Rapps In Argentina

Good Friday Santo

2009-04-23T17:46:00.000-07:00

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.

In this world you will have trouble. But take heart!

I have overcome the world.”

John 17:33

As a dislocated traveler on the other side of the terrestrial orb, all of the holidays that we have celebrated in Argentina have left me feeling rather out of joint. My summertime Christmas, as you may remember, turned the familial celebration from inside to outdoors, and, in the interest of comfort, conviviality, and not dying of dehydration or water-shortage related ailments moved from day to night. While we may immediately recognize that the meals and rituals that families and communities celebrate in all corners of the Western Hemisphere in the name of joyful celebration and offering on December 24/25 take on a variety of forms depending on culture, I only realized during my time in Argentina that it also depends on climate (itself a determinant of culture). I asked the question “Do people tend to enjoy celebrations in hot or cold climates more?” and its corollary: “Do more people go to parties when it’s hot or cold?”. After a couple of comments from my stateside collaborators, my hypotheses on these questions were all cast in doubt and I ultimately threw up my hands and thanked God for the opportunity to develop a sharper sensitivity to the role of climate and weather in cultural production (translation: I’m even more curious about the way the weather affects the way we party.)

After passing through the Christmas season in a somewhat hazy state, product of the new experiences and observations as well as a strange low-grade fever that Angela and I passed back and forth for a couple of weeks, I eagerly awaited Lent for more new symbolism and rituals. Our Lent, however, has been less than conventional, even by Argentine standards. We missed an Ash Wednesday celebration (miercoles de cenizas), despite the fact that we were at a protestant seminary at a conference on Gender in the Old Testament. For some reason, in the dense gathering of pastors and church leaders from around the country nobody thought of organizing a local Ash Wednesday celebration (perhaps because most of these church leaders went back to their home congregations to hold services there, leaving us out of town people to fend for ourselves).

Without the usual Ash Wednesday service, I only slowly and partially entered into the Lenten frame of mind, one that for the typical Lutheran (dare I say, protestant, or Christian?) is a time of reflection and waiting. We censor our speech and our actions with an awareness that 1) most of what we do is a sin and our sins are about to cost Jesus his life; 2) Jesus and the historical Jewish communities went through similar periods of discernment; and 3) struggle and sacrifice are a part of the world, even if they are not part of the discourse of consumption-driven contemporary life, so we should consciously makes ourselves struggle at least a little bit just to see what its like. I know that some readers, some theology students especially, may feel like this is unjust to the Lutheran community, but I think it captures the paradoxical depth and superficiality of Lenten rituals quite nicely.

In some parts of Latin America, Lent is an intense time to be religious (religious = Catholic) because popular and personal struggles against injustice and marginalization intersect with the holy narrative and as Lenten reflection moves people to identify with Jesus’ sacrifice, hopes for salvation and resolution become accentuated. The need for salvation is then celebrated in extravagant ceremonies, processions and spectacles that require acres of flowers and fabric to properly equip. Resistencia is not one of these spiritual centers. While Buenos Aires and Asunción, Paraguay, are famed for their Semana Santa celebrations, Resistencia has maintained a pretty low profile. When I casually ask friends about Lenten and Easter traditions, they either blankly look back at me or say “Nada”. Despite the fact that a stereotypical anthropological assessment would be quite boring, our Good Friday was anything but.

Semana Santa is a traditional Christian celebration that stretches from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, seven days of intense physical symbolism that reenact/remind/recall Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem after three years of ambulant ministry and his subsequent arrest, trial, and crucifixion at the hands of angry Jewish leaders and their worried Roman custodians. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week in the Lutheran tradition are infrequently celebrated, but the local Catholic church held mass everyday, reading passages about Jesus’ last conversations with his followers before his tragic sacrifice would unfold. Maundy Thursday (what does Maundy mean?) is the paradoxically jubilant/morose celebration of Jesus’ last hours with his disciples, sharing with them the santa cena (Holy Communion, Last Supper, the Bread and the Wine) before wandering out to the olive grove to be arrested after Judas’ treacherous kiss. After a long night of trials, arguments, accusations, denials, parabolic answers and violent reprisals, the Good Friday dawn breaks and Jesus’ is presented to the Roman government. Despite Pilate’s best attempts to convince the Jewish leaders that what they were doing didn’t make any sense, he orders Jesus to be crucified in order to pacify a mob that was becoming increasingly agitated and, perhaps, revolutionary. This is how it came to pass that Jesus of Nazareth was taken to Golgotha to suffer a tortuous death on a cross alongside convicted criminals, the same sequence of events that we remember on Good Friday, the most morbid and depressed festival in the Church calendar. Gracias a Dios, the story isn’t left off here, but continues on to Easter Sunday, when Jesus’ body disappears from the tomb and Mary Magdalene delivers the good news about his resurrection and triumph over sin and death to the despairing (and mostly clueless) disciples.

The church has adopted a number of symbols and rituals in order to communicate the emotive and spiritual importance of all of these events, including the waving of palm branches and physically moving processionals, the dismantling of the altar on Maundy Thursday, the washing of feet, the stations of the cross (otherwise known as the Passion), covering windows with blackout sheets, singing single verses of hymns over several days to focus on the specific meaning (and relative difference) between the sentiments contained in the lyrics, etc. The range of symbolism and its relatively rapid development from joy to pain and back to joy (situated in a broader narrative of struggles for justice and understanding), has fascinated me from a very early age, making Holy Week one of my favorite events in the Church year, and while this year my Lenten experience was quite different from past years, Holy Week has not failed to challenge my assumptions about the Church and its place in the world.

This story should properly begin on Jueves santo, Maundy Thursday (seriously, what does Maundy mean?). When I went out to the barrio on Thursday afternoon, I was distracted by my somewhat unproductive day and concerns about what was going to be expected of me when I got out to the mission (I had no idea). After playing with the kids for a while, cleaning up a lot of spilled paint, eating some wonderful arroz con leche and closing up the after-school program, Angela and I wandered over to the Paez household, a wonderfully kind family comprised of four energetic kids that are always at the mission with us and their compassionate parents. After throwing around a Frisbee under the streetlight and twirling the kids around a bit, we went back to the mission to find the pastor ready for the service. As we got started, I was surprised to see that the small chapel filled up! Women and children from around the neighborhood showed up and filled up the eight benches; people who come every week sat next to their friends and neighbors that we usually just see out in the street. We had over twenty worshippers, dressed up and ready to worship together as a community. My knowledge of Latin and Greek isn’t very profound, but I was struck by the relationship between the words “community” and “communion” (or rather, between comunidad y comunión, but it makes sense in translation too). Gathering together, in common conditions and with similar hopes for salvation, we consciously and willfully come together through rituals, a kind of reciprocal relationship in which the people and the ritual work together to overcome differences in opinion and individual circumstances. As we left the chapel in silence after dismantling the altar, the seriousness of the moment didn’t linger long, and the laughter of the many children playing outside in the street accentuated the joy of seeing each other and many smiles and hugs and kisses were exchanged before retiring for the evening.

Now, it was Good Friday. After sucking down some mate to get our bodies and minds organically going in the morning, we headed out to the bus stop and joined the one other person on her way towards the barrio. Resistencia was, for all intents and purposes, shut down. Everything except for a few megabusinesses (Carrefour, the local pharmacy chain) was closed for viernes santo. Not even the local paper came out. The desertedness of the morning’s metropolitan vista was simultaneously discomforting and wholesome, like something out of a body-snatchers movie that made a town look completely normal. I was happy to see that a Christian observance was so important to so many people, but the way that that impact manifested itself was like something I had never seen before, Christianity taking people out of the world instead of committing them to it. Or maybe, instead, it was committing them to a different kind of world, one in which their families, neighbors and personal well-being took precedence over bill-paying and consumerism, one in which they didn’t need to travel across town to be at peace. Perhaps even in a globalized world staying home isn’t sitting out.

