Week Four: September Newsletter!

Check out my first newsletter of the year! It relates to the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo.

Argentina’s Desaparecidos

Since arriving in Argentina on August 26th I have been learning about its history and its people. Through the history of the country I am finding that I can start to understand a little more about what makes its people tick. Before moving into our placement locations, my fellow Young Adults in Global Mission volunteers and I had a week of in-country orientation. Together we opened our minds to a new culture by seeing new places, speaking Spanish with Argentine people, and trying different foods.

For my first newsletter I want to share an important part of Argentine history that I had the opportunity to learn more about. In 1976, after a military coup, new leader General Jorge Videla unleashed a systematic state of violence. Some years before the military coup, Buenos Aires saw the appearance of guerrilla organizations, mainly the Montoneros, which supported the Revolutionary ideas of Che Guevara and left-wing traits of Peronism (This term stems from the political values of the former Argentine leader Juan Domingo Peron). Anyone suspected of being a guerrilla, a family member of a guerrilla, anyone associated with them or suspected of harboring guerrilla sympathies were targeted in Argentina. Those who were attached in Buenos Aires tended to be liberal intellectuals, journalists, psychologists, Jews, Marxists, trade unionists and atheists. Most victims were between their late teens and thirties but no one was exempt even pregnant women and handicapped.

Hit squads were sent to make people “disappear.” Once taken these “desaparecidos” ceased to exist. No one knew who abducted him or her or where he or she was. During the military dictatorship, which lasted from 1976 to 1982, 30,000 Argentine people disappeared. These desaparecidos were brought to one of over 500 secret detention camps in Argentina. These camps operated as interrogation facilities to find what the new dictatorship considered national terrorists. The Navy Mechanics School (ESMA), located in Buenos Aires, was the largest detention camp and around 5,000 people were contained there over the time of the dictatorship. At this camp the prisoners were subjected to torture, rape and usually execution. Typically, execution was carried out by dropping the victims out of a helicopter into the nearby river, La Plata, with weighted feet.

As a part of our YAGM orientation we toured the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA). It was defiantly an experience I will never forget. The whole campus was eerie. During the time of the desaparecidos, this school was in use and the detention camp was hidden in the officer’s living building, which consists of three floors and a basement. It is not clear if students of the school knew that this building was used as a detention camp.

I walked the hallways that the newly disappeared people were dragged down, climbed the stairs that they were forced to climb while hooded, and saw the tight spaces they had to sit in all day. We went down to the basement where prisoners were interrogated by their countryman or drugged before their flight to the river to be exterminated. I learned that in this camp the guards constantly played a loud radio making it difficult for prisoners to sleep. Detainees were lucky to go to the bathroom once a day or even get food. I read about one experience that occurred during the 1978 World Cup Soccer Tournament, which was held in Argentina to help show the new government’s “success.” The survivor said that the guards and prisoners were listening to the final game of the Argentine team and both were cheering for the same side. This memory shows that this was a grave situation and time in Argentina’s history. Countryman was against countryman. Instead of living in harmony and helping one another they were separated and torturing their fellow countrymen.

Madres de la Plaza de Mayo is a human rights organization that was established in 1987 to protest the government’s actions and to bring the issue of the desaparecidos to the attention of the international media. The mothers and families of the disappeared want to know the truth of what happened to their children and family members. The Madres theorize that the goal of the dictatorship was to break down family structures to control the society. To this day the Madres continue to hold silent protests every Thursday afternoon in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires.

The other YAGM volunteers and I were lucky enough to have the opportunity to meet with one of the leaders and founders of this organization. She shared with us the history of the organization and told us that she was happy that we are in Argentina to continue the work of their children. Her son was taken from her in the summer of 1976. She told us that the YAGM volunteers are doing what their children were doing before their lives were taken away from them. Like their children, we are trying to understand different perspectives of the world and help those less fortunate than us.

