Gun Smuggling

A friend on facebook recently posted a Washington Post article about guns smuggling into Mexico on his newsfeed. I started reading news reports of this type of smuggling from the US to Mexico in the spring of 2009, while I was in Guatemala (incidentally, the Guatemalans I knew found it amusing that finally there was some concrete evidence that contraband moves both ways across the border). I remember learning about the problem because of a New York Times article on the subject.

Basically, Mexican officials and ATF officials are finding that many, many guns used in violent crime in Mexico can be traced to US gun shops, particularly stores in Texas and other border states. ATF investigations have found that drug cartels pay "straw" buyers to purchase guns legally in the US and these guns eventually make it across the border into Mexico, often in the hands of those who bring drugs and people north. In areas of Texas, for example, one buyer could buy 10 or 15 guns in a short period of time without visiting the same store twice, due to the abundance of gun stores in cities like Houston or Brownsville. While store owners are obligated to report the purchase of multiple handguns by the same person in a short period of time, they are not obligated to report the purchase of multiple "long guns" (rifles, assault weapons, etc.). Weapons sales at gun shows and private sales of weapons don't even require the seller to record the name of the purchaser.

This particular article Washington Post article is interesting for many reasons, but I wanted to write about a few particular things.

There is a fascinating section in the report about the reaction of the National Rifle Association to claims that a large portion of guns used in acts of criminal violence (especially drug cartel violence) in Mexico come from the US.

The foundation [National Shooting Sports Foundation] and the National Rifle Association aggressively challenge statistics that show 80 to 90 percent of the weapons seized in Mexico are first sold in the United States, calling the numbers highly inflated. After being criticized by the gun lobby, ATF stopped releasing such statistics this year.

"To suggest that U.S. gun laws are somehow to blame for Mexican drug cartel violence is a sad fantasy" said Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action.

Cox said guns are coming to Mexico from other Central American countries and from former Mexican soldiers who have U.S. weapons and are now working for the cartels.

ATF disagreed, saying the biggest factors are the high number of dealers along the border and the convenient location.

Grimaldi, James V. and Sari Horwitz (2010) "As Mexico Drug Violence Run Rampant, U.S. Guns tied to Crime South of Border" Washington Post. December 13 

First, why do Mexican soldiers have US weapons? Does he mean guns are supplied to the Mexican military by the US? I don't that much about the Mexican case, so I am unsure if there is the same kind of problem of former soldiers keeping their weapons even thought they are no longer part of the military in Mexico as there is in Central America.

Second, while I wouldn't be surprised if there are some Central American weapons floating around Mexico, I am skeptical as to the extent of this problem, particularly along the northern border. Granted, there really isn't much stopping smuggling of drugs, people, or other kinds of contraband along the Guatemalan border with Mexico, but I wonder how much of this is guns. A cursory Google search turned up almost no information about gun smuggling in Central America.  A working paper from the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center at the University San Diego suggests a few reasons why the NRA spokesman may be mistaken in his assertion that guns are coming primarily from Central America: (1) an assault rifle like an AK-47 is more expensive and lower quality in Central America, and (2) guns that do come from Central America often originate in the US--these are not guns left over from Central American civil wars, but weapons that are smuggled into Central America from the US on their way to Mexico. Hand grenades and rocket-propelled grenades, however, appear to be coming from Central America.

Also, they article recounts the dismissal of a case against a gun store owner accused of knowingly selling guns to straw buyers working for Mexican drug cartels. I am not a lawyer nor a judge, so I can't really speak to the judge's ruling (basically that the defendant's lawyers were able to show that the ATF's witnesses weren't credible and that the prosecution was "overcharging" the defendant, who could only be proven to have committed a misdemeanor). But the quotation the journalists include in the article is very interesting:

About guns going to Mexico from the United States, the judge said: "It is a terrible problem. They have to do something about it."

Grimaldi, James V. and Sari Horwitz (2010) "As Mexico Drug Violence Run Rampant, U.S. Guns tied to Crime South of Border" Washington Post. December 13 

Who are they? The Mexican authorities? The ATF? Does the judge think that the US legal system does not have a role in this drama? Is this something that the US should be pursuing? I would argue that this is something that we should be worried about. Yes, the Mexican authorities should also working on this problem (just as we should be working on the problem of drug trafficking), but this flow of weapons into Mexico from the US is not just a Mexican problem. What in the world does the average US citizen need with such open access to AK-47s? I've read the NRA's arguments as to why we should not have a ban on so-called "assault weapons," but I am not a hunter or a gun enthusiast and am still ignorant as to whether or not people really use these types of weapons to hunt or whether they are truly helpful as a measure of self-defense. A friend of mine in Guatemala once told me about why he stopped carrying a gun. Concealed handguns (legal and illegal) are pretty common in Guatemala, and I know more than a few people who carry guns for protection. My friend told me he stopped carrying his gun the day after he actually used it to defend himself--long story short, he was almost killed in a gun fight in the street with a thief who was robbing his neighbor (I didn't quite get him to tell me who started shooting first). He told me that carrying a gun made him more likely to use it, and by using it he put himself in more danger than he would have been otherwise. Obviously, this is just one story of many (there is a fascinating This American Life episode about gun control), but it resonates with me.

If you are interested in arms trafficking in Mexico and Central America, here is a great source for articles on the subject.

Gangs in Chicago

NPR recently reported on new anti-gang policies in Chicago (listen/read here). The new policies approach gang violence in Chicago in two ways: by arraigning meetings between gang members on parole and community members and families of victims of gang violence, and by putting pressure on gangs that have at least one member suspected of violence. If one gang member is suspected of a violent crime, the police will arrest as many other members as possible on any other charge possible. The intent is to foster self-policing among gangs, a tactic reminiscent of punishing the whole class if one person cheats or making the entire soccer team run laps when one person mouths-off to the coach. Apparently, similar programs have been successfully implemented in Boston and Cincinnati.

