December | 2012 | arturoblogito

UPDATE OpenDemocracy, one of the best online alternative news sources on global politics has published this blog essay-article (The Widow Fears a Coup ) in a re-adapted for on
Link http://www.opendemocracy.net/arturo-desimone/widow-fears-coup

What I first noticed from the car window on the way from the airport, aside from beautiful green fields full of violet trees and the haunting absence of Indians which is more firmly lodged in my consciousness than in the soil, were tall buildings of social housing built by the Kirchner presidency.

President Nestor Kirchner has died and left his widow in charge. The dead Kirchner (who maintained a silence about his Ashkenazi Jewish origins while advocating a populism that aimed to be a more restrained and intellectually calm ally of Chavismo in the North of the subcontinent) was much more successful than his wife Cristina Fernandez, possibly because he died just before the inflation crisis that may have been caused by loans from national banks to pay off the IMF while he pretended to be a leftist defying the latter. In the previous decades some of Argentina’s Marxist Montoneros decided to disguise their Marxist politics, with its theories that common people presumably would be unable to understand or sympathize with, such as ‘false consciousness’ and ‘commodity fetishism’ as compatible with a right wing Peronist platform, or simply as Peronismo. Peronismo was the predominant right wing popular movement against the bourgeois oligarchy that ruled the country before Juan Domingo Peron’s ascendancy to power in which he introduced previously-unknown industrial worker’s rights and holidays but brutally persecuted anarchist and socialist dissent. Many have tried to explain why a fascist populist regime still concerned itself with worker’s rights, and many have found the explanation with Eva Peron having been the saving figure that ameliorated and at times transfigured the cruelty of Peron’s Justicialismo–the winning of worker’s rights has won Peron his oral hagiographies and sainthood among generations of working class Argentineans. Peron allied himself with 1930s fascism of Mussolini , Hitler and Franco. During the second world war he enforced anti-semitic policies such as denying entry to Jews–luckily, corruption saves lives and some Jews could enter through customs with petty bribes though most found no entry and returned to their destroyers if they were unable to succeed finding another exo-European place of refuge.

The Italian and Spanish immigrants who came to Argentina in the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the Spaniards and Southern Italians who built much of the city of Buenos Aires, were more often anarchists. But elite campaigns to reeducate the people destroyed any memory of this fervor of solidarity with the Spanish and Greek civil wars. Peron then came and popularized a tolerant and more reasonable kind of fascism. Some Montoneros had decided that the lower classes would support them if they presented their politics as Peronista.

Today, the Peronistas present themselves as left-wing revolutionaries, one of the Concert of Latin American Nations’ Socialisms of the 21st century. They depict themselves as Marxist Guevarists or as Indianists. But there is no hidden more intellectually elite Marxism underneath the fluffy socialist-populism, they are simply Peronistas. Abortion is still illegal, the country is a debtor under the reign of banks, life gets more expensive, crime and the drug addiction epidemic is tolerated in a way no historical mildly totalitarian socialist regime in Eastern Europe or in Cuba would have ever allowed without oppressive redressing.

Few in Argentina answer affirmatively to my question: does Cristina Kirchner resemble another widow, Peron’s widow Isabela? No, simply because Cristina Fernandez is a fierce politician. Despite the opposition elite media mocking her intelligence and bimbo-like antics she commands power and has many high-profile intellectual advocates working for her.She is a multi-millionaire, and her ‘casas populares’, popular democratic-assembly-offices for the poor are in every working class district showing her waving at the masses above a slogan like “Todos Con Cristina,” “All with Cristina” the sentimentality of an attempt to be Eva Peron, the ikon who I was surprised to see when arriving graces the towers in Mt Rushmore-like depictions of her effigy over the main boulevards of the Buenos Aires city center, overlooking Callao and Avenida Santa Fe. I had thought her importance was only depicted as central to Argentineans in the film by Madonna Ciccone.

It appears some of the widow’s policies and those of her predecessor have made life more expensive. Argentineans proudly believed Nestor K had cancelled the debt of the IMF, the debtocracy that strangled the country ever since the military regime who took over by way of a violent coup supported by the USA and its treasury department, borrowing from the IMF and World Bank while it murdered its own citizens who would long after the regime’s end be enslaved to repaying the financial institutions who granted loans to the torturers and murderers so unscrupulously.

Nestor Kirchner in canceling the debt seemed to take a radical stance, one that I and most Latin Americans could have only admired when they were implemented in the first few years of the 21st century.

