Last week, my program office closed for the day and warned us to stay away from the Plaza de Mayo and center of town because a rally was planned, and all sorts of rumors and predictions, from revolutions to brawls involving thousands, had been prophesized. So, naturally, we all headed straight for the center of the action.
While everyone in the United States is well into their summer vacations, I am finishing up the semester in Buenos Aires. I have been very neglectful in posting (sorry Lydia!), but now that political tensions are soaring again, I bring you an incomplete and inexpert assessment of the situation.
Political turbulence has been brewing since Easter, when the campos (farms) went on strike in response to a proposed export tax, designed to reduce inflation and provide more affordable food to Argentines. Since then, protestors have blocked off roads periodically to prevent the transport of food, huge amounts of which have gone bad and been thrown out, in a country where a significant portion of the population goes hungry. At the beginning of the conflict, grocery stores in Buenos Aires were eerily empty, although, now, food shortages have not been a problem in the capitol. After Semana Santa, the supporters of the campos first took to the Plaza de Mayo, the location of the government buildings and a historic sight for demonstrations and political addresses.
Attracted by the excitement and noise, several friends and I headed down to the plaza to join the fun. Feeling that supporting the poor farmers was surely a noble cause, I banged my pots and pans with enthusiasm. After learning more about the conflict, I grew less sure about which side was correct. Although the campos evoke images of struggling farmers, the majority are actually large corporations, who have benefited greatly from the world food market, incidentally, helping pull Argentina out of it’s financial crisis.
Tension has been simmering ever since. Last week, an incident of physical violence prompted a renewed series of blockades by campos workers, which in turn, caused Cristina Kirchner, la presidente, to address the country and organize a pro-government rally.
Fresh from watching documentaries about the protests following the economic crisis in 2001, I was expecting, if not the chaos and police brutality of that time, a little conflict and danger. However, (fortunately, I guess, because I do love Buenos Aires and would never want anyone to get hurt) the proceedings were relatively tame. More people than I have ever seen in one place filled the streets, waving banners and setting off firecrackers with alarming enthusiasm. The demographic of the people present was very different from the usual makeup of Buenos Aires. The government supporters had overwhelmingly darker complexions and appeared to be less economically well off, two characteristics that all too often go hand-in-hand in Bs As, as well as in much of the rest of the world.
I’ve heard many rumors from various professors, host parents, and others that many of these people were paid to come out and publicly demonstrate support for the government. One of my friends swears that she saw people handing passengers cash and a sandwich as they disembarked from a bus that had come from one of the provinces. Most of the participants I witnessed seemed genuinely enthusiastic, but I am unwilling to rule out either the possibility of bribery on the government’s behalf or conspiracy mongering by the campos.
After much parading and revelry in the streets, the President gave a speech that was focused primarily on the need for cooperation and nonviolent conflict resolution. Although her speech did not contain much substance, it seems to have been well received by a great deal of Porteños, even though Cristina’s favorability polls are currently hovering around Bush-esque numbers. (I am curious what the reaction would be if Bush tried to hold a pro-government parade in the United States). No solutions have emerged to the conflict yet, and whether this protest will truly help unify the deeply divided citizens remains to be seen, but at least there wasn’t a revolution. Yet.

“Take me out to the opera
Take me out with the crowd
Find me a seat at the Opera House
I don’t care if its Mozart or Strauss…”

I attended an event on Friday at AT&T park, the stadium where the Giants play in San Francisco, and felt like I was living in a developer’s artist rendering. I can imagine (have, unfortunately not done the research) that the stadium and the surrounding stores, businesses, office towers, and housing (what they call “mixed uses” in the biz) were planned and built around public transportation hubs in an attempt to create a good, vibrant neighborhood of yuppies’ apartments with some feel-good affordable units, a place where people would come for the entertainment at the stadium and stay for the food and retail outside. If my speculations are correct, the free simulcast opera presentation I saw at the stadium was that urban planner’s dream fully realized.

