of 3 departments: a productive department containing a bakery, a textile workshop and a publishing editorial, an educational department consisting of the Kindergarten CIEL, a literacy program and English, theater, and computer classes, and a community service department which includes, among other services, mirco-crediting and free legal counseling.

This is taken directly from the fundraising pitch regarding the Kindergarten CIEL (Crecer Imaginando En Libertad):

The kindergarten was opened for the first time in 2004 with the goal of creating an alternative education that can show the children of the neighbourhood that a different and better future is possible. Through working values such as fellowship, liberty, solidarity and work, the kindergarten hopes to improve the living conditions of the children. One of the main focuses is the topic of work in order to show the children that dignified work can help them to live a better life. The kindergarten is free but requires that a parent participates in a weekly meeting where the parents, along with the teachers, plan and closely follow the children’s development in the kindergarten. Today the kindergarten has 50 children between 3 and 5 years old in two separate classrooms. At this point it has funding for teaching materials and the midday meal. The classrooms are equipped and ready for use. What is missing however is the teachers’ salaries which are absolutely necessary for the kindergarten to run as planned.

You can make tax-deductible donations online through Help Argentina

The Trelew Trials

the basic story:

On August 22, 1972, 16 leftist guerrillas were murdered as they were being held in a military base in Trelew (Patagonia, Argentina) after attempting an escape from the nearby prison in Rawson. The 15th of August there was a massive break-out of the political prisoners from Rawson in which leaders from the FAR (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias), ERP (Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo) and Montoneros managed to escape to Chile and later Cuba. Another 19 of the prisoners were caught and sent to the military base in Trelew where days later they were machiene gunned in their cells. Alberto Camps, Mary Berger and Ricardo Haidar survived the attack and reported the crime.

Recently the court has issued orders for the arrest of various military officials involved in the massacre -- Paccagnini Ruben and Emilio Del Real were arrested earlier in February. A few days ago Carlos Marandino turned himself in to the Argentine Embassy in the United States. Página 12 recently located another one of the wanted officers -- Roberto Guillermo Bravo in Tampa, FL where he has been living for much of the past 30 years as the head of RGB Group. He put his house up for sale shortly before federal judge Hugo Sastre released the order requesting his international capture from Interpol and has been on the run for the last 10 days.

Link to the original Página 12 article

a link to a post i wrote for rulablog.

Link to the Impunity watch blog post about the reopening of the Trelew trials.

Se terminan las vaciones

i'm back after some long vacations. in december my family came for las fiestas and we traveled south to ushuaia ("famous" as the "southernmost city in the world"). there were penguins, sea lions, sled dogs, lakes, glaciers, etc. very pretty but very touristy, expensive and english-speaking. the interesting historical facts are the (former) presence of an indigenous group that went without clothes despite the cold, wet weather and the former prison that housed various serial killers and political prisoners (including simón radowitzky). exciting for me was seeing the end of la ruta nacional 3 -- i spend so much time on the first 30ish kms of...

the rest of vacations included visits from friends from the u.s. and a short trip to the coast with the folks from la matanza which was, of course, a blast. sometime, if i have time i might add more photos... andá a esperar...

La Matanza: sidra y pan dulce!

December is always one of my favorite months in Buenos Aires and the last couple of days in La Matanza reminded me why -- hours of fairly repetitive (yet fun) work of painting boxes or pasting stickers on boxes or equally exciting tasks are always interrupted by parties and sidra!!

Tuesday was the birthday of 3 compañero/as -- Walter, Sara and Mariel so logically we all stopped working around 6 to eat cake and toast to the cumpleañeros. The break from painting boxes for pan dulces was definitely appreciated.

Wednesday was the graduation ceremony for the kindergarten where we handed out diplomas to all the graduating students and gifts to everyone (all the kids, their parents, the teachers, all the folks who help in the cooperative) and toasted to a successful year with (guess what!) more sidra!

And now it's back to pan dulces a ful. The project is a continuation of a project that started last year with the chef Maru Botanu (she's famous -- has her own TV show!) who gave the MTD her pan dulce recipe and some extra publicity. The pan dulces are made in the panadería there in La Juanita, under the watchful eye of the head chef Abel, by young men (most are about 18-19 years old) many of whom have been in trouble with drugs and alcohol in the past. So besides making delicious pan dulces, the project helps get these kids involved in something positive and hopefully teaches them useful skills. Folks at the cooperative are really strict about keeping an eye on these kids and making sure they don't abuse drugs/alcohol while they're working there and so far it seems to be having an effect... (and did I mention the pan dulces are delicious!)

La Asunción

From the inauguration of la presidenta Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner on Monday.
As far as anyone can tell, Cristina's elections means much of the same, for example the Economic Emergency law was repassed giving the President more power to handle economic decisions and continuing the jefes y jefas program. We're still friendly with Chavéz, not so friendly with the IMF and getting into petty squabbles with Uruguay. In fact, the biggest difference the news media has seemed to pick up on so far is how different Kristina's every day schedule will be from that of her husband -- she starts work early, eats little and doesn't take a siesta -- woah, maybe a woman president will get more things done?!

Some of the larger labor unions were present at the Inauguration (but notably not the CGT), some piqueteros and a few other social movements/organizations. A group of piqueteros actually organized a march for today to ensure that the Kirchner administration continues to listen to their demands and not to take their support for granted -- so maybe these movements haven't completely lost everything yet! The music was of course largely cumbia with a some rock and folklore, because Cristina is, of course, de la gente and re cumbiera.

un poco de justicia

The big news from yesterday: Catholic priest Christian von Wernich was sentenced to life in prison for his role in assasinations and tortures during the dictatorship. He was found guilty of involvement ("co-authorship") of 7 murders, 31 cases of torture and 42 kidnappings. It was the first conviction of someone from the Catholic Church in relationship to crimes committed during the military dictatorship and is important demonstration of the Church's complicity in the torture and murder of 30,000 people. (Hugo tells me as I write this that in some masses, priests even blessed the instruments of torture). Von Wernich served as the police chaplain of the Buenos Aires police during the dictatorship and was often present at torture sessions using his role as priest to try to extract "confessions" from torture victims. The Church still denies any official involvment in the acts of state terrorism carried out by the dictatorship, maintaining that some individuals were involved of their own personal accord (umm yeah right).

I watched the sentencing hearing on TV which was intense -- von Wernich's lawyers asked for his absolution and von Wernich himself spoke, quoting the Bible and speaking of "false witnesses". The courtroom was full of family members of victims, Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and other human rights activists. At one point the hearing was interupted for a bomb threat. The judge announced the sentence around 7:30 to a display of fireworks (I really good fireworks display which I wonder who organized/paid for?) and the cheers of hundreds of protesters outside. Although in many ways it is too little, too late, it is still good to see that some justice is being carried out. But as one of the prosecution lawyers said -- there are still a lot more trials that need to happen and we are still missing Jorge Julio Lopez.


the story from pagina 12 explains everything better than I could