In the mid-1990s, the armed forces acknowledged their role in the atrocities of the dictatorship by making a public apology; but I learned on the tour at ESMA that they will not release any of the files or documents from that time. Therefore not much is know of what happened and the testimonies of survivors are the only proof available. Trials are being held still today to punish those responsible.

We attended one of these trials where a woman named Maria shared her story. More than 30 years after her time of captivity, Maria calmly told the full courtroom of being taken from her cousin’s house, thrown into the back seat of some car and being whisked away to a horrible place where she was tortured and hardly feed. She had to sleep on a cold cement floor where in the next room she could hear her fellow prisoners being tortured. After a series of clarification questions the hearing was over and the men on trial were taken away in handcuffs.

After reflecting on this intense history I see that it is still very present in the hearts of the Argentine people. Many people have connections to families of those taken and are very emotional when talking about that time in their history. I am continually shocked at the horrors that human beings are capable of doing. Genocide is something that is continually happening all over our world. My hope is that by sharing this history it will help bring to light that brutalities like these are something we need to fight to stop.  

To learn more about what happened during the time of the desapericidos I recommend that you watch the documentary Nuestros desapericidos/Our Disappeared. This movie tells some very personal stories of families that lost loved ones and explains more in detail what happened.

This month’s quote for thought:
“The rights of all are diminished when the rights of one are threatened.” Martin Luther King Jr.

This month’s scripture quote for thought:
You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. Galatians 5:13-15

Week Four: Nalga Picada Intesamente

Food...more specifically meat...is something difficult to understand in another language.  I have basically been avoiding buying any meat because when I enter the section of the store with meat I get scared.  You never know you could end eating cow brains or something without even knowing it.  Meat is also kind of expensive and I do not want to waste it.  If you stop and think about it there are so many different words associated with meat and there are so many different types of meat out there.  Plus, different countries process and eat different types of meat (compared to what I am used to in the US).  

Despite this fear, I realized at the beginning of this week I was probably starting to lack protein (despite the many eggs I have been eating) so I decided to buy some hamburger.  Innocent, easy hamburger.  I was in the grocery store and I had no idea what the word for hamburger was.  I know it might seem stupid that I just don't ask someone about what meat is like in Argentina and what some of the different names may mean (I do know a few) but I just took the easy way out and decided to buy the thing that looked the most like the hamburger I am used to (and I will ask eventually).  

I ended up buying something that said "Nalga Picada Intesamente Desgrasada Novillito" (it looked like hamburger to me).  I made an actually hamburger with it and it tasted fine...not exactly what I am used to but it was good.  Then today I was using the rest to make noodles and red meat sauce.  As I was cooking I decided to get my translator out to try and figure out what that long name actually means.  I discovered that I was eating cow buttock that was intensely chopped.  I figured this out before I ate dinner and I sort of lost my appetite for a minute and broke out laughing.  I am actually still laughing about it.  I kind of love being a foreigner and not understanding anything...it presents lots of funny situations.  All I can do now is laugh and eat my probably very fatty cow buttock.  Always learning something here!

My pasta dinner with buttock cow meat!

   

Week Four: What Exactually Am I Doing in Argentina?

So I realized the other day that I never explained what this blog is about and why I am in Argentina. I have this amazing opportunity that started August 18th which is to be a part of the ELCA’s Youth Adults in Global Missions program. I was assigned a placement in Gran Buenos Aires, Argentina where I will be able to use my majors of Spanish and Studio Art by teaching art and soccer to youth for 11 months. Five other young adults will also be serving in the Argentina/Uruguay area and will be placed with Lutheran churches that have sister congregations in the USA.

Our goal is to support and encourage these local churches and their communities in the work they are doing. I am really looking forward to this experience because I know it will be life-changing and push me to my limits. I will have the opportunity to grow and reflect on my own faith, help others grow in faith, and learn about a whole new rich culture, among many other things.

