Pre-school, Chavez and the Crazies, March 2007

I'm writing from one of the many wonderful cafes surrounding my son's pre-school. I love the smell when you enter of ground coffee beans, steamed milk and pastries baking. The cafes in Buenos Aires are always full of people quietly chatting, reading the paper and working on laptops. I really missed this scene in West Africa. Anyway, I’m here because my son and I are jointly undergoing his school's "adaptation period." Over two weeks (or longer if needed), the toddlers go to school for progressively longer periods of time. The first day they go for an hour, the next day they go for an hour and 1/2, and so on. The first day of school at his “jardin,” the parents were allowed inside with the children. We all took photos, oohed and ahhed at their ability to play with the toys and interact with the teachers, and were allowed to play a bit with our kids. The second day we were relegated to the sidelines and instructed not to play with our children. The third day we were told to stay near the door, and to sneak out when the kids were having fun. Now, when we get to the school’s entrance, the teachers try to take our kids by the hand and lead them into the classroom. During any of the above stages, after the parent leaves, if their child cries uncontrollably and non-stop, the school will call for the parent to pick up the child and start over the next day. So far, I've been pretty lucky. My kid is having a ball. He knows we are going to "go see babies at jardin", although he isn't yet at the point where I can just drop him off at the door and walk away. That would certainly result in a screaming fit, which, to be honest, I'm just not ready for.

Some of the Argentine mothers at the school and I laugh outside of the school after we get kicked out about how the adaptation period is so much more important for us than our kids. Some of us mothers are working, some are not. The women are an interesting mix of professionals from all over the grid – opera singers, accountants, lawyers, travel agents, teachers, and an MD specializing in fertility. At the moment, we are all share one thing – being overly concerned with our kids and their ability to adapt to pre-school.

I'm slightly guilt-ridden about leaving my son at school with his limited Spanish vocabulary, having seen him have to defend himself from the other kids in his class, knowing that he is going to be in school doing that for the next 20 years. But, the alternative is that he stays at home and clings to my leg and whines while the nanny cleans the house and it rains outside. No thanks! I figure we are so lucky to be in a country where the pre-schools are wonderful, plentiful, clean, professionally-staffed and inexpensive ($150/month for a 1/2 day). All of my friends with kids my son's age are sending their kids to pre-school also, so there is no one to hang out with during the day, and he is too old for the Mom and baby classes. Why not take advantage of the one of the great things available in this country?

Fall is here and the rain has arrived. I think it rains heavily about once or twice a week now. The temperature has dropped into the 80s and 70s. It rains more these days than it ever has since we arrived six months ago. The Argentines complain bitterly about "la humedad" but I just have to laugh. After three years in Ghana, I have yet to experience the same level of heat and humidity here. Overall, I have very few complaints about Argentina's weather, or Argentina in general.

But the warm and rainy weather has brought a plague of mosquitoes, on a scale never seen before in Argentina. The first cases of dengue fever are being reported in the North, so the Portenos are stock-piling all the “Off” mosquito repellent they can get their hands on. Why deet-packing “Off” has cornered the market in a country so concerned with the environment, I’ll never understand. I haven’t found any non-toxic or organic mosquito sprays here at the big grocery stores, a market opportunity for some company that can successfully navigate the business environment here.

Anyway, in spite of mosquitoes, we are really enjoying ourselves in Argentina. We like the Argentines, the lifestyle, and find the political and economic environment here pretty fascinating. But you can't say the same for some of the other people at the U.S. Embassy. It just goes to show you how much your enjoyment of a post has to do with so many factors, including your job, your boss, your stage in life, whether you have kids, where you served before, how well you speak the local language, etc. But for people coming from Africa with a young child who speak Spanish pretty well, there are few better places to be.

In the news, Dubya's trip through Latin America has sparked the anti-yanqui flames in the region, including here. Bush isn't traveling to Argentina on his tour, which gave our buddy, Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, the perfect opportunity to make a statement. Chavez is chummy with Argentina's President, and came to town to host an anti-American rally at a stadium here, while Bush is next door in Uruguay. It was fascinating to be here during his visit, experience the fallout and hear him speak. I learned a lot about this man who I never had bothered to study before.

Freud would have a field day with Chavez. He is a former military officer who speaks of justice and revolution. He is only able to survive politically because of the existence of oil in his country, and, despite being one of the fiercest critics of the U.S. and our overseas policies, he is totally dependent on our oil industry’s refining capabilities. He criticizes the U.S. imperialist tendencies, and then censors his own media, making it illegal to express any form of dissent against him or his government’s policies. He criticizes our President for being unoriginal, but he is a Fidel-wannabe with his marathon, TV evangelist-sounding political speeches.

