Lo que piensan (What they think)

Ken Kerr Bio

One advantage of learning a second language is that you can find out what people think—not what the English-language newspapers tell you they think, but what the people actually tell you they think. I returned Sunday from three weeks in Buenos Aires. I visited with old friends and made new friends. Inevitable, the conversation would turn to politics.

There are two main topics to these conversations: George Bush and Barack Obama.

It is not easy to explain George Bush. Argentines are genuinely confused as to how we could have elected George Bush. They are completely baffled as to how we re-elected him. As completely as my Spanish skills allowed, I explained the questionable voting in Florida and the Gore v. Bush Supreme Court decision. That satisfied most as to the question of the first time, but how did it happen twice? I told them he took advantage of Americans' fear. The landlady of the apartment I was renting replied that in re-electing him, we made the world have fear. The words "loco" and "Diablo" often came up when talking about Bush.

Argentines think the current world financial crisis rests at Bush's feet as well. Their Peso has fallen from 3:1 against the Dollar to 3.5:1 while they have seen inflation of 30% a year. As the world's second-largest exporter of corn and soy (behind the US) the world-wide recession has seen exports drop. A prolonged drought has made a suffering agri-conomy worse with dried up fields and 300,000 dead beef cattle. The failure of huge sectors of the US financial system could not have come at a worse time.

A friend, a retired Argentine diplomat, was surprised when I told him how much I disliked the president and asked me why. I told him of Karl Rove's push polling in South Carolina that derailed McCain's 2000 bid and the arm's length endorsement of T. Boone Pickens's "Swift Boating" of Kerry's 2004 presidential candidacy. I went on with claiming mandates he did not have, eroding citizens' rights, his Oedipal-complex-inspired Iraq war financed by Chinese debt while giving tax cuts to the wealthy. At the end of my tirade, he responded, "We didn't know any of that."

At a dinner-gathering of two families in the home of another friend, I was asked if Bush has dyslexia. "Can he read?" was how bluntly they put it. These people cannot speak English, yet they got the sense that our president has a learning disability.

The Argentine impression of Barack Obama was also surprising. When I arrived at the airport and the driver was loading my luggage, he saw my "Educators for Obama" pin on my carry on. He pointed to it and said, "El Salvador." My retired diplomat friend, however, said, "I think he is a demagogue."

Argentines have a strong sense that there is racial tension in the USA. A waiter in the café said, "But many Americans don't like Obama." I asked him why he thought that and he stroked his cheek and said, "The color of his skin." He was not the only one who asked about American racial bigotry. I tried to assure them that the issue of race has gotten better in the USA, and it is not the problem it once was. I am not sure they believed me.

Many, many Argentines asked if I was afraid that Obama will be assassinated. I told them that we can't worry about that. I told them that Americans are tired of being afraid; that our fear has not helped us in these past seven years. I told them that whatever happens, Barack Obama's election says good things about the United States. "Es un buen día para los Estados Unidos," I said. A man I spoke with in the little neighborhood restaurant, El Rincon, replied, "El tiempo lo dirá."

"Time will tell."

--------------------

To receive "Daily Email Updates" from Air-it-Out with George Wenschhof, click on "Subscribe to this feed" below.

Amigo, ¿Puedes Darme Diez Centavos? (Buddy, can you spare a dime)

Ken Kerr Bio

The canary in the coal mine for the US economy is the image of men and women standing on street corners selling pencils and apples on the street corner. That, along with Yip Harburg, and Jay Gorney’s song, “Brother, can you spare a dime?” are icons of the Great Depression.

Last week, an Argentine business associate of mine told me as we discussed our respective economic crises, “The best day in Argentina is not as good as the worst day in the United States.” I politely nodded and dismissed it as hyperbole, but then gave it some thought.

In the last big American recession of the 1980s, we saw the emergence of squeegee men and “Will Work For Food” written on cardboard signs, and stoplight beggars. On the streets of Buenos Aires, it is common to see the modern-day equivalent. Outside the grocery store, a young woman sells cherries for $2.99 a quarter kilo. Inside, the same sell for $3.29. A few blocks later, there are the same cherries for the same price on a different corner with a different woman. On the bus, a man gets on and speaks to the driver before going into his sales pitch about an excellent quality pen with a light on its cap for two pesos, about sixty cents. He gets off after accommodating all takers only to be replaced by a man selling sewing kits for AR$5. In the subway, an old woman sits near the entrance selling small packets of facial tissue for a peso.

We see unemployment figure headlines that tell us the rate is the highest in four years, then ten years, and now sixteen years. It will not be long before we see it reach Reagan’s 1982 rate of 10+%--the highest since the Great Depression. Argentina’s unemployment rate now stands at about 8.1%. However, those working in the “informal economy” have an unemployment rate of 15%. The unemployment rate in the US was 7.2% as of December 2008.

Buenos Aires is a city with an important café/restaurant culture. Families, even those of modest means, eat in a restaurant every week. An article in La Nacion last week told of 300 restaurants closing in Buenos Aires in recent months because of falling revenues and rising rents.

After the 2001 economic crisis, where the average Argentine lost 2/3 of his wealth, unemployment in Argentina reached US Great Depression numbers. Desperate for work, men once employed as car mechanics and laborers resorted to sorting through the garbage to scavenge for any trash of recyclable value. They became known as Los Cartoneros, the Cardboard Collectors. This army of over 100,000 scavengers descended upon the wealthier neighborhoods in a government-supplied train that the locals called, El Tren Fantasma—The Ghost Train. This was because the people ignored them as they went about their work; like ghosts, they were invisible to the world.

Cartoneros now have uniforms and official status. Their numbers have dropped to about 20,000. They have also had the serendipitous effect of reducing Buenos Aires landfill by 25% a day. The Ghost Train has been replaced by busses and trucks located at various pick-up locations.

Curiously, if one were to be blindfolded and dropped into the center of Argentina, he would, upon regaining sight, swear he was in some agricultural part of the USA. Argentina is, like the USA, a country of European immigrants. In the years just before WWII, it had the 4th highest standard of living in the world. Average wages and middle class wealth were above that of even the USA and most of Europe. Argentina’s constitution is modeled so closely to the Constitution of the United States that it could be considered plagiarism.

According to American lore, the “canary in the coalmine” served as an early warning for miners. As long as the canary kept singing, it was OK to keep on doing what we were doing. Very sensitive to methane and carbon dioxide, a dead canary signaled the need for immediate action. For the United States, perhaps the canary is Argentina.

--------------------

To receive "Daily Email Updates" from Air-it-Out with George Wenschhof, click on "Subscribe to this feed" below.