Mafalda

Left to Right: Miguelito, Susanita, Mafalda, Felipe, Manolito. Front Row: Libertad, Guille

During my time in Argentine, the cultural phenonemon that has most consumed me hasn´t been tango or football or Peronism, but Mafalda, a comic strip which is something of a cross between Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes.

It´s funny, it´s cute, and it veers between childlike innocence and jaw-drpiing cynicism.

The characters are:

Mafalda: A six-year-old girl with a precocious mind. She is devoted to her the Beatles and Woody Woodpecker, though she hates James Bond. Her plan is to become an interpreter at the UN and mistranslate the insults so that everyone can live in peace. Mafalda constantly listens to world news on her transistor radio and has generally 'progressive' views on things. Her mother is a stay-at-home mom and her father works in an insurance office. Mafalda is always confronting them with embarassing or difficult questions. She has a pet tortoise named Burocracia (Beaureacracy).

Susanita (Suzie): Apparently Mafalda´s best friend and a shameless gossip. Susanita is more old-fashioned in her political and social views, often making disaparaging remakrs about the poor. Her goal in life is to get married and have as many children as possible. She appears to have a crush on Felipe, though she and Manolito are always fighting.

Felipe: A year older than most of the other children, Felipe is fond of dressing up as the Lone Ranger and playing cowboys. He hates school even though his grades are very good. His teeth are unfortunately prominent.

Miguelito (Mike): The grandson of Italian immigrants, Miguelito is a year younger than the rest of the children and has ´lettuce-leaf hair´. Due to his Fascist grandfather, he attributes almost everything (including the moon landings) to Mussolini.

Manolito (Manolo Jr.): The son of Spanish immigrants, Manolito´s family owns an 'almacen', or neighborhood grocery store, notorious for its high prices and questionable products. His dream is to have his own chain of supermarkets.

Guille (Billy): Mafalda´s little brother. He is devoted to Brigette Bardot and draws on the wall whenever possible.

Libertad (Freedom): A very small girl with hippy parents. Libertad is a socialist, which often puts her at odds with Manolito and Susanita. She also tends to be cheeky to her schoolteachers.

It´s difficult to convey a comic strip without pictures, but I´ll try, to give you an idea of the strip:

(Mafalds is listening to her radio)
Radio: And now for an old tradition that´s never out of style...
Mafalda: Killing people?
Radio:...drinking Black-Grog Whiskey!
Mafalda: Ah...

Mafalda: Mom, do you think Chinese Communism will...
Mom: No! Focus on things a child should focus on!
(Mafalda blows bubbles into the air and claps her hands)
Mafalda: Ooh, how pretty! How pretty!(Pause) There you go. Mom, do you think Chinese Communism...

Mafalda: Hello Manolito; going around with all five senses focused on making money?
Manolito: I don´t understand; what are the other four?

May Day

May Day has come and gone here in Buenos Aires, and I have to say: what a letdown! Growing up on lackluster ´Labor Day´ holidays, I expected something a little bit more from a country with a living, breathing labor movement and a tumultous political history.

What was I expecting? I dunno, marches, fluttering red banners, International Workers´ Solidarity. Instead, it was basically just a day off. Restaurants and cafes were open, and the bookstores were crowded with parents trying to entertain their children on their day off from school.

Yeah, some protesters got arrested, but that happens every week here.

´300´ Reasons Why This is a Bad Movie

OK, a non-Argentine related blogpost. I saw ´300´ and it made me so mad I just had to bash it on the internet.

First of all, it´s a bad movie. The dialogue is atrocious, the acting it terrible, the cinematography unwatchable, the fight scenes look like something out of a video game (which they no doubt soon will be), the plot twists idiotic, and the music 80s-era metal.

But, beyond that, it´s one of the most cringingly neo-fascist warmongering pieces of garbage I´ve seen in a long time.

It would be bad enough if it were in the one-white-man-can-kill-500-swarthy-Orientals mode, and the ´Greeks´ looked like they just got off the last chariot out of Stockholm, and the ´Persians´ are all faceless snivelling wretches or inhuman monsters. All of those are the case, but that´s not all.

It all starts because evil Persian emperor Xerxes (and whatever happened to ´ombra mai fui´?) asks for tribute from Sparta. Rather than pay it, the Spartans would much rather risk their entire civilization. As Leonidas explains, beating the Persians would mean ´a new era of freedom´ and would ´liberate the world from mysticism´, but that doesn´t stop him from praying to Zeus and going to oracles and leaving the weaker children on cliffs.