After a rather solitary walk from the bus stop to the mission, Angela assembled her flute and ran through some hymns with Raul as several people arrived for the service. While not quite as packed as the night before, the benches creaked under the shifting weight of several women and children, a few were apparently new to the chapel. The notes from Angela’s flute gave life to a celebration of death in a paradox that I’m sure wasn’t lost on anyone, as joy and sorrow mixed together under the sun (the mission celebrates weekend services on Saturday nights, so Maundy Thursday felt like the norm while Good Friday morning was oddly illuminated). To complete the picture, the service was punctuated by the entrance, exit and expectation of several barrio dogs.

The missionary experience as part of the ELCA is an odd one because it takes smart, capable and willing people that are used to being in control and situates them in a minefield of power relationships that requires a commitment to understanding interpersonal and international relationships. One of the missions of the YAGM program specifically is to equip young Lutheran leaders with the knowledge and theology produced by their companion churches, i.e. how Argentina’s view of the Good News and how it may or may not play out with and/or around a US context. I explain this to highlight the simple fact that Good Friday is Argentine.

Without embarking on his multipart sermons as usual, Pastor Raul highlighted the similarities between Jesus’ crucifixion and the desaparecidos of the last military dictatorship. Some 30,000 people were killed and disappeared by government men driving Ford Falcons from 1976 to 1983, with the complicity and approval of the US government’s anti-communist, neoliberal foreign policy (for more reading on this, see Naomi Klein’s fantastic The Shock Doctrine). Holding a thin, medium-sized wooden cross in his hands, Raul reminded the congregation of their shared experience of a stone-faced government structure that was responsible for killing progressive, justice-minded people in the name of keeping the peace, and the wounds that such a policy had left on generations of Argentines. Impunity and incompetency in government, fueled by mistrust, apathy and cynicism in the populace, unable to reinvest their spirits in the way that the young Argentines of the 1970s had done. These people know what it was like to witness the crucifixion and as we sat there in the chapel, my feeling of sorrow was punctuated in two ways: first by the loud explosions of sound that interrupted the gospel reading as kids outside through rocks onto the tin roof of the mission, a frequent expression of destructive boredom that replaces the profound emptiness of marginalized poverty with a brief moment of destructive productivity, and second, by the vision of the barrio and others surrounding it: people slowly walking and riding bikes, at the same time hopelessly and hopefully looking up to see a passing car, curious about where its coming from and where its going, thinking about what they have to do, but painfully aware that they don’t have the time or resources to get it all done.

After spending the afternoon with the Pastor and his wife, on the way home Angela and I had another vision of Good Friday, also distinctly Argentine, but in a very different way. In the Plaza 25 de mayo, the four square-block central square of Resistencia, a team of youthful actors were processing the Stations of the Cross, the vía crucial, accompanied by music and narration from loudspeakers wired up the light posts. Surrounded by hundreds young adults, families with children, most perched on papa’s shoulders, and older couples pouring mate as they walked, the Passion story became an odd spectacle of violence and repression with a very different political bent. Whereas Raul’s message in the morning service at the mission reminded the people that they had suffered pain at the hands of an unjust government that had marginalized them historically and presently, the band of young men clad in cardboard armor and shepherd-like sheets distanced the crowd from any experience of pain and suffering, offering as a substitute the pity for an actor that suffered nothing more than fake floggings at the hands of over-committed Roman impersonators. It might help to note hear that the vía crucial had to pass in front of the provincial government offices in its final phases, and that the cathedral and final site of the procession was recently opened after several months of renovations financed by the provincial coffers, and personally approved by the governor in the early days of Holy Week. This kind of ecclesial-official collaboration may not be novel or even necessarily harmful, but it certainly struck me as an odd juxtaposition of images on a day that I had thought Argentines understood all too well.

Ultimately, though, the two Argentine Good Fridays reveal the struggle that contemporary Christians have with Jesus’ sacrifice: was his suffering human or divine? Was he predestined to be tortured, or does his crucifixion serve as a lesson for social justice? Was he killed by Jews or Gentiles, his own or his enemies? The Easter story should earn a lot of postmodernity points for insinuating these questions without giving too many fixed answers, emphasizing instead the movement from pain to resolution. How we get there and how we got here, we will probably never know. But before the stone gets rolled away, it keeps hope locked up for a few days, and while it may be uncomfortable, it’s a common reality for billions of people around the world. The better we understand it, the more we experience it, the better we can relate with those individuals, which is what Jesus instructs his disciples to do before his ascension: go forth and baptize, make disciples and teach. We can only accomplish those tasks if we can establish trust, which first requires understanding, sympathy and compassion.

Photography

2009-02-16T13:30:00.000-08:00

Last fall, sometime in October, the camera that we brought down here with us was damaged after taking a spill out of my bag onto a tile floor roughly a meter below. We were able to get it to work for a while, but in the first week of November, it decided that it was done. We mailed it to an authorized repair company in Buenos Aires (the closest location), and received a call back two weeks later that the camera’s central circuit had to be prepared, at a cost of almost $600 pesos ($200 U$D), and that it would take at least a month to repair (this is at the beginning of December). After some family debate, we decided that it taking pictures in the near future was too important to us, and that the cost for repair was on the level of buying a new camera, so we went to one of the local electronics stores and bought a new camera (at approx. 150% its US value – that’s what you get for tariff protection).

Our experience with the camera produced within me a lot of turmoil. While my parents could easily testify that I’ve never been good at taking care of my belongings, my responsibility for this loss was quite painful. The quantity of photos that I couldn’t take made me feel incredibly guilty, which I think reveals a lot about some very typical attitudes towards photography:

1) I felt guilty that I wouldn’t be able to share photos of my experience friends, family and collaborators at home. As if I had robbed these people of an opportunity, I vividly imagined the disappointment that would certainly be expressed when I explained that I didn’t have any pictures of the Christmas lights because I had been careless. While I may have allowed myself to get a little carried away with this thought, it is useful to recognize that we often think about others when we take pictures. More often than not, I assume, we think about showing others how cool we are (a thoroughly egotistical attitude) through our pictures: “Look at this beautiful picture of us on the beach” we say, meaning “don’t you wish that YOU could go? We’re so cool (rich, cultured, insert appropriate adjective here). But we also take pictures thinking about others’ interests and to genuinely communicate events and feelings. Snapping a picture of a neat flower for a friend interested in gardening, or of a scene that can help explain everyday habits or a special event (e.g. a home and/or a parade).

2) I felt REALLY guilty for somehow destroying my own experience of events here, as if I could only participate if the black bag containing my camera was at my side. This feeling was especially strong in the first few weeks after I broke the camera when people asked me, “Well, don’t you have your camera?” Do we have experience for the experience itself or to create memories that can occupy us later? It seems that I too easily began to think this latter thought, without realizing that pictures are almost always supplemental to an event (not being a photographer, nor primarily concerned with documentation, my motives for taking pictures were not professional). I reflected, then, on my worries and realized that we are in fact quite fortunate to have camera phones (which are quite common in Argentina, more so than digital cameras) because they allow us to take pictures without worrying about it too much… we don’t have to make a lot of special accommodations to snap a picture and have a good chance at capturing a moment to share it with others or ourselves at a later moment. Picture-taking becomes less cumbersome and allows us to focus on experiences.