When listening to the piece, I tried to think of how we would react to such a move if it had been done in Central America. Such a tactic would certainly be categorized as an "iron fist" approach to crime control, emphasizing punitive measures, punishment for wrongdoing. It is not exactly the same as rounding up young men solely based on their physical appearance (tattoos, etc.) or suspicion of gang membership, but it does lead to mass arrests. The first test of the new policy in Chicago led to the arrest of 60 gang members in the aftermath of a gang-related murder. My biggest questions have to do with where these petty charges come from and what happens to those arrested. Are the charges that weren't acted on earlier because they were too small? Are those arrested actually suspected, individually, of committing these petty crimes, or are they arrested solely for being members of a gang that commits these offenses? Are those getting arrested actually sentenced for these small crimes? During the Mano Dura and Super Mano Dura days in El Salvador, the majority of those arrested on suspicion of gang membership were released due to lack of evidence. Does this new policy in Chicago mean that the only evidence needed to arrest someone is membership in a gang, as long as they suspect someone in the gang to have committed a crime? What kind of evidence is needed to charge these gang members with these smaller crimes?

These new measures in Chicago take the opposite approach of zero-tolerance policies made famous in New York. Zero-tolerance tactics spring from the "broken window" theory, that by cleaning high-crime areas (e.g.fixing broken windows, cleaning up graffiti) and arresting people for small, petty crimes, we can prevent more serious, violent crimes from occurring. These new policies are attempting to reduce serious, violent crime by punishing small, petty crimes after a serious crime has already been committed. That is, punish gangs for petty offenses in retaliation for a more serious crime in the hope that it will prevent future violence. It abandons the link between petty crime and serious crime implicit in zero-tolerance policies and takes up the logic that gangs will stop members from committing serious crimes for fear that everyone might be picked up for something small. They aim for the same end result, but get there on different paths.

This is, of course, a controversial policy. NPR quotes the head of a faith-based group dedicated to rehabilitation and outreach for at-risk youth, who argues that using the stick without offering some sort of carrot (or if not a carrot at least some alternative) doesn't really take care of the problem. The governor of Illinois worries that because the new policies includes meetings between the gangs and the superintendent of police, it only gives more status, more legitimacy, to gangs. Interestingly, I read similar complaints in newspaper editorials and on internet forums in El Salvador after the public transportation strike in September this year. Street gangs held their own press conferences with local media outlets following the passage of new anti-gang legislation that made gangs illegal, and some criticized the media coverage of these press conferences for giving legitimacy and prestige to gangs. Could this lead to status seeking among gangs?

Finally, I am unsure about the impact of meeting with family members of victims of gang violence. I haven't read any literature on this type of intervention (although I am sure it exists and intend to look into the secondary literature). Does exposing gang members (parolees in this case) to the sorrow of victims and the frustrations of community members make gangs less likely to commit violence? Or is this more a public relations tactic targeted more at the community than at the gangs, a way for the city to show that they are not only relying on punitive measures?  

I would be interested to know what people more well-informed that I am about anti-gang policy in Central America think about these new tactics in Chicago.

Dissertating

It has been a chore to get myself to write again. Trying, attempting, straining to write my dissertation (or anything pertaining to my dissertation) is taking up all my brain power. It is gratifying to know that someone somewhere at the university thinks it is worthwhile to pay me so I can write and not have to hold down a full time job at the same time (no, I don't count being a TA as a full time job...although being a TA and writing more than counts). So I've been neglectful of this blog. Of course, it is also because I'm not traveling at the moment and do not have any fun adventures to write about. Those, I hope, will be coming again, in time.

My life right now consists of writing, fooling around with STATA, pretending I know what I'm doing, occasional visits to the gym, cooking, diving to and from campus, and sleeping. Oh, and a random novel and movie thrown in from time to time. Every once in a while I socialize with fellow grad students. I search for fellowships online and am constantly re-framing and re-writing my generic fellowship proposal. And I worry about the future, most specifically about how I'm going to survive financially once my funding runs out in April.

It's not the most exciting existence, but it certainly isn't that terrible either. Perhaps it could best be described as a break. I was thinking about it in terms of being in Limbo, but I think that description is a bit too bleak. Life for me right now is the most routinized, the most normal, the most settled it has been since I started writing this blog, maybe even since before that. Which is probably what I'm rebelling against (ha!). So my new plan of attack is to embrace routine and settle in for the next few months. Maybe then I'll get some real writing done!

So, dear readers, I'm setting myself the challenge of writing on this blog at least once a week. Not so much about my adventures abroad, but about my work and other interesting things (interesting to me at least, you all can judge for yourselves if it is universally appealing). Let's see how it goes, shall we?

Fuerza Bruta

The problem with being a slacker when it comes to updating a blog is that you start to forget things. It's already October and I'm still writing about May, for goodness sake! But I'm going to do my best to get caught up. Life isn't really all that interesting right now anyway, at least in the realm of adventure, so you all are probably getting a better story from me remembering back five months than if you were getting an up-to-date play-by-play (nice, two hyphenated words in a row!).

The final night of the festivities for the Bicentenial of the May Revolution, the government pulled out all the stops. A local acrobatics group (think Cirque du Soleil) called Fuerza Bruta (brute force) put on a parade of acrobats and musicians and dancers that was absolutely incredible. There were hundreds of performers that acted out scenes from the history of Argentina, from its indigenous cultures, to independence, to Perón, the Malvians/Falkland Islands War, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, etc. I'm including some photos my roommate took (my camera had, unfortunately, was no longer with us at this stage). The first photo is of the tango scene. The musicians were perched on top of taxi cabs as the dancers tangoed in the street. It's a bit hard to see in the photo, but if you look closely you can make it out.

Granted, I couldn't actually see anyone but the musicians on top of the cars from my vantage, but apparently my roommate had a much better view. I had gotten lost from the crowd that day, and was watch the parade by myself, positioned in the middle of a bush with a few other spectators trying to get away from the push and shove of the crowd.

This next photo is of the scene of the Mothers of the Disappeared, the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo. The are famous for protesting the military dictatorship during the military period. Tens of thousands of people disappeared during the dictatorship that ran from 1976 to 1983, some of whom were linked to "subversive" leftist organizations, others who were targeted for economic reasons (military and police officers often forced detainees to sign over deeds to land, homes, cars, etc.), still others were kidnapped and tortured and murdered for the sole purpose of creating fear or because of mistaken identity. It was illegal to loiter in the plaza, so in protest of the disappearance of their children, a group mothers began to march around the monument in the center of the Plaza de Mayo, the plaza in front of the presidential palace (the Casa Rosada). These mothers demanded (and still demand) that the government give them back their children. As a symbol of their roles as mothers, they wore white cloth diapers as kerchiefs on their heads, a symbol that is now synonymous with the Mothers of the Disappeared. In this interpretation, the actors wore headpieces that glowed white and marched in simulated rain, a striking image and one that moved many in the crowd.

