Chaos Buenos Aires

7:30 p.m. car horns fill the air with a full bodied sound, "correte la fila atras" yelled the bus driver as an elderly woman of maybe 75 years tried to squeeze by me in a race to grab the recently vacated bus seat. It was exactly this moment as I patiently gazed off into the bus windows on my 1 hour and half trip back home that I began to contemplate the craziness that embodies, Buenos Aires, the culture and Argentine personalities. My thoughts combined the subject of conversations I had with some of my English students hours earlier. "I don't understand what direction this country is headed," one student tells me, "I don't think anybody really does. But situations like these really heat up peoples attitudes until they explode." The situations my student was referring to are the ever present "cortes de la calle" and "paros de subte". The first situation may be more of a deep social problem while the later another problem that in this day acted as the icing on the cake.
"Cortes de la Calle" entails organized protests from different groups which aim to halt traffic on some of the biggest avenues throughout the city without any police or government opposition. In fact, my student explained that most of the "cortes" are actually a political tool supported by the government. The Christina Kirchner government is especially tolerant of the "cortes" because their leftist aligned agenda seems to find these expressions just a freedom offered within a democratically just country (something Argentine society had none of during the late 70's and early 80's during a harsh rule of dictators). But the question in place is whether the Kirchner government is too tolerant. In general, the attitudes of porteños (people who live in the city of Buenos Aires) are more and more irritated by the chaos of traffic which consumes the downtown district of the city when protesters cut across avenues. As my student explains, "I understand the right to protest, but the way they do it has to be less destructive. Most people don´t even understand which issue or side of the political spectrum they´re protesting.¨

This form of protesting also extends to all parts of the country. For example, protesters of the papelerías or industrial paper plant in Uruguay have accused the plants of polluting the air and water near the Rio de la Plata which Argentina shares with their smaller neighbor. So in order to show their displeasure with the situation they cut straight to the streets which in this case was a highway in the small town called Gualeguaychu which connects Argentina and Uruguay together by a bridge to stop traffic. Today, the highway continues to be cut without much intervention from the government, and the only time the protesters let traffic pass through the bridge was when the Argentine National Futból team played in the important World Cup qualifier one month ago. As amusing as this may be many of the people being affected by these "cortes de la calle" seem to be less than amused. If the government continues to allow such forms of protest the amount of irritated Argentines across the country are going to lash out against such displeasure. The next big ¨corte¨may be by the majority population of the city of Buenos Aires when they decide to march toward La Casa Rosada. The last time this happened, millons of Argentines armed with pots and pans to make noise pressured the then President De la Rua to leave his position only 8 years ago. (to be continued...)