What does Nelson Mandela have to do with Argentina?

After two months in Argentina (can you believe it?) and several emailed, Im'ed and mailed questions about what we're up to, I've realized that its about time for me to explain/describe my role in this missionary experience. Angela has already done a great job of introducing her placement and I'm sure that in the coming weeks and months we will both be able to introduce you to the various people that have entered and enriched our lives here, but let me first respond to the question posed in the title of this post: What does Nelson Mandela have to do with Argentina?


Absolutely nothing.


Nevertheless, I spend the majority of my working hours in Resistencia at the offices of the Centro de Estudios e Investigaciones Nelson Mandela (the Centro Nelson Mandela, or the Nelson Mandela Center for short), which is a non-registered, non-profit NGO in downtown Resistencia. The man in charge is Rolando Nuñez, a lawyer that has worked on human rights issues since the center was founded in 1995, an outspring of socio-political organization against the provincial gubernatorial campaign of a former member of the military dictatorship. In the last 13 years, Nuñez, his colleagues and friends have worked on a wide range of issues, the majority of which focus on the grave problems that confront the inhabitants in the interior of El Chaco (the province in which we currently reside, one of the poorest in Argentina).


In my two months at the center, we've taken on deforestation, the construction of steel mill, the unexplained deaths of some ten people in a small municipality in the interior, a collapsed medical-care system and the not-so-independent judiciary system in the province, just to give you an indication of the wide focus that the Centro Mandela maintains. While the focus may be expansive, the function of the center tends to be very simple: put people in contact with each other. Dr. Nuñez (the title of "doctor" tends to get added to the names of all lawyers here) has developed many strong relationships with hundreds of social players in the provincial, national, and even international arenas. He wakes up early and keeps regular office hours, receiving walk-in clients as well as government functionaries, always with his cellphone close at hand. He almost always knows the right person to call to help someone if he can't do it himself. The Centro Mandela thus functions as a locus of activity for NGO's, students, doctors, lawyers, unions and individuals (especially from aboriginal and indigenous nations) to share information, resources and solidarity. The other, much more public, function of the Center is to make sure that the information available to this network is made public through the media. Nuñez is very adept with mass-media communication, wielding critical adverbs like bureaucrats handle stamps and signatures. His articles, editorials and radio interviews communicate a passionate defense of human rights and dignity, that is often supressed by the government's populist discourse and public cynicism.


What do I DO at the Center? First of all, you should ask yourself why that question matters. After taking a few seconds to think about that, I'll tell you that I go into the office Tuesday through Friday mornings, helping Rolando respond to emails and typing documents that he dictates to me, frequently destined for publication in some media outlet. My adequate Spanish vocabulary and decent computer skills have set me up well for this task, as well as my ability to quickly learn about tasks at hand, making me more familiar with topics as we go along, making the whole process more efficient (for example, I remember names, people and abbreviations, making dictation significantly easier). When I'm not typing, I'm usually reviewing information, studies, newspapers, etc., looking for any relevant information about El Chaco and what needs to be done to help those that are suffering in the interior. When Rolando is on the phone giving a radio interview, I take care of his cell phone and let people know that they need to call him back.


If this gives you any indication of the kind of work that we do and its importance, let me describe my first week to you: Visit the courthouse, parole office and jail on my second day. Attend a conference on public lands and their illegal distribution at the Provincial Legislature on my third day. Fourth day, attend public meeting on the instalation of steel mill in which we represent a minority voice, outnumbered by a large number of angry respondents that criticize our rejection of the steel mill.


And we drink a lot of mate at the office as well. Yum!

In addition to working at the Centro, I also spend several afternoons in the Barrio playing with the kids in the workshops, working with a group of women on issues related to civic engagement (they want to start up an office which can direct people towards government services), and with the local adult school on environmental issues. We're currently thinking about how to link my two placements and we're following up on a couple of very good ideas, which include everything from visiting the interior with a group from the Barrio and increasing media sensitivity and literacy in the Barrio. We'll see where some of this goes.


The Center is named for Nelson Mandela for no specific reason. His international organization has no connection with our office and to the best of my knowledge that is fine for both sides, but his message of peace and justice, especially in the political arena, is one that the Centro Nelson Mandela center in Resistencia takes up every day. The time that I spend with Rolando is constantly engaging, challenging me to develop communicative and expressive strategies to communicate effective critique and to generate the dialogue that may eventually realize effective change. Rolando is becoming a remarkable mentor, full of passion and commitment. His work seems to have such a direct impact on the problems that he addresses that I'm starting to (re)consider going to law school. The LAW is such a formidable institution, resistent to participation my non-experts, which is why the indigenous groups that have rejected Western education and white-people ideology are so disadvantaged, and inappropriately so. There need to be people who will fight for the oppressed, who will help the mute find their voice, and who will strive for peaceful, respectful and dignified development that ACTUALLY engages peoples' needs.

Can I be one of those people? Do I have to be a lawyer to do meaningful work? Of course, this has also fed into the professor vocation as well, building up some questions about the relationship between literary production and democracy, more specifically thinking about how certain forms and themes ellicit participatory responses from various sectors of the general public. Consider for example, the way that people talk about George Orwell's novels 1984 and Animal Farm. These get cited in A LOT of discussions with a variety of audiences and with many different interpretations. Both novels still appear on high school reading lists and Orwell continues to enjoy popularity with American, British, and other readers. What about these two books make us still reference them? What about Uncle Tom's Cabin made it such a powerful book for its time? If you get what I'm getting at here, then you can see the direction that some of my thoughts about potential doctoral work might take (given that I'll be dealing with Latin American writers, probably from Mexico and Argentina).

The way that we make sense of our world is intimately attached to the stories that we know how to tell/hear about it. That's why the media work of the Centro Mandela is so important, working off of the strong community relationships that run through it. As I look forward to what awaits me in the coming months, I expect anything to happen, but I continue to affirm that:

The depressing realities of the marginalized peoples in El Chaco may be complex, but resignation CANNOT be an option.


If you can read Spanish and are interested in seeing the Centro's website, click HERE.