The Persians are constantly derided as ´slaves´, apparently ignonring the Spartans fondness for slavery. The Athenians are similarly scorned as ´boy-lovers´, ignoring the Spartans liking for that too. In one scene, with no apparent irony, Sparta´s King Leonidas tells his young son that ´Your strength in battle comes from the soldier beside you´. And not just in battle, kingy.

Back home, Leonidas is being backstabbed by a slimy anti-war politician who says he doesn´t want Sparta to go to war because one, it´s illegal, and two, Leonidas is provoking it anyway. Obviously the real reason he refuses to give Leonidas the support he needs is because he WANTS Sparta to lose, being in the pay of the Persians and all. Of course, he´s not wily enought to not carry his bribe around with him, and when he finally refuses to lend his support to the war effort, Leonidas´s queen stabs him in the middle of a council meeting, to warm applause and cries of ´Traitor!´

Ultimately, noble Nordic Leonidas is betrayed by the misshapen Spartan who ought to have been left on the crags to die, but his mother was too weak to weed out the Untermenschen, and now look what happened: he went running to the Persians, just because Xerxes didn´t treat him like dirt.

In the end, one feels inclined to agree with the NY Post´s Kyle Smith when he says: ¨Keeping in mind Slate's Mickey Kaus' Hitler Rule - never compare anything to Hitler - it isn't a stretch to imagine Adolf's boys at a "300" screening, heil-fiving each other throughout and then lining up to see it again.¨

Last Monday, I had just gotten onto the suprisingly clean and efficient (though hot and crowded) Buenos Aires subway when a message came over the intercom informing us that the train conductors were now on strike. The commuters groaned, but we complied.

Arriving at the University of Buenos Aires sometime later, there was no one in my classroom. Not to worry; punctuality was not an Argentine virtue. Five minutes passed, then ten. Twenty. Thirty. Finally, someone poked their head into the room and informed me that the whole University was on strike. I chuckled appreciately. Those wacky Argentine professors, always going on strike because they don´t make any money.

Not exactly:

Via the BBC:

The main teachers' union is to strike on Monday in protest at the violence.

The teachers are demanding higher wages, arguing that inflation has reduced the spending power of their salaries.

The violence on Wednesday happened when police fired tear gas to disperse the several hundred-strong group of demonstrators, some of whom responded by throwing stones.

One protester, Carlos Fuentealba, was hit by a tear gas canister and taken to hospital but later died of his injuries.

Fuentealba's death is only likely to further fuel what is already a volatile protest over pay and conditions, says BBC Americas editor Will Grant.

Other teachers' protests have been reported around the country.

The government, though, has a fantastic diversion set up. 2007 being the 25th anniversary of the Falkland Islands war, a desperate and costly attempt by a crumbling and dictatorial regime struggling to hold on to power, there´s obviously alot of nostalgia. Thus, the following slogan has begun sprouting up on billboards all over the city (wait for it)...



The Falkland Islands Are Ours!

Unfortunately, even some of the left-wing groups are going along with it, under the pretense of fighting ´British imperialism´. Of course, the idea of a second Falklands - excuse me, Malvinas - war seems nuts, so did the first.

EDIT: I went back to school today, and the professor was out on strike again. This time, though, it seems like an ordinary salary dispute... though the last protest started as an ordinary salary dispute too.

En Marcha!

Last Saturday was the 31st aniversary of the fall of the Argentine military dictatorship. I was invited by some kids from UBA, so I went.

Someone handed me a sign with Isabel Peron´s picture and the caption ´Prison Now!´ It seems that, just like her late husband, she spent her exile in Spain, and was just recently arrested for her role in allowing the military leaders to come to power. It´s a big deal because 31 years later, no one has yet been brought to trial for what happened during the junta.

There are 30,000 people still officially ´missing´. Nost likely they´re dead, but that doesn´t stop people (it started with the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo) from gathering in front of the Congress building and demanding their safe return (¨They were taken alive, we want them back alive!¨).

I don´t think I´ve ever that many communists, socialists and anarchists in one place before. Their particular complaint is that although Kirchner´s government is officially ´justicialist´(a combination of the words ´justice´ and ´socialism´; no it does´t sound any better in Spanish) he has, like the democratic governments before him, refused to disrupt the order of things by going after the junta leaders.

Supposedly, though, this year´s march was not half as big as last year´s.