My favorite times in Buenos Aires are Sunday mornings. I just sat in an outdoor cafe for about 2 hours, read some, people watched (probably fifty yellow labs strolled by), and enjoyed how quiet such normally loud place can be. If you can´t tell, I´m showing how I´m not a city boy at all. But Sunday mornings are wonderful.
Before I go with some friends to la Boca, a working class neighborhood with a few cool streets filled with brightly painted buildings and random tango performances, I thought i´d put some more favorites online.
1. Wednesday afternoon meeting with a spokesperson for the Abuelas de Plaza del Mayo. This group of grandmothers of Argentines who were ¨disappeared by the 1976-1983 military regime is still going strong in their 30th year. We heard a really amazing story of how this woman´s son and daughter in law were kidnapped and their baby stolen to give to a pro-military family. After 22 years, the Abuelas used dna evidence to show that this 22 year old was her grandson. What an impossible situation for the guy, who now had to come to grips with the fact that his ´parents´were actually criminals. The grandson and his abuela now, finally, are beginning to have a good relationship. She was so old, but so passionate and kind to us.
2. Thursday tour of Morón. This 300,000 person suburb of BA elected a 29 year old mayor in 1999, then re-elected him in 2003. He demanded open bidding for all city contracts instead of the usual back room deals for services like garbage pick-up, which used to take up 30% of the municipal budget. He cut $4 million (like 12 million pesos) on the new deal and so the city now has funds for improvements like parks and roads. The Wall Street Journal did a feature on the city, though I´m having difficulty finding it in English anywhere online. let me know if you stumble across it because I´d love to read it. Anyway--- I´m going back there all next wek to study effective states for my ´field study´portion of the class. Wonderful place with a governing team thats young and very committed to doing things the right way.
3. Lunch with Carey Beth! She´s been studying here since February and we had a great lunch at a hole in the wall in palermo. My steak was less than $3. Wow. Good to see a UVa friend in Argentina!
Ok- keep writing me email because I love to get them. Also, check out my friend´s blog. She´s much better about updating it than I am:
walycealmeida.blogspot.com
-dz
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