Before him, Lenin had prevented the great depression in Western Europe from affecting Russia when he cancelled all debts to Western banks. But Kirchner was not the revolutionary he seemed; it appears now according to opposition journalists of Periodismo Para Todos, that Kirchner cancelled the debt to the IMF by paying it off with a loan he took from the central banks inside Argentina; now there is a miniature crisis raising prices and inflation due to the creeping interest rates caused by the new internal debt to local banks. People were surprised: the Socialism of the 21st century, it seems, is proactive and respectful of the global financial system, it is not a reckless maverick but pays its debts and fills in all the appropriate application forms, it is a tireless diplomat, non-violent and like all post-ideology it is conformist.

In the news the criticism of Cristina Kirchner to me is too focused on caricaturing her as a narcissistic woman, and one directly involved and responsible for the violent crime waves. I worry this is history repeating itself: after Peron died he left his second wife Isabela in charge; Isabela was depicted in newspapers as a former burlesque dancer, the middle class complaints accumulated and finally the gentlemen of the Coup, the Latin-nazi junta saw grounds to overthrow her and pretend to apply “order” to the chaos of a country mismanaged by the prostitute widow of the populist Peron, a country where an angry and selfish middle class desperately wanted an answer to the so called civil unrest caused by “subversivos”, by the young revolutionaries, the students fighting, the so-called terrorism, the workers and peasants unions in solidarity with Allende. Well the gentlemen of the coup established order, they murdered at least 30 000 youths in secret dungeons and concentration camps. According to the oral history I knew by heart, my one piece of heritage, the only gift from my Argentinean relatives visits to Aruba where I was born and raised: they dragged them from their beds in the night, they executed young intellectuals by torture or by pushing them from airplanes throughout the late 70s and early 80s. Now people are interviewed on the tv-stations that are of the opposition, outraged at the escalation of violent crime in Argentina. They attribute this magically to the current government, as if this admittedly mediocre government has caused the rising rate of crime, they want vigilantes, they want Batman. Reports of violent crime, directly implicating the government’s repsonsibility, not merely for not fixing the problem adequately but for not prosecuting criminals or even as organizing the criminals and giving them freedom in exchange for votes. These seem to be partly speculation of the middle class though there is no reason no immediately discredit the claims.

Comparisons to the crisis of Chavism in Venezuela are routine.

The elites in Venezuela similarly blamed the violent crime rates on Chavez and Chavismo, saying that it was Chavez’ propaganda that sowed class-hatred and class-envy among the poor. Recently a girl who came to my exhibition in Paris, a Venezuelan student in Paris presented me this view–there is much for a Venezuelan elite child to fear what with all the abductions and kidnappings. I told her that the poor in Venezuela do not need any propaganda other than their daily material reality to hate the old money families of Venezuela. Cholera was wiped out in the 90s in poor areas of Venezuela, the rich seem to be not merely a different class than the poor in Venezuela, with different formalities, but are different species resulting from a century of social darwinism. Yet I reacted too harshly, as indeed Chavismo has persecuted those who publicly speak of the rising crime rate. A young filmmaker of a popular movie called Secuestro Express, about a gang of delinquents from the ghetto who kidnap a spoiled elite couple for a ransom from their old money parents, enjoyed success among both the elites and lower classes for its depiction of the daily reality of the kidnapping business. It was a thriller, despite its mediocrity a good movie for Venezuelan cinema standards; the government reaction was banning the film as a critique of Chavismo, Chavez called the director Jonathan Jakubowitz a Zionist Jewish conspirator and persona non-grata, exiling him.

Yet for all the hype about Argentina being a wealthy and Europeanized society, myths originating partly in the Porteno’s own delusions and in the progressive elite propaganda of Europe, just outside Buenos Aires there are villages whose inhabitants still live in huts and drive carriages drawn by mules, often lacking electricity or plumbing. The Argentinean economy has become slightly xenophobic, with a different exchange rate for non-Agentinean currency that has made expats and travellers decide to avoid the country. *(There is an arguably similar system to the Northern European or Dutch one in public transport with special cards for citizens and more expensive tariffs for foreigners, making the foreigners transit by comparison more burdensome though there is no comparison possible to the Northern European intolerable xenophobia that had become the Dutch and Danish expression of ethnic democracy for some recent years of the Euro Crisis.)

An opposition journalist, La Nata, is popular with the middle classes, and has inspired comic plays such as one I heard and felt in the Teatro de Los Ciegos (sightless theater, intended for blind audiences and devoted to dialogue, sound and water effects, a platform in which talented though perhaps unattractive actors can triumph) are loosely based on his journalistic adventures and sex lives. La Nata praised last week’s demonstration of 250 000 for its lack of any ideology, for its not having leaders or clear points or organization as this is a sign of honesty and intelligence unlike the government which resembles that of China (Maoist or Capitalist China? He did not specify which, likely he conflates the two, as despite that there is a serious need for an intelligent opposition to the ruling government, La Nata seems a shrill reactionary with a love for punditry and hyperbole, despite some valid points hidden in his critique of the regime.) La Nata elsewhere seems a manipulative and shameless hysteric, presenting his political views on the format of game shows with theme songs, comedians with wigs impersonating the president using in vulgar skits, applause signs flashing and lottery prizes for special audience members.