Our group will be living in various housing situations depending on the site – home stay, shared housing, apartments, or on-campus housing. I am living in an apartment on my own for the year that is near the church.

I want this blog to be a place where I can share with people at home what I am seeing, feeling, and doing. It is going to be very informal and probably a little cheesy at times. So prepare yourselves. I also hope to share with the people who cannot be here this "journey" (hence the title of the blog) that I have started. This is a journey of discoveries through: self, culture, economics, social, faith, history, language, norms, etc. I know now at the beginning of this amazing opportunity that things will be added to that list that I expected and other things that I never would have guessed. I do not know if this is too high of an expectation but I hope that this year will change me (in a good way).

Along with this blog I will be sending out a monthly newsletter that I hope will make you think (maybe, hopefully). I will also attach it to the blog :)

So for now peace and love to all my readers! Stay tuned because I am sure this will be an interesting year full of highs and lows. Hopefully I can figure out the right words to write to communicate what I am experiencing!

Week Four: What I am doing at my Placements

The YAGM group singing at church the first Sunday

Here is a little discription of what I am doing so far:

On the weekends I work with the church.  My duties so far are as follows: Saturdays include cooking and preparing the food for Sunday's after church lunch and doing any little odds and ends of organizing or cleaning.  Sundays include going to church, helping/teaching Sunday school, serving lunch, and playing with the kids (soccer, drawing, singing, and board games).  As I said before I have been playing a lot of soccer!  WOOHOO!  

Side note: It is great to be living a country where everyone (pretty much) plays soccer.  Asking someone if they play soccer is almost like asking someone if they breath.  It is great!  Even some people that I would not has guessed played soccer...do.  It is surprising but in a good way.  At home hardly anyone plays so getting a little game together is pretty difficult...but here you just have to yell out in the street and you have enough people to play.  Plus...no one cares where they play...I saw a very intense game going on in (literally) a corner.  I love soccer. 

  
Three other days out of the week I am working at M.A.M.A (Mis Alumnos Más Amigos), which is a non-profit organization, located in a low income community about 20 minutes away from the church.  It is basically a community center for youth (ages 0-14ish) where they can come and eat lunch and spend time playing.  So far I have been helping with recreational activities, sports, and a little bit of arts and crafts (hopefully I will get more into the arts and crafts as the year goes on).  We mainly play soccer, pool, put together puzzles, and play on the swings. Basically all I have to do is hang out with the kids all day...its a pretty sweet gig.

Week Three: Visit to Capital Federal!

YAY! I found some nature to climb!  I miss nature!

Learning Learning and more learning!  On Monday I meet up with another friend from the YAGM program who is living sort of nearby.  We went into the main part of Buenos Aires which is known as Capital Federal.  The outer suburbs (where I live) are known as Gran Buenos Aires or Greater Buenos Aires.  It took me about one hour to get into the city center by train.  That was my first experience riding public transportation alone here in BA and it was pretty easy and very cheep to get there (AR$1.20 both ways).  I have been finding it difficult to get orientated to BA because it is such a huge city!  This little trip really helped!  We smoothly navigated ourselves around the Retiro/Palermo area and now I have a better cogitative map established for the city (wow I kind of sound like a scientist here...cool).  

The weather was beautiful and it was nice to go on a little adventure and get away from my apartment!  The Retiro/Palermo area is one of the wealthiest areas in the city and it contrasts with the area I am living in...the streets were almost spotless and everything was very well kept.  As we walked to the Plaza de Francia we went by Carter and other high end stores.

A Church we stopped by in the Plaza de Francia

 

 

 After stopping in the Plaza de Francia we headed to the Cementerio de Recoleta (a few steps away), which is a very famous tourist stop.  The cemetery opened in 1822 and was and continues to be a very difficult place to get into (people are dying to get in....literally?) with lengthy waiting lists.  It has become home to famous, well know family names and it very expensive.  It contains many elaborate tombs/mausoleums that are all very unique and very interesting to look at.  It sort of seemed like a place Buffy the Vampire Slayer and her gang should be hanging out in...did not see them though.  

