Family Reunion, Part Two
To finish the chronicling of my family's 10-day visit here:
Day Six: I get out of class and meet my family at MALBA, the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires; we see some Frida Kahlo and some Picasso, and then, because MALBA is in the middle of pretty much nowhere (read: parks and monuments but not much in the way of places to eat) we trek off to Plaza Italia for lunch. It was a long walk, and my dad and my sister complained a bunch, but when we got there it was all worth it. Afterwards we walked all around Palermo Soho and Palermo Viejo, which are beautiful places with little expensive boutiques and cobblestone streets, and we had a really nice time. I tried on a beautiful leather jacket, and thus the search for a leather jacket began.
Day Seven: In the morning, my cousin Guillermo came to get us from the hotel and take us around the city. I'd already taken my family pretty much everywhere that's touristy, but Guille is an architect, so he decided to take the opportunity to show us his buildings. We went past one of his early works, and got to go up to the roof of another apartment building he built in Palermo Soho, after which we walked around Palermo Soho some more; then we went by his apartment and said hi to his kids, who are adorable. He took us back to the hotel, we scarfed down lunch really quickly, and then Judith and Claudio came to get us. They took us to San Isidro and to Tigre. To get there, we drove out of the city on Avenida Libertador, which goes right past ESMA-- the Escuela Mecánica de la Armada-- which was a torture and detention center during the Dirty War. It's a museum now, and you can take tours, but you have to sign up in advance. I plan to do that, at some point. It was really humbling and solemn to drive past and know the kinds of awful things that went down there. People were kidnapped and brought there, where during the course of "interrogations" the military government conducted to find out who were "subversives" (read: opposed to their government), they would torture and rape prisoners as a matter of routine. They even kidnapped pregnant women, and when they had their babies while they were being detained, they would give the babies to pro-government families looking to adopt a child. There's an organization now, called the Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo, who are working to identify these children and reunite them with their true families. And then once they were done torturing these people, they would drug them until they were barely conscious and put them in helicopters, fly out over the Río de la Plata, and drop them in. These people are the desaparecidos of Argentina, and it's not even known how many of them there are. The most commonly accepted figure is 30,000 people, but depending who you hear it from, you'll hear a different estimate.
Anyways, we passed the ESMA on our way to San Isidro, which is a beautiful town with an absolutely breathtaking series of old colonial houses and a beautiful cathedral. The square facing the cathedral has an artisans' fair, where I got a pretty striped cardigan-type thing, and my sister got some leather wallets. After we were done with the crafts fair, we continued on to Tigre (where I've been already, and where I will be again shortly) to Club Hacoaj, the Jewish rowing club, where Judith and Claudio are members and which several of my great-aunts helped to found. There are many rowing clubs at Tigre, it being on the delta of the Paraná river, and back in the day they wouldn't let Jews join, so the Jewish community founded their own club, and it's huge. Apart from the rowing, there are ridiculous amounts of sports fields, and also a restaurant and some other indoor space, which includes a plaque commemorating the desaparecidos who were members of Hacoaj. Judith showed us a series of names and told us that they'd taken this entire family, because the 15-year-old daughter was handing out leaflets at her high school; the only member of the family who survived was the brother, who wasn't home at the time. When Claudio heard what story Judith was telling us, he told us one of his own-- that, right before the military junta took over, he was a student at the Universidad de La Plata and he'd been taken, with a gun to his head, and interrogated as to why he was hanging around the campus all day, every day (the reason being, the commute from Buenos Aires is an hour long each way, and he had classes to go to). It was a very eye-opening and frightening thing, to hear both of them talk about what it was like to live through the 70s and 80s in Argentina, which were times of a variety of political extremes, including domestic terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism, where you really couldn't trust anybody you hadn't known for a long time, because you never knew if you were talking to an undercover cop who would then report you to the military junta as a subversive if you said the wrong thing.
It makes me think how very spoiled we, as Americans, are, to have the freedoms we have and the means and history of protecting them they way we do. It makes me think how very spoiled we are that it was such a big deal when Bush started using the term "enemy combatants" to create some sort of legal terminology for taking people away. Lucky because this reveals a state of being in which there is basic respect for the law, that he felt it necessary to create a new legal state for these people, to bring them to a specific, known place. The desaparecidos and subversivos in Argentina, during the Dirty War and before, never had that luxury. Rather than being made to exist as "enemy combatants," they were made to not exist; rather than being taken to a place where their loved ones would have the luxury of knowing where they were, they were taken to ESMA and the other detention centers, held in captivity and raped and tortured and drugged and slain in the middle of the same city they'd lived out all their lives, where their same loved ones probably passed by the place on their way to the Provincia, never knowing what awful things were taking place inside. I am in no way advocating the kinds of awful things that go down in Guantánamo Bay, nor am I advocating the use of the term "enemy combatant" to give these acts the veneer of respectability, but at the same time I am endlessly grateful that it has not been worse.