This is what is praiseworthy in the 21st century: having no clear idea or political ideology, only the basic consumer priorities. This is time of post-ideological mass demonstration, based on the assumption that ideology is a violent mysticism that leads always to totalitarianism. I think there is no age more vulnerable to take-over by fascism and fascist revivals and returns of anti-semitism than that of Post Ideology.

This morning there was a football program on. Here the supposedly stupid people, the plebeiat discuss passionately their opinions and judgement on the games, the tensions in between regions and provinces and working class districts of the country. They know every aspect of football history and every technical rule that I still fail to understand, proof I am only partly an Argentine. If only they could wage the conversation on how society is supposedly to look, fiercely defending their opinions and talking about party politics and ideology, instead of looking into the camera of manipulative reporters asking the government or a new vigilanteist party to please do something about the crime rate while lamenting the absence of a vigilante, of Batman.

POST UPDATED AFTER DECEMBER LOOTINGS.

There is certainly a need for a left wing or in any case critical opposition, an alternative to populist official rule in all the Latin American countries and one that will be attractive to the poor as well as the middle classes and foreigners, Argentina is no exception. The existing opposition seems a movement of the middle class, committed only to identity politics of the middle class and their history of contributions being negated by the ruling administration. Though their grievances are often real and genuine, they are concerned mostly with their class culture. When looting sprees of supermarkets erupted across the country, in the much poorer and much more mestizo provinces of Argentina outside Buenos Aires and major cities, the middle class conclusion including among its self-proclaimedly leftist commentators was that all supermarket raids and violence were directly organized by Kirchnerista hooligans who promise rewards and more rights to the poor if they will commit crimes, galvanized by ‘punteros’ or middle-man gangsters operating between the halls of the Casa Rosada and the criminal ghettoes where drugs are sold.

If the prices are rising dramatically in Argentina–though luckily not yet in French or Greek crisis proportions–is it not natural to assume that the lower classes in the provinces are also suffering and that lootings of supermarkets might spread by way of rumors and reports across the countryside? The opposition intellectual’s conclusion, that it is strictly hirelings and provocateurs designed to intimidate the enemies of Kirchnerite “Socialism” means this critique caters to the assumption that the very poor cannot suffer as middle classes do from rising prices, as they are benefitting from the copious parasitic welfare arrangements dropped on them from the sky of populist heaven for their not working.

Recently there were protests in Buenos Aires against the trade in women that has had a few horrific instances of girls in the provincial slums or from Paraguay being betrayed by people in their community who sold them to criminal prostitution rings. The Porteno protestors did not stop at legitimately demanding the government to act on the crimes: instead they operated on the assumption, to me not yet proven, that the government directly involves pimps. This might be believable in Argentina, where Carlos Menem, the president of Syrian origin before Nestor Kirchner, went to prison for illegally selling weapons while he was president, after he sold much of the country to foreign interests. Though one should not be surprised if evidence arises of a ruling party official’s direct connections to prostitution rings it is conspiratorial and presumptious to immediately run demonstrations based on the accusation of the government officials being the pimps.

The ruling party and the opposition both claim to be the left wing, the ruling party are the novices whereas the opposition are the returning veteran leftists who settled in the middle class existence after their days of reading Marx. It seems this is a conflict between two right wings, both of them disguised as left wings claiming the heritage of the face of Guevara reduced to the Disneyfied status the effigy enjoys in Western consumerist media.

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Cab driver no #

The cab driver who just brought me home, his hands on the steering wheel had untrimmed nails, ferret claw hands, a few strands of old gray hair, water ran down his nose, he drives with eyes glazed over either from cataracts or endless crying over the Anibal Troilo-melodies of his youth and middle and old age sounding on the car radio, biochronology of his life and its moments with women, the pitiful singing of the men who sing tango, it is the opposite of flamenco with the rough beauty of cantillation and the gypsy who is free, mystical, solitary and not needing much to survive in his trance, tango is the opposite: a music of the weak, the timid men working factories who lived their fantasies in nights when they could leave home without punch-card. Men shuffling and afraid to be lonely, hoping hoping to create spectacle that can exert pagan powers of attraction on the soul of a woman.

We drive by murals in Constitucion painted with satyrical cartoons about Jesus saving Paraguayans, then murals with prophetic anunciations of foreign cosmic change accompanying the Italian elections in 2013.

His hands with sharp ferret claws, the music plays, he asks me again once or twice for the altura, at which hundred-number height of Constitucion did I say he need drop me.