The creepy but awesome Cementerio de Recoleta

Evita's final (for now) resting place

We stopped by Evita Peron's grave (that is basically the only reason we came to the cemetery...she is after all their most famous resident).  It is a nice humble, plain black granite tomb.  It is rumored that her remains will eventually more to San Vicente cemetery to be burred next to her husband (I wonder how that will work...he had 3 wives...Evita was the second...).  The graveyard was a city itself and we sort of got lost trying to leave...but we made it out in the end. 

El Museo National de Bellas Artes (National Museum of Art)

Of course I wanted to check out the local art museums...this was a great place to start. It is one of the largest art museums in South America.  I will defiantly have to go back...there was too much to see.  We did get to see a really interesting exhibit of an Argentine Artist called Antonio Berni (1905-1981).  his early work reminds me a lot of the Diego Rivera's murals.

Antonio Berni Españoles desempleados

Me in front of the Facultad de Derecho (right next door to the Art Museum)

Overall we had a great day...this is the beginning of a beautiful year of exploration in this great city!

Week Three: Welcome Home!

Sign the Kids made for all the new volunteers

Villa Ballester...what a great place to be welcomed to!  The people are so great here and I feel so welcomed and at home.  The first day at my new church the children were so excited and they made me two really big signs.

Church courtyard and classrooms

Church

New cat neighbor

I love the church it is great...nice and Lutheran but in Spanish.  It has been really fun and interesting to attend church services in Spanish.  It is especially great because I can understand everything.  The church is connected to an old hacienda that is now the church offices and a residence for women.  The church also has another building that is a residence for women, some classrooms, a nice big patio, and a little soccer field for the kids.  Every Sunday I get to hang out with the kids.  Last week I got to play soccer for 4 hours and I LOVED IT!  I will defiantly get my fill of soccer here and I am very excited! 

Playing futbol for the first time with the youth at Church

I am living in a great apartment near the church.  After living in a college dormitory for four years this is the Ritz!  The apartment is almost twice the size of a typical dorm room and I have my own bathroom and kitchen.  Plus everything is very new because they just renovated the apartment one year ago.  I could not have hoped for anything better.  I am so thankful that I get to live here for one year!  Plus, one of my new friends showed me a great park to run in! 

My Bed!

My Closet and Picture wall.

My Bathroom!

View of kitchen and closet from living room/ dinning room.

My living room.

View into my bedroom from living room.

Dinning room!

I am getting used to cooking for myself.  It has been a little difficult going from the St. Olaf cafeteria (Fifth school in the nation for yummy food) to Cafe a la Rachel; but I am having fun experimenting with new cooking ideas.  It is also quite the experience going to the super market...the food is so different here and the mentality for quantities and how often one goes to the grocery store is very unlike the American mentality.  I think we eat a lot more food and everything is always so big!  Here one bag of cereal gives me about two bowls.  I guess cereal is not something they eat much of...but I basically live off the stuff...and don't even ask me about the milk haha...still trying to figure that out.  Overall everything is soooo exciting and new...it is fun to be una extranjera (a foreigner).  I am learning a lot about how this culture works.  I have also discovered that fried bananas are amazingly yummy and I cannot stop eating them. 

My new kitchen!

Week Two: Fotos

Our Group with one of the Madres

The Main Building on the Navy's Mechanics School

The Officer's Living Quarters where the secret detention camp was held

One of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo

 

 

MAN was it cold when we first got here!

Map from orientation with all the volunteers and their site facilitators. Two worlds and cultures coming together!

Week Two: History and Reflexion

Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo Protesting

On Friday, we got to meet and eat lunch with Pastor Alan Eldrid, the president of the IELU (the sister Lutheran church organization to the ELCA in Argentina and Uruguay). He told us about the history of the IELU and other interesting things about his life and the country. He is a very kind and it was fun to get to meet him.