3) I predicted that I would feel guilty in the future for not taking pictures of events. This worry won out the debate over whether to replace the camera immediately, proving to be so important to Angela and I that we couldn’t eliminate the vanity and pride latent within it. My thought process probably looked something like this: if I don’t take a picture of it now, I’m going to forget that it happened (or at least how it happened), which is something that I’m going to want to know later; if I can’t get that information later, I’m going to be angry with myself and not have any possibility of (ab)solution, so I better make sure that I take pictures to avoid pain later in life. Being concerned with memory-making is important to telling stories, building relationships and maintaining our identity, but getting obsessive about it can certainly be unhealthy. It makes me think about how we never had a videocamera in my family when we were growing up, and how thankful I am that I didn’t have to perform in front of a camera at every turn, from first step to diploma, with every piano recital and pinewood derby in between. Preserving memories and creating them are different processes, and we must make sure that our actions are balanced.

These three points describe the pain that I felt during those two months that we didn’t have a camera, but let me describe to you the importance of cameras in our experience here that put weight upon these ideas.

In the barrio, the camera is one of the most treasured objects for the kids and the talleres because it allows the kids to perform, and to see themselves having fun. Whenever someone takes a picture, kids usually crowd to get in front of the lens, throwing their arms out and showing large grins while yelling the word “Guisqui!” (this word produces the toothy grin that US tourists evoke with the word “cheese!”). The kids then rush the cameraperson, trying to get a glimpse of the digital display of the photo, catching a glimpse of themselves and smiling and jumping around, hoping for another shot. While taking a camera into the talleres usually requires a lot of patience, the joy that it can produce is remarkable. Again, one can easily note the relationship that picture-taking has with identity and experience: “I was there”, “I know him”, “this is what I saw” are all pretty common statements that one makes when narrating a selection of photos from a trip. Such a powerful activity can become trivial when we focus on pixel size and data storage, but photography can be a very important way of getting to know ourselves and other people.

Keeping these lessons in mind, I’d like to conclude by talking about taking a camera on vacation. I HATE tourists and I hate BEING a tourist even more. To explain, I don’t think that all people that travel are tourists… I think of a tourist as a person to wants to experience other places in a very superficial way, without respect for local customs and without awareness for the way that their presence impacts the place that they are visiting. So as I think about a tourist, I think of the somewhat cliché image of a person with a camera around their neck, loudly criticizing the meal that he/she has just eaten as they shuffle along a busy sidewalk on their way from the hotel to the city plaza, stopping in the middle of a flow of pedestrians to clumsily take their camera out of a case, try to get the “perfect” shot of his/her spouse in front of a scene, hopelessly unaware of the fact that the enterprise is forcing dozens of people to walk in the street, to stop what they are doing, etc. Give someone a camera, and this bound to happen at some point, because not only do we need time and space to deal with the settings on the little machines, we also suddenly become possessed by the desire to get that “perfect shot”.

I am no exception. While I may at times exercise some restraint and not stop to take a picture of the National Library in Chile, for example, I do kick myself for not taking that picture now (or rather, Angela mocks me for not letting her take the picture because I was worried that we would look awkward on the sidewalk). We want to have pictures to record our experiences, but the act of taking a picture changes that experience. Instead of saying that “I visited the Palacio de la Moneda in Chile”, we say “I took this picture in front of the Palacio de la Moneda in Chile” (Palacio de la Moneda is the Chilean President’s offices, currently occupied by Michelle Bachelet). “I visited” vs. “I took a picture”… two very different kinds of experience, right?

My fear of being a tourist is probably faulty, but it is very real. I don’t want to get in the way, not just for personal security reasons, but also because I want people to know that I respect the experience that I’m having. I probably also want the experience to be more “real” by keeping the camera out of it… but why would it be any more real? Of course, some places are just “touristy”, built for people from a wide variety of backgrounds to visit. These places are often “set aside” to allow people to take pictures (usually everyone wants the same picture – people holding up the leaning tower of Pisa, or the clearly marked, Kodak-sponsored spots at specially appointed landscapes in Disneyworld).

Cameras are an important part of many middle- and upper-class individual’s and families’ lives, and they can be great tools for memory making, but their use can also distract us from other kinds of experiences.

To apply some of these ideas to a specifically Christian discussion of experience and memory: what would Moses say about taking a picture of the Red Sea during the Jewish diaspora from Egypt, or how about if the disciples had told Thomas to look at the pictures that they had taken of Jesus instead of getting him to come to their meeting to experience Jesus’ presence himself?

Why yes, that was my picture in the Lutheran!

2009-02-11T18:44:00.000-08:00

It has come to my attention that my photo recently appeared in the Lutheran magazine, that excellent publication of the ELCA. The image is also available online. I´m honored to be in the magazine!
The photo comes from a September visit by Twila Schock, who is part of the Global Mission staff for the church. She spent some time getting to know our context and the communities in which mission contacts occur. I am pictured with Dayana, a young lady from the barrio who comes to the talleres frequently. She is a sweetheart!

Bolivia and Lithium

2009-02-09T15:51:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, I visited Bolivia for a conference of indigenous women. This turns out to be a very interesting year to have visited Bolivia, as both the president and the natural resources of the country have gotten a lot of press time in the American media. Recently, several major newspapers have reported on Bolivia´s large lithium deposits (possibly half of the world´s supply) and lithium´s potential importance to a developing “green” energy supply. I found the New York Times´ (and other papers´ coverage) rather slanted, as those same stories express frustration with the Bolivian government, which is refusing to simply yield the lithium to foreign investors, wishing for some or most of the income from the mineral to remain in the country. I am not much of an expert on international business, but the lovely, dignified complex that held the conference was funded by the newly nationalized natural gas industry. Wouldn´t it be great if the lithium in the soil could not only contribute to rechargable batteries but also to building schools and houses and hospitals all over Bolivia? I hope for the best for the beautiful, embattled country and its enthusiastic but impoverished peoples.

First time in five months...

2009-01-22T12:30:00.000-08:00

I saw (am seeing) my parents today! They arrived in Buenos Aires this morning and we are presently at our Bed and Breakfast getting ready to go eat some Argentine steak with friends. Thank God for safe travel, family, and fellowship.

Holidays in Argentina

2009-01-05T14:31:00.000-08:00

We are doing well here in Resistencia, although we´re about to head off on vacation to other parts of the country! We´re very excited and have been spending much time on the internet trying to find literary pilgrimages to take.

Today is The Three Kings day, in case you were keeping track. Parents and children fill stores looking for gifts from the reyes magos.

Anyway, as the rest of the world (and Argentina too) copes with the worldwide financial crisis, there´s another crisis here, much less documented internationally: la crisis de moneda, the coin crisis. The gist of the coin crisis is that everyone fears s/he will run out of coins, and therefore shops try very hard not to give you coins as change. We´re not entirely sure how this situation began, but we think it is mostly fear-mongered. Having everyone hoard all spare change cannot help circulate it much. The situation does seem based in Buenos Aires, though, where the buses only accept fare by coin. In Resistencia, the rumors of the situation are much more dire than the reality, since the buses here accept all coins (denominations up to the oh-so-desireable one-peso coin) and bills up to twenty pesos (although they´ll glare at you for more than a five-peso note).

This situation is complicated by the difficulties in breaking 100-peso bills, which are all that ATMs dispense. So one has to plan a bit to get money that you can actually spend. I find that stores are less grouchy about accepting a hundred-peso note if you offer coins to help out, and about returning coins if you offer small change.

At the moment, we are hoarding coins like Scrooge so we can explore Buenos Aires to our hearts´ content. Neither of us have ever done extensive backpacking before, but we´ve got a bunch of hostels picked out that look pretty groovy from their websites.