We took Muni and walked along the housing and retail corridor to the park, where literally thousands had gathered to watch Lucia di Lamermoor on the panoramic jumbotron. The actual opera was being presented in the San Francisco Opera House. It was free, but hundreds lined up at the concession stands for the overpriced garlic fries. I didn’t make up the above lyrics, either — a news anchor from the local station led us all in song during intermission, (um, the 7th inning stretch?)

Lest you think I’m being too cynical about this experience, I’ll have you know I had a great time. The outfield’s plush grass was a patchwork of picnics and the many of the bleachers were packed. Every now and then, you’d hear someone murmur a plot detail to a friend who had fallen down on subtitle-reading duties. The sun was setting as the plot became more somber. The cooing couples and young families lounging on the grass were definitely a change from the park’s usual beer-guzzling clientele. But of course, being in the stadium meant we didn’t have to follow the rules of an opera house.

“Don’t do it, Lucia!” someone shouted, as the protagonist signed the marriage license that sealed her awful fate.

California California California. It makes me want to belt out all of those songs about sunshine and beaches and highways and “will you take me as I am?” Here in Berkeley, the cars really do stop at street-corners waiting for pedestrians to cross, the ex-hippies really do congregate on Telegraph Avenue to spout out 9-11 conspiracy theories, and the farmer’s market is the place to be on Saturday mornings. The organic, locally grown fruit is fresh, but the air off the Bay is even fresher – in fact, I’d say it’s close to chilly, which for all of you suffering through that East Coast heat wave might sound like relief, but really just makes me not want to go out at night. Aliza and I are still getting our bearings out here, so I don’t have too much to say yet.

For this, I would like to post on Quito, just one more time.

I had forgotten to share with Off Broadway readership (hey Lydia, haha) that one of my last days out there I took a little trip to the Palacio de Carondelet, the equivalent of the Whitehouse in Ecuador. President Correa, whom I’ve written about a little bit on this blog, was the first president to allow tours of the Palacio, in an effort to institute his widely-known and very catchy campaign slogan, which has become the message of his communications staff: la patria ya es de todos. Painted on walls in small towns and cities throughout Ecuador and broadcasted in catchy radio jingles, this phrase more or less communicates the idea “of the people, by the people, for the people.” The focus group-tested line helped Correa spread the word about his platform – increased government transparency and a bureaucracy based more on merit than on who your brother-in-law is (see the post I wrote a few months ago about why the last president was sacked for some more context).

Like Obama, Correa was the “change candidate,” the guy who hoped to shatter the system of the past developed to benefit the right-wing partidocracia for something more democratic. My final project this semester was in part, about assessing his and his party’s progress on this goal within the Asamblea Constituyente he commissioned to rewrite the country’s constitution. I looked more specifically at the way the indigenous movement’s proposal, plurinacionalidad, was being treated by this new government body, and I came to fairly ambivalent conclusions. I think most people have about a similar “wait and see” attitude about Correa, and they don’t have to wait much longer – his assembly has only another month to deliver the goods.

But back to my tour of Carondelet. For one of the most tangible symbols of Correa’s goal to make government more transparent, the free palace tour was pretty hokey. They took our photo at the start (and printed it out to make a nice little recuerdo so we’d remember that the Carondelet ya es de todos), and then took us briskly into a few of the rooms upstairs, pointing out architectural features.

I didn’t get too much insight into how the Correa government works from this tour, as doors to functioning offices were closed. The guide did, however, demur at each glass case of gifts Correa has received from foreign dignitaries in his travels around the world. He boasted that Correa is the only president in the country’s history to proclaim these gifts the property of the Ecuadorian people – most presidents tend to hoard them away.

Recuerdo in hand as I walked back into the Plaza Grande, I felt the tour was really without much substance. But then I reconsidered. Such gestures – opening up the presidential palace and allowing Ecuadorians to ooh and ah over the shiny things inside – are necessary steps in the larger goal of making government more responsive to citizens, steps that I may take for granted.

But these steps are only meaningful if they are accompanied by legitimate shifts in policy. I guess we’ll have an answer to that question in July.