On Sunday we all went to the service at my coordinator’s congregation called Santo Sacramento. This congregation is also the congregation I will be living at and working with for the year. I was lucky to get an early preview of my placement site! We attended church and they all welcomed us with open arms and everyone is so nice! We sang a few camp songs for them after church and they really enjoyed it. I will tell you more about the congregation later.

After church we got to hear a presentation on the federal debt problem in Argentina by my congregation’s pastor Angel. He is an IELU pastor and the coordinator of Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Program on Illegitimate External Debt in Latin America. It was a very interesting presentation because I had never heard of this problem. Basically the government is in such external debt that it is almost impossible to pay it back. It seems all due to loopholes in the contracts and insanely high interest rates. This great debt is partly the cause of many social issues that this country is facing. I will take more about this topic in one of my up-coming newsletter I think.

After that presentation we watched a film about the Argentine dictatorship of 1976 called “Nuestros Desaparecidos/ Our Disappeared.” I recommend that you all watch it (it is in English). It really explains a lot about what happened and has many specific accounts of people affected by the actions of the dictatorship.

Here is a little history (this is all from my September newsletter…): In 1976, after a military coup, new leader General Jorge Videla unleashed a systematic state of violence. Some years before the military coup, Buenos Aires saw the appearance of guerrilla organizations, mainly the Montoneros, which supported the Revolutionary ideas of Che Guevara and left-wing traits of Peronism (This term stems from the political values of the former Argentine leader Juan Domingo Peron). Anyone suspected of being a guerrilla, a family member of a guerrilla, anyone associated with them or suspected of harboring guerrilla sympathies were targeted in Argentina. Those who were attached in Buenos Aires tended to be liberal intellectuals, journalists, psychologists, Jews, Marxists, trade unionists and atheists. Most victims were between their late teens and thirties but no one was exempt even pregnant women and handicapped.

Hit squads were sent to make people “disappear.” Once taken these “desaparecidos” ceased to exist. No one knew who abducted him or her or where he or she was. During the military dictatorship, which lasted from 1976 to 1982, 30,000 Argentine people disappeared. These desaparecidos were brought to one of over 500 secret detention camps in Argentina. These camps operated as interrogation facilities to find what the new dictatorship considered national terrorists. The Navy Mechanics School (ESMA), located in Buenos Aires, was the largest detention camp and around 5,000 people were contained there over the time of the dictatorship. At this camp the prisoners were subjected to torture, rape and usually execution. Typically, execution was carried out by dropping the victims out of a helicopter into the nearby river, La Plata, with weighted feet.

We visited ESMA and it was a very intense experience. It was difficult to imagine anything had happened at this campus. The detention camp was held and disguised in one building, which was the officer’s living building. There is little to no evidence that this was a detention camp because before the end of the dictatorship they tried to hide everything/make it look like it was never a detention camp. Thanks to survivor witnesses they have been able to explain a lot about what went on at in this building during that time.

Overall the experiences of the survivors make these detention camps sounds a lot like the concentration camps of the WWII Nazis. People were taken from their homes and treated like they were less than human. I just do not understand how the soldiers could carry out such horrible tasks or how they could think that they are superior to their prisoners. My guidebook I brought from home for Argentina has this great history section in the back and it told of one survivor’s experience with one of the interrogators. The interrogator told him, “Only God gives and takes life. But God is busy elsewhere, and we’re the ones who must undertake this task in Argentina.” This quote shows the mindset of these people of the dictatorship. It seems as if they think they are doing what is right, almost the work of God? Our guide also told us that the prisoners were never addressed by their names because they all had numbers.

I guess they justified their actions by the fact that they learned the tactics from a very established school and at the time these “ways of interrogation” were being used all over South America and other parts of the world. Our guide said that they learned the strategies from the United State’s FBI and other schools in South American especially one school in Panama. These places actually taught these tactics as authentic ways of interrogation. I guess ethics were not taken into consideration.

