q descansen en paz

This fall the 24-year-old singer of a MA hardcore band, Dominic Mallory, passed away. His band Last Lights had just played a set at BU. Dom was helping the band pack up the van when he started to feel dizzy. He developed tunnel vision. He couldn’t feel his legs. He collapsed against a wall and his friends called an ambulance. Apparently he impacted a nerve during a fairly routine stage stunt in which he wrapped the mic cord around his neck and ultimately caused the aneurysm from which he died just a few hours later.

Although we have a fair number of people in common, I’d never met Dom. I liked his band’s demo and 7” a lot but never got a chance to see them. However, although I hardly ever cry, while reading his obit in the Worcester Telegram-Gazette in my kitchen at Fairmount, I broke down and began weeping. (I’m not sure I could ever describe another experience as one in which I’ve wept.) I felt so intimately connected to him, to his friends, to his family… It was so tragic that a 24 year old kid could just up and die like that, and perhaps even more affecting because he could have been any one of many kids that I know. Perhaps this isn’t unfair. In some ways I guess we were connected. Bobby and I had helped put on a show at Oxfam that was converted at the last minute to a fundraiser for Dom’s family. I spent that day, maybe two days after his death, with many of his closest friends, singing along to the cover of his favorite song. And that’s how it was. Beyond simple acts of solidarity like changing band’s profile pictures on myspace or sending notes of support, people really came together to help Dom’s family to pay his hospital bills and funeral costs. I heard that when all was said and told, donations and benefit shows and merchandise – the support of the hardcore scene – raised about fifteen thousand dollars. It was certainly Dom’s friends and family’s tragedy but it was, in its way, our tragedy – all of us.

This weekend a participant in the BA hardcore scene killed himself. From what I’ve been told, he had a girlfriend of a higher social class. Her family pressured her to break up with him. He tried to hold it together and distract himself all weekend but Sunday night he saw that she had removed all of the photos of them from myspace and listed herself as single. Some time after sending text messages to friends with the words “true till death” (the name of a famous straight edge song), he was hit by an oncoming train.

It’s an eerie thing to see photos of Matute, as he was called, with my new Argentine friends. I don’t really know if I should do anything, say anything to them. I found out about what happened in an indirect way, putting together pieces of the story deposited in different outlets. But I can’t help but experience some of the same feelings that I felt when Dom died. I am not a true member of the BAHC. I’m not sure I had ever seen him before and we certainly had not met; yet I feel connected to this kid and the wounds he inflicted not only to himself but to those that loved him. And while I wish I could communicate all of this simply – enough to explain that I am not a tourist to your emotions in the most meaningful of ways – there’s nothing I could say anyway to the grief my friends are feeling.

RIP Dom and Matute

Amuuurrrrica (or: you ain't supposed to die on a Saturday night )

I have pretty much exclusively been listening to old hardcore bands lately with one extreme exception: THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM. Normally I think I would find something like this corny and tooly and not be into it but inexplicably I am hooked. All of the hype is true. They really do sound like a cross between 1970's-era Bruce Springsteen and the Bouncing Souls, somewhere between the Jersey turnpike and the endless highway Americana of Lucero's That Much Farther West. Truly fantastic -- and just SO awesomely Jersey. (Dad, give it a shot.)

As I said, usually "youth anthems" about love or life/death/transcience make me roll my eyes a bit but this is perhaps the epitome of what happens when former hardcore kids grow up and make grown up rock music all while maintaing some semblance of Kevin Second's Young Till I Die and not being total tools. The whole album, The '59 Sound, is just awesome for all audiences. I assure you that if you are reading this you ought to listen because you will enjoy.

IFFFFF you really can't hang with rock music, I suggest partaking in this different but equally wonderful slice of Americana -- This American Life #328: What I Learned from Television. Although it made me feel like a latte liberal, I couldn't keep myself from laughing pretty much the whole way through.

As for slices of America in my life here:
Friday night my friends and I went to Disco, hit up the imported foods aisle, and made ourselves some super tasty burritos in Silvia's kitchen. Saturday we continued our culinary adventure with sheets upon sheets of M&M cookies, oatmeal raisin, peanut butter M&M, and PB oatmeal cookies. Mmmmm. Then yesterday I went again to Jumbo, the huge American-style supermarket (somewhere between Stop&Shop and Target) that I like to call "Amuuuurica," with Alana. What does that say about the States that I relate most to American when I am eating absurd amounts of terrible-for-you food or when I am in places where they sell it?

¿qué es Santiago? -- Beth's not too bright homestay mother

I know I am a bit behind schedule about this, apologize.

Disclaimer: Santiago was where I wanted to go in the first place but Tufts only accepts transferred credits from its program there so I opted for Buenos Aires. On paper (and I think in reality), Santiago is a better fit for me. It’s not all about partying. It has a killer straight edge hardcore scene. People don’t speak as much English. I am much more familiar with its political history. Etc. So just sayin' I was pretty predisposed to be into it.