So tonight is my second to last night in South Africa. Like Sara mentioned, we’ll both still be blogging here over the summer, along with some new kids (if you want to post something from where you are, just let us know!). Meanwhile, rather than something long and ponderous, I thought I’d finish up here with some lists.

Things I’ll miss about Cape Town
- rotis
- minibuses
- Table Mountain
- Wind/rain/sun
- Cheap fruit
- Avocado season
- Victorian cottages
- Gigantic bugs
- Headlines on telephone poles
- Intense papers, low-key finals
- Students walking barefoot
- Good wine and being old enough to drink it
- People from all over the world in your classes
- Always having somewhere new to visit
- A society constantly moving forward and struggling with its contradictions
- Ibises and guinea fowl
- not understanding what everyone is saying around me

Things I miss about the States
- not having to look over your shoulder constantly
- public transportation
- bandwidth
- understanding what everyone is saying around me
- fitting in
- a decent student newspaper
- my family
- the New York Times in print
- iced coffee
- social mobility
- living on campus
- front yards you can see from the street
- biking everywhere
- permanence
- hummus and tofu
- Brooklyn
- Bwog
- 24 hour libraries, grocery stores
- having responsibility

Things I’ll be bringing with me from Cape Town to the States
- taking notes by hand
- biltong, hot sauce, and Coke light
- feet in really bad shape
- skype
- fearlessness
- knowledge of [what racism looks like] [how the world sees America] [how to write papers]

Yes, that sticker says “Chief Invigilator.”

Possibly the best thing about academics at UCT, for me at least, has been the complete lack of tests—no quizzes, no midterms, just one cumulative, two-hour final. It’s not to be taken lightly, for in good British form, it usually comprises about half of your grade. But compared to the three-hour ordeals I’m used to back at home, this feels like winning in a walk.

Perhaps because the exam is so high-stakes in terms of grades (for those whose marks matter; I just have to pass), professors give you every possible chance to do well. In my four humanities classes, we were given between five and 14 topics, from which we only have to pick two or three questions to answer—doing the math, you only really have to study a fraction of the stuff covered. In the exam overview, professors often warned us to make sure we “answer the question,” and in one case cautioned against using “SMS speak” in our essays (r u joking? Lol).

Consolidation week (reading week to you, Columbians), consequently, has been gloriously low-key. The library has longer hours, but fewer people. Nobody camps out, eats dinner, covers their study space with sticky notes, or lines the table with empty cans of Red Bull. People go home at normal hours to have normal evenings with friends the night before exams. On the one hand, it all feels more healthy, more functional, like school is supposed to be. On the other, I miss the solidarity of shared misery, the sympathetic glances towards those still with tests to go, the unmitigated joy when everyone is finished. School has ended, it seems, with a whimper.

So I’m back in New York City.

After a highly cliche flight to Miami from Quito — we were delayed on the runway while someone’s suitcase was investigated by narco cops with sniffing Labradors — and a night in a Miami hotel, I arrived at my dad’s apartment on East 68th Street. I still feel like New York is a dream I have conjured up from my bed at my host family’s house in Los Chillos. Today I stumbled around the city streets, tempted to say “qué le vaya bien” to all of the store clerks I encountered, and confused as to why the M72 bus didn’t just stop midblock to let me on. I haven’t done much processing or reflecting on the last three and a half months. I don’t even know where to start.

So I’ll start with some images. Below are some of the pictures I took when I climbed the Basilica (Quito’s most Gothic-looking church) with Eric, Yonit, and Diego during my last few days.

Just last night, I was saying to my housemate that it’s strange I haven’t been mugged yet. Nothing stolen, even. No crime whatsoever–and it’s not like I’ve been hiding at home for five months.

Today, ready to run after after an early morning exam, I decided to deviate from my typical routes through the leafy suburbs and go towards town on Main Road–broad daylight, lots of people around, nothing to be afraid of. On my way back, passing by a corner, a guy knocked me down out of nowhere and grabbed my iPod, so fast that I barely remember what happened. I shrieked and scratched at his eyes, but he was gone in a flash, running down a side street with a gang of boys. Rather than afraid or shocked, I mostly just felt angry, and screamed expletives at the departing youths.