There were many impressive scenes played out in the parade. San Martín's army crossed the Andes in the snow; soldiers in the Malvinas were shot, buried with crosses over their graves (when the soldiers lay down their backpacks turned into grave markers), and rose again to march on; bankers fought over cash in a high-wire maelstrom in the economic insanity of the 1990s; immigrants ran about on ocean liners from Europe; demonstrators shouted slogans and carried banners for Perón; and a woman dressed in white and blue representing Argentina swung over the heads of the crowd, dancing on the end of a boom. It was, well, impressive.

La Revolución de Mayo

In May of 1810, a group of criollo lawyers and military officers held a meeting in the city of Buenos Aires and voted to not recognize the Regency in Spain set in place by Napoleon, overthrow the current Viceroy of the Río de la Plata colony and set up a junta to rule. Even though the junta in Buenos Aires invited delegates from the other cities within the Río de la Plata colony, a series of small wars broke about between different regions, some supporting the junta and others supporting the Regency in Spain. While the May Revolution was not an official declaration of independence, many see the acts committed between the 18th and 25th of May of 1810 in Buenos Aires as the starting point of the Argentine War of Independence and one of the many starting points of the Spanish American Wars of Independence. Independence was finally declared in Buenos Aires on July 9, 1816.

All of this, of course, means that this year is the 200th anniversary of the May Revolution. I had no idea that I'd be in Buenos Aires for the celebrations (lucky me!) but by a serendipitous twist of fate (or something) I happened to rent a room in a house two blocks from one of the biggest centers of the festivities. For the five days of the holiday, the national government blocked off ten blocks of 9 de julio avenue (if you recall, this is one of the widest streets in the world). The government put up huge pavilions in the street showing off products from all the provinces, showing off Argentine industry, history and culture. There were various stages along the route for musical and dance performances, culminating in the main stage just in front of the obelisco, at the intersection of 9 de julio and Corrientes. For those of you from the US, think of the Washington Monument and set it down in the middle of a sixteen lane avenue cutting through the heart of Buenos Aires. There were also stages set up in the Plaza de Mayo and other historical areas in the city. Hundreds of thousands of people came out to the celebration (probably in the millions if added up over the course of the five day holiday).

The first night, Friday, was a celebration of Argentine National Rock, and was a lot of fun. I recognized quite a few of the artists that played at the free concert, which lasted until 2 am (Leon Gieco, Los Pericos, Fito Paez, etc.). I headed out to the concert early, in an attempt to meet some couchsurfers, but we all got lost in the crowd. Or at least I did. Lots of people in close proximity, lots of elbows and tight spaces and pushing and compression. But, overall, I was very impressed with the civility in the crowd. I only saw one instance of violence, which I'll write about later. No one was even really bad mouthing anyone else (unless they were referencing politics). Since I couldn't find the couchsurfers, I attempted to meet up with my new roommates and their friends. About an hour into searching (aided by text messages), I was able to find them thanks to one of my roommate's ingenious plan to put one of his friends on his shoulders and have her wave his red hat in the air until I stumbled upon them. Lucky for us, we were able to walk home that night. The streets were completely full of people, and the subways were overflowing with people. It truly was a mass of humanity, and I wouldn't have wanted to try my luck underground with that many people on all sides.

I was struck with how civil things were, truly. I remember attending a free concert in Guatemala City. We had to pass through checkpoints to enter the area in front of the stage and were patted down for weapons and had our bags searched. There were black, seven foot barriers surrounding the plaza, and the guards carried guns. Here, there were no barriers, no weapons check, not that many police in sight. Or rather, I saw cops but really only near the stages. At one point on the fourth night of the holiday, one of my Spanish roommates and I were sitting on the ground right in the center of the crowd, waiting for the next band to set up their equipment, when a group of people beating the hell out of thief almost fell down right on top of us. Apparently the man had stolen cell phones from some of the people in the crowd, and at least three of them (a woman and two men) were hitting and kicking him until he gave the phones back. Almost by accident he dropped the phones, and they let him run off into the crowd. It was vicious, and no one even made a move to call the police over. But somehow I think it would have played out differently in another setting or another country. I don't know. It may just be because there are less guns in general circulation in Buenos Aires than in Guatemala (per capita, I suppose...don't quote me on that until I can actually check out the statistics). More than anything else, I was just glad I was able to scramble out of the way in time.

The next night I was able to meet up with some couchsurfers, and we enjoyed an evening of international music (including Gilberto Gil!) once again situated right in the heart of the crowd. I will say my knees ached for weeks afterward because of standing for so many hours. I'll bet I averaged about five to eight hours a day on my feet in the crowds or walking around over the five days. The concert was a lot of fun. But definitely not for the claustrophobic! While I was hanging out with the couchsurfers, my roommates embarked on a daring plan (well, ok, not really daring, but that makes it sound better, no?) to make a little cash. Budding entrepreneurs that they are, they bought up 100 cans of beer and sold them for double the price to thirsty revelers. Later they proudly informed me they sold out in less than an hour! I spend the third evening inside after the festivities were canceled due to torrential rain. It was a nice rest for my weary legs.

It was really quite an experience to be part of this celebration. I wonder what it must be like for foreign tourists to partake in similar celebrations in the US. I obviously missed quite a bit of the patriotic fervor of the celebration and probably much of the underlying connotations of certain performances, etc. But it was definitely a fun party! I'll fill in the rest in the next post...

Monserrat

I spent a week and a half searching for an apartment in Buenos Aires. Renting as a short-term foreigner had it's disadvantages, since most leases run as long as two years. Rental agencies and private owners alike know this and take unashamed advantage of the hundreds of foreigners who come into the city as students or travelers. There are numerous possibilities. You can rent a room in someone's home, rent a furnished apartment or rent a room in a house full of other foreigners. Prices run from US$200 to US$800 a month depending on the area you want to live (although I'm sure you could find some places that are even more expensive). I searched for a room in a house with other foreigners through rental agencies, craigslist and on a housing search group on the couchsurfing website. Since I wanted something on the cheaper side and near the Library of Congress, my options were somewhat limited. In the end, I picked a house a few blocks from 9 de julio in the Monserrat neighborhood, just below the Avenida de Mayo. It really wasn't that difficult of a choice, really, even thought the room was a bit more expensive that my other options (these options included a room in an apartment with five other women that consisted of a mattress on the floor and only one bathroom, a room in a house that smelled like mildew and had a teeny tiny bunk bed, and a house that felt like a cave but that had nice roommates).