We passed a lovely Christmas and New Year´s here in the Chaco. The fiestas (party season, holidays) are relatively low-key compared to the states--people seem to prepare for about two weeks instead of a month and a half. There were Christmas lights all over town, which was comforting. On Christmas Eve, we went to our pastor´s house, where after midnight we shared the traditional pan dulce (sweet bread--but with little pieces of fruit in it) and sidra, a champagne-like citrus drink. Christmas Day really was not as big of a deal as the night before. EVERYTHING shut down then, but by the afternoon on the 25th taxis and buses were running again, and we were able to get into an internet café to call our families, which was wonderful.

Then we spent New Year´s Eve in the barrio, which was fabuloso! One of the families of the church shared their asado with us, so we were with about 30 people (extended, extended family), all of whom we hugged and kissed as midnight passed us into 2009. Again, the sidra and the pan dulce were everywhere. The kids all threw tons of firecrackers (also a Christmas pastime), filling the air with the smoke of their deep, deep happiness.

New Year´s Day we had an afternoon asado with our marvelous pastor and his wife, then passed the day listening to his collection of quality Argentine music and looking at photos and artwork. What a way to start the new year! It seems like a great start.

Like so many of our experiences here, I can´t really say if that was the "typical" Argentine way to pass the holidays, but it was our way, and we had a lot of fun.

It´s sad, however, that many people have begun the new year with terror, hunger, and warfare. We think of the conflict in the Middle East and the Palestinians who are suffering so greatly from the situation. May Christ whose coming we celebrate at Christmas bring peace, quickly, to his homeland.

ArgenTime

2008-12-17T12:43:00.000-08:00

So I noticed that it has been quite some time since I posted in this blog. In the intervening time, I´ve been globetrotting a bit--an indigenous women´s convention in southern Bolivia, a YAGM retreat with the other volunteers in Uruguay, touristing it up in Montevideo, and several assorted smaller trips. All of those experiences someday will become profound and well-written personal essays as well as blog posts, of course. But in the meantime, I am passing days with beautiful, charming children, teaching recorder and yoga, drawing a lot, and reconfiguring my perceptions of time.

Adjusting to Argentine time has been one of the more difficult cultural changes for me. The stereotypes of promptness or lack thereof in Latin America are not especially true here--buses run on time, for the most part, and businesses keep regular hours, for the most part, and people arrive to appointments roughly on time. Readers who know me well know that I begrudge no one their extra fifteen minutes for a coffee date, so a slightly relaxed approach to scheduling is just fine with me! I hypothesize that increased dependence on public transport, which runs frequently but irregularly, creates a half-hour cushion around most stated times.

However, many things do not run on exact times. There are basically four times in Resistencia: mañana, morning, which runs about 6-12; siesta, nap-time, which runs about 12-4; tarde, or afternoon, from 4ish to 9ish; and noche, night, from 10ish on. When scheduling events in the barrio, it´s much more common to indicate that it will happen in one of these times than labeling a more specific point on the clock. Much of this is logistical, as the great majority of the families involved in the church live close enough to the building that they can easily see if the pastor´s van shows up, if Jake or I am waiting outside the building, or if their neighbors come by to suggest that the event start. It just isn´t necessary to be much more specific than morning, afternoon, or evening: Events starts when the people involved show up. Stores open when the owner gets there, and close when s/he leaves.

Also, because of the severe heat here in the spring, summer, and fall (and sometimes during the winter, too), nearly every business in town closes during the siesta hours. Practically, this means that if someone (almost always the woman of the household) is not available to do morning shopping, families can´t easily get food. I am sure that many people find ways around this, but it is strange for me realizing that I must have my mornings free if Jake and I are to have bread and fresh produce. I spend half an hour to an hour every morning going to the four stores that supply us with food (the bakery, the meat shop, the vegetable shop, and the supermarket). If this schedule does (almost) compel households to have a stay-at-home woman or a domestic worker, it can also be used to empower women. In the barrio, an elementary school for adults that did not finish-the vast majority women--runs during this time when the rest of the city closes down. This opens up many opportunities; one woman recently explained to me that because of her advancing education, she can now do her own banking!

In addition to the local times, the church year and liturgical time direct my consciousness and support the life of the Misión. I feel "at home" celebrating Advent, in a new country, with a new congregation of believers, but connected to the same God and the same Biblical narratives of Christ´s coming birth. Like most Lutheran churches during Advent, also, we are preparing the Christmas pageant, figuring out which of the squirming, lovable children will portray María, which will be angels, and who will tutor them in memorizing their Lines.

And underneath the whole Misión is God´s time for the project. Often I want God to work a miracle, to make the economic difficulties, the addictions, the hunger, the curable diseases in the barrio disappear--or at least to hurry along the people in demanding their rights. Working with individuals, with systems, with communities to build the Kingdom of God takes lots of time, sometimes very slow-moving time. And sometimes the building bricks are invisible to me, and I need those that I accompany to explain to me, patiently, that my frustrations actually represent advances--that the occasional chaos of the center represents happy interactions that would have been impossible some years before, that the slowness of opening a new project represents women in the community, rather than outside agents, learning to operate the project themselves, that an older child teaching a younger child a game that to me seems meaningless represents a positive interaction instead of continued cycles of violence. Learning to wait on God´s time requires patience that I sometimes think I lack, but it allows small rituals and daily interactions the dignity they are due, and the recognition of God´s hand in the quotidian and mundane.

Feliz Navidad, prospero año... oh wait, thats a Mexican song!

2008-12-16T15:52:00.000-08:00

I hear that a LOT of snow has fallen this week. Here, on the other hand, I'm struck by the strange juxtaposition of tank tops, flip-flops and christmas trees. It doesn't quite feel right to me, which has made me reflect on what some US citizens (and residents) must feel when they hear/see stories about white christmases.

Here, you can see a lot of continuities with US-style Christmas celebration, which is to say that global marketing does indeed seem to impact rituals more than nationality at this point in human history. Most of the stores downtown a running sales, encouraging shoppers to buy STUFF for their loved ones (at rather high interest rates), and everyone has at least one PAPA NOEL or Christmas tree in the window. Outside of the commercial district, there are random spatterings of christmas lights on some houses and a number of small christmas trees in the neighbor's windows. As I talk about chrismas trees here, let me make clear that I haven't seen one higher than three feet. And as far as lights go, we're not talking about my uncle's 50,000 light Clark Griswold creation, but rather a few strings of multicolored lights to circle windows.

The city has put up a number of decorations to make the season. Large white-light stars and strings of light arranged in cones can be seen lining the streets and plazas of the city. Seeing them certainly evokes a similar vision of the cities that we've lived in the States, as does the Christmas tree-like light image on the side of the Provincial Governor's offices.

Also like in the States, a majority of official correspondence avoids references to the Jesus part of Christmas and refers instead to the party. "Felices fiestas" proclaim all of the store's windows and newspaper ads. The national newspaper, Clarin, has been publishing children's stories and published stories about Papa Noel and the Reindeer before arriving at the last one, the birth of Jesus, which should arrive this Sunday. Of course, the fact that the Jesus story is coming out with a mainstream paper is probably something we would NEVER see in the states, but the trends in secular celebration are striking.

Angela and I will be celebrating this Christmas in a pretty conventional way. This week Angela is helping put the Christmas program together with the kiddos in the barrio: basic christmas story with shepherds, kings, a small child playing an angel and the youngest newborn playing the part of Jesus. Along with the nativity celebration on Saturday night, we'll also celebrate the end of the school year, the birthdays of all of the kids that come to the after-school program, and a host of other events. Should be a VERY joyous event. Christmas day will be spent with our host family, probably involving some AMAZING food.

Something to think about...

I think that most Christmas media pokes fun at California for not having snow on Christmas, ever (I'm thinking specifically about Woody Allen here), but what about those vast expanses of the US Southwest and Southeast (and Carribean?) that see snow once every decade, and never on Christmas? Do they WANT a white christmas? Does the temperature change we way we experience the holiday (obviously the trappings and specific rituals, but does a warm climate facilitate a sense of openness and welcoming better than a cold one, or is it the opposite)?

