7: "To the north, to the desert: Part 1"

Winter break came two weeks early because of Swine Flu.

Monday, June 29th, I was supposed to give a talk to Language II about a video I’d made. I got a text in the morning from my adviser: because of the flu, school was cancelled. She wrote back later in the afternoon – the school’s been closed for winter break, no classes til July 27th.

Entre Rios province shut all its schools early, as a health measure. That weekend, the clubs and bars were also closed, along with church services and any big public gatherings. The newspapers were referring to it all as a “psychopandemic”, as there was no national consensus on how to respond, on the extent of the outbreak. Each province reacted as it wanted to.

What really made things bad was the resignation of the president’s minister of health just after the June 28th midterm elections. The replacement declared a few days later that the number of Swine Flu cases in the country weren’t a couple thousand, as they said before, but one hundred thousand.

I stuck around town for another week writing, reading, cooking, eating, going for walks, sleeping.

Tuesday, July 7th, I set off with my backpack, some Melville and Woolf and Philip K Dick, pens and my notebook. I had a date to meet a Chilean Fulbrighter in the northern desert in a week´s time.

I took an overnight bus to Tucuman, a big city in the northwest, near the Andes, that’s like a miniature Buenos Aires.

I got into town early in the morning. I walked downtown, to the morning rush. A waiter walked by on the sidewalk, balancing a polished tray, carrying a cup of coffee, a glass of seltzer and a plate of toast. I stopped at a café for a drink. I saw men wearing three-piece suits, talking with their hands, their faces exaggerated, just like Porteños (Buenos Aires natives). Women were wearing high leather boots, tight pants, sweaters.

I walked to a shop that sells old magazines, books, fliers, comics, instruction manuals…all sorts of stuff piled up on metal tables, with hardly any space to walk or turn around. On the way I saw a woman and a little boy. She guided him towards a garbage can, put her hands on his waist. He started peeing into the corner, as the crowd flowed by.

I walked towards the main plaza. A red light stopped traffic. A group of old people, retirees, walked into the street, stretching out a long banner – “Retirees of the Plaza” – it said. They were protesting for the rights of the retired, who have been losing government benefits.

One old guy was blowing off fireworks. The light turned green and they didn’t move. The cars, the trucks, the taxis, started honking, drivers leaning out the windows and shouting or throwing mean gestures with their hands.

The retirees made a loop around the plaza and finished near the congress building.

A line of riot cops waited for them, behind metal barricades.

The group approached, and one old guy, wearing a canvas hat, carrying a shopping bag and a flag, pulled down the fences. The riot cops formed into line and put up their shields. A big, bald, dark and nasty guy – wearing a wool overcoat and a grey three-piece and a red tie – stalked around in the front of the cops, holding a walkie-talkie, staring at the retirees.

The old people hung around there, passing around the bullhorn, smoking cigarettes, talking, shouting. They chanted too, sometimes profanities. Another group protesting something else – relatively younger, wearing powder blue caps – came from behind the retirees, along the plaza, and formed into the mass.

I took some pictures and went to a bookstore and then a Chinese buffet for lunch.

Later, I met up with Fareed, an ETA living in Tucuman. I hung out with him during a conversation group he’d arranged for his students.

The next day, July 9th, was one of Argentina’s Independence Days. I walked downtown and saw a crowd gathered around a white adobe building. They were waiting behind barricades, looking towards the fresh-painted, shining blue doors of the place. I got in with the mass to wait and look. Thoughts of Swine Flu were far from our minds.

The president, Cristina Kirchner, was going to talk in Tucuman that day. I thought it was probably for her that we were waiting.

She and her entourage made their way down the street, towards the white building. The crowd got happy and eager and amazed when she walked by. One little girl tried to hand her a hand-written letter.

They proceeded through those blue doors into that building, filing in, photographers and bodyguards and local politicians and accomplices. A journalist got locked out of the place, lingered around too long and had to knock on the big doors a few times before they opened them again and let her sneak in.

I didn’t know what the building was. Some private meeting place I thought. Turns out it was the House of Independence, where declaration was signed in 1816. I passed by there later that afternoon, after the crowds and celebrity had left. I paid 5 pesos and got to go in and see the old rooms and a museum there and some quiet courtyards.

I took a bus north to Salta late in the afternoon.