Chile was incredible. Kara and I arrived Wednesday morning. We did have to pay an entrance fee (bummer) but the flight was worth it both in terms of time (25 hour bus ride vs. 2ish on the plane) and in terms of the incredible view of the Andes from the plane. In that moment I understood so much of Gabriela Mistral!

After sorting out how to get to the city from the airport and getting really ripped off changing AR pesos to CL pesos, we arrived at our beautiful hostel in the boho neighborhood of Bellavista. We walked around all morning, saw a huge produce market and drank some sweeeet agua fresca type juice and shopped a bit, then slept most of the afternoon (panicked preparations meant that I arrived at the airport on seven hours of slept in the proceeding two days) and got some decent Mexican food as an excuse to see more of the city.

On Thursday, after a sweet maxikiosko bfast, we headed out to Valparaiso. Again, there was some confusion upon arrival at the bus station but finally we figured out how to take a bus to the hostel. However we arrived only to discover that the hostel we were planning to stay in was full. Whoops. We quickly found a new one – a hostel owned by a French immigrant to Chile hahaha – and I spent much the rest of the day worrying about how our friends Jasmine and Beth would meet up with us after the changed plans. (I was already nervous because they were flying into Stgo and had to meet us in Valpo. I didn’t know if they knew how to do that, where do go in Valpo, etc. And our cell phones didn’t work in Chile. We couldn’t contact them about the changed hostel using another method until we had arrived at the new hostel and after their flight from BA had taken off… I was nervous!) To wrap up this story and leave my Jewish mother anxiety at the door, everything worked out fine with the girls who arrived in our room at about 9:30 that evening. Phew.

Valpo is so cool! It’s the hub of Chile’s most active port and a beach destination in the summer but neither of those things are why it’s so cool. Valpo is awesome because it’s a small city of brightly painted houses built into the mountains.

To get to said houses in the mountains, one rides in a giant box up the side of the mountain called an ascensor or an elevator. They were built in the beginning of the 20th century which renders them somewhere between frightening and totally amazing. For the ascensores, Valpo is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Skipping some boring details, Kara and I went for lunch and ended up sitting next to a table with two Chilean dudes who looked about our age. Kara – being both pretty and outgoing – skillfully initiated conversation. We learned that they were engineering students our age and that they were absurdly nice. We waited out the end of the Colo-Colo game wit them (Colo-Colo won obviously) and they took us around the city, up and down the best ascensores, giving us an excellent tour. Best of all, even though I could tell they both spoke English, they continued to speak to us in Spanish the whole day. (This does not happen in BA where I have to fight to use Spanish some days.) Eduardo and Oscar were SO GREAT!

Our group was rounded out in full on Friday. The four of us went to Pablo Neruda’s beautiful house.

and to the National Congress which took up residence in Valpo after the dictatorship relegated it to Valpo to reduce its influence.

We had some lunch of seafood and chorrillana (aka French fry onion meat heart attack dish of death) at the Central Market, which was awesome.

On the bus back that night we met some Israeli travelers – yes, this is officially the South American stereotypical experience – who we later had dinner with. Fun night!

Saturday was a boom and bust day. Jasmine and I tried to go to the Salvador Allende Museum of Solidarity (socialism and 70’s pop art? yes please!) but we discovered that it had moved and didn’t have enough time to meet Beth and Kara for lunch if we went to its new location. It wasn’t a total bust – Jasmine is awesome and we had some great discussions through the streets of beautiful Barrio Brazil. After more chorrillana Jasmine and I headed over to Palacio de la Moneda, Chile’s executive office building and where Allende killed himself during Pinochet’s siege. You can’t take a tour but at 4:30 they let tourists enter the plaza within the building’s walls. All of government center Santiago was incredibly beautiful in a Washington kind of way, with lots of beautiful architecture. I was pretty much in love.

After our foray through downtown Stgo, Jamine came with me to a hardcore show back in Barrio Brazil. How lucky was I, really, that there would be a show the one day I decide to look in a safe/easy to find place?? Okay, first, I saw three Chilean bands and they were all good. My favorite, easily, was the opener REMISSION. I had listened to each of these three bands before but they were just as good / even better when I saw them. The Arg bands I’ve seen, on the other hand, haven’t generally provoked similar compliments… More than Remission being a great band, their singer Philippe was an amazingly nice dude and he ended up chatting with us the entire time Jasmine and I were at the show. (Philippe spoke perfect Americanized English, they only time I used it in abundance with an actual Chilean.) He asked what I was doing the next day (which, oh yeah, was Easter Sunday!) and met up with me to talk about hardcore and show me around Santiago. We were SUCH NERDS, in the best way. Our hangout commenced with the question (from him) “top five favorites, go!” He was an encyclopedia of hardcore knowledge (which I don’t say lightly) and isn't every day I get to have intense conversations about Turning Point and Dag Nasty, I was so grateful! Plus he showed me so many beautiful areas of Santiago, especially Cerro Santa Lucia which is the giant hill where the Conquistadores beat the natives and around which the rest of the city has been constructed since its birth.