Monserrat is a neighborhood somewhat similar to San Telmo, with narrow streets lined with old buildings that date back beyond the last century. This house was at least 100 years old, but had been nicely updated. The agency claimed it had space for six people (with two of the rooms boasting two beds for those traveling together), but when I moved in there was only one person living there, an Uruguayan twenty-something studying film and the cinema school in San Telmo. The ceilings were impossibly high, at least 14 feet, and we had a glass-covered patio towards the center of the house. One of the rooms came off the kitchen in the front, with a second door to the entryway that also led to the front bathroom. The entryway also led into the patio, and the remaining rooms split off from there, each connected to the other through the patio or by interior doors. The back two rooms had access to the second bathroom, a large room with stained glass windows looking into the bottom part of my room (which included a loft area). Thank goodness the windows were not only opaque but also under the stairs...otherwise things may have gotten a bit uncomfortable from time to time. Not only did both bathrooms have the ubiquitous bidet, but our bathroom in the back even had a bathtub, a rarity in Latin America (or at least in my experience). As I mentioned earlier, my room was spit into two, with a loft area above. The idea was to have a bed in the room below as well for two people who are traveling together, but while I was in residence the bottom part stayed empty. The upper part, where I slept, contained a bed and a closet and not much else, but had a beautiful window that looked out over the patio and had a view of the sky through the glass windows above the patio. Truly, the only draw-back to the place was that we were three houses down from a veterinary clinic, which also doubled as the local Humane Society. They must have had quite a large kennel in the back of the house, because we could hear the dogs barking constantly. This wasn't just a dog or two barking when a stranger walked past their home. This was at least ten dogs going nuts every time someone went back into the kennels. It usually started at about 8:00 am and lasted until around 10:00 pm. You couldn't really hear it in the front of the house, but it echoed in the patio and in my room (being the closest to the windows above the patio). I'll admit I learned to tune it out, but the first few mornings were, well, frustratingly un-restful.

After maybe five days living with my new Uruguayan roommate, a Spaniard (well, more specifically at Catalunian) moved in. Probably the most unfortunate thing about renting a room in a house for foreigners run by a rental agency is that we have no say as to who moves in. I was frankly amazed at the rental process. I simply showed up and paid my security deposit and the first month's rent. That's it. So I know that there are no such things as background checks (ha!). We were very lucky that the our new roommate turned out to be a wonderful addition to our house. The poor thing showed up to see the house with bags in tow, fleeing a cockroach ridden apartment in the Once neighborhood. He told me after seeing the third cockroach in as many minutes he scrambled for a new place and that he slept with one eye open the only night he spent there. I have never been the only girl in a house full of guys before, and I'll admit I was a little anxious as to how it would work out, but it worked out really well. Ok, so I did get a bit frustrated by the Uruguayan's tendency to not wash the dishes until the next morning (which for him was around 3 pm), but that's relatively easy to put up with when you know it's only for a month or two. To tell the truth the Uruguay was a bit of an odd bird, but harmless. For most of my stay it was just the three of us, with the exception of two of the Spaniard's friends who more or less couchsurfed with us for a few weeks (although at different times).

I'll get into the more exciting highlights of my stay in Monserrat in the upcoming posts. But from day to day my routine consisted of cooking breakfast at home (usually oatmeal), drinking some mate or tea with the Spaniard and heading off to the library for four or five hours. The library is open 24 hours a day Monday to Saturday, and it was nice to take my time in the mornings. Sometimes I would start at the library as late as two or three in the afternoon and work until after dark. On my walk home I'd stop at one of many resto-bars off the Plaza del Congreso to drink coffee and eat empanadas and watch the people in the plaza. Probably every third day there was some kind of demonstration in front of the Congress building. After coffee and a snack I'd head home, try to get some work done in the kitchen, drink more mate with the Spaniard, maybe cook some dinner and watch a movie and go to bed or head out to meet some friends at a milonga or at a bar or restaurant. Ah, the good life....

San Telmo

I passed the first two weeks or so I was in Buenos Aires in a hostel in the neighborhood of San Telmo. Famous for it's Sunday antiques fair and for claiming a strong tradition of small tango clubs (milongas) and historic cafes, it's a pretty fun neighborhood. While some of my porteño friends claim that they can't stand San Telmo, I like it. The neighborhood is (forgive me for using this word!) gritty, with narrow streets, old houses , antique shops and small boutiques and art galleries (and a reputation for being somewhat dangerous for tourists after dark). It sits right below the downtown, with it's most well-known street, Defensa, running straight down from the Plaza de Mayo to La Boca. If you walk toward the river you end up in the upscale neighborhood of Puerto Madero and will eventually run into the natural reserve that runs along one section of the river. Walking away from the river you run into 9 de julio, one of the widest streets in the world. If you cross 9 de julio (which is impossible to do in the span of one red light unless you RUN) you end up in Monserrat and eventually hit the area around the Congress building.

I stayed at this same hostel six years ago, when I was doing research for my masters thesis. It's called Sandanzas (I'm including a link to the website here because I really do think it's a great spot). It wasn't quite like deja vu to be there again, but it was close. I still remember the walk from the hostel to the San Juan subte (subway) station that took me to the Library of Congress newspaper archives. The neighborhood has changed somewhat from what I remember...there are more empty buildings and "for sale" signs, more graffiti, more trash. Not that I remember Buenos Aires as a terribly clean city. Beware of dog poop landmines on the sidewalks all you who want to walk the streets of Buenos Aires someday! The first time I stayed in San Telmo the antique market filled the Plaza Dorrego and spilled out into a few surrounding streets, with the antiques concentrated in the plaza and booths of handicrafts and hand-made jewelry lining the sidestreets. Now all of Defensa Street is closed on Sundays, with thousands of tourists and locals wandering past booths that are open well into the evening. Only the traditional antique booths close at dusk, the owners packing away chandeliers and goblets, crystal decanters and antique telephones, costume jewelry and gemstones alike into cardboard boxes and hauling them back to the stores that line Defensa. During the day the whole plaza looks like a giant yard sale for the rich, with the contents of mansions laid out on plywood tables. I'm sure most of it is junk, really, but it is impressive none-the-less.

