This week I was able to see both Hugo Chavez (current president of Venezuela) and U2 in La Plata. For being a pretty small city, it gets a lot of big names to stop by.
Chavez was in La Plata to receive an award from the school of journalism in the University for defending public expression and fighting for those who don’t have a voice in the monopolies that exist in Venezuela. I really don’t know much about his actions for or against freedom of speech but here is an article from the Washington Post… http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/argentine-journalism-school-honors-hugo-chavez-for-service-to-peoples-communication/2011/03/29/AFPTDAvB_story.html
It was such a unique opportunity to see Chavez speak—he certainly won’t be coming to the U.S. anytime soon. Because of this, we convinced our professor to let us end class two hours early so we could go see him. Chavez is a very vocal critic of imperialism, capitalism and pretty much anything the U.S. does. He plays up being a “man of the people” never wearing suits and talking about the power and voice of the “pueblo” (small-town) in all of his speeches. In La Plata, he clearly aligned himself with the current president Cristina Fernandez and the Kirchner-ists to mixed reactions from the crowd. He emphasized the solidarity of Argentina and Venezuela (and all of South America) against the influence of the U.S. and Europe. The most interesting thing I think he talked about was the situation in Libya. He was clearly against the U.S. invasion and went as far as to voice his support for Gaddafi for being a man of the “pueblo” and standing up to imperialism. Hmmm—interesting.
Chavez is a good speaker and knew how to get the crowd excited—lots of “Viva Bolivar, Viva Castro, Viva Che Guevara, Viva Kirchner, Viva Venezuela, Viva Argentina” and it was really interesting being an American in the crowd. There were lots of people there with flags and banners and chants going for almost the whole 3 hours that we were there (he spoke for about 2 hours and that is apparently pretty short for him). I love the political activism here—its so great to see so many students and young people involved.
Another funny note—when walking into the area that he was speaking we had to go through security. They glanced into our bags and asked, “Cuchillo (knife)?” I hesitated before realizing that they were asking if I had a knife and quickly responded that I wasn’t hiding a knife in my bag. While I feel like it was a step to have security (it’s the first event that I’ve been to that has had security), I’m not sure how effective simply asking whether people were bringing knives into the speech would be against anyone who actually had a knife. Just another reminder that I am not in the U.S. let alone in D.C.
After a pretty typical week of Comision classes, I went to the U2 concert last night at El Estadio Unico in La Plata. It was an INCREDIBLE concert and I’ve basically concluded that Bono is one of the coolest people on the planet. So many great songs (I think “With or Without Me,” “Beautiful Day,” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” were my favorites) and Bono really talks a lot about human rights and the groups humanitarian efforts throughout the concert (including AIDS in Africa, Burma, Egypt, Japan and more). It was really an awesome show—one of the best concerts I’ve seen (I think Bruce Springsteen wins that one…).
I’ll try to put up some more photos soon—my camera is currently out of commission but I should have it back by next week.
Lots of love from Argentina,
Caroline
Ps. Shout out to the Grady family on their impressive showing in the Grady/Clancy Challenge NCAA Bracket, all 6 of us were in the top 8. Special congrats to Beth for the win!
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