que tengo que hacer to get these takeovers to stop!?!?!

que tengo que hacer (what do i have to do.....to get these takeovers to stop!?!?!): forgive the daddy yankee reference, but you might as well get used to them, im just trying to spread my reggaeton love. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHgnebZ_jYo. deal with it  :)

as the title suggests, the student takeovers at the various UBA campuses completed their second consecutive week on friday and god knows how long the protests could potentially last. for the past week, i have literally not stopped thinking about everything that is going on right now in buenos aires in terms of public education, both at the high school and university level. despite the school seizures, early tuesday morning i had to trek over to one of the university buildings to turn in a midterm essay. enormous posters still covered every wall, classrooms were still barred, and desks were still arranged in small circles in the hallways and on the outdoor patio. we anthropology students congregated in the hallway and waited for our professors to arrive. when they did, we chaotically turned in our exams and then listened to the professors speak about the estudiantada situation.

well, i listened anyway.

at first, the two professors respectfully tried to share their opinions and encourage students to rethink their unnecessarily extreme methods of protest (a totally legitimate request), but were almost immediately cut off and interrupted by a variety of radical students. students were literally shouting in the hallways and the poor professors had to raise their own voices simply to maintain order and let themselves be heard. whereas during the first week of the tomas i found the whole thing entertaining and new and interesting, this time around i was disappointed and offended and embarrassed by the obnoxious behavior of a lot of my fellow students, whose radicalism clouded any sense of decency and good judgement. to be honest, the whole thing was seriously off-putting.

the professors' main message for us students was that, unlike some of the other UBA teachers, they would not be continuing classes in the hallways and streets because, from their perspective, educating and learning requires a particular atmosphere, like a closed room without distractions and access to a white board for example. they encouraged students to stop halting the entire school system....in response to this, several students claimed that the professors themselves were the ones halting the school system because of their refusal to carry on with "public classes for a public education" in the streets like some of the other teachers. the students were actually casting the teachers as the enemies. if anything, the teachers are  the victims of this whole saga in the fact that they are barred from adequately doing their jobs and having the type of learning environment they desire. i was pretty shocked: these are smart students who attend one of the most prestigious schools in latin america...and yet their logic was totally OUT. OF. WHACK. the teachers have nothing to do with anything dealing with funds or facilities, and yet they were consistently portrayed as the problem, a skewed and unfair image the students fabricated to justify their continuation of the tomas. at that point, i began to think that the students are protesting just for the sake of protesting, creating drama just for drama's sake. i couldn't help but think about my old la puma days.

i've been pretty bitter and disillusioned about this whole toma situation, primarily because i just don't see the validity of the students arguments nor the validity of their chosen methods. let's rethink our priorities here, people: does a dumb request for a common dining hall justify shutting down school for a solid two weeks (perhaps more, we'll see what happens on monday)?? do students have the authority to demand better facilities and working environments when the reason why the facilities are in such shitty conditions is precisely because of how poorly the students have cared for them?? their logic is contradictory and paradoxical, and i'm getting kinda sick of it.

as if tuesday morning hadn't already been political and heated enough, later that afternoon i went to a political rally-party-festival taking place in a small concert stadium. when i first ascended from the depths of the train station, i sincerely thought i was at a protest, and not a celebration. different political groups were littering the streets, aggressively waving their flags, banging on giant drums, and shouting chants together. we managed to somehow nab some tickets from the various ushers that were handing them out (free tickets to enter, but only a limited amount because of the seat availability). i was able to reach above the masses, pushing and shoving to get tickets, and catch the eye of the guy handing them out....perhaps the one time where being a blond "scandinavian ogre" really comes in handy!! when i managed to get a couple however, people swarmed me trying to snatch them away and i thought i might get trampled in the process. totally crazy!!

the political fever inside the venue as everyone waited for the president and ex-president to take the stage overwhelmingly outdid the soccer fever i witnessed at the argentina vs spain match, which definitely says something pretty powerful about argentines' involvement and investment in their civic reality.

"la juventud peronista"  who helped sponsored the event 

the president herself (no big deal).....
i was football throwing distance away!! 

after an entertaining drum show and some other musical performance leading up to the main event, president kirchner and her husband nestor kirchner, the president from the last term, entered to the screams of thousands of riled-up argentines. miss kirchner spoke for about twenty minutes about the importance of education, the middle class, freedom of press, and the various advances her administration has made in the past few years. perhaps the most interesting part of the speech for me was the reappearance of the word historia. again and again and again, the president made references to moments in argentina's history that had shaped the argentina of today--from the military dictatorships of the sixties and seventies to the more recent economic crisis of 2001.  whereas the political discourses in the united states revolve almost entirely around talk of the future and the tomorrow, in argentina you often find the opposite. here, the past is deeply ingrained in the argentine mentality and collective identity, something you could easily witness both in kirchner's speech and the audience's fiery reactions to video footage of corrupt leaders from decades ago. still not entirely sure what to think of the president and her peronism politics, but experiencing the passion and energy of her biggest fans sure is interesting. later in the evening at dinner, i asked my host family what they thought of cristina and my sister's answer pretty much finalized the subject: "we hate her". end of story!! sooo i guess i know where my argentine family stands on the matter!! as for me, not sure yet but i'll let yall know when i do. so basically, i'm wiped after all this insane political-ness!! whoever said georgetown is a political environment should really get their ass down to argentina and see what's up.

the power couple of argentina (ie, beauty and the beast)  

i look wayyy less overwhelmed than i actually was