I spent much of the two weeks in San Telmo searching for an apartment. Since I was planning on staying for a little over two months I wanted to have an apartment within walking distance to the Library of Congress. Hostel living is not really that great if you're looking to actually get some work done. But I will admit to some touristy activities while at the hostel. I spent a lovely evening eating the most delicious steak that has ever graced my taste-buds and conversing with a Californian and an Irishman about energetic healing, took a tango class with a bunch of rowdy Basques, got my hair cut, toured the cemetery in Recoleta for the fifth time, chatted well into the evening with the owners of the hostel and slept long passed when I should have hauled myself out of bed almost every morning. It pretty close to being on vacation.

The night of tango lessons with the rowdy Basques deserves a more detailed explanation. One of the last nights I was in the hostel a group of six Basques (five men and one woman) checked in for a few days. They were on their way back to Spain after coming to Argentina for a friend's wedding. We talked them in to taking a tango class that evening despite the fact that men would far out-number women, a situation that hardly ever happens in any kind of partner-dancing class (at least in my experience). I have often had to dance with another woman in a tango or samba class, but never have I seen the men paired with other men. The Basque guys just jumped right in with no thought as to whether the gender of their partner had any effect on their images of masculinity, an act which I'm not sure would be replicated by most straight men from the US. And these guys were straight. It was probably the strangest but most entertaining tango class I've ever had the pleasure to be a part of. These guys were a riot. We all ended up at a milonga that night set up at a local cultural center a few blocks away, and one of the guys kept trying to convince me he was going to take me out to dance in the crowd of obviously experienced tango dancers even though he had never even heard tango music before that night. We got as far as half-way to the dance floor before he finally chickened-out, shocked that I actually took him up on his offer.

I finally moved my stuff to my new apartment after almost two weeks in the hostel. I looked at maybe five apartments, most of them in the Congreso and Monserrat neighborhoods. In the end I picked a house just off 9 de julio. I'll fill you all in on my B.A. apartment in the next installment...

Recoleta Cemetery

My camera had an unfortunate accident involving a head-on collision with cement while I was in Buenos Aires. But I was able to take some photos of the cemetery in Recoleta before the poor camera's untimely demise. Rest in peace, little Nikon. You did all point and shoot cameras proud. Here is a tribute to your last days....

Buenos Aires

It's not as if you won't notice after reading even a little of this post, but I love Buenos Aires. I love that there are lots of independent theaters and art galleries and cafes with live music. Bookstores abound and they even sell books at newspaper stands. Not just pulp novels, but Borges, Cortázar, Saramago, García Márquez. You can go to a milonga in San Telmo or Palermo or Almagro and dance tango until dawn, wander the streets of Recoleta and gawk at the luxurious homes and shops, buy mouthwatering choripan from street vendors in Puerto Madero for the price of a coffee back home, gorge yourself on steak in restaurants both pricey and cheap, sip a glass of house wine that sells for less than a bottle of Coca-Cola, picnic in the parks in Palermo, visit the Japanese gardens, or simply sit in one of the ubiquitous resto-bars that grace what seems like every street corner and watch the people walk by. Just thinking about empanadas for lunch, facturas and yerba mate at 5:00 with friends and a late dinner makes me want to get on a plane right now and head further south. Ok, that's me waxing a bit poetic. Like I said, I love Buenos Aires. Say what you like about ridiculously enormous cities, the crowds, the smell, the noise, the traffic, the pollution, the crime, but I would still jump at any opportunity that comes my way to spend a little more time in Buenos Aires.

I'm not really sure where to start with this part of my travels. This blog has been neglected of late, I know, and any kind of chronological order has been shot to hell. So maybe an episodic approach might be a better tack to choose. So for the sake of just getting this post published, here's a story, an episode if you will. Otherwise I'll get so lost in remembering things in order that I'll never get it written down. I'll call this one "Blind Theater."

You could, I suppose, translate teatro ciego as "theater of the blind" as well, but it doesn't really sound as nice. I like the literal translation of "blind theater" better. In the neighborhood of Abasto, close to the Carlos Gardel Museum, stands the Centro Argentino de Teatro Ciego, a nondescript theater that produces shows that are made for and largely by the blind. But these plays and other theater productions are not only for the blind but place the seeing public in the shoes of a blind "spectator." The shows are put on in the dark and incorporate not only sound but also smell and touch.

One rainy Saturday night a Spanish friend of mine called me late to see if we could snag some tickets to the late performance of the new play Luces de libertad. Argentina had recently celebrated the 200th anniversary of the May Revolution, the revolution that sparked the war that eventually led to the independence of the majority of Latin American countries. The play tells the story of a black slave in Buenos Aires (yes, there were slaves in Buenos Aires, although there are very few families of African descent in Argentina now) who gets romantically involved with a young criollo man who is wrapped up in the May Revolution. I wasn't all that excited about getting dressed up and going out in the rain that evening, but my friend harassed me into venturing out and practically dragged me to the theater. She even had the nerve to call the theater to see if they would delay the start of the show by five minutes so we could make it before the play began. And the theater agreed!

So how do you put on a play for the blind? Or that even goes beyond this and strives to give the sighted audience an experience that mirrors the feelings of being blind? We were led into the theater itself by staff members, each person placing her or his hands on the shoulders of the person in front of him or her. The theater is entirely dark (and having been in true dark inside caves previously, I can tell you that it was indeed entirely dark) and we were helped into our chairs by the staff of the theater. Or perhaps even by the actors themselves, I'm not sure. One of the actors warned us that it can be disorienting at first to be in the dark, in the complete dark without being able to see even shadows of objects. And he warned us sternly of not turning on cell phones or illuminating watches during the performance. And at some point, without warning, the play began. I won't really go into the plot more than I already have, but I will say it was well written. They did an incredible job of describing things in such as way that you could imagine it in your head but without straying from the norms of conversational speech. It didn't sound false or contrived when characters gave the audience and idea of what things looked like, what sounds meant, etc. even though in a play for the sighted these things might be left unsaid.

