El piquete

13/09/12

Tonight I got to go to a protest against Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, the president of Argentina.  And it was awesome.  Although in the last election Kirschner was elected with 54% of the vote, Buenos Aires is very anti-Kirchner, and to sum it up, she is popular with the lower class but not the middle or upper.  A lot of her policies in my opinion are semi-communistic and the impression I’ve gotten is that many people think that she thinks she’s a dictator.  Just a couple weeks ago she declared that September 24^th will be a national holiday so there is no work or school.  While this seems cool, my host mom says that there are already way too many holidays, “we have to work at some point!”  And most recently, Kirchner has supposedly suggested amending the constitution so that she could be reelected for a third term. 

So the protest tonight wasn’t for a specific thing, just to protest Kirchner’s policies in general.  I haven’t really been to a protest before, but it was cool to see how the Argentines did it.  If you ever go to an Argentinian rally, this is what you need:

1)      Most important of all, you need “caserolas” aka dishes to make the biggest racket possible.  This can be anything from a metal mixing bowl, which is what we had, to saucepans, to trash can lids, and I even saw some giant porcelain coffee mugs. 

2)      You of course must bring a spoon of some sort to bash against the caserolas.  

3)      You can bring a “cartel,” a poster with your message.  My favorite was “Diosa: No te tenemos miedo,” meaning “Goddess, we’re not scared of you.”  Haha

4)      Your singing voice.  The Argentines were very prepared with songs that they sang together and then even all started jumping at one point.  It was impressive. 

It was interesting to see all these people, but we were only in front of the president’s house.  The main part of the rally though was planned for the center of the city.  Just imagine thousands of people marching through Washington DC with pots and pans.  We saw it on the TV once we got home and that was all the news what covering our whole dinner which is saying something since they typically change stories practically every minute. 

Other random things I found interesting:

Ø  Planes were flying over the President’s house….definitely wouldn’t see that in DC

Ø  The property was HUGE… we must’ve walked almost 10 minutes down just one side of the property.  It was surrounded by a concrete wall though so we never saw much of the actual house, but I’m sure it’s huge too.

Ø  Although Kirchner’s house is outside the city, it doesn’t seem that far that she needs a helicopter to take her to work.  Although I’m not sure if she typically uses it or not, but I know it’s there for her. 

Ø  Cars all over the city around were honking like crazy.

Ø  Even if you don’t go to the actual rally, you can just go out on your porch and bang on some pots haha