Plus it's just crazy how small the world is. Philippe's band is on a label called Amendment Records that is doing a split between a Chilean band called Against All Fears (super 90’s) and Maintain who exist in my mind occupying a space somewhere between a real hardcore band and my being my friend Amanda Ferres’s housemates in Somerville…. Plus Philippe chats irregularly with my friend Keith from Springfield. Weird, right! I'll be really stoked if Remission makes it to the States to tour next year as is tentatively planned.

To wrap up some loose ends worthy of note: Saturday night we ate tradition Chilean food. Our waiter was hilariously condescending, oh man, but the pastel de choclo was fortunately worth it. Before Philippe hangout time Sunday was of the highest quality. After a trip up the ascensor (the furnicular) at San Cristobol, we visited Santiago’s insanely high statue of the Virgin Mary and saw an amazing vista of sprawling Stgo.

Afterwards we ate incredible sandwiches at TOP SANDWICH (mmmmm), all drowned Kara in now-permissible formerly Lent-forbidden sweets and saw Beth and Jasmine off. Fast forward a few hours: Kara too had a Chilean friend hangout and when I was wandering through Barrio Bellavista in search of a phone card with which say hi to the padres, I ran into the only two remaining Tufts-in-Chile students. Again, smallest world.

On Monday I wanted to show Kara Cerro Santa Lucia, then we enjoyed more Top Sandwich, and then (unfortunately) had to say goodbye to Chile, its vastly more understandable and patient Spanish speakers, the awesome tomato bruschetta they serve at every table that puts tasteless porteno food to shame, and to Chile’s awesome people. Big bummer. It was a great trip! Not the most traditional of Easters but worth it.

Also I bought postcards but after struggling to find a post office, then after it was closed twice, I still haven’t sent them. I suck.

ON THAT NOTE, if you want a postcard HOLLA. I am slowly but surely working on it.

All in all, after all of that panicking about finances and meeting up with the girls and about the lack of proper planning, trip was totally incredible. If you enjoyed this post, donating to the Shana Hurley Poverty Fund will ensure that similar travel diaries follow.

the informal economy

Since I have been rather dilligently working on actual schoolwork today and have earned / would like a somewhat productive break, I am going to touch upon a couple of political economy questions that have been of interest to me lately. Disclaimer: I will be the first to acknowledge that I am no economics ace. (Perhaps the first to acknowledge that would instead be my very kind Principles of Economics professor, bless him...) However, fulfilling my destiny as a northern hemisphere and generally left of center college student, I have a profound interest in development economics and political economy. We can catalog this one under "Stuff White People Like."

The political economy of Argentina is fascinating stuff, even excluding the 2001 crisis. At the start of the 20th century, Argentina was the 7th wealthiest country in the world. Wealthy people lived in splendor in the still-beautiful neighborhoods of Barrio Norte and Recoleta, reaping the benefits of Buenos Aires's wealth-inducing port and Argentina's fairly extensive railroad system. But the history of Argentine glory ends pretty early, followed by decades of stop-and-go self-perpetuating political and economic crises. (It's no coincidence that the first coup occurred in 1930, the same year as Argentina's first economic collapse.) While that former luster remains the lusty twinkle in every porteño's eye (sorry, is this creative writing 101?), the reality on the ground is that Argentina has fallen far behind Brazil, Mexico, and Chile. A quarter (!!) of the country's population still lives under the poverty line and unemployment hovers at about 10%. And in the most unofficial of ways, I personally genuinely struggle to understand how the Argentine economy functions. There are many stores and many restaurants, few of which I ever see with customers. From what I understand (again, I am no Paul Krugman here), if you lack customers your business will not make enough money to over its overhead costs and it will fold. Somehow these empty businesses keep chugging...

Aside from the storefronts, it seems to me that economy has an other active side. Both in EPIIC and my development economics class sophomore year I spent a substantial amount of time studying informal economies. At home I generally wrapped my brain around this concept by thinking of, say, urban drug trade in America's poorest communities. But in my time here I've been able to develop a fuller sense of that which comprises the informal economy -- and never moreso than when I come home from class on Tuesday nights.