The holidays are a time to see people that you love, to share the peace of company and the compassion of solidarity. We miss those of you who are reading this more than you can know, but we are also excited that we have this time together and that we're able to participate in celebration with our friends here.

¡FELIZ NAVIDAD!

Movement and transition

2008-12-01T15:54:00.000-08:00

Happy December everyone!

Angela and I have just returned from our first trimester check-in retreat with the ELCA program. We were in Uruguay, the country situated just up the Atlantic coast from Buenos Aires, and had an absolutely amazing experience! We spent a couple of days on an organic farm (I'm sure that Angela will comment on this at greater length), and even put together a nice thanksgiving dinner!

I find myself at the moment in a period of transition after the recharge that the retreat provided. One of the things that I would like to change the most is the way that I communicate with those of you reading this blog up in the North. I'm surprised by my relative silence on some important questions related to our mission here, and really by the infrequency of my posts! For someone who feels like he's writing all the time, I find that my words here don't do justice to what you all would like to read or should be reading.

So, I'm going to try to post more regularly, and I am also trying to put together an email list to put out some specific stories.

We pray that this wintery weather and Holiday season find you all in high hopes, positive spirits, and large mugs filled with warm liquids.

The Quantum of Solace

2008-11-23T13:26:00.001-08:00

For those of you interested in reading some comments about the new James Bond flick, read ahead. WARNING!!! SPOILERS AND CRITICAL COMMENTARY ABOUND!

So, a week ago Angela and I went on a date to see the new James Bond: The Quantum of Solace. We were both very excited to go to a theater to see a movie (this was the first time we've done that since arriving in Argentina), especially since we loved the last Bond, Casino Royale, so much. We were kind of dissppointed for a few moments when we realized that the movie was slotted to be dubbed in Spanish, but we consoled ourselves with the understanding that Bond flicks have never been driven on dialogue (if you watch Casino Royale, you may note that the first chase scene allows for an almost eight-minute window of character silence). *I will gladly agree that the Bond one-liners are a staple of the franchise (for those of you who care, Matt), but dialogue on the whole is not why we watch Bond movies. IN ANY CASE, the movie turned out to be in English, so we didn't need to be consoled after all.

POLITICALLY: This is one of the most political Bonds that I've ever seen, which may or may not be news to those of you reading this. Admittedly, not having lived through the Cold War, the politics of some of the earlier films may not be immediately evident to me, tho I would certainly argue that Pierce Brosnan's tenure as Bond was marked by a distinct absence of realistic political commentary. I'm struck by the reviews of this movie that have negated (NY Times) or completely missed (Rocky Mountain News) the very prescient issues dealt with by this Bond.

*Bolivia: First of all, understand that this is the most unstable country in South America today and the filmakers were apparently working with a crystal ball because one of the film's plot points revolves around a proposed coup against the President, an event which transpired only a few weeks ago. Evo Morales, the Bolivian President, is an aboriginal coca leaf (yes, the root material of cocaine) farmer who has fought hard over the last several years to bring about sweeping social changes to favor the majority of working poor (and mostly indigent) indigenous community. His changes have been met with a lot of resistance by a few rich governors, which forced a very heated and even violent confrontation. While the Bond plot does not treat the issues that Evo has unearthed with any subtlety at all and the Bolivian General who will lead the coup is a stereotypical latin Generalisimo, we have a very real political issue on the screen, which absent an international financial crisis would probably merit more critical comment.

*Water: The villain of the film is a gem: well performed on all counts. Again, I'm surprised that the reviewers missed the very obvious political nature of his presence on the screen. Of course, this may be because the issues important to environmentalists in Northern Argentina may not be a part of every movie reviewers canon. Here in Argentina, Douglas Tompkins, the man responsible for creating the labels NORTH FACE and PATAGONIA, amongst others, has been buying large pieces of territory in the name of ecological reclamation. A majority of the Argentine population believes him to be a thief, even a CIA agent, working against the Argentine Republic by buying up its most important sources of water. There are some more mediated judgments of Tompkins, who has done similar projects in Chile and has created nature preserves that he later returned to state ownership as National Parks. I've been working with groups of people that deal with Tompkins on a regular basis, which is why this Bond villain immediately jumped off the screen. I encourage you to think about the reality that the movie puts forward: is water more valuable than oil? and what are we going to do with water in the future? To make an odd intertextual connection, can you imagine the world of Waterworld in which water is so valuable that it becomes a currency?

STRUCTURALLY: I'll keep this brief, but I just wanted to note that this Bond was beautiful in a lot of its technical aspects. The titles were a nice return to classic Bond symmetries and the Jack White composition (performed with Alicia Keys) proudly introduced cacophony as a theme of the movie: competing interests that unavoilably juxtapose, rearrange and battle for attention. The thing that I most thought about through the film was the way that the film indicted Bond's presence for being an interruption in other activities. The first sequence, for example, is a nice helicopter shot of the Italian coast: the viewer's appreciation of that beauty is constantly disrupted by shots of the car chase. A few minutes later, the altercation in the catacombs interrupts (not entirely), a horse race on the streets above. The questions that we can take from these observations are several: Is Bond (and espionage as we know it) necessary for our world today? If so, should we keep it as isolated as it has been historically? Or, in another vein, is the model broken, producing death instead of justice?

I loved this flick, and the pizza that we ate afterwards. Any thoughts that you may like to share are welcome.

Thank you Golden Oldies

2008-11-23T13:21:00.000-08:00

I would like to send a large THANK YOU to the Golden Oldies at Cross of Christ for the kind note that they sent us almost a month ago. It is so nice to get mail, and your note was full of encouragement; it made us both feel so happy! Additionally, the words of advice and enthusiasm that many of you shared with us at COC before we left continue to inspire us. We only hope that we will be able to relate with younger generations as well as you have with us!

Happy Thanksgiving to you, and may the Peace of God fill your hearts and homes.

A not-so-intense post from Jake

2008-11-12T16:05:00.000-08:00

So, I tend to get a little serious when I'm writing for this blog, but here are a few comments that I'm going to just put out there.

Food: Argentine food is notably more bland than Mexican food, but actually has a lot in common with American cuisine. A lot of meat and potatoes, soups, breads and fruit. My favorite food here is definitely steak, and I'll probably write a long post about Argentine beef sometime soon. My favorite dish is definitely Estofado, a mix between a stew and a heavy pasta dish. Yum! Pizza, hamburgers, and french fries also all figure prominently. And high blood pressure comes from too much salt, right? I wonder what the figures are on Argentines... they eat a lot of salt.

Wine: Argentinians know what they're doing, 'nuff said.

Soccer: The National Team just made the National Hero their coach. For those of you old enough to remember the World Cups of the 80's and 90's, you probably know the name Maradona. He has been brought in to bring the Argentine squad back to glory, or at least to raise the ratings on their next matches.

Ped Malls: Resistencia recently built a ped mall. Its pretty much exactly like Pearl Street in Boulder or Mass St. in Lawrence. We don't spend a lot of time there, but consumerism (I mean "investment" has a home).

Important thing to remember: Human beings are more than the bubbles that they circle on the census and they are more than the sum of the hours that the work. Dehumanization happens when we stop asking others questions and assume that we already have the answers.

Organic agroecology, feminism, and spirituality

2008-10-30T18:05:00.001-07:00

After that oh-so-unpresumptous title, this post demands a bit more seriousness than some previous posts. I have started to get beyond the pangs of homesickness and constant culture shock to participate in my placement and surroundings a bit more, and two weekends ago I had one of the most profound participatory experiences of my life.