Day Eight: My mom's mom's entire side of the family (minus the Brazilians) gathered at my cousin Judith's house to eat several entire cows and have the only family reunion I've ever been to. And goddamn, they are a fantastic bunch. They are outgoing and musical and athletic (everything I am not), but I had a really wonderful time with them, probably my best day here yet. Claudio made an asado on the rooftop terrace of their house, where he keeps his cactus collection, and all 23 of us ate chori-matzah instead of choripan and had various other cuts of beef as well, and red wine and salad-like things, and then when it started raining, my little cousin Nicolas led the charge back into the house, where we sat and chatted for hours. Fernando brought his guitar, and my sister and Ariel played some African drums they had lying around the house, and Mariana sang, and Malena tried to teach me how to play the panpipes, and it was lovely. Nico got his hands on a wooden flute and would not let it go. Later, Nicolas and Damian told gallego jokes and the men played foosball, which they call "metegol" here, while Tamara and Mariana and I had girl chat time. Also, it turns out my cousin Paula, who is fantastically multitalented and generally awesome, is a published author (this in addition to her day job as a child psychologist), and her book is in the Feria del Libro happening now in Buenos Aires. I also got to catch up with my cousin Pablo, which was really great, and I had some maté which Fernando brought with him.
Day Nine: Outlet shopping with the cousins. My parents, my sister, and I met up with Mariana and her mom and also Paulita and her mom and we went to leather goods store after leather goods store until finally we came to this place where my dad and I got beautiful leather jackets. His is brown and mine is black, and mine is absolutely gorgeous. Clean lines, a classic look, well cut and just perfect in every way. It smells so nice!! I was smelling myself all weekend. We went to some other shops too, until we were practically dropping from hunger, when we found a pizzeria and were joined by Javier, Nico, Damian, Paula, and Judith; most of us went on to see this photography exhibit at the Centro Cultural Borges which some cousin of Cuky's had done-- beautiful photos of people in Cuba. Then Pablo joined us, and Paula took us to this cloister which had a café inside. (Apparently there are also crypts and catacombs and such there, I'll have to go back sometime.) We all had a coffee, and Sara and I hung out with Mariana and Pablo, who are awesome. I have been describing many of my family members as just "awesome," which is true, but I know I'll have to do a better job describing them one of these days.
Day Ten: My family's last day in Argentina. I took them to the artisans' fair in Plaza Francia, where they'd been before, but not on a craft fair day. We wandered all around and got a few souvenirs, and I got a fruit cup for my sister-- they make these awesome fresh fruit cups at the stands there, with kiwi and melon and banana and orange and sometimes also with apples and grapes, and then they pour fresh-squeezed orange juice over it, and it's pretty much the best thing ever. After we were done with the fair, we walked down the Avenida Alvear, which is a really fancy street with fancy shops that have Cartier gold-plated dog collars and such in the windows, and went all the way to the Plaza San Martín, which is quite a hike but it's worth it. The Plaza San Martín is this huge beautiful park, with a palacio in front of it which houses the Ministry of External Affairs, a huge monument in it to San Martín himself, the single biggest ombú I have ever seen, a monument to the fallen in the Malvinas conflict, and also a spectacular view of the Torre de los Ingleses, which is a famous Buenos Aires landmark. After that, we found some alfajores for them to bring back to the States, had some lunch, and went back to the hotel, from where Judith and Claudio came to get them and took them to the airport.
It was a really wonderful visit. We saw a lot of family and did awesome things with them (in total there were 37 of us, but I'm counting Bettina and Malena, who are not technically part of the family-- so, 35), did a complete tourist circuit of the city and its environs, ate several cows apiece, and on top of all of that, I realized (possibly for the first time, but I'm sure I knew it on some level before) how wonderful is this place I'm in, how glad I am to be here (even if I am still very homesick and miss my friends terribly), and how much my Spanish has improved. I have offers of hospitality in Bariloche and in Montevideo that I aim to take my relatives up on, and I have to look into doing that. But now I really should get working; I have a lot of catch-up things to do.