I don't leave UCA (Universidad Catolica) until usually 9:15 or so on Tuesday nights. Depending on my mood -- which, after 6 hours straight of class, can be quite testy -- I either opt to take the subte (longer walk, shorter ride) or the bus (longer ride, shorter walk). I walk to the subte along Paseo Colon, one of the major traffic arteries that runs parallel to the water and along the government buildings. At this time of day, the office buildings have emptied. Thus, at 9:15/9:30, all of the garbage is thrown out of its buckets or dumpsters to be picked through by cartoneros (garbage pickers) in search of sellable recycable goods. If I take the bus I see the cartoneros sorting through the garbage between Uruguay and Lavalle, near Plaza Tribunales. Most of the sorters are young men but many are children. In my neighborhood there is a ciruja who piles his recyclables onto a donkey-drawn cart. Beyond that, there are many other signs of the informal economy. Pretty much every trip someone will enter your subway car and try to sell you socks, pens, notebooks, anything. People wash windshields or direct your parallel parking for tips. Some folks sell homemade food in high-traffic areas, from the immigration office to touristy Calle Florida. And as mentioned, petty crime is a problem.

Attempts have been made to convert some of these informal activities into formal employment, like the famous example of Argentina's organized and collectivized garbage pickers. Generally speaking, however, these examples showcase the odd duality that beautiful Plaza San Martin is merely a few blocks from the tent city at the Retiro Train Station. In the end, it's a reminder that the Argentine economy, though considered upper-middle income, is still in the developing end of the spectrum.

speaking of hardcore......

I know I should be writing more about things that aren't hardcore and, for that, I apologize. However, esto vale la pena. I wrote this piece for Melisma, the Tufts magazine of music/alt culture, about straightedge (in a word: my decision to abstain from drinking, drugs, and permiscuous sex as tied to my participation in the DIY community of punk/hardcore). Since Melisma came out last month, I don't feel bad publishing it here too. If you're on campus and you didn't pick up a copy, please do!

When I was fifteen and a sophomore in high school, I wrote a zine about straightedge, the decision “live on the edge” – by being involved in the punk rock subculture, for example – while abstaining from drinking, doing drugs, or having promiscuous sex. For the zine, I interviewed the singer of one of the most hardline active bands. Hardline, or the militant strain of straightedge, had dominated in the 1990’s but fell out of fashion; however, certain kids and bands perpetuated that anachronistic spirit. Clean Steve, of Massachusetts’ Embrace Today, was one of those kids.

Steve was a fascinating interviewee. We ended up talking for upwards of 3 hours. (In fact, I ran out of tape on which to record.) I asked wide-eyed questions and he answered without skipping a beat. Steve, a long eight years my senior and associated with the gang-like Courage Crew, debated me intellectually and answered my questions sincerely. At age 15, it was one of the most meaningful demonstrations of adult respect I had experienced.

Steve was emblematic of why sophomore year of high school was possibly the most transformative year of my life. I remember it as a montage of highway: Exit 10 for the Depot in Darien, 46 for the Wallingford K of C, and 83 for New London’s El’N’Gee. There were close calls when sing-alongs almost met road dividers, when a turn in the road was barely edged out ahead of a crucial steering wheel finger point, and when several wrong turns on scenic back streets never really reached destinations at all. There were trips to Long Island, New York City, Poughkeepsie, and Providence filled with throats screamed raw. And best of all, there were packed house shows in Stamford and all over in which kids bumped up against each other, the shelves, the walls after sharing potluck rice and beans with not-quite-strangers in the kitchen.

Ascribing words to these memories doesn’t do justice to the sense of community. Occasionally those feelings come back to me and I long for those times, that sense of ownership in something bigger than I. Hardcore immensely changed my perception of where I grew up – for the first time in Connecticut I met kids who identified as middle class instead of my upper middle class hometown counterparts whose lifestyles were often out my reach. It provided an immediate sense of kinship, as personified by a one-in-the-morning sing-along on the subway with a total and complete stranger, a South Korean who had been in the States for only two days but who was a friend of a friend and, therefore, a friend of mine. It works both ways, too. This summer, when my friend Fred’s band toured Guatemala, a random kid asked in broken English if he knew someone from Connecticut named Shana. The kid was Andres, whose email correspondence had allowed me to practice Spanish and learn about the community and culture in Guatemala, all in the context of the impossibly small world that is hardcore.

At this point, my participation in the community has ebbed. Instead of attending Food Not Bombs benefit shows, I cloak my righteous indignation in talk about fiduciary responsibility and campaign for Democratic candidates. I no longer wear band shirts and scribbled-on Chuck Taylors but collared shirts and cardigan sweaters. I attend Tufts University, an institution antithetical to my inclusionary values in its stringent admissions process and prohibitive costs. However, although I’ve changed in other ways and have considered letting go, I have held fast to my straightedge identity. The last strong link within my sometimes tenuous connection to the hardcore community, straightedge sometimes feels like all I have left.

When people meaningfully ask me why I don’t drink, I usually give them intellectualized answers. I talk about the link between sexual violence and blood alcohol levels. I mention boycotting massive corporations whose politics I reject. Occasionally, I’ll even get personal and talk about my Irish Catholic family’s long history with self-destructive alcoholism. Only to a select audience will I mention the community that I respect and, in other ways, have abandoned.