I spent Friday through Sunday discussing food sovereignity, the right to eat, and the dangers of soy monoculture (devoting most of the Argentine farmland to soy production for export) in this country and others in South America. The women with whom I work at the mission in Resistencia and I attended a women´s retreat at an organic women´s coop farm near Santa Fe, the capital city of the province below El Chaco. The well-organized event was very educational and allowed me and other participants to develop our understandings of the problems related to food access in Argentina and especially how those problems relate to women´s lives.

The conference´s focus on "food sovereignity" was concerned with the basic human right to access ample, high-quality, culturally appropriate food. An important part of food sovereinity is the necessity of communities (i.e. nation-states) to produce all or most of their own food needs, so as not to be dependent on other nations for basic alimentation. This is especially relevant in Argentina, which, like the U.S., has vast tracts of agriculturally productive land. Based purely on natural resources, there is no reason that any Argentine should go hungry.
However, those vast tracts of land are currently producing soy for export instead of wheat, corn, beef, citrus, and other crops suitable for human consumption. Argentina is currently the second largest producer of soy in the world (after only the U.S.) , as soy genetically modified for Round-Up pesticide has proved extremely profitable for a very few people. Now, I do not know much about soy farming in the U.S., other than that I live around and am related to many soy farmers. I believe that the environmental controls on pesticide are fairly strict, and that we also have a greater need for soy than Argentina does. But the results of a rapid transition to soy farming here have had disastrous effects on the agricultural economy. Thousands of farm laborers have lost their jobs, forcing them to move to the cities, where there are no more jobs. In the meantime, basic foodstuff must be imported at high prices. Mass unemployment combined with increasing food costs have produced a lot of really, really unneccesary hunger. Poor environmental controls on RoundUp may have caused birth defects and considerable sickness in children who encounter the substance.

Many of the people who own the land on which soy is grown are not Argentine, and view the land as a short-term investment rather than a long-term sustainable project. Consequently, many farms are in constant soy production, with no crop rotation or thought of maintaining arable soil. The quest for soy land (which turns a short-term profit) has also contributed to the mass deforestation of El Chaco (where we are living this year). The destruction of this ecosystem has led directly to the increase in summer temperatures from around 100 degrees Farenheit, to insufferable heat that often approaches 120 degrees F.

Although there are many comedores (soup kitchens) that have been offered soy-based dishes, it turns out that soy actually impedes young children´s ability to absorb nutrients. So feeding them soy amplifies the problems of anemia and malnutrition. Many are asking why wheat and beef, the staples of Argentine diet, must become more and more inaccesible to all involved. In a food-rights sense, the concern about importing and exporting most of one´s food has more to do with direct connections to food production than the more common environmental concept of "food-miles," which may or may not help the environment, and also may or may not help people eat.

One thing that surprised me was the close connection of soy production to the trafficking of women. Some argue that the infrastructure which soy production demands also provides avenues for trafficking: highways and railways, increasingly used to transport soy and decreasingly used for public transit, make clandestine transport easy, and any subsequent attempts at getting back home more difficult. In addition to this, the movement of employment from agricutural communities to trucking and transit creates a mobile population of mostly men alone, far from home, helping create the market for prostitution. This theme has been a major interest of the women´s group at our church here in Resistencia (see previous entries in this blog for more information). One of the women at the retreat shared that she had intercepted her neighbor´s 12-year-old daughter on her way to a fishy job offer that would almost certainly have landed her in forced prostitution; knowing that we are all only 2 or 3 degrees away from women being bought and sold is tragic and makes me understand better why this topic is attracting so much attention in the church and nation here.

Anyway, for more information, some in English, you can look at the website http://www.lasojamata.org. This is a horribly complicated and horrifying problem, especially since assuredly no one intended to cause so much harm to land and people through profitable farming for export. Of course, overproduction of soy does not help anyone except those who buy soy cheaply for use in biofuel and cattle feed.

The event made the local paper, if you can read a bit of Spanish: http://www.unosantafe.com.ar/26.10.2008/noticias/8612_M+s_de_150_mujeres_discutieron_el_modelo_agropecuario_vigente.html

The retreat, incidentally, allowed me to experience a robust, pro-child, pro-family feminist spirit that I have not felt in a long time. Many women brought their babies, and of course mate was consumed on all sides. (see previous post) I bought my own mate, made of recycled materials at a women´s coop in Córdoba. I also accompanied one of the women who was with me in painting a Lutheran rose in a mural commemorating the event, which made me reflect on the Christian spirituality that is often absent in such discussions.

So why should this be a topic of concern for missionaries and for Christians? Why do I think that a symbol of Lutheran faith relates to food rights? I have been reflecting on this a lot, and am tossing around some ideas in my head.

We are commanded to feed the hungry, and I see food rights as securely grounded in Christ´s teachings. That all should have access to food seems enshrined in Leviticus, in the Gospels, in the example of the early Church. I also recall that Jesus used culturally appropriate food to communicate--figs, fish, wine, bread. The central sacrament of our faith asks us to remember Christ through metaphors of food. Our need for His love and redemption is, like our need for food, constant, and our expressions of that need are culturally mediated. Perhaps in solidarity for food rights, we can all try to use locally produced bread and wine/grape juice for our communion celebrations. Please pray for the many South Americans fighting for access to affordable food and for those accompanying the men, women, and children suffering from unneccesary hunger today.

What does Nelson Mandela have to do with Argentina?

2008-10-27T16:47:00.001-07:00

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.

Tomando Mate

2008-10-15T18:32:00.000-07:00

The past couple of weeks have been pleasant but busy here in Argentina. I am getting steadily more absorbed in my placement at the Mission, where I´ve started some yoga and recorder (the musical instrument) workshops. We enjoyed a visit from our program coordinator and also another ELCA pastor last week, and had fun teaching our guest how to make empanadas! Then on Monday our "host family" invited us to an asado (backyard barbeque, roughly) of lamb to celebrate a long weekend. For the record, lambs are adorable, and also delicious. Also for the record, mid-day asados have the advantage over evening asados of giving the body longer to recover before the next day of work.

And I have been tomando a lot of mate.

Tomando mate [pronounced mah-tay], or "taking mate," is a cultural practice to which I was first introduced by former YAGM volunteers in April. It refers literarly to drinking a semi-bitter herbal infusion of crushed yerba mate leaves in hot water. But this beverage and its associated accesories and practices permeate life here in the Chaco (and throughout many parts of South America). One takes mate by putting the loose, crushed leaves in a mate gourd, pouring hot water (about 2 ounces at a time) over the leaves, and using a bombilla, or a metal straw with a strainer on the end to separate the water from the leaves, to drink the beverage. Few Argentines like tomando mate alone, however. This is an intensely social activity, and one person holds the thermos, pours new water into the gourd and passes it to each person in turn.

When we arrived in Resistencia last month, the first thing we did was tomar mate in the back of the pastor´s van, while transporting ourselves and luggage to our new apartment! Since then, I have taken mate in our apartment, in the church, in the after-school program, on front porches, in plazas, in our back yard, and with the hairstylist in the salon where we got our hair cut today! That we do drink mate is usually established within the first few minutes of any introductory conversation here, a question right up there with "Where are you from?", "How long will you be here?", and "Do you like the Chaco?" (Which, of course, we do.)

While mate has not yet replaced coffee in my life, it is here the preferred morning stimulating beverage. Children as young as 18 months old begin sipping from their parents´mates, although most people under the age of 15 prefer a gag-inducing amount of sugar with theirs. This baffled me--when I share mate with the kids at the mission, my stomach revolts at the amount of sugar trying to infiltrate. But then I remembered my introductory attempts at coffee, my junior high days of crunchy coffee, before I learned to appreciate the bitter glory of the bean itself! Very similar.

