Me Encuentro En Argentina, Boludo

I'm currently living in Buenos Aires conducting an externship with the Defensoria Oficial Ante La Corte Suprema de la Nacion, the Federal Public Defender before the Supreme Court of the Nation. A completely different species from the US variety, and an entity that is much farther reaching and powerful in this and other Latin American nations. More on that later.

I arrived two weeks ago, yet I have been slow to record my observations. In many ways Argentina is a familiar place, but in others it's quite foreign. It's taken some time to get my bearings. In the coming month I'll share more about my experiences en la tierra de parilla, empanadas, y alfajores.

Last week I stayed in on a Friday night. My porteño family had friends over and asked me to join them for dinner. As I recall, the wide-ranging conversation went like this; the best pizza in Buenos Aires (the vote of one was for El Cuartito on Talcahuano), the striking similarities between the US-Argentinean Constitutions, stolen watches on the Subte, habitually closed streets for rock festivals, the tenets of Anarchism, the tenets of Communism, la dictadura, a money-laundering scandal that involves the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (the subject of future posts), an old case of an orthodontist who killed his family and plead insanity due to abuse by his mother in law, Paraguayan and Bolivian immigration to Argentina, los cartoneros (cardboard and scrap recyclers who haul giant wheelbarrows down the street ignoring the honking buses), how much argentinos hate to work, Argentinean exceptionalism, and finally, futbol.

I held on till 2:30am when I asked permission to excuse myself. Marta, the woman I live with, turned to me with a sneaky smile saying, "Peter, que mal educado!" The conversation continued without me for at least another hour.