Bloqueos

On Thursday students and professors from a post-secondary art school staged a street show in Avenida de Mayo, one of the main avenues in downtown Buenos Aires. The show was a form of protest against the planned closure of the school and similar post-secondary schools where students go to study art in order to become art teachers. The schools are publicly-funded and students only pay a small, token amount in order to attend them. The municipality (or state, I'm not sure which it is) has said it wants to close or consolidate the schools, presumably in order to reduce the number of teachers, students and, corresponding the cost. Many students wouldn't be able to afford to go to a private art school, and, of course, the teachers don't want to loose their positions, hence, the Bloqueo (literally, "Blockade" but it can be any protest or picket where a street is partially or totally blocked). In this case it was well organized and looked like they got permission ahead of time. The photos above are of the same street. You can see that half of it had traffic flowing and the other half was full of placards with their schoolwork. That's the Casa Rosada in the background, where the President's offices are. There were probably a couple hundred students with a thousand pieces of work taped on these placards or set on the street or fixed to the walls of the buildings along this part of the street. It was peaceful and everyone was simply hanging out, with volunteers asking passers by to sign a petition against the closure. There was a print that