One thing I do not do much is drink mate alone. While some people do have their equipment at hand at all times (like my coffee mug in the U.S.), it is also the base of many a social gathering. Many conversations begin, "Let´s meet up in the plaza and tomar mate." Those who hold onto the gourd after completing their serving will hear jovial teasing, "It´s a mate, not a microphone!" When we walk up and down the streets of Resistencia, and see families, friends, and courting couples drinking mate in peace on every corner of the city, I feel that at least something is right in the world.

Last week on Friday, I had the honor of tomando mate at a political rally in which (strictly adhering to ELCA policy) we did not participate, but observed. Throughout this peaceful request that the government of the Chaco fulfill electoral promises and enforce the existing laws, people celebrated solidarity in uplifting the rights of all. As we navigated the edges of the crowd, taking both pictures and mate, we ran quick bit of mate to the pastor helping lead one of the participating associations. This was a powerful moment for me: accompaniment is not about trying to exert political influence or expressing the "right" political opinions or scoring "political rally points" to bring up in conversations for the rest of my life, but spending time with people, in communities, and drinking a lot of mate.

Human Trafficking Abroad, and at home?

2008-09-30T17:38:00.001-07:00

Here is a translation of a true story that we heard at the youth event held this past weekend. The main topic of the weekend was human trafficking, its realities, causes, and possible solutions. Please take a moment to read this story, and if you wish, reflect on the questions that follow or use some of the links.

Basilia and her husband, Pedro, had a small business in Bolivia, near Tarija, that wasn't bringing in enough money. So when a friend told them about an opportunity to move to Buenos Aires to work in a clothing factory, they readily accepted and prepared for the trip with their 18-month old daughter. They were going to be paid by the garment, and they would even get food and housing. The gentleman that set up their contract sent them some money to travel to Yacuiba, where they were supposed to contact a taxi driver. The taxista took them to a mountainous area where a guide was waiting to take them through the wilderness to a town, which has a name that is currently escaping me, but supposedly it was in Argentina. The next day, the guide got them to Salta and bought their tickets for Buenos Aires. When the couple got to the bus terminal in the capital, their contact's sister was waiting for them. She took them straight to the factory where they were going to work. They were given a simple dinner and then told to work until one in the morning.

In the workroom, which was really a big shed, there were eighteen adult workers and thirteen children. In one corner and barely concealed by a partition, they set up a cot for the couple and their baby daughter. They later found out that the school-aged child laborers didn't go to school because the patrón didn't allow it. The work day started at 8 in the morning and lasted until 1 the next morning. The workers seldom left the factory, and despite the fact that the door wasn't locked (though they always had to let the manager when they were going to leave), the patrón never missed an opportunity to remind them about their illegal immigration status and the certain encarceration or deportation that awaited them if they were captured by the police. These warnings were corroborated by the two times that the police--whose stationhouse was on the same street--came into the factory and asked for the workers' documents. On both occasions the patrón made them hide behind some old machines in an unused part of the workroom.

There had been an agreement that they would be paid USD$.50 per garment. The first month Basilia made USD$85 and her husband about the same. The second month, the patrón stopped paying them: he gave them each USD$8 a week in credit, telling them that he was going to hold the rest of the money to pay the costs of travel and housing. And on top of the sewing they had to clean the whole building on the weekends with the money from their "credit". When Pedro asked for the missing money that he was owed, the patrón and his wife beat him and set the dog on him. That was when they decided to leave.

Some questions to consider:

Have you heard any stories similar to this one? Who was involved? Where did it take place?What happened at the end of the story?

What kinds of problems do you think Basilia and Pedro faced when they fled the factory? Where will they go? What will they do? What has changed as a result of their journey?

What would you do if you found yourself in work conditions like those at this garment factory? What would you do if you were Basilia and Pedro when they walked out?

Where is God in this story and in others like it?

Some links to follow:

US Dept of Labor Report on Argentinian Child Labor

A news article on Bolivian slave laborers in Argentina

News article from THE GUARDIAN about Argentina's slave trade

UN Report on Argentinian Human Trafficking

State Department report on Human Trafficking in the United States (large PDF)

Collection of articles on US Human Trafficking

An article from the AFL-CIO on contemporary US slavery

Weekend and the Mission

2008-09-29T17:37:00.000-07:00

Hi from Angela here! We have now been at our placement for almost a month, and homesickness is beginning to wear off a bit, blessedly. This past weekend, we had a brief vacation from our usual placements to accompany some of the young women from the church here to an ecumenical youth retreat in Misiones, a province to the east of El Chaco (where we are). Our journey there was scenic and beautiful--the area is known throughout Argentina for its red earth and agricultural beauty. It reminded me a bit of Wisconsin, with the red soil associated with Oklahoma. A really lovely bus ride.

This youth encounter of sorts involved four or five congregations from the IELU (the Lutheran church associated with the ELCA) and the IERP (a Protestant denomination of German origin). The host church had a beautiful Bible camp-retreat center-like facility, with sleeping rooms and a volleyball court and a massive grill. I really enjoyed getting to know youth leaders from across Northern Argentina and also getting to spend quality time with the chicas from our congregation here!

The retreat´s theme was human trafficking, which I have to admit I initally did not think was a very relevant topic to young people. But to my surprise, it is unfortunately a very relevant topic. Most of the young people knew at least that people from their neighborhood had been vulnerable to trafficking schemes. Underground webs here target both immigrants and native women in bad economic situations, as well as children, for sweatshop-style work, prostitution, and illegal underage work. Here (like in the US, I believe) they use immigrant status and bait-and-switch tactics (i.e. advertising for legitimate jobs, then taking documents and forcing people to illegitimate, demeaning work) to virtually enslave victims, cutting them off from access to authorities and their home communities. It is a very tragic situation, and very unfortunate that it hit so close to home for the people we are living with.

Besides making me realize the immediacy of human trafficking in the community where I now live, the retreat also made me reconsider the benefits of ecumenicalism. The IELU and the IERP were able to share resources towards common goals, making for a great event at which we did not need to focus on doctrinal differences but could moved towards shared understanding. I was really happy to be part of the event.

I also should probably update a little bit about my regular employment here! It seems that my assignments change somewhat every day, but I spend my time working with children ages 1-17ish at a community development center. Thus far, I have been playing a lot of Jenga and "house" and holding beautiful babies while trying desperately to understand the Spanish (or castellano) of the older children. But as my language skills are beginning to stabilize a bit, this week I plan to start leading some workshops on music, yoga, creative writing, and possibly other themes as the Spirit moves.

It is spring here, and beautiful. Yesterday was rainy, but not today, and the climate has been very pleasant. Flowering trees make every walk cheerful and colorful, and drinking mate outside is one of the great joys of life.

Our new friends from the weekend shared a great culinary joy of life with us, too: chipas. These small delights are cheese cooked in cornflour, I think, little puffs of deliciousness about the size of a Swedish meatball. I am not sure how to describe them, but I will do my best to learn how to make them!

Anyway, all is well with us. We really love to hear from home! Keep in touch, and God bless you every one!

Getting to know the base structure

2008-09-15T16:55:00.000-07:00

Its amazing how much things can surprise you, even when you're supposedly ready for anything. I've left the country before, and I've played with children from different cultural contexts, but the smiles and laughter that arose from a game of Jenga played in the Mission the other day made me pause.

We had a lot of fun building and redesigning the small wooden tower according to our estimations of structural integrity, or rather, whether the tower looked wonky on that side and when the whole thing came crashing down, we all grabbed as many pieces as we could to get it back into shape for another round. I love board games, I always have, which is why the boys' laughter, finger-pointing, and "helpful" suggestions surprised me... I never expected to see such similar behavior to my own. What a gift to be able to step into a new job and instantly have a point of contact, and once more, not just a point of contact, but a shared connection of pleasure and joy.

