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 third of several dispatches from her work and travel in South America.

Although I hadn’t planned on going to Cordoba, Argentina’s second largest city, I couldn’t get a bus ticket to Salta because all was full over the holidays. As a result, I decided to go to Cordoba and arrived at a cool hostel, recommended by an American friend, at the crack of dawn on Christmas Eve.

After lunch, I went to a market with Janni, a 26 year-old who works at the hostel. I chatted with some hippies -- what is interesting is that hippies talk to me with incredibly frequency here, while they’re super cold to foreign male friends. All was good until Janni said to wait for her for a couple of minutes. 45 minutes later, I walked back to the hostel - the hippies helped me find my way. She apologized profusely after, but man, is she flakey. I like her a lot, but wow. I later learned that she´s a business woman-turned-hippy. Very interesting.

I took a siesta, as is the proper thing to do in 35 degree weather. Then, Victor, an interesting queer guy who runs the hostel, made reservations for us at a restaurant for dinner. I went with some very rude Israelis and a number of Brazillian boys. After a game of follow the leader on the way to restaurant, with me, against my will, becoming the default leader (how do these people get dressed in the morning?) we realized that the dinner was 65 pesos each (about 25 CAN, which is like, 6 times what I would normally spend). This was a little too expensive for us (western privilege and all), so we wandered around for 45 minutes trying to find something else that was open. Finally, we found a buffet.

On our way home, it started to pour rain. Then, when we got back to the hostel, the power went out. We chilled in the common room and I smoked with a cool couple - one from Belgium, the other from Italy. After having not slept for two nights in a row (one on the bus, the other at a club before having to check out at 9am), I decided to go to bed instead of go out with people to the party (which was apparently mediocre). That was my Xmas eve.

XMas day itself was more interesting. Young Cordobesans tend to eat lots of food on XMas eve with their families, then go out around 2am and party till 8am. Then, the next day, they go camping and zone out, nursing their hangovers.

In proper Cordobesan form, we had an asado (traditional barbeque) in Rio del Oros, a Villa outside the city. My Spanish is good enough now that I can carry on an actual conversation, which is really exciting. I chatted a lot with a family, including a woman who told me how she was descended from the aborigines in Salta --she talked a lot about the spirit of the earth there and wrote me a poem. The husband kept being like, ¨Che, Canada¨ (instead of using my name), which was pretty funny. It was his birthday and we sang him happy birthday in five different languages. And he gave us champagne.

The locale of the asado was interesting. The rio oros is really just a small, dirty river, so it seemed an odd choice, but there were lots of people there. There were also lots and lots of dogs - one had cuts and one of the hippies told me that it had fly eggs in it.

The next day, the Brazilians and I went to the town of Alta Gracias, a couple of hours away from Cordoba. We visited Che’s house from his childhood, which had amazing letters to his family on display. We also checked out Falla’s house (the composer) and the Jesuit Distancia. The boys toasted Che at lunch!

I’ll conclude with an excerpt that I really like from a letter Che wrote to his kids. The really simple gist is that the capacity to feel the injustices felt by all the people in the world is above all what is most important in order to be a revolutionary:

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