migraciones

Yesterday I told Silvia something that has been told to me many times: There are many places better to learn Spanish than Argentina. Bolivian Spanish, as I've heard from native English and Spanish speakers alike, is better for learning because it's much more like peninsular Spanish, isolated from regional influences by its unforgiving terrain. To this, Silvia bugged out. Según mi querida anfitriona, Bolivians are a dumber people, a less educated people, a more indigenous people... that just couldn't be. It could not be possible that BOLIVIANS, of all people, could speak a form of Spanish closer to the Real Academía de España. What was the silly American saying?

The Peruvian neighborhood here in BA, Abasto, is considered unsafe at night. All porteños, even of the standard middle class, don't do the dishes or make their beds because that's for the Paraguyan/Bolivian/Peruvian household help to do. Undocumented immigrants are routinely beaten by the generally untrustworthy Argentine police. 

...and despite all of this, the largest collections of people I have seen in this city have been in the MERCOSUR line of the immigration office, a huge line that all of the IFSA students passed by during our trámite at Migraciones, and outside the Paraguayan embassy. 

 When I was in Chile this weekend our new Chilean friends compared the Peruvian and Bolivian populations of Chile to the Mexicans in the United States. Yes, but worse.