Day Six: I get out of class and meet my family at MALBA, the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires; we see some Frida Kahlo and some Picasso, and then, because MALBA is in the middle of pretty much nowhere (read: parks and monuments but not much in the way of places to eat) we trek off to Plaza Italia for lunch. It was a long walk, and my dad and my sister complained a bunch, but when we got there it was all worth it. Afterwards we walked all around Palermo Soho and Palermo Viejo, which are beautiful places with little expensive boutiques and cobblestone streets, and we had a really nice time. I tried on a beautiful leather jacket, and thus the search for a leather jacket began.
Day Seven: In the morning, my cousin Guillermo came to get us from the hotel and take us around the city. I'd already taken my family pretty much everywhere that's touristy, but Guille is an architect, so he decided to take the opportunity to show us his buildings. We went past one of his early works, and got to go up to the roof of another apartment building he built in Palermo Soho, after which we walked around Palermo Soho some more; then we went by his apartment and said hi to his kids, who are adorable. He took us back to the hotel, we scarfed down lunch really quickly, and then Judith and Claudio came to get us. They took us to San Isidro and to Tigre. To get there, we drove out of the city on Avenida Libertador, which goes right past ESMA-- the Escuela Mecánica de la Armada-- which was a torture and detention center during the Dirty War. It's a museum now, and you can take tours, but you have to sign up in advance. I plan to do that, at some point. It was really humbling and solemn to drive past and know the kinds of awful things that went down there. People were kidnapped and brought there, where during the course of "interrogations" the military government conducted to find out who were "subversives" (read: opposed to their government), they would torture and rape prisoners as a matter of routine. They even kidnapped pregnant women, and when they had their babies while they were being detained, they would give the babies to pro-government families looking to adopt a child. There's an organization now, called the Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo, who are working to identify these children and reunite them with their true families. And then once they were done torturing these people, they would drug them until they were barely conscious and put them in helicopters, fly out over the Río de la Plata, and drop them in. These people are the desaparecidos of Argentina, and it's not even known how many of them there are. The most commonly accepted figure is 30,000 people, but depending who you hear it from, you'll hear a different estimate.
Anyways, we passed the ESMA on our way to San Isidro, which is a beautiful town with an absolutely breathtaking series of old colonial houses and a beautiful cathedral. The square facing the cathedral has an artisans' fair, where I got a pretty striped cardigan-type thing, and my sister got some leather wallets. After we were done with the crafts fair, we continued on to Tigre (where I've been already, and where I will be again shortly) to Club Hacoaj, the Jewish rowing club, where Judith and Claudio are members and which several of my great-aunts helped to found. There are many rowing clubs at Tigre, it being on the delta of the Paraná river, and back in the day they wouldn't let Jews join, so the Jewish community founded their own club, and it's huge. Apart from the rowing, there are ridiculous amounts of sports fields, and also a restaurant and some other indoor space, which includes a plaque commemorating the desaparecidos who were members of Hacoaj. Judith showed us a series of names and told us that they'd taken this entire family, because the 15-year-old daughter was handing out leaflets at her high school; the only member of the family who survived was the brother, who wasn't home at the time. When Claudio heard what story Judith was telling us, he told us one of his own-- that, right before the military junta took over, he was a student at the Universidad de La Plata and he'd been taken, with a gun to his head, and interrogated as to why he was hanging around the campus all day, every day (the reason being, the commute from Buenos Aires is an hour long each way, and he had classes to go to). It was a very eye-opening and frightening thing, to hear both of them talk about what it was like to live through the 70s and 80s in Argentina, which were times of a variety of political extremes, including domestic terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism, where you really couldn't trust anybody you hadn't known for a long time, because you never knew if you were talking to an undercover cop who would then report you to the military junta as a subversive if you said the wrong thing.
It makes me think how very spoiled we, as Americans, are, to have the freedoms we have and the means and history of protecting them they way we do. It makes me think how very spoiled we are that it was such a big deal when Bush started using the term "enemy combatants" to create some sort of legal terminology for taking people away. Lucky because this reveals a state of being in which there is basic respect for the law, that he felt it necessary to create a new legal state for these people, to bring them to a specific, known place. The desaparecidos and subversivos in Argentina, during the Dirty War and before, never had that luxury. Rather than being made to exist as "enemy combatants," they were made to not exist; rather than being taken to a place where their loved ones would have the luxury of knowing where they were, they were taken to ESMA and the other detention centers, held in captivity and raped and tortured and drugged and slain in the middle of the same city they'd lived out all their lives, where their same loved ones probably passed by the place on their way to the Provincia, never knowing what awful things were taking place inside. I am in no way advocating the kinds of awful things that go down in Guantánamo Bay, nor am I advocating the use of the term "enemy combatant" to give these acts the veneer of respectability, but at the same time I am endlessly grateful that it has not been worse.