Chaves uses his Presidency, built on oil riches, to spread hatred and half-truths about America and our interests overseas to support his political agenda to amass more power and influence. Sound familiar? Using Venezuela’s major source of income, he is perpetuating the need to be anti-American to win Presidential elections in the region. The part where he spreads hatred of America is really the only part that worries me about the guy. We all know where that can lead.

On a lighter note, Chavez is comical when he speaks. The image that came to my mind when I saw him speak on TV at the rally in Argentina was of the scene in Forrest Gump, when the anti-war speaker would not have anything to say, and he would interject, “Viet-f#$ing-NAM!”, getting a rise out of the crowd. Chavez does the same thing, but with the words “Imperalismo!” and “Revolucion Bolivariano!”. It’s even more hilarious when you consider that in Argentina, his “supporters” were mostly journalists, interested graduate students, and “picoteros” paid with a chorizo sandwich, a soda and cab fare to attend and half-heartedly applaud.

Chavez may be many things, but he is not stupid. He had a few valid points in his speech, which gives him a shred of credibility, and is enough for people to latch onto. Like pointing out the lameness of the $75 million assistance package that George Bush brought to the region with him on his tour. To compare, Chavez is spending billions around Latin America. So we offer up some English classes? A military medical boat? An existing loan guarantee program? A conference in DC to figure out what to do about Latin America’s problems? Please. The groans from the U.S. Agency of International Development employees were audible from here when I read about the “new money” for English language education and exchange programs. I know that tune all too well. Every time a Bush representative came to West Africa, the administration’s “deliverables” often meant we had to start cutting our existing, tight budgets and well-thought out programs to fund the ill-conceived, Bush appointee-developed deliverables. What’s even more ironic is how in the early days of the Bush Administration, its members prided themselves on not embracing those silly "deliverables" that the Clinton Administration was so fond of. I don’t miss government work.

So back to Chavez. What should we do about this guy? Like school kids being bullied listening to their mommies, the administration’s strategy seems to be to ignore him. I didn’t read anything Bush said about any of the significant things we have accomplished in Latin America through U.S. foreign assistance. All I heard him say is “America is a generous country!” To be fair, Chavez isn’t worthy of his attention, and we do have other fish to fry in other parts of the world. But if we do care about the increasing anti-American sentiment in Latin America and where it might lead (in Argentina, 64% of people surveyed by the BBC say they view the U.S.’ influence in the world negatively) then there are some things we should consider doing that couldn’t be picked apart by the critics.

Here is the deal—Latin America is against our trade policies, our environmental policies, our immigration policy and our actions in the Middle East. The Middle East is a tougher nut to crack, but we can stop building the wall on the border with Mexico, drop some trade barriers, ease up on the requirements we place on countries with which we negotiate free trade agreements, and get serious about the environment—all without costing us any U.S. government money. We COULD make serious progress on these issues and improve our relationship with Latin America at the same time, if ANY U.S. politician or government official was courageous enough to take on the lobbies and big business that drive these agendas during a Presidential election. The sad truth is that making serious progress on any of the issues that really matter to Latin America would cost big business some money, and would be political suicide for a politician in the U.S., even one on his way out. So I doubt anything will change. Better get used to more anti-American feelings south of the border.
I haven’t faced any anti-Americanism here yet. I have a good time with the Argentines and laugh a lot with my girlfriends and the people who work for us in the house. The other day I entered our kitchen to find our babysitter muttering to herself, “Que cochino!” (What a pig!), so I asked her what was wrong. She told me that she received a phone call that morning from a man who she thought was a priest she had met at her morning job, working for a Bishop of the Catholic Church here. She recognized the voice of the caller, and said, “Father Pedro?” to which the caller responded, “Yes!” Then the caller began chatting with her. Through the course of the conversation, he started giving her inappropriate advice about her marriage and sex life, and suggested she needed to come and confess to him. Shocked, she told Father Pedro that he better stop talking or she was going to have to slap him the next time she saw him. She made some excuse and abruptly ended the call. Later that day, Father Pedro called her on her cell phone. He told her he had been trying to reach her all day on urgent business related to the Monsignor, and ended up having to call the Monsignor in Rome to get her home and cell phone numbers. She said, “But Father Pedro, you called me this morning!” And he replied, “What are you talking about? I didn’t have your phone numbers!” So either the morning’s “Father Pedro” was just a smart crank caller, something she had never experienced before, or he is a pretty sick priest. We had a good laugh about it, and compared notes about all the crazies living in the Americas. There sure are some nuts in the region, and they make life awful interesting.