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Hola from Buenos Aires! Sorry I’ve become so bad about updating this blog. This semester has been so packed with experiences and schoolwork, and, with the end of the semester quickly approaching I have been very busy.
Buenos Aires is beautiful, and it’s fun to be back in a metropolitan area. In a lot of ways, Buenos Aires feels like New York, or perhaps a large European city. Much of the architecture has European influence and the small boutiques in certain neighborhoods like Palermo are reminiscent of SoHo. There is even a neighborhood within Palermo known as Palermo SoHo. There’s also Palermo Hollywood!
I’m going to make this blog post pretty short and not infuse a lot of critical analysis because, to tell you the truth, I’m tired. And my brain is a bit exhausted from constantly thinking deeply about everything. This program is tiring in ways I never would have expected. It isn’t easy being surrounded by a language that isn’t your own and constantly having to be aware of cultural and social norms. Everywhere we go is shocking and amazing or steeped in dark history. At home, we spend time with our host families, which is one of the best and most valuable parts of the program, but also makes it so that you have very little time for yourself, relaxing how you like. For example, in Argentina, they really don’t like feet for some reason. So it’s not acceptable to walk around barefoot, even at home. I know it’s a really little thing, but all of the little things add up, and it has been a long semester. Though I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything.
At a food festival in Parque RivadaviaAnyways, I’ll just go through some of the things we have been learning and activities we have been doing since we arrived here two weeks ago. If you haven’t noticed already, our program has a secondary theme besides health and community, which is political violence. This theme really ties together the three countries that we have visited, which have all experienced some degree of political violence in their history.
In the case of Argentina, there have been several military dictatorships, the most recent of which ended in 1983. You may have heard of this era referred to as the “Dirty War.” This is a highly contested term, as it implies that there was some sort of equal battle between two sides, when in reality this was a period of state-run terrorism. During this time, 30,000 people disappeared from Argentina, some of whom were left-wing guerilla activists and others of whom were just regular people with the slightest affiliation to an organization the state disapproved of. It is not clear what happened to many of them, but a good portion were held and tortured in clandestine detention centers throughout the city before being drugged and thrown off of planes over the south Atlantic in what came to be known as “death flights.” We visited one of the biggest of these detention centers called Ex-ESMA, which used to be a training center for naval mechanics. While it still operated in this capacity part of the staff’s housing was used as a center for detention and torture of many of these disappeared people. We had the opportunity to see where they were held, where they were tortured, and the renovations made to the building in an effort to discredit the descriptions given of the center by survivors. Roughly 5,000 people went through ESMA and some of them were eventually released. It is not entirely clear why they were let go, though one can speculate that it was a tactic used to incite fear in the groups they belonged to. Much is not known about this period in Argentine history, but it left the country traumatized. One of the worst acts of terror committed by the military government at this time was the theft of children from women who were pregnant while detained. They would give birth in the detention centers and their babies would be given to military couples. Of course, these disappearances did not go unnoticed. Two major groups formed as a result of the disappearances of loved ones: the mothers of La Plaza de Mayo and the grandmothers of La Plaza de Mayo. These groups demand to know what happened to their children and grandchildren and still protest every Thursday at La Plaza de Mayo over forty years later. Some of the grandchildren have actually been found and reconnected with their grandparents, and the Argentine government has even implemented a controversial law in which they can forcibly demand DNA from people who they suspect are children of the disappeared. Since I intended this blog post to be a bit lighter, I am not going to discuss this much further, but suffice it to say that this era of Argentine history still has huge implications today.
We have also continued our classes from the previous two countries here in Argentina, one of which is Public Health: From Biology to Policy. We have started our public health classes here learning about the Argentine health system. There are three healthcare sectors here: the public, the private, and social security. Social security is provided to those who have formal work and private insurance is for those who can afford it. Public healthcare services are for everyone else and are provided free of charge to everyone. Everyone. Argentinian or otherwise. That means that many people from surrounding countries will come here to receive healthcare (and free education). Though this system has its flaws, it does fulfill a basic human need without exception.
Like us, Argentina recently acquired a president who is a businessman and whose father was a businessman and who wishes to dismantle the current healthcare system. Macri is attempting to implement “Universal Health Coverage,” which, obviously, is different from what many of us would consider to be universal healthcare, which is what they already have. Instead, it attempts to get everyone covered by some sort of health insurance and take away a whole lot of funding from public facilities. Argentina has been affected by neoliberal agendas from all around the world in the past few decades, causing many public services to be defunded.
Today, we visited Dock Sud, which is an area in Buenos Aires that houses thousands of petrochemical plants. The people who live in this region, which at one time was farmland, are affected by a number of horrible health conditions. Half of the children in one neighborhood whose name literally translates to Flammable have lead poisoning. The first step a doctor tells you to take when you are diagnosed with lead poisoning is to move away from the source of contamination. This is impossible for the residents of Flammable who are all highly impoverished. The residents of Flammable were supposed to be relocated years ago, but the promises that have been made to them throughout the years have all been broken. Now, while they wait for eventual relocation, they are lobbying to improve their living conditions, hoping to get access to electricity, clean running water, and a proper sewage system. This program has given me a lot of exposure to environmental health problems, and it is definitely a field I will continue to explore going forward.
Another one of our field visits that I particularly enjoyed was to a Jewish senior center called AMIA. There, we learned about community programs for the elderly, a population often forgotten in public health. We also got the chance to participate in one of their dance classes, which was so fun!
Speaking of dance, one of our first nights in Argentina, we participated in a classic Argentine pastime, the Tango. We took a Tango class with some locals and danced our little hearts out. It was lots of fun. The class went until midnight and then some of us went out afterwards, since nightlife in Buenos Aires really only gets going after 1 AM. I don’t know how they do it here. Lots of naps I suppose.
Outside of class I have explored several of the outdoor markets here and gone to museums. This weekend we have Monday off and I plan to keep exploring both inside and outside of the city. Next week, we have a rural stay, which I’m really looking forward too, since the rural stays have been some of my favorite parts of the program. Other than that, I’ll just be over here eating lots of empanadas, enjoying all the beautiful street art, and trying to ask people for directions.
It’s also been fun getting to use my Spanish again, though I’ve lost a lot of my ability in the past three years or so since I took a Spanish class. Also, the Argentine accent is pretty difficult to understand. For the double L sound they make a “sh” instead of a “y” sound. And of course, many people in the city speak quite quickly.Well, that’s all for now. Have a great weekend everybody!
And I’ll see you all soon. Leah