The play integrated sound, touch and smell with a deft touch. At first it was strange, but after a few minutes I began to imagine in my head the actors and staging and sets and costumes. I began to forget I couldn't actually see anything. It was eerily similar to how I imagine things while I'm reading a novel. Nothing was very defined or sharp or terribly detailed, more like an impressionist painting rather than a realist or even surrealist one. But for me, these images supplanted any awareness I had of being seated in a chair in a dark room. When the characters were washing clothes, you could hear the water and smell the soap. When one was cooking, you could smell the burnt sugar of the dessert she was making. The actors used the entire room as their stage and their voices appeared in front, behind and to the sides, as if you were inside the play and not a spectator. Actors would softly bump into the audience members, rubbing a leg while walking past with their own legs or lightly placing a hand on a shoulder or arm. The most impressive moment for me was when two of the characters swam across a river. Not only could you hear the sounds of the water splashing and the labored breathing of the swimmers, but you could also feel the splash of water and smell the riverbanks. And the sounds and splashed moved across the room, giving the impression of movement, as if these actors were truly swimming across a river that had magically appeared at our feet. I was impressed at the ingenuity of the whole play, but this scene left me dumbstruck. At the end of the play the lights slowly came up and we were able to see for ourselves the actors who we had been listening to for the past hour and a half. I had imagined a cast of a least ten or fifteen, but eight actors stood before us at the end, dressed in plain clothes. According to the playbill, over half the actors are themselves blind. It took me at least twenty minutes into the play to realize what kind of dedication it must take to learn a play like this, since it is not only the audience but also the cast that is in the dark. There are no visual marks to follow, the actors are not wearing night-vision goggles to know where to walk or where to stop or how to maneuver among the audience members. It must be like memorizing a dance, three steps to the right, two to the left, run six steps ahead and fall to the ground. I wonder if at some points the actors were having conversations with themselves and not with other actors playing the second part in a discussion.

I have no idea if there are other blind theaters out there. Surely in a city like New York or London or Paris or Madrid there may be. But if you happen to find yourself in Buenos Aires I highly recommend attending one of the plays put on at this little theater in Abasto. You won't regret it.

San Salvador

So let's travel back in time a bit, dear readers. Put yourselves two months or so in the past and journey with me to the city of San Salvador, country of El Salvador. I jumped on a bus (which, by the way, was an adventure in itself) to San Salvador from Guatemala City sometime in early March so I could get cracking at the newspaper archives at the National Library and start making contacts with journalists, public opinion people, etc. Getting from Antigua to San Salvador was not as easy as you would think, since most of the direct buses from Antigua (well, all really, or at least all that I asked) don't actually go to the capital but instead take you directly to the beach. So I had to catch the bus from Guatemala City early in the morning, a feat which was preceded by at 3 am walk through Jocotenango and Antigua with my enormous backpacker backpack (hehe) to get to where the shuttle to Guate would actually pick me up. Stupid shuttle drivers who won't make the extra five minute drive to Jocotenango! The bus ride to San Salvador from Guatemala City can last between four and six hours, depending on traffic and how long it takes to cross the border. The border crossing was rather anticlimactic and felt a little like crossing the border into Canada from the US. Ok, much more low-tech, but still, very low-key. They didn't even stamp my passport! All I have is the exit stamp from Guate to prove that I even left the country. A heads up for anyone who wants to stay more than 90 days in Guatemala...leaving to spend time in El Salvador or Honduras or Nicaragua still counts towards your 90 days, so head toward Mexico or book a trip to Costa Rica or Panama.

I thought San Salvador would be a lot more like Guatemala City than it was. There are, of course, many similarities...they are more alike than say, Boston and Guatemala City. But you can definitely tell you're not in Guatemala anymore. The most obvious clue, of course, is you don't see people walking around in the traditional indigenous dress that is ubiquitous in Guatemala. El Salvador does not have the same indigenous population that Guatemala does. Also, the Salvadoran accent is different than in Guatemala, as is (of course) the slang used. I had to learn or at least become familiar with a whole new range of slang...it got a little confusing! I spent most of my time staying in a hostel in the colonia Centroamerica, a neighborhood that is relatively safe (but not as safe or ritzy as the Colonia Escalon neighborhood where many of the slightly more expensive hostels and guest houses are located) and that is close to the MetroCentro mall. Which, apparently, is the biggest mall complex in Central America. The thing is enormous. I later learned that to get around, especially on buses, people tend to navigate around landmarks and malls. So you can tell people that you live near the naked lady (a statue of a naked woman) or the naked man (a mural of a naked man on the side of an art museum next to the Sheraton Hotel) or near MetroCentro or one of the other big malls. The shopping centers are the new big thing in San Salvador apparently (well, relatively new). Don't picture them as a mall in the US...things change in warm climates (are malls different in California? I have no idea). This is more of an open-air thing, with shops facing plazas or patios with fountains and seating and cafe's etc. And this is where much of the partying happens at night...bars and restaurants in these shopping centers are the hip place be if you are part of the young Salvadoran middle and upper class, somewhat replacing the bars in the Zona Rosa as the cool nightspots. Or so my friends tell me. So if you want to go out in San Salvador you head for a mall....or the beach, which is a thirty to forty minute drive. Friday nights are nuts for driving down to the coast, especially in tourist towns like El Tunco (where we ended up one Friday night). It seems like half the city of San Salvador heads to the beach to party on the weekends. Kind of like what happens in Antingua on the weekends (and Tuesday nights, haha), but a little less family friendly in some places. And with more of a beachy atmosphere, of course.

I'll skip over most of the boring bits of my trip to San Salvador. A lot of it was spent sitting in the basement of the National Library, where the newspaper archives are kept. The National Library takes up one of the sides of the main plaza in the downtown, alongside the Presidential Palace and across from the National Cathedral. The main librarian at the archives is this skeezy guy that couldn't stop himself from hitting on me...I have to admit it was a little creepy. He had no problem sitting down for a chat every once in a while while I was working and at one point told me this long story about the first woman with blue eyes he had ever met, who was a nurse from the States who had come to his village to give vaccinations. He told me he fell in love with her and went back everyday to try to get a second vaccination so he could see her again. I got this story one day after he noticed I have blue eyes. There wasn't much in the way of noise control in the archives...the librarians would talk loudly on the phone or chat with each other or with other patrons. I finally ended up going to the library with my ipod and headphones in an attempt to deter the librarian from talking to me and to drown out the noise of conversation.