So, Tufts, I will out myself: I am straightedge. I don’t X my fists, I don’t wear X watches, and I wouldn’t be caught dead with a straightedge tattoo. But I am as strongly attached to my edge now as I was when my South Korean friend Ki Seok and I sang “Thinking Straight” on the Broadway local after seeing straightedge legends Insted reunite at CBGB’s in July of 2004. It means as much to me as it did when I sang along to Bane’s “I’ll be here tomorrow and I'll be here next year" two weeks before my sixteenth birthday, truly faithful that "just like this X on the back of my hand, I’m not going anywhere." I believe in it now like I did when Clean Steve and I occupied the back room of a Cromwell church basement, sitting on Fisher Price furniture and feeling like two adults nonetheless. I may not continue to identify as straightedge in two years – or even two months – but it will still be one of the most important factors shaping who I have become today.

Perhaps my refusal to let go of straightedge (such a curious remnant of my relationship with hardcore!) reflects a certain immaturity. It is possible, of course, to have merely a glass of wine or two with dinner. Clearly an after-dinner drink does not immediately result in alcoholism. The vast majority of alcohol consumption does not result in sexual violence and one can easily avoid supplementing the Anheuser-Bush family’s right-wing war chest by supporting other fine microbrewers. As for me, there are other options than straightedge. I could connect with the community in other ways. What if I went to more shows? Wrote another zine? Finally picked up my dusty bass guitar and started playing in a band? Even by hanging out at the right places at the right time I could seamlessly reconnect to the community that I have distanced from. But nothing makes me feel more sincerely connected than truly sharing Have Heart’s “Something More than Ink” as the voices of the kids – our voices – overpower the amplifiers: “In the core of heart, this is something more than ink.”

According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism only 12% of college students don’t drink. Very few of my friends also abstain from drugs and alcohol. Indeed, even most of my straightedge friends have taken different paths. Despite the alone-in-a-crowd feeling that occasionally hits me at parties on campus, I know that my straightedge identity will continue until I can truly divorce my feelings for straightedge and for hardcore as a whole. I will sustain this somewhat anachronistic token until I can find another way to satisfy my longing for the community to which I identify. In the meantime, I’ll carry seminal hardcore band Youth of Today’s torch when I say that “my flame will keep on burning strong” and “I will continue to sing this song.” What’s keeping me going, as singer Ray Cappo wrote 21 years ago, is that “I know I’m not singing this song alone.”

desde stgo, con pasión

I am having a really satisfying email exchange with the kid who runs Amendment Records in Santiago de Chile. I thought I might post it here for those of you who might be interested in a true window into my relationship with hardcore down here, the scene, and the ties between the scene here and in the eeuu. I suggest running it through Google Translate. 

The italicized text is from Pablo. The regular text is my response. This is email #5 in our exchange. 

Yo ire probablemente al ultimo show de Verse en RI en mayo, asi que quizas ahi nos veamos. Estare un tiempo en los Estados Unidos, pero mayormente en la costa oeste (Portland, OR).

El show será bueno – el espacio (AS220) es muuuy chico. Vi algo de mis shows favoritos allá – la comienza de las dos giras más grandes del verano 07 con have heart, verse, down to nothing, ceremony, sinking ships, allegiance, soul control, y I rise. Cuando Have Heart tocó, porque era tarde, llegó la policía para terminar el show. La gente cantó Watch Me Rise sin los altavoces y la banda…. ¡Re bueno/divertido! Aunque quiero, no voy. Cuando estarás en los EEUU, todavía estaré acá. No regresaré a los EEUU de Buenos Aires hasta julio y viviré y trabajaré en Washington en vez de Boston hasta septiembre. Y si tú estás en la costa oeste (¡e inferior!), pienso que es muy improbable que nos veamos.

Me parece muy interesante, y a la vez, comprensible el tema de que hayan investigado sobre el hardcore en Argentina y Chile. Aca el hardcore lleva casi 20 años y jamas, creo, se ha sabido algo de eso alla en Estados Unidos sobre todo. La escena es muy elitista y la gente solo escucha lo que esta de moda, la prueba de ello es que en Sudamerica, Europa hay muchas bandas increibles, pero nadie las pesca porque no son cool o porque no son de Boston, hahaha. Aca cuesta 5 veces mas hacer las cosas, las bandas nunca obtienen dinero y todo funciona con el dinero que obtenemos de nuestros trabajos. De todas formas, agradezco que te des cuenta y que digamos, apoyes el hardcore de aca, porque aca no hay duda que esta hecho de corazon, y lo mejor, es que tiene un mensaje importante, muchas veces ligado a lo politico o social. cosas que nos afectan a todos.

Es raro porque allá mi vida diaria es bastante separada de hardcore. Voy a una universidad donde no hay más de dos personas (incluyo yo) que les interesa hardcore como a mi me gusta. Pero porque estoy en un lugar distinta con una idioma que no es mía, me siento más los sentimientos que influenciaron mi interés inicial en hardcore. Tengo un interés nuevo y estoy averiguando grupos viejos que son nuevos para mí etc. La simpatía que he recibido de la comunidad de hardcore me muestra todo lo bueno de esa escena y me da mucha entusiasma.