I knew I’d passed a police station on the way, and so ran there and asked where I could report a robbery–apparently people get stuff back sometimes if the offender is picked up for some other reason. Unfathomably, they must have had better things to do than help white girls stripped of their expensive electronic equipment. After being directed to various desks by different people in uniforms and waiting for about a half an hour, I gave up and left.

What do I have to say about this? Not much, I guess, aside from the fact that it’s going to be hard to go without my podcasts until I find a replacement. The other letdown, though, is that my feeling of invulnerability has disappeared. I can no longer say, “South Africa? Yeah, don’t worry about it, all the warnings are just paranoia.”

In other words, I’m just like everyone else.

A few days ago, I visited a mosque for something that shouldn’t have happened. On Friday, I visited another mosque for something that happens every week: a call to prayer.

It was a strange scene: 12 mostly white American girls, fiddling with multicolored scarves, wrapping them around their heads in some semblance of Islamic modesty. We’d just finished our Religion, Gender, and Sexuality final, and our hip young teacher offered to take the curious to services at a mosque right in the middle of the busy shopping district of Claremont. Being white, female, and rather obviously American, I knew that waltzing into a mosque on my own would be a much harder thing for me personally than popping into a church I didn’t belong to, as I’ve done whenever I need to rest my feet during the course of travels all over the world. So, with the anonymity of numbers, I kneeled on the floor with my pasty compatriots, and tried to look as penitent as possible.

Claremont is not your average mosque. In 1994, noted scholar Amina Wadud led the Friday prayer, causing a hubbub in the more conservative Muslim communities of the comparatively liberal Cape. It’s also one of the few mosques to allow women to sit on the main floor with men, separated only by a nylon airplane partition. The atmosphere felt very open, with construction workers coming in off the street to attend services during their lunch break alongside well-groomed professionals in slacks, the sound of traffic audible in the background. Afterwards, the imam explained that Claremont attracts people who like its progressive slant–for those who want their religion old-timey, there’s another mosque further down the road.

In some ways, the service felt like the Rosh Hashanah shindig regular shabbat I’d been to a few months ago. A few old ladies sat in the back chatting, knowing no one was going to tell them to be quiet. There was a lot of chanting in a language I didn’t understand, and people in long dark robes. But this one felt more concentrated, somehow. The imam’s sermon focused on unity of the umma, or Muslim people, and the injunction was clearly replicated in miniature in the synchronized bowing and standing of hundreds of people in neat rows, their movements quick and sure, made supple by repetition. At the end, when a woman grasped my hand and kissed me on both cheeks, I felt like I’d just gotten out of a movie; it had that same feeling of the lights turning on after a mesmerizing, otherwordly experience.

The whole time, I was sort of distracted by a little girl a few women over, happily coloring while her striking, black-swathed mother listened to the sermon, occasionally attending to her daughter with a sense of love and pride. When it came time for the group prayer exercise, she produced a black scarf for the girl to wear, and they bowed and stood in unison. I learned later that the woman was a UCT academic whose work we had read for class, now clearly practicing Islam and feminism with no discernable incongruity.

I think her daughter will grow up to be extraordinary.

Several days ago, I briefly made note of the xenophobic violence that has swept the country in the last few weeks. This morning, I went out to check up on the consequences–thousands of immigrants taking refuge in churches and mosques from threats, violence, and intimidation in their communities. It’s beyond comprehension.

“How many people do you have today?”

“Two more busloads coming, ok.”

“Any victims of violence?”

“Two stabbings, one burning, got it.”

