Well, I am into the final countdown here. Only two more days of school - one a class with Martin, that I'd really like to skip, and the other our exam this Friday, which I'd also like to skip, but since I am taking classes to move up in salary (we teachers have to do everything we can to increase our salary), I probably will do both of these things. Bite the bullet, as they say.
I'm going to skip all of the details about lunch and how I got to school (even though a lot of people have mentioned they like knowing what I eat), and go straight to class.
It was an interesting class, even though I felt that a good teacher would have been able to take advantage of our desire to discuss today's topics.
Today was Daniel's turn to do something for us. He is studying Economics at the University of Chicago (why would someone study Economics?), so his theme that he was going to present was economics, and more specifically, what led up to the crash in 2001 here.
It was interesting and goes back to the last dictatorship (I've learned that people refer to it as the last one, because there have been others), and their mismanagement of the country, pocketing money for themselves, and also their neoliberal policies of free trade, which effectively eliminated much of Argentine industry.
There was a brief period of hyperinflation, which according to Claudia happened in a matter of minutes. She said her brother was going to make a deposit in the bank and picked up a sum of money somewhere (I didn't get that part) and that by the time he got to the bank, three blocks away, his money had been devalued. She said her roommate told her when she got home from school that day, that they couldn't even afford to buy chicken, and they both started to cry.
It was at that point that I asked if Kafka is popular here, because so many of these things seem to be taken straight out of a Kafka novel.
Anyway, the final nail in the coffin happened when Menem, the last president (well, sort of) pegged the peso to the dollar 1:1. It was valued falsely, but Argentines enjoyed a very high standard of living during those times, they could travel and Argentina was the most expensive place in South America to visit.
But the bottom fell out and the peso crashed. People started withdrawing money from the banks, but eventually the government put a stop to that, and no one could get their money. For many people, the money just disappeared and they lost everything they had in their savings.
It was all a very interesting topic, except that it was hard to tell where Daniel was coming from. It seemed to me like he was actually promoting the idea of free trade and neoliberalism and was implying that if there weren't any interference from the governments involved, that neoliberalism would bring prosperity. I asked him if there were any example of any country where neoliberalism brought prosperity, and he gave me a roundabout answer, that involved something about corporations having to pay taxes and governments taking their holdings. I mentioned that the "neoliberals" seem perfectly happy going to a country and taking land, water and other resources from other people, especially the poor and defenseless.
We ended up on this discussion topic for almost a full hour and half, and then we took our break. After our break, Claudia gave us our practice exam and we were going to do it in class, but Cynthia suggested we do it for homework. I then said I had some questions about Argentina.
Claudia went on a little tirade about how she tries to do things with us and we always make her go in another direction, which is completely not true, but in the Freirian view of education, would actually be what she should be doing. Then Daniel asked a question about mandatory education, which I thought was totally boring compared to the question I wanted to ask. I waited until that theme was exhausted and then I asked my question.
Why is it that in restaurants, there are never enough menus? If I go alone, I don't get a menu at all. If I go with another person, they bring one. If I go with four people they will bring three. Claudia said she had never experienced this because she doesn't go to restaurants alone (which was missing the point), but eventually she said that she thought it was an economic factor - that menus cost a lot to print and they are always changing them, and therefore there are not enough menus. I don't know if that is the real reason, but it was a satisfactory answer (of course, the solution would be to make cheaper menus and not these big fancy things that they have, but they are still trying to live like they did when they were living with the fantasy peso).
Related to that, I asked why there was no change. Claudia said that she was so surprised when she went to Europe the first time and they had change! It turns out that there has been no change here for so long, they think it's normal not to have change in stores! I just picked up my laundry and it cost 12.40 - I gave the woman 14 pesos, and guess what - no change! I then gave her 13 pesos and she was able to give me 60 centavos change. Very strange for businesses not to have change. Claudia said it was because the government doesn't print enough money (I think), but it was interesting to me that menus and change are somehow related.
Claudia then asked us some questions about the US and said that from the outside, people really wonder what is going on. For example, it appeared that there was no one in charge when Hurricane Katrina hit. She did not understand how that could happen that a government could not help its own people. Daniel said that was a mistake and it was embarrassing for us, but Nancy explained better that it was because the National Guard was in Iraq because there aren't enough soldiers and they were therefore unable to send them to New Orleans.
Claudia then mentioned that from the outside it seems highly possible that the attacks on September 11 were not caused by some outside source, but were in fact engineered from the inside. I know people are very skeptical of conspiracy theories, and I don't like to go there (even though I am more skeptical of the official story), but it is interesting that the view from abroad seems to suggest more that it was an inside job. We (well not me) just take it for granted that it was Al Qaeda and that the towers fell because of the airplanes, but in fact, there are a lot of people who are saying otherwise and apparently, outside of the US, those voices are being heard more clearly.
It was very interesting to see Claudia challenging Daniel especially, who is young and I imagine, from the things he said, is rather conservative and not very well informed.
What I realized from the discussion was that my questions about how a military government could have taken over here, how people were disappearing, the country was driven into ruin, and no one seemed to know what was going on or was able to stop it, is actually very similar to our situation in the US. With limited information, we are not getting the full story of what is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq, what happened on September 11, who is profiting from the war, and who is really running our government. People are more concerned about Paris Hilton or Brangelina than our staggering national debt. We could very well see our own economic crisis or see something resembling a dictatorship take over (remember McCarthy?), but people are so distracted, no one is paying attention. Having people ask me, "How could that happen?" is really good, because it is answering the same question I am asking here - "How could that happen?" When the question is posed to me about how such and such could happen in my own country, I understand better, how certain things were able to happen here.
When people are distracted, anything can happen.
I got a nice comment from someone named Kat - thanks Kat for reading my blog. I hope you have as much fun when you come here as I have had. In spite of my complaints about menus and no change, it really is a great place to visit and the menu and change shortage just add to the experience!
No comments:
Post a Comment