If the sun is shining in Buenos Aires, then there must be a strike. On this day of protests I went out for an afternoon walk to see what the proleteriat was up to. Walking down Callao I ran across a small group of protests on the corner of Corrientes. It was about a dozen hospital workers.

I could tell from the lack of traffic on this normally very busy thoroughfare that Callao must be blocked somewhere. Looking down the street I saw a very large group with about a dozen banners, if not more. Then I heard the distinctive sound of the drum line that marches in front of most demonstrations.

This group, la Asociación Trabajadores del Estado (ATE), stretched for several blocks and must have numbered around a thousand people. I walked swiftly to get to the front of the group as they neared the Congreso. A flatbed truck with loudspeakers and photographers drove slowly in front of the worker´s association.

Seeing the group turn at the Congreso, I knew that they were heading the Plaza de Mayo. Walking ahead I beat the group to the Plaza for a nice view of them marching down Av de Mayo with the Congreso behind.

Since Thursday afternoon is Madres´ day in the Plaza, the group lined up on the side on the Plaza on calle Yrigoyen. As the group entered this area I saw another small group starting to march in front of them and carrying a banner that said Teatro Colon. My reaction was “What?! Why is the opera house upset?”

I guess it was a show of solidarity. Members of the Teatro Colon orchestra climbed onto the flatbed truck and played the Argentine national anthem. Actually it was a nice gesture with members of the crowd singing along and the Argentine flag being waved around. The orchestra finished and went on with their day, but the workers stayed for about an hour and gave a dozen or so speeches, using the word compañero incessantly.

Employees of all the banks in Argentina went on strike today. With the exception of one small scuffle with the Police in front of the Casa Rosada, this was a mild demonstration by Argentine standards. Afterall, how radical can bankers be? The employees are calling for banks to respect the 7.5 hour working day and a 30% wage increase. The strike was scheduled only to last for one day.

Okay, so maybe that is a little dramatic but the high school students here are definitely asserting their political influences on issues important to them. (Wouldn´t it be nice if high schools in the U.S. were a little political?)

Two days ago the students at Escuela Normal Sarmiento returned to school, accompanied by Argentine Nobel Peace Laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel. The students had vowed to take 50 schools if the repairs to the building did not begin within two days. Today, two days later, several schools were taken, including one just down the street from me on Av Cordoba. Student protest erupted at almost a dozen schools around the city.

Rather than attend classes at one school, the students staged a rally on the street in front of the school.

Several recent events have led to this educational crisis. In April a piece of a ceiling collapsed onto one student. Earlier this month dozens of rats were found in another school. The protests are led by the student body presidents of the schools. This past weekend delegates from different schools met to plan today´s protests.

On Friday the students plan to march to Plaza de Mayo. I´ll be there, update tomorrow.

Over at the BANewcomers list has been a discussion about whether a lot of the locals in Buenos Aires go to psychologists, as is stated in one of the guidebooks. I was surprised to see people on this list who hadn’t encountered the psychological fixation that drive so many Porteños.

Here’s what I posted to the list:

Almost every Porteño I know goes to a therapist and there seems to be no stigma about it as there is in the U.S. But it does seem to be a phenomenon particular to Buenos Aires and not to the rest of Argentina.

I asked my Argentine girlfriend about her perspective on therapy and Porteños and she replied, “It’s what we are.”

I got rather interested in this topic a couple of years ago and found a detailed book titled “Freud in the Pampas: The Emergence and Development of Pyschoanalytic Culture in Argentina” by Mariano Ben Plotkin. It’s a rather dry, academic text but does trace the history and background of the topic quite well. Most psychoanalysts here are followers of Freud and Lacan, which is very different from the U.S.

One theory for the prominence of psychoanalysis here is the rootless nature of the immigrant society that has built Buenos Aires yet so often looks back to Europe for its identity. Of course that gets into the squishy nature of the subconscious but it seems that pscyhoanalysis here is seen as a process for understanding life itself as much as for coping with a specific problem.

While the kids were protesting at the school (see previous post), a more violent skirmish was taking place a few blocks away near the Justice building as people started fighting hand-to-hand with police in riot gear. The incident was over the upcoming release of Omar Chaban, who has been in jail for months due to the December 30, 2004 fire at his nightclub that killed 193 people. Chaban will be released from jail, pending trial, as soon as he pays the $500,000 pesos bail that was set today.

The setting of the bail ignited fury among the parents of those who died in the fire. Windows were shattered as fathers and brothers of the dead confronted the police. The incident was shown live this afternoon on Buenos Aires TV as the violence escalated. Tensions were obviously very high as, in what must be an unusual tactic, the riot police climbed into their armored vehicles and rode away to safety; as the vehicles went down the street, families of the victims ran along side kicking the sides of the trucks.

In a country where justice against those who are wealthy and politically powerful often are freed by a seemingly less than fair judicial system, the families of the victims fear that this is just another indication that justice for the 193 who died in the fire will never be delivered.

So proclaimed (in Spanish) the handwritten sign taped to the gates of the Escuela Normal Sarmiento on Av Callao. Starting Wednesday, students took over the high school in a demand for improvements to the school’s buildings, which the students say have deteriorated to dangerous conditions. For the past two days, students have partially blocked Av Callao, one of the main downtown thoroughfares.

Since the school is located within walking distance of where I live, I decided to go over there and have a look for myself. Last night, students slept in the school and are still blocking access to the building. Numerous handwritten signs and banners are posted all over the front of the building. The building itself, from the exterior is quite attractive though I don’t doubt the bad conditions on the inside. Indeed, it makes me wonder about the conditions of schools that don’t look so good from the outside; they much be deplorable. School buildings in Buenos Aires are in bad shape. Last night, a TV program did a segment on the horrible conditions of a school in Quilmes (a suburb of BsAs). Yet, the Buenos Aires government seems not willing to acknowledge that there is any problem with the buildings and are calling the student protestors liars (even though the students have invited TV news crews inside the building on Callao to document the conditions).

Today, a couple of TV stations were posted in front of the school. I hung around for a while and watched as student leaders came out and spoke to the reporters and then went back inside.

To keep the students under control, a very large police presence was lined up across Av Callao. I estimated about 50 cops were there, about a dozen in riot gear and another squad of riot cops were sitting in a bus that was waiting on the street. I doubt if the students were going to get violent, but I guess that the police just wanted to make sure that nothing got out of hand.

I actually admire these young teenagers for taking a stand. It’s good to see that the next generation of Argentines has developed a social conscience and is willing to speak against the government.

As if to dramatize the economic conditions, more than 3,500 women – all between the ages of 40& 60 – lined up in Recoleta Tuesday to apply for 40 openings at a new movie theater.

My first question was why only women 40-60? It was because the ad actually specified women (sexo femenino) from 40 to 60. The application form itself was titled Mamas, Tias, & Abuelas. Obviously, sex and age discrimination are alive and well in Argentina. (more…)

There is no better way to understand the hardship facing Argentina than by examining the pay that people receive for a day´s work. In the northwestern town of Salta, a provincial capital, the public school teachers have been on strike for seven weekss demanding an increase in pay. The government is sticking by its offer of 300 pesos a month. The teachers union has asked for an increase to 700 pesos as the minimum monthly wage. The protests have been massive, yet the government hasn´t swayed.

How little is 300 pesos a month? The exchange rate is roughly 2.90 pesos to the dollar. So, it´s shocking to think that teachers (on whom the future of any society depends) make no more than $100 US dollars a month. While Salta is a remote city of 500,000 at the base of the Andes, that wage is not sufficient for anyone, much less a family.

Within Buenos Aires the situation is not any better. Many people work twelve hour days just to earn $8 dollars. A recent radio program discussed the lack of quality of higher education in Argentina and attirbuted it partly to the low wages of college professors (along with the huge open enrollments that overwhelm the resources of any university). A professor at the University of Buenos Aires can expect to earn $900 pesos (around $300 a month).

Throughout the country workers are striking for higher wages while inflation continues to rise and threatens to grow out of control. For the first three months in 2005, inflation was 4%; annual inflation for the entire year is now expected to be in double digits, despite the government´s forecast that inflation in 2005 would be only 8%. The government now fears that increased wages will only fuel higher prices, which is likely so but how long can this situation continue? The current government is very popular and no clear (and likely to succeed) rivals are on the horizong, but this is a condition in which the populace will not tolerate forever.

And those teachers in Salta? After 7 weeks of striking, they have dropped their demands for an increase beyond $300 pesos. They must have reluctantly faced the choice that anything is better than nothing.