Guate can ( The downtown of San Salvador is not really all that much like the downtown in Guatemala. Ok, for a gal from the States I guess it is pretty similar, but it felt completely different to me. Inyou don't see that many stalls selling blackmarket goods once you get off the Sexta Avenida (6th Ave.), the main plaza is enormous and the central market is mostly underground. In San Salvador stalls selling food, clothes, pirated cds and dvds, and really anything else youthink of fill the streets. There are streets that I figure must have been built to hold twolanes of traffic that are crowded and narrow and barely let buses through due to the amount ofstreet vendors. A Salvadoran acquaintance told me this is partly due to the world economicrecession, since there is little hope for the average Salvador to get a job with a living wage once they've lost theirs and many more have resorted to the informal sector to support theirfamilies than in the past. Walking around in downtown San Salvador is quite an experience forsomeone not used to this kind of thing. Being a blond, tall, blue-eyed foreigner in this part oftown definitely made me stand out. The only time I spotted any other obvious foreignersobviously I'm not counting foreigners who are from other Central American countries) was during the commemoration of the thirtieth anniversary of murder of Monseñor Romero. I'll try to talk about Romero in a separate post, but for those of you who haven' t heard of him, he was the archbishop of El Salvador (I'm pretty sure that was his position) during the height of the Civil War how broke with the Church's positions on some things and defended the lives of those targeted by the Salvadoran military during the Civil War. He was assassinated while holding mass by the Salvadoran military in 1980, one day after he preached a sermon calling on Salvadoran soldiers to lay down their weapons and stop violating the human rights of their fellow citizens. During his funeral the military opened fire on the crowd of 250,000 mourners, killing between 30 and 50 people. He is currently undergoing the process of consideration for cannonization as a saint in the Catholic Church.

What else can I say about El Salvador? Let's see.... Well, the buses are much cleaner and easier to get around on than in Guatemala. They even have turnstiles to get to the seats and bus stops where people actually get in line to get on the bus. This was a shock to me the first time I saw it. In El Salvador I am not canche (blond) like in Guatemala but am chelita (light skinned). Both of these words, of course, are slang, so don't go around using them thinking it's universal spanish. I was recently told that canche in Peru isn't a very polite word. There are not many hostels in San Salvador, partly due to the lack of tourist attraction in the capital....if tourists come the usually are the a day or two before heading to the beach. But there are guest houses, which apparently got their start when FMLN (who was the group on the left of the Civil War) militants began to open their homes to travelers in order to demonstrate their way of life to those interested. Or so said a guide book and a few websites I checked out to confirm this one. It's a lot hotter in San Salvador than in Guatemala City, which made sitting in the basement of the library with no fan or windows a lot less comfortable than you would think. Sure, basements tend to be cooler, but not when it's wicked dang hot outside. Then it's just slightly less dang hot and much less well ventilated than being at street level.

Ok, so that's as much as my brain can handle for today.... Jenn, I'm sorry I took so long writing this. I have no real good excuse other than pereza. But I'll see what I can do to get back on track.

Another Apology for Not Writing

Yeah yeah yeah, I know I suck at updating my blog. I apologize once again for being a bad sister/daughter/friend/stranger who can't seem to keep her blog going. The sad thing is that it's not even that I have been so terribly busy that I can't find the time to write. I'm just lazy, I suppose. So there's my apology....harumph. Think I'll start another post separate from this one to keep the narrative stream. So, again, SORRY!!! And on to the next thing...

Semana Santa 2010

I swear I really will post something of substance soon. But while you're waiting, take a look at my favorite photos from Holy Week in Antigua. I spent a few days following my friend (who is a professional photographer) around taking photos of the processions. So here's a selection for you to enjoy..

2 Months! Oh My!

Holy heck, it really has been two months since I last wrote? What could possibly be a good excuse? Would you buy that my life has turned into a soap opera which I want to eventually turn into a novel and am therefore keeping things under wraps? Hmm, well, the soap opera part is mostly true, anyway. As for keeping things under wraps, this has less to do with writing a novel and more to do with the fact that I really don't want to spread my private life over the internet. Not a ton of adventuring was to be had (although there was some adventuring) and so I didn't feel compelled to write on the blog. Although if you'd like to hear about the private life soap opera stuff, feel free to contact me for the sordid details.

I spent a good part of the last two months in Guatemala, writing and doing background research. Which any good field researcher will tell you is not what you're supposed to do while in the field. But hell, that's what I did. I'm not proud, necessarily, but I don't deny it, either. I'm starting to think of Guatemala as a sort of pleasant quicksand (for me at least). It partially has to do with the fact that I lost my way a bit when I found out that I had been denied a grant that I was really hoping for (let that be a warning to anyone relying on a grant proposal to get something important in their project completed....what do I do now?). And of course some of my inertia had to do with the aforementioned telenovela that had taken over my life. Sometimes that stuff gets in the way. Anyway, lets just say that I spent a lot of time writing and looking things up online and listening to podcasts and reading novels and drinking with my friends. There was a rather productive four days spent at a conference in New Orleans (ok, three days, since the first day was Mardi Gras). And I finally got my butt down to El Salvador this week. So it's not like things are completely stagnant. Nor were they. But hindsight, you know...

What interesting things did I do in these long months? Well, I can tell you the story of the Nativity Party. Apparently there is a tradition in Guatemala (I have no idea if this goes the same for other Latin American countries) that if someone steals your Baby Jesus from your nativity scene during the Christmas season, that person can ask for a ransom. Traditionally this means that the person whose Jesus was stolen has to throw a huge party for which the thief will eventually pay (from how I understood things, the victim of the theft can spend whatever he or she likes and the thief has to reimburse him or her....but you take a risk thinking that every thief will pay!). I took me a while to get this all straight, since almost everyone explaining it to me had had something to drink. Plus there was the added bonus that one of the uncles at the party that I attended (at a friend's house) kept comparing me to the huge painting of Jesus on the wall (he had blue eyes like mine). The nativity party happened to coincide with a rather strange parade through town, full of kids and adults dressed as cartoon characters that did silly coreographed dances to reggaeton music. It was a bit surreal, all told.