*****

:Senor Benito Plomero

For a few months I am trying to call the plumber, Senor Benito, to come and fix the humidity problem in my bathroom, as the fungi on the shower ceiling become greener and expand further outwards into the white plaster cosmos. Mr Benito shouted once he will come at 8, as he had a lot of jobs that day. He walked in and saw my face which was altered with bumps from allergies resulting partly from a reaction to the fungi (fungi in Lumfardo, the Argentinean old near-moribund street slang, meant a man’s hat, usually a Fedora, so perhaps his patience with the bacteria on the ceiling has some sentimental nostalgia of respecting the sweetness of the past)

He came in and looked about my apartment. Perhaps he knew my grandparents, Romulo and Natalia, or recognized Natalia in the picture by a rosewood table with some flowers–near her death she still wore lowcut dresses and had flowing Sicilian-Norman blonde hair; Romulo was a musician most of his life and they do well with girls even in near -death, his lungs survived seven months as a widower, weight of mourning and all that hysterical weeping. (Before her death had even sold his saxophone, his sacred friend, provider, to pay her treatment–the new owner was a young rocker in the Argentinean band Los Redonditos de Ricota, “The Kids Grown Fat from Ricotta Cheese” now famous on the radio and tele, it was not the boys talent, only Romulo’s saxophone alone that worked their money wonders.)

Mr Benito then looked at my face and took off his sunglasses. Did he pity the red-bluish pustules, I wonder, or my apparent loneliness and foreign accent, he glanced at the ceiling and explained even if I scrape off the pondscum, the humidity problem can only be fixed by a plumber, and he needs to also check the pipes in the room upstairs, for which he needs permission. He tugged on his leather belt, with tools like Christmas decorations, shook my hand, clapped me on my shoulder giving words of support–for what tragedy I know not–and excused himself out the door, saying I had his number and he would call me when there is availability next week.

I called him back, the fourth time he answered that I need call the owner of the building who lives in Calle del Rubi, Ruby Street, she need determine the price of his labors.

She said he has to call her, that I must tell him. After a month he returned my sms, in which I announced in an intensified language, a message with a threatening tone yet nonetheless written in the from of usted, Thou, in Spanish, as he is much older. I muttered to himself that is no wonder his parents named him after the Fascist leader, that he must be a Fascist who knew my grandfather was from a communist family, the son of a Portuguese Jewess.

I did not write this, however, but I mentioned that I cannot continue with ongos, fungus in the shower ceiling, as my skin is reacting with allergies, I have a health problem. It was true, I had not gone to the hospital as I needed avoid paying the 400 pesos for blood and stomach tests after my wallet was nabbed.
( In the sms I was direct in my complaints and lining up my case, almost too direct I feared–I had learned a thing or too, from 5 years in that prosperous little purgatorio that was the Netherlands, from the little Dutch bureaucrats and coordinators on how to complain with direct frankness and unarguable moral form. Yes, then it had made me feel oppresed in Utrecht and Bylmer Amsterdam, but maybe now it will come in useful in Argentina, the scars of Germanic discipline that I had failed to live up to will here make me seem very organized and powerful, though there I was treated as a barbarian creep. I remember in Greece some girls were impressed at how organized and clear-headed I seemed, I was shocked then, they, these Greek artist-women thought me to be more organized and practical? It might have an echo here in this country.)

Benito called me back. His voice was compassionate, he was tired and old but concerned for me, he called me querido, he said he was much work in the Holidays, but surely he will be here in January. The first week of January, I tried to rush in. Yes, the first week. He asked me about my skin problems, how I am holding up. I said I only mention this in relation to the moss of the shower ceiling that grows back like the hydra after I clean it. Perhaps that made him feel Herculean in his old age. He started telling me how he understood, he too has skin problems, reactions, he has to avoid the sun. Now I felt embarassed for overreacting, I surrendered, gave up: I don’t want to compete with his melanoma or the metastasis he prevented, or the little spots of benign tumor like discolorations on plaintain skins that appear if he doesn’t avoid the midday sun. Un abrazo, I embrace you my friend, he said to me, and meant every syllable, we hung up.

He did not wish me happy Christmas holidays, which I appreciated. Maybe it is because he found out from the building’s encargadora that I am the son of a Jew, or because he knows my grandfather was an atheist from a communist family of artists and the son of a Portuguese Jewess.

Monthly Archives: December 2012

4 cab drivers, went out attempting to catch the elusive antelope “fun”, Buenos Aires last night

the widow fears a coup

Buenos Aires diary: Cab driver No. 21; the plumber senor Benito

link to funny interview with poet Glenn Shaheen

News/poetry update: Dutch translation of poem Dear Khadija now in Ex Ponto Magazine

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