If you've never played Jenga before, ask the nearest kid to help you find a set and play, and if you haven't played it in a year or longer, do the same. A collection of small wooden blocks say so much about the way that we relate to each other and our world, both through the building and the rebuilding that takes place over the course of the game. The blocks themselves are ingenius because they are so plain... planks that could come from almost any material on earth, without any complicated silicone chips or protective equipment required. Their simplicity nevertheless is quickly converted into structure by even the smallest hands in the furthest of lands. Can you imagine a location on earth in which you couldn't play this game? After three weeks in Argentina, I find myself asking this question for the first time, gleefully realizing that Jenga has a power to transcend boundaries placed on us by nationality, geography, ethnicity, language, and class.

And while the Mission has been a place of joyful congregation, fellowship and play, the social reality of the Barrio and of Resistencia makes me realize that Jenga has more to tell us than we ever could have imagined as children. The Mission where Angela and I will be working (especially Angela) is located in a neighborhood called Barrio Juan Bautista Alberdi (Barrio means neighborhood in Spanish and Alberdi was a president of Argentina in the 19th C.), a poorer part of the city where many people have built lives for themselves in small houses. While this reality is utterly breathtaking for us as privileged US citizens (we have to be honest about that fact, Angela and I have been blessed with wealth, love and opportunity relative to this community, and most around the world) there are communities far worse off in this city and in the surrounding province of El Chaco. Resistencia is the poorest provincial capital in the country, and the capital of the poorest province. As part of my work with the Centro Nelson Mandela, a non-governmental organization (NGO) that studies environmental and human rights abuses, I am bombarded every day with more facts about the dangerous processes that are crippling the livelihood of these communities.

Take, for example, the case of an industrial park in a neighboring town. This town lost most of its factory jobs in 1991 and has been economically devastated by unemployment, inflation and the consequential social service fallout. This town is thrilled to have the opportunity to have an industrial park in their community and are actively campaigning for its construction, which will surely bring jobs and dignity back to a group of people who have experienced a great amount of humiliation and pain. But the first plant that will be installed in this park is likely a Brazilian enterprise that makes steel, a venture that was stopped by their own government because of the dangers that it presented to the environment. If it were to be built, it would certainly mean the destruction of thousands of acres of the natural woodlands and sustain the soils of the interior of the province, destroying the livelihood of thousands of people, forcing them to abandon their homes to move to the city to find work, and the cycle repeats.

So where does Jenga come in? Any tower ever built was constructed according to some kind of plan and with a certain amount of materials. From Babel to the Empire State Building to the new education wing on the church, there is a plan and materials. And as we are told time and time again by both architects and pastors, what we have at the base is the most important. Rock or sand? Reinforced concrete or adobe? Do we build a society by offering employment, or by watching out for the environment? By raising taxes to pay for social services or by encouraging investment that will make those social services unnecessary? These are the questions that divide us politically and ideologically and none of them can be answered by anything as simple or narrow-minded as a blog post. And yet, in our own minds, the solutions to these problems appear as elegant as a Jenga tower.

Seriously, pull the game out of the closet and play a round with a friend. We can learn a lot from the simplicity AND the complexity of a game like Jenga.

Safe in Resistencia!

2008-09-03T15:25:00.000-07:00

After two weeks of orientation at home and abroad, we finally arrived at our placement here in northern Argentina on Tuesday.

We left Denver on August 17 for Chicago, where we attended YAGM orientation at the Lutheran School of Theology--Chicago. The seminary is beautiful, by the way, and we had a great week spending time with the other YAGMs going all over the world. Daily seminars there focused on intercultural communication, philosophies of mission, and expectations & procedures, among other things. I found our discussion of the accompaniment model of mission work the most interesting. The ELCA describes this model as "walking together in solidarity that practices interdependence and mutuality." Our presence here is part of our role; we are here to listen and learn, as well as speak and serve. I find the model good and Godly but difficult to describe!

The great departure from Chicago occured on August 25, when we flew to DC and took an 11-hour flight from there to Buenos Aires. There are three volunteers in Argentina (including us) and one in Uruguay, but we are all several hours apart from each other. So we had five great days in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, getting to know one another and the country. We stayed at the ISIDET, the united Protestant seminary there. I was excited to see all the posters for interesting classes, seminars, conferences, etc. going on there! It is, by all appearances, a vibrant academic and faith community, which we will experience in bits and pieces throughout the year. We also spent a lot of time with our country coordinator and her family, who were most hospitable.

We did manage some touristy activities in the city. By far the strangest was the Cemetery of Recoleta, where Evita Peron and other Argentine greats are buried. This "cemetery" is a collection of above-ground vaults, some just big enough for coffins, many small (and some large) chapels where services could be held. It is like a city of the dead, with avenues lined with houses for coffins. Google pictures if you are interested! It is a must see sort of attraction. (Eva´s grave is pictured to the right.)

We also visited a gaucho ranch and ate a whole ton of meat there. The gauchos are (were) like cowboys in the American West, and wear distinctive berets, cowboy-like boots, and pants. The whole town where the ranch was actually looked a lot like the Southwest, with stucco and brick houses.

The IELU (United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Argentina and Uruguay) is hosting us here, and we attended a service at the Buenos Aires congregation on Sunday. The order of worship etc. was very familiar and comforting, and we shared a meal of empanadas with the church members. Empanadas, by the way, appear to be the national food--we have eaten them perhaps eight times already, and they are always good. It is a kind of mini-sandwich, meat and other fillings wrapped in a dough pocket. Several kind people have already volunteered to teach us how to make them.

Finally, on Sunday night we boarded a bus to Resistencia and arrived here the next morning.
(Views from our apartment) Buses here serve meals on long bus rides! Wow! I was pleasantly surprised. The bus-riding experience resembled flying much more closely than it resembled Greyhound. The seats were very comfortable, and they served coffee in the morning as we got close to our final destination!!!

I was delighted to move in somewhere I will not be leaving in two weeks! We have a really charming apartment a few minutes from the town square. But the rest of our Resistencia stories must wait for another post and another day. Chao!

O2B in Buenos Aires

2008-08-26T10:26:00.001-07:00

We've arrived in the Southern Hemisphere, in the right city, with all of our baggage (both material and cultural). I've been in Buenos Aires for a total of about thirty minutes and I'm already enthralled with the diversity and beauty of Argentina. Deeper reflections will certainly come with time, as will longer and more detailed blog posts.

Salud!

Where are we going and what are we doing?

2008-08-09T07:36:00.000-07:00

Bienvenidos al blog de Angela y Jake Rapp! We're very excited about our upcoming adventure and would like to start by providing some links to where we are going and the program that we are working with.

In brief, Angela and I will be spending the next year in service to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Iglesia Evangelica Luterana Unida through mission and service work in Resistencia, Argentina. Resistencia is a 400,000 person city in the northern province of El Chaco, about a 13 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. We will be working there for about 11 months (we arrive on the 26th of August, after some training in Chicago). At the moment our assignments are still a little vague, but we know that we're going to be working with a youth-oriented mission outreach program as well as a human rights organization. Angela will spend most of her time at the Maria Magdalena Mission with their after-school programs, environmental awareness activities, as well as language and catechism workshops. Jake will be working with the Mission as well as with the Centro Nelson Mandela, which works to denounce human rights violations related to environmentalism, globalization, and the indigenous population of the El Chaco province.

The ELCA's program site can be found here:

http://archive.elca.org/globalserve/youngadults/argentina.asp

For those of that can read Spanish, here is the city's website:

http://www.mr.gov.ar/

And a tourism website that describes Resistencia in English: http://www.welcomeargentina.com/resistencia/index_i.html