I also took a trip to the famous Sunday market in Chichicastenango with some friends. We piled in to my friend's car early Sunday morning (after a late Saturday night I might add, which belongs in the soap opera category and will not be discussed here) and drove the 2.5 hours or so to the Chichi market. We didn't even get lost on the way there! It's not that much different than other markets I've been to in Guatemala in terms of what kind of stuff is sold. But it's just so much bigger! You could definitely get lost. One of the friends I hitched along with is a photographer and he had a field day taking pictures of anything and everything. If you ever find yourself in Chichicastenango, don't forget to make a stop in the church. The church is particularly interesting (I think) because of the stone altars running down the center aisle where Mayan shamans conduct syncretistic rituals pulled from traditional Mayan and Catholic cultures dating back to the conquest. Lots of flowers and candles and incense.

Hmm, what else can I tell you about the last few months? I started running three times a week with a fellow norteamericana. Before I started running in Antigua I thought the cobblestones were a small pain in the butt. Now I am convinced that they have a grudge against me. Running on the sidewalks and roads around Antigua are kind of like trail running in the woods around Sewanee with the added bonus of buses and pick ups trying to run you down or drowning you in black exhaust smoke. And all at altitude! But to tell the truth it was fun to get up at 5:45 am, run for 30-45 min., take a shower and crawl back into bed. Such a tough life, right? I'm attaching some photos of the sidewalks so you can see what I mean about the footing. The first photo is, granted, the most narrow area on the walk/run between Jocotenango, where my house is, and Antigua, where my running partner lives. We usually start running towards each other and when we meet up we decide where to go next. The second photo is also of the road between Jocotenango and Antigua. The bummer is that one of us has to run in the ditch (and if someone is coming the other way, both of us end up there). You definitely want to keep your eyes on the road!

Stay tuned tomorrow or the next day and I'll update you on my trip to El Salvador and my impressions of San Salvador. Granted I've mostly been in the basement of the library, so I haven't seen too much of the city. Well, unless you count getting lost while trying to walk to the library from the hostel where I'm staying. But I pretend that didn't happened.

back again

I’m jumping around a bit in time for this post, dear readers, so please forgive this lapse in chronology. I still haven’t written about my last trip in December before heading home for the holidays, nor have I updated you on my adventures over the break. But since it’s fresh in my head I thought I would give you all a quick post about my trip back to Guatemala.

So here is how things stand. I flew into Guatemala Sunday after a little less than a month in the States. As most of you know, I decided to move everything I own out of my apartment and into a storage unit so I could travel for the better part of this next year without worrying about rent payments etc. Let’s just say that the move was interesting. Actually, setting aside that the fact that the move itself caused a few minor tiffs among my family over logistics and that moving day brought with it more than a few inches of snowfall, things went pretty well. My friends in town stepped up to my desperate call for help and fate arranged it so that I could guilt my sister into staying a few extra days (yes, Jenn, I know you didn’t really help out of guilt). Continuing this streak of generosity on the part of my friends, another friend put me up Friday night (we emptied my apartment on Thursday) and I took advantage of the commuter train into Chicago Saturday afternoon. My flight was scheduled to leave O’Hare at 6 am, which meant that I had to be at the airport somewhere between 3 and 4 (given that international flyers are encouraged to get to the airport 3 hours in advance and that security has been even more tight since the bombings on that flight from Amsterdam to Detroit around Christmas). So I checked into a hotel near the airport on Saturday night after the 2.5 hour train ride to downtown Chicago and the 1 hour ride on the “L” to the airport itself.

Things started getting interesting once I made it to the airport. I hauled myself out of bed at 2:30 am to catch the shuttle to the airport and put myself at the end of the reasonably short line in front of the Spirit Air counter just after 3:30. Once I got to the front of the line, the airline representative cheerily informed me that I was lucky, since I would most likely make my connecting flight despite the delay. Delay? What delay? Sunday was one of the best days we’ve had in the middle and eastern parts of the country in weeks. Clear sky for most of the country east of the Mississippi and the temperatures were rising. This lovely weather, however, didn’t stop one of the flight attendants to call in sick that morning, and, apparently, the flight cannot take off without the minimum number of flight attendants. So we were stuck waiting to hear whether or not they would be able to fly a substitute flight attendant in from Detroit. To make a long story a bit shorter, after several contradictory assessments of my ability to make my connection in Fort Lauderdale and two trips through security I actually made my flight and the connection despite the two-hour delay. Plus I had a lengthy conversation with a very nervous woman on her way to a cruise she didn’t really want to go on, shared a copy of the New York Times with a friendly older gentleman who regaled me with his opinions of Fox News, had difficulty not laughing at my neighbor as he tried to hide the fact that he was talking on the phone with his girlfriend while the plane was getting ready to take-off even though the flight attendant stood right in front of him to give the safety demonstration (he ended up putting a sweatshirt over his head and told his girlfriend she could talk to him but he couldn’t answer her for a few minutes), and had to fend off numerous taxi drivers when exiting the airport in Guatemala City who just couldn’t seem to understand that no, even though I look like a backpacker, I don’t need a taxi to Antigua (my big backpack must have been misleading…plus being a blond gringa doesn’t help either).

Somehow my friends found me in the crowd outside the door at the airport (apparently some famous singer on a reality show was flying in that day and people where waiting for a glimpse). But of course, as things go here, we didn’t actually head straight towards our destination. We walked upstairs to the departures area so that one of my friends could buy a plane ticket to Chicago (ironic, no, since I had just come from there?) for the next day and ran in to some acquaintances of my chauffeurs. Which led to a quick meal at one of the restaurants in the airport and an hour or so of chatting. The rest of the evening consisted of breaking into the trunk of my friends car (the key had been broken off in the lock by a would-be thief) so that he could give the suitcase inside to his friend who had been basically clothes-less for a week while his worldly possessions were stuck in the trunk, a tour of my friend’s office (he is a professional photographer), changing a flat tire (in record time, I might add…I think they’ve had lots of practice), a trip to drop off the previously stuck suitcase, a stop at my other friends house to pick up a few things, another stop for food, and then, finally, the drive up to Antigua. Truthfully, it was a great way to be welcomed back to Guatemala. It reminded me why I love this place. Nothing is ever simple or straightforward and even a quick trip to pick someone up at the airport can turn into a journey of epic proportions.