Estoy de acuerdo contigo. Para mi parece que hardcore de acá nunca llegó a los EEUU. Yo no sabía que lo existía acá por 20 años, pensé que es más nuevo… Allá la escena es muy separada -- en Boston no hay mucho intercambio entre, por ejemplo, Kris Mission y los grupos más ignorant que tocan en Brockton (cerca de Boston) como Death Before Dishonor o Colin of Arabia, los más punk como Positive Reinforcement, y los más vieja escuela como cuando Stephen de The First Step vivió cerca de Boston. Es una pobreza de riqueza, quizás. Lo que quiero decir es que es bastante difícil ser una banda nueva de Boston y ganar la atención de la comunidad, aparte de ser de un país diferente. New Lows y Rival Mob, por ejemplo, son muy populares pero también son amigos de Lockin Out y tiene vínculos con ellos que son los influénciales. No es suficiente ser de Boston – se necesita ser cool de los que hacen los decisiones también. Que sé yo. 

Cuando vino Have Heart, digamos, fueron las unicas personas, sobre todo Pat, que se intereso en la escena de aca. Fue muy bueno experimentar eso.

Al final, el hecho de que uds trabajan mucho más para tener la escena es la razón porque grupos como Have Heart disfrutan mucho estar por gira acá. Especialmente para los grupos de los EEUU que no tienen el reconocimiento que merecen allá (no como los graaaandísimas como Have Heart), es mejor ir a Europa (o Sudamerica) para que experimente gente de bienvenido. Fue el mismo Pat de Have Heart que me aseguró que yo pueda hacer amigos de la comunidad amable de Santiago y Buenos Aires porque eso pasó a él. Ellos disfrutaron mucho la experiencia de ir a Sudamerica. Pero sí, espero que nosotros podamos dar apoyo a uds y asistamos en popularizarles en los EEUU. (Por lo menos yo quería darte una gira de Boston – con toda la historia de la revolución norteamericana, soy una nerd/empollona – alguna vez.)  

Con respecto a los vinilos, pues, los amo hahaha. Esa es la unica razon porque hago los discos en vinilo y no en cd por ejemplo. Tambien a las bandas que he sacado, les gusta el formato vinilo, asi que por ahora no he tenido problemas con eso. El sello es una de las pocas cosas con la que yo puedo hacer lo que me gusta y lo que yo quiera, asi que lo administro a mi modo. Si a la banda le gusta, los saco, sino, se puede negociar algo, pero asi funciona basicamente esto. Ahora recien saque un LP de Against All My Fears que es una banda que toco el sabado pasado, y ahora se viene el debut LP de Remission, y un split 7" de Against All My Fears con Maintain de Boston, quizas a estos los conozcas. Yo hablo mucho con Enrique, el bateriasta y son Chris, el guitarra.

hahahaa dicho como un hardcore kid verdadero. Me gustaba Against All My Fears (re de la decáda 90). Será difícil esperar para el LP de Remission – a ellos me encantan. Y sobre AAMF/Maintain, ¡q chistoso! Mi querida amiga (quien la extraño mucho) Amanda vive con Sean, el cantante de Maintain. En la universidad, mis amigos Bobby y Geoff y yo arreglamos dos shows con ellos. Además de eso, no conozco a Enrique o Chris jajaja.

Bueno Shana, ojala nos veamos en los Estados Unidos para cuando vaya, y te reitero las gracias por apoyar lo nuestro. :D

Mil gracias por los mails. Me gustaba mucho el intercambio. Con hardcore, es como tengo un pedazo de mi vida de allá pero también en una forma sudamericana y es el mejor. Y te agradezco por aguantar la escena y tener Amendment y (lo más egoísta) darme Remains to be Seen, que son reeeeeee buenos.

un abrazo!

*Note for those who speak Spanish: "re" is bsas slang for "very" and demonstrates the ways in which bad porteña castellano is invading my vocabulary.

la UBA

I promised Uncle Jeff that I would write more about school so here I go, fulfilling that promise. I am taking one class at the big public university here in Buenos Aires. By big, I mean big. La UBA has 180,000 students. Although it is without a doubt my most difficult class, I also think it is my favorite. Simply, la UBA is the experience that I came for.

Some useful background: (1) UBA is free for all Argentines. The way this works out in practice is that a schmillion people enroll and only a few actually graduate. It takes significant strength of will to overcome all of the bureaucracy/obstacles, especially the ones you're fighting while also holding down a full-time job. (2) From an administrative perspective, cost per student is very low. This is because overhead costs are kept to a bare minimum. Professors barely earn a pittance and almost none are full-time. Buildings are dumpy and inadequate. As a result, striking occurs often (it's happening right now) and school resembles a cross between a prison and a middle school gym, except that it's covered in leftist newspapers and grafitti.