Day Eight: My mom's mom's entire side of the family (minus the Brazilians) gathered at my cousin Judith's house to eat several entire cows and have the only family reunion I've ever been to. And goddamn, they are a fantastic bunch. They are outgoing and musical and athletic (everything I am not), but I had a really wonderful time with them, probably my best day here yet. Claudio made an asado on the rooftop terrace of their house, where he keeps his cactus collection, and all 23 of us ate chori-matzah instead of choripan and had various other cuts of beef as well, and red wine and salad-like things, and then when it started raining, my little cousin Nicolas led the charge back into the house, where we sat and chatted for hours. Fernando brought his guitar, and my sister and Ariel played some African drums they had lying around the house, and Mariana sang, and Malena tried to teach me how to play the panpipes, and it was lovely. Nico got his hands on a wooden flute and would not let it go. Later, Nicolas and Damian told gallego jokes and the men played foosball, which they call "metegol" here, while Tamara and Mariana and I had girl chat time. Also, it turns out my cousin Paula, who is fantastically multitalented and generally awesome, is a published author (this in addition to her day job as a child psychologist), and her book is in the Feria del Libro happening now in Buenos Aires. I also got to catch up with my cousin Pablo, which was really great, and I had some maté which Fernando brought with him.
Day Nine: Outlet shopping with the cousins. My parents, my sister, and I met up with Mariana and her mom and also Paulita and her mom and we went to leather goods store after leather goods store until finally we came to this place where my dad and I got beautiful leather jackets. His is brown and mine is black, and mine is absolutely gorgeous. Clean lines, a classic look, well cut and just perfect in every way. It smells so nice!! I was smelling myself all weekend. We went to some other shops too, until we were practically dropping from hunger, when we found a pizzeria and were joined by Javier, Nico, Damian, Paula, and Judith; most of us went on to see this photography exhibit at the Centro Cultural Borges which some cousin of Cuky's had done-- beautiful photos of people in Cuba. Then Pablo joined us, and Paula took us to this cloister which had a café inside. (Apparently there are also crypts and catacombs and such there, I'll have to go back sometime.) We all had a coffee, and Sara and I hung out with Mariana and Pablo, who are awesome. I have been describing many of my family members as just "awesome," which is true, but I know I'll have to do a better job describing them one of these days.
Day Ten: My family's last day in Argentina. I took them to the artisans' fair in Plaza Francia, where they'd been before, but not on a craft fair day. We wandered all around and got a few souvenirs, and I got a fruit cup for my sister-- they make these awesome fresh fruit cups at the stands there, with kiwi and melon and banana and orange and sometimes also with apples and grapes, and then they pour fresh-squeezed orange juice over it, and it's pretty much the best thing ever. After we were done with the fair, we walked down the Avenida Alvear, which is a really fancy street with fancy shops that have Cartier gold-plated dog collars and such in the windows, and went all the way to the Plaza San Martín, which is quite a hike but it's worth it. The Plaza San Martín is this huge beautiful park, with a palacio in front of it which houses the Ministry of External Affairs, a huge monument in it to San Martín himself, the single biggest ombú I have ever seen, a monument to the fallen in the Malvinas conflict, and also a spectacular view of the Torre de los Ingleses, which is a famous Buenos Aires landmark. After that, we found some alfajores for them to bring back to the States, had some lunch, and went back to the hotel, from where Judith and Claudio came to get them and took them to the airport.
It was a really wonderful visit. We saw a lot of family and did awesome things with them (in total there were 37 of us, but I'm counting Bettina and Malena, who are not technically part of the family-- so, 35), did a complete tourist circuit of the city and its environs, ate several cows apiece, and on top of all of that, I realized (possibly for the first time, but I'm sure I knew it on some level before) how wonderful is this place I'm in, how glad I am to be here (even if I am still very homesick and miss my friends terribly), and how much my Spanish has improved. I have offers of hospitality in Bariloche and in Montevideo that I aim to take my relatives up on, and I have to look into doing that. But now I really should get working; I have a lot of catch-up things to do.