Nestor Kirchner in Plaza de Mayo

Ok, it´s been a while since I have updated this blog and since almost a month has passed since I wrote my last entry, I´m going to try and start from where I left off. The first weekend after our classes, I think on Saturday night, Lisa and I were set to go out. We left from her apartment and stopped by Alicia´s so I could drop off my backpack. Alicia was watching the television and it showed the Plaza de Mayo where there was a huge Kirchnerista rally to support the president in her (their) continued opposition negotiate with farmers over her proposed increase of export taxes. Christina Kirchner had proposed a hike in the export taxes on all agricultural products from around 34% to 42% in order to balance the budget. Why was the budget out of balance you ask? Because her husband´s previous administration had doled out tons of funds to the urban workers to shore up their political base and to buy a few votes here and there, thus creating budget deficit. But that´s neither here nor there...

Having never been to a political rally, we decided to check it out. When we arrived there were people all over the Plaza de Mayo, carrying banners, chanting and drumming. Representatives from various unions and organizations with awkwardly long and opaque names. In order to get a better view for the photographs, we moved to the top of the bank that surrounded a circular fountain on the edge of the plaza. As Lisa was taking pictures of several of the banners behind us, I noticed a commotion and bunch of people running, a coalescing around something about 200 meters in front of me. As the crowd moved, I saw a man at the center of the crowd. That´s Nestor Kirchner! He didn´t have any bodyguards, at least none that were recognizable, which surprised me because this would never happen in the US or China.

The crowd moved towards us like a hurricane, slowly and with a peaceful of eye of the storm around Kirchner, moving with an indeterminate trajectory. It slowly made its way towards us, meandering around the fountain, where an unfortunate news photographer lost balance trying to snap a picture of the ex-president and fell in completely. We also would have gotten a picture but just as he approached us, we were knocked down to the ground and by the time we got up the storm of people were headed away from us. The guy looked incredibly afraid and uncomfortable, as he very well should have been, moving through a mob apparently without a security buffer.

Not bad to see the ex-president of Argentina in the first week I was here. Fun fact: they call him el pingüino because he used to be governor of Santa Cruz, the southern most province in Patagonia before he became President.