Because of the way the university system is governed, students have a substantial amount of power. The state doles X amount of funding to the university but, from what I understand, does not impose strict restrictions on how that money is spent. In that determination, parties representing the faculty, the students, and I think one other stakeholding group (but not an administration per sé) meet in Congresses to represent their groups and interests. Student government, therefore, is legit and a big deal. Student parties, it follows, are legit and a big deal -- and given that this is Argentina, these student parties are super lefty and very active.



Frequently someone will enter in the middle of class and, upon receiving a nod from the professor, will plunge into a rehearsed 30-60 second spiel about their student party, student congress, student strike, etc etc. I usually have to bite back laughter as I imagine the student who tried that during, say, one of Professor Taliaferro's classes. Oof, it's fighting tears. In those moments, above all, I realize how very far from home I am.


For me, all of this ridiculousness works out swimmingly. Not to sound all Edward Said orientalizing on you or anything but I really dig that UBA is a different world from Tufts, perhaps even in another universe. IFSA handles the internal UBA maze and I get to enjoy the Che Guevara t-shirts and Popular Student Movement posters.

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.

cathartic, really.

I have to confess that one of my goals for this trip was to prioritize academics less, in favor of life experiences. In this spirit, I am pretty sure I am about to go to Chile for Semana Santa on shoe-string planning and a shoe-string budget. I say pretty sure because although we are planning to leave Wednesday morning (uh the day after tomorrow), nothing has yet been booked and we're stil not entirely certain who is coming.

A symptom of this EXCELLENT planning: I most definitely am almost out of clean laundry but neither the past track record of the lavadora nor the fact that I am in class 3-9pm bodes well for getting my laundry back tomorrow. Also, I still don't know if I will have to pay a fee when I hit the Chilean border, thus drastically increasing the price of this visit. (Though in my defense, no one seems to know this.) We were supposed to pay when we got here and didn't have to. However, there is a reason the Chilean economy is booming and the Argentine economy only sort of exists (coughefficiencycough). Finally, I most definitely have not done my homework that must be turned in on Wednesday before I leave -- and rather than do it, I've been updating this blog and rocking out to some CIV -- and I am happily skipping my absurdly difficult UBA class to go. 

QUE BUENO that Kara and I are acting this way! We're usually so on top of it! I know this is the opposite of the attitude I should have but I think this is healthy for once in a while. 

what you've been waiting for.... food

Last night my host mom and I debated over one of my favorite topics: FOOD. Food in Argentina is and is not what you think. Yes, it’s cheap. When David came to visit, we had a wonderful and huge parilla (grill) dinner for less than US$40. The most expensive places at which I have eaten generally charge AR$35 per entrée. When dividing by a favorable exchange rate of more than 3.5 pesos to the dollar, even an expensive meal is not breaking the bank – and most meals are not even close to that price range. Lunch today of two empanadas and a huge peach licuado (an amazing smoothie-like contraption of blended milk, ice, and peaches) cost me less than AR$20, or about US$5, mostly because my licuado cost more than both of my empanadas combined. 

So, I bet you are wondering, what is there to complain about? 

BA has incredible and plentiful mom-and-pop ice cream shops. I can dig classics like a humita (corn) empanada and a tostada miga (toasted white bread ham and cheese with the crusts cut off) for sure. Heavily influenced by BA’s montons of Italian immigrants, pretty much every corner café carries pasta, pizza, and milanesa, a breaded meat (or chicken or soy) cutlet. But, as those bland staples suggest, the food here is just not that flavorful. Contrary to the expectation drawn from the wonderful chimichurri I’ve had in restaurants in the States, I can’t seem to find cilantro in a grocery store to save my life. Tomato sauce rarely comes with oregano or even much basil; I gave up on local brands and bought a jar of imported Newman’s Own to stave off the boredom on my tongue. The concept of picante (hot/spicy) is a city myth. In fact, even when we went out for Mexican food here the picante condiments of pickled jalapeños and salsa picante were terribly bland and on a different occasion a requested hot Indian dish was mild at best. Every table comes with salt but I’ve only twice been given the option for pepper. For someone who enjoys the processes of cooking and eating, BA can be surprisingly disappointing. For those of you with milder gastos, I assure you that I’m no buffalo wings fan, that don’t like spicy food for spicy food’s sake. Plus there is just not that much variety: ham-and-cheese empanada, ham-and-cheese tostado mixto, ham-and-cheese miga, ham-and-cheese torta… you get the point. 