At the sites we visited to gather data for relief efforts run by SHAWCO, the Treatment Action Campaign, and dozens of other civic organizations, things actually seemed to be under control. In numbers ranging from 17 at one church to over 200 at a nearby mosque, the displaced Mozambicans, Congolese, Zimbabweans, and Somalis quietly lunched on bread and beans, or slept on one of the thin mats laid out in long rows. The calm atmosphere, however, belies a paralyzing set of circumstances: many had had their homes destroyed, friends and relatives attacked, money and possessions lost–leaving them without the means to even flee back to their home countries, which they often left for similar reasons. Everyone talks about re-integrating them back into normal life, especially the white Presbyterian church we visited, which emphasized the dangers of dependence and the need to reclaim a sense of “self-worth.” But when you hear about one church in the cushy southern suburbs getting attacked by an angry mob after being inundated by refugees who fled violence in the townships, where do you go? While of the refugees had braved public transportation to go to their jobs, many more are still shut inside walled compounds, afraid to be foreign even in this most cosmopolitan of cities.

Urban refugee situations are hard to deal with because they’re so hard to keep track of, as new sites keep mushrooming and disappearing again when people move around. Right now, the political leadership is bickering over whether to keep people in the small community-run sites or to consolidate them into larger groups, which can apparently not be called refugee camps. I can see the argument for both sides: on the one hand, faith-based groups are ideally equipped to support people for temporary periods, since most congregations are only too eager to donate stuff and time. On the other, it’s a lot easier to deliver services that churches can’t provide if you don’t have to drive around finding them all day. Either way, it’s a dreadful, dehumanizing business.

NB: Because we were on a fact-finding mission, I gathered that taking pictures would have been a no-no. I stole this photo, which looks a lot like what I saw, from Agence France-Presse.

I decided to begin my post-program trip up the coast in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest and most populous city, because I didn’t really get a good look at it the first time around. I also wanted to see how the other half lives: this country is very regionalistic, and over the last few weeks, I’ve become a little too attached to the sierra for my own personal standards of objectivity.

What I’ve realized from wandering around today is that Jaime Nebot, the mayor of this port city on the River Guayas, is a self-promoter. And part of me says he has reason to be. During his tenure, state and private funds transformed the depressed boardwalk into the gorgeous Malecón 2000, a park with museums, theaters, and restaurants that snakes along the estuary. Visiting today with my Columbia buddy, Eric Hirsch and a friend who participated in SIT’s Peru program with him, I just gawked at just how green, clean, and well-maintained it all looked.

We continued into Santa Ana, a barrio built into a large hill overlooking the water. This spot was once one of the most dangerous in the city, a place where cops wouldn’t even dare to patrol as its winding streets and dark alleys providing safe haven for ladrones. Today, it is a polished tourist destination, thanks to mayoral intitiatives. Stone steps wind through cafes, bars, stores, and cement homes painted a rainbow of bright colors, informational signs and security guards are positioned every few hundred yards, every so often on the route up the hill, there is a garden, plaza, or playground. (Photos to come, I’m writing this from our hostel). I didn’t get a chance to really talk to the people of the town and the streets did seem a little dead on this random Monday afternoon, but I can imagine they appreciate the renovation. Nebot isn’t shy about letting people know who did the deed. His name is practically on every castiron lamppost.

But Guayaquil is a city of extremes. While the city’s elites (the king of banana exports, and the richest man in Ecuador, Alvaro Noboa) live like the wealthiest people in Miami Beach, the Guasmos slums at the southern end of the city are home to some of the country’s poorest. Every few weeks, there are reports (more in El Comercio, Quito’s daily, than in Guayaquil’s paper, which is a big Nebot fan) about the city’s failure to collect the trash in many neighborhoods on time. Plastic bags of refuse just pile up on the sides of the roads. It’s an uneven place that, in this respect, can really stand in for most Latin American cities. Wikipedia has also written some about how Nebot’s gentrification plan was modeled after Giuliani’s in New York, and about the sometimes excessive force used by police to keep street vendors out of the Malecòn.

Even still, most Guayaquileños love Nebot. He’s continued the city’s age old quest to cecede from the country, the argument being, they make all of the country’s money, yet officials in Quito get to spend it. He has been in a well-publicized war with President Correa to get the city more respect (the serrana in me wants to say: as if the city doesn’t get enough respect already). But I think his positive public image here is due more to how flashy and impressive his projects are. And the fact that his name is always on a gold-plated plaque somewhere.