Seven Oaks Magazine.

Rachel Marcuse is currently working for The Working World, an economic democracy not-for-profit based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This is the first of several dispatches from her work and travel in South America.

After a long but uneventful 30-hour trip, I made it to Buenos Aires. I did get to stop in Atlanta and hear the Southern drawl live for the first time. The servers at the airport restaurant called people baby, sweetheart, honey, etc. which was quite enjoyable. There were about 300 soldiers going to an army base in Germany. (Do any other armies have bases all over the world like the US does?) This may not be particularly original, but I've decided that Americans are bigger than Canadians -- physically (obviously), but also in terms of gesture, speech, style. etc. While waiting at my gate, someone said "God Bless You" to me. I had forgotten about the God part.

Now in Buenos Aires, I´m working for an organization called The Working World (La Base in Spanish). This country has an incredibly complicated history that I´m delving deeper into with my work here. Although generally regarded as one of the most prosperous countries in South America, the beginning of the 21st century was tough for Argentina. At the end of 2001, the country experienced an unprecedented economic collapse. While the roots of the crisis were complex, what became quickly evident was that millions of Argentines were propelled into extreme poverty. Although the country is recovering and conditions are improving, about 34% of the population continues to live in poverty.

Skilled workers were hit particularly hard by the financial crisis. Many factories shut down after declaring bankruptcy, leaving many unemployed and forcing those already marginalized further to the fringe. Left without any means to support themselves or their families, many workers started to organize among themselves instead of waiting for a response from the government and private corporations; they took control of their working lives and kept their companies operating.

Now known as “fabricas recuperadas”, these recovered, worker-run factories -- although diverse -- value solidarity, and member needs. The Working World´s first project is here in Argentina, supporting worker-run factories and cooperatives (for more information, see www.theworkingworld.org).

On my second day I got to visit one of these recovered factories which makes snack food. I was a bit of a deer-in-headlights, standing and trying to smile and nod at the right times while straining so hard to understand the Spanish. The language barrier didn´t prove difficult, however, when I helped bag potato chips.

The portenos (BsAs city folk) are friendlier than the guidebooks say and the people in the provinces even more so. There is clearly a huge rural-urban divide, although the poverty is there in the affluent city, just a little harder to see with the luxury brands everywhere.

Western privilege certainly occupies an important place here, although the whiteness of the city is quite astonishing (I, the whitest person around, could be a porteno). Class seems like the biggest social cleavage. That being said, skin colour is certainly tied to class -- as with the caste/varna system in India. The models in advertisements tend to have very pale skin, as do the rich people.

Barbeque, Argentina-style

Now three weeks into my trip, I´ve been to three asados (traditional barbeques). This was where I ate cow intestine – pretty good for a former vegetarian, eh? (Beef is one of Argentina´s biggest exports and I’ve eaten it at nearly every meal). One asado was in Suarez, a “sketchy” suburb of BsAs, where one of the LaBase grassroots organizers, Lalo, lives. It was my third day and felt like a total dream. The family whipped out instruments and started singing after dinner. Another Asado was at a coop called Desde Del Pied, a recovered shoe factory. We ate with one of the worker’s whole family at a big table on the sidewalk. Desde Del Pied is in La Ferrere, a dusty town with lots of old beat up 1960s cars. Pablo, a shoemaker and dance teacher made me dance salsa with him!

After the first asasdo, we went to a rock’n roll discoteque. It’s a really strange subculture here – people dancing to rock and rockabilly while dressed like they’re from the 80s. I also ventured out to a hip hop club where a guy performed with an accordion (and a flute and a piano) on top of recorded beats. Hip hops’s really new here and portenos don’t seem to quite get it yet…The DJ was trying to layer beats that didn’t work at all together. Also, they projected movies of old school hip hop with black people dancing (of course there were only, like, 3 black people in the entire club).

The ubiquitous cat-calls

From my North American perspective, gender interactions are very different here. Although women get cat-called at every turn, those same men who catcall them are also somewhat likely to also listen intently to what the women have to say. It’s as though, here, sexualizing a woman doesn’t necessarily mean that she also gets dismissed. (I’m thinking about the equation in North America of sexualizing with writing off…e.g. pretty, strong women like Belinda Stronach, for example, are often dismissed as “dumb blondes” so that their work - whether you like it or not - isn´t acknowledged.) The patriarchy is present here, but it feels quite different.

Portenos also take coupledom very seriously. There seems to be a lot of jealousy, but also a lot of making out on the street. Young people don´t tend to move out of their family´s house until they get married so I suppose there aren´t a lot of places to get it on...

More on gender, my work and travel soon...

Photos by Rachel Marcuse in Argentina can be viewed here, and she can be contacted at rachelmarcuse@yahoo.com.