One thing that really got to me was that I am the same age that the people being abducted were. I realized how thankful I am that I am free and do not have to worry about being imprisoned and taken away from my family and friends. I am lucky that I can be in Argentina, the US or almost wherever trying to help others and not be seen as some kind of threat. I keep revisiting this Bible passage when thinking about all of this:

You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. Galatians 5:13-15
 

The Beatles said it right when they said, “ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE!” If human beings keep treating each other like dirt we will destroy each other. Tangent (well we have already probably had a lot of those but I will actually label this one): I think this also applies to what is happening with our environment. If we keep wasting our natural resources and living consumer driven lives we will obliterate ourselves and our children because their will be nothing left for them. Anyway I plan to talk more about the environment later…so I am warning you now J. Tangent over. So really I wanted to share this history with y’all so you can share it with someone else, and they can share it with someone else. The kicker is that this way we can tell other that horrible events like this continue to happen in our world and that we can/should all start to try and do something to prevent it from happening. Awareness is the first step, I think, to making a better world.

Week Two: Food!

Lucky we did not have to cook many meals in the kitchen and we got to eat out quite a bit. Within this first week I have learned that the Argentine people love pizza, empanadas, and beef. Argentina has/had a large immigrant population from many different countries especially Germany and Italy. Therefore the love of pizza makes sense. I have also noticed that many of the last names I have seen so far look Italian. I think that this will work out well for me because Italian food is probably my favorite type food! Speaking of Italian food…we ended up eating at the same Italian restaurant 3 times in one week. It was only a block away from the seminary and they had really good food at a very reasonable price. Their pizza is yummy…I am getting hungry just thinking about it. I also had lasagna that was made with thin pancakes instead of noodles…it was interesting. Empanadas are a great creation that I hope to learn how to make while I am here. Empanadas are a great creation that I hope to learn how to make while I am here. The name comes from the verb empanar, meaning to wrap or coat in bread. Empanada is made by folding a dough or bread patty around the stuffing. The stuffing can consist of many things such as meat or vegetables.

Ok…new paragraph just to talk about the beef. Milanesa (Pictured here) is breaded veal and it is on every menu in any restaurant (you can also get milanesa de pollo which is breaded chicken). One can get it as a sandwich or without bread but either way I hope you are hungry because they will give you two huge patties. We were lucky enough to have our country coordinator (Kate) and her family cook us super one night. They did it asado style which means they grilled the meat! My favorite meat we had that night was the lomo, which is tenderloin steak. They also made bife de chorizo, which is a prize steak cut, and chorizo which is a thick meaty sausage (but as I learned is not spiced like the spicy Spanish sausage that I was used to in Spain). Kate also made us salad because that is something most Argentine people do not eat. And for desert we had some of the most delicious ice cream I have ever had. It must again be the influence of the Italians because they are known for their gelato.

Week Two: Finally in Argentina

After a long flight for Chicago to Washington DC to Buenos Aires, my fellow YAGM volunteers and I arrived safely in our new country and home for the upcoming year. This week we stayed in the center of Buenos Aires in a Lutheran seminary. We ended up sharing the space with 40 other volunteers from Germany. They were all very nice and liked to speak English with us. I think that most of them just started learning Spanish but have had English for many years making English a sort of a comfort language. I would walk through the seminary not knowing if I should speak to the German volunteers in English or Spanish and it got a little confusing but it was fun to get to talk with some of them.

A comical challenge came about in the kitchen. The seminary has a large kitchen and dining area but no cooks were on campus so we had to fend for ourselves. It turned out to be difficult to cook with 40 other people because dishes and cooking utensils were scarce. Pots and pans were almost impossible to find and there was a huge scary gas stove and oven that we needed to use. Overall it was a pleasurable experience cooking together in the kitchen. I think cooking with people is amusing and it can bring them closer together.