manifestación
After some stilted and half-hearted haggling, I bought some computer speakers yesterday so that I would finally have some music in my house. As I walked home with them, wondering if they would work (I bought the floor model), I found myself walking through a protest march. Suddenly I could hardly have belonged less on that street – the American with his new technological gadget.
As usual, I didn’t know what the exact focus of the protest was and I couldn’t figure it out from the signs, but I could guess the basic idea. My friend Karina, who is tutoring me in Spanish while I help her with English, says disparate groups often march together, expressing a common sentiment of frustration. Last week, for example, she and her Greenpeace chapter were to join with the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo to march on Congress. At first this seemed a little ridiculous to me, but apparently it’s the way things are done here.
Back in my apartment, I set about plugging in my speakers and for a few minutes forgot about the protestors, who hadn't struck me as unusual. But just as I got Ketchup playing, I heard pounding drums from the street below and looked down to see a massive group (what’s the word? A pack? a clutter? a charge? a casual stampede?) of protestors coming down San Martin and turning onto Córdoba. Another protest took the same route a few days ago (see photo in my apartment blog), so maybe this is a standard protest route.
The protestors were mostly younger middle-aged people, and the march seemed to be composed of several separate groups. Each group had its own team of 20-year-oldish men with big sticks and bandanas whose job it was to block traffic. When the end of their group came, they were replaced by the next team of streetblockers and took off at a jog for the next intersection, tag-team style.
Some of these teams of traffic-stoppers allowed cars to turn from Córdoba onto Sarmiento and some didn’t, but even when some vehicles were allowed to turn the traffic jam stayed terrible. I counted eleven buses stuck in the short block between San Martin and Reconquista. The air smelled like diesel exhaust 12 stories up. Taxi drivers got tired of waiting and left their cars to chat with each other.
After watching marches in New York, what I found most striking was the absence of policemen. I don’t believe I saw a single officer from my apartment window. Maybe the police department has decided that marches will be more peaceful if they stay away? Or maybe were all stationed at the political centers?
It seems like protests here have become such a normal part of life that they are treated casually by all involved. Yesterday, most of the marchers walked quietly, although here and there was somebody with a megaphone or a group of people with drums. The overall atmosphere was quite peaceful. Nobody – spectator or marcher – seemed alarmed.
Many of the large-seeming protests I’ve seen over the past month haven’t even been noted in the news, so I wondered whether this large stream of people would somehow pass under the media’s radar screen. It was comforting to see the marchers on the cover of some papers today. Clarín (the most widely-read paper, and also owner of a TV station and a radio station which report the same news) suggested that 10,000 people had attended, but other estimates were higher. All I know is that a steady stream of marchers passed in front of me for an hour. It seemed like an awfully large number of people.
By reading the paper, I learned that the march was largely composed of retirees/pensioners and unemployed people. As spokesman for the marchers, Clarín interviewed a man from the Movimiento Indepentiente de Jubilados y Desocupados. (Jubilados are retired people. I have to guess the Desocupados are unemployed people; my dictionary lists few of the words I see on protest signs.) They seemed to be protesting their fixed wages and also the expected increases in public utility costs mandated by the IMF. The march began at 10 in the morning at the Congress, and traveled to the Plaza del Mayo by way of the Ministry of Labor. After arriving at the Casa Rosada, the marchers traversed the big avenues of the City.
The last marcher passed my house at 4:20 in the afternoon.
previously there was big
afterwards you have Castellano
Seriously though, are people from the states seen as responsible for any of the hardships these citizens endure? [submitted on 09 Nov 02]
People don't presume that US citizens support the current American government. I think they understand what it's like to have a government that doesn't represent their viewpoint.
Clinton appears to have been very popular. As a woman I work with told me: "everybody here is Democrat." People ask me what Clinton is doing now and how his wife is doing. [submitted on 11 Nov 02]