To be fair, regional/traditional Argentine foods like cazuelas (stews, I guess?) and traditional corn tamales (not really like the Mexcian kind) are not spicy but definitely flavorful. Street food like choripán (chorizo + pan (bread) sandwich), though potentially deadly, can be quite saborizado. I would be remiss not to clarify that there is incredible Italian food in the city, from wonderful pizza a la piedra (brick oven – literally pizza by the stone) to freshly made ricotta-and-spinach gnocchi. But by far and away my best spice-satisfaction has stemmed from abundant (and amazingly cheap) Peruvian food, which is both well-spiced and is served with a flavorful and spicy yellow salsa picante in which I frequently drown plates of French fries. That is helping to make up for the Salvadoran and Ethiopian I miss from DC, the Indian and Italian I miss from Boston, and the amazing dishes prepared by Georgetown Road’s own head chef Ed. (Yo, dad!) 

I still have much food exploration to do of course but my once-high hopes for encoutering well-spiced foods and sauces are dimming. While I live near a barrio with a large Korean population and am looking forward to sampling Korean bulgogi asado as soon as possible, I know that if it’s anything like much of the rest of what I’ve eaten here the hot sauce that defines the best bibimbap will be dumbed down for lame porteño taste buds and I will be lucky to find the soy/curry/sesame/scallion marinade I desire. Bummer. 

RIP Alfonsín

Raul Alfonsín died last week of lung cancer. Sorry I have been sluggish to comment on it – perhaps Argentine time is impacting me more than I would have expected.

Alfonsín, as you probably read, was the president of Argentina from 1983-1989. While his presidency was fairly mediocre – he ultimately fell from grace because of a major crisis of hyperinflation – Alfonsín’s transition from power is legendary. A committed democrat, the Radical-Civic Union leader (center-right) handed over the presidency to Peronist Carlos Menem in July of 1989 peacefully. In Argentina’s long history of election-junta alternations, the Alfonsín-Menem transition was the first truly democratic handover of power in 61 years.

Alfonsín was not a saint and his period of governance is marked by failures, from the aforementioned crisis of hyperinflation which he failed to ameliorate to the serious concessions he granted former junta leaders, including amnesty for war criminals, after facing threats and pressure from military powerbrokers. However, unlike many of his predecessors and followers, Alfonsín was honest. When the talk of the town centers upon favorable deals the Kirchners have awarded themselves and the ongoing corruption scandals of President Carlos Menem, when the society lacks a strong sense of social democracy and faith in their democratic institutions, this unique feature of Alfonsín is particularly meaningful.

Upon finding out that Alfonsín had died, my host mother bestowed the highest compliment she could pay: Alfonsín, she said, was the only living president of Argentina who could walk through the streets without having eggs thrown at them or being spat at. She withheld the four-letter-words with which she usually labels her elected officials. For the first time, I heard her cynicism replaced with respect.

Clearly, Silvia was not the only one. Tuesday at midnight my friend Beth and I walked to Alfonsín’s home at Santa Fé and Rodriguez Peña where there was a sizeable gathering. Acknowledging the solemnity, I did not take photos. I did however take photos of the huge crowd outside of Congreso, the Argentine capitol building, waiting to pay respects at Alfonsín open-casket wake the next day.

Lines wrapping around themselves in coils of four stretched four blocks from Rivadavía and Callao until Sarmiento, then as a solid line to Corrientes. Sporadically, these large groups would break into claps of “Al-fon-sín,” which seemed to help along the several hours wait of the after-work crowd. I saw plenty of flowers, many teary eyes, and lots of folks wrapping themselves in Argentine flags. Many were supporters of UCR, to be sure, but I am certain that many Judicialist Party (Peronist) members stood among their ranks, in an appropriate stand of democratic solidarity.

Although I experienced them, I did not write about the Day of Human Rights or the Mother of Plaza del Mayo, who march every Thursday to honor their disappeared, but I will acknowledge them now. In the midst of cosmopolitan, modern Buenos Aires, it’s sometimes easy to not see Argentina’s tragic and all-too-recent past. Alfonsín’s transition of power to Menem is considered the embodiment of the consolidation of Argentine democracy and his death is a poignant reminder that Argentine democracy, both politically and institutionally, still has much more to grow.

For more reading on the subject, I suggest the flattering NY Times obit and today’s similarly-themed article, “Argentina Mourns Raul Alfonsin, an Honest Leader.” In Spanish: Clarín’s obit.

no hay monedas

Rather than buy a reloadable plastic subway card or paper 10-ride passes, I buy my subway cards in two-ride or occasionally even one-ride units. This means that one out of every two rides requires standing on line and waiting to buy a subte pass. What is the reason for this madness? If I didn’t buy individually and in small quantities, I’d have to wait on 45-minute lines at the bank to get enough monedas (coins) for the privitized -- and therefore, non-uniform -- bus system, which doesn’t accept bills or any sort of prepaid cards. And even if I did wait at the bank, I’d probably get no more than $5 pesos anyway. 

Even though BA doesn’t usually feel all that different from other busy noisy highly developed cities, it’s amazing how inefficiencies lead to other inefficiencies: no monedas, long subte pass lines. 

For more on the moneda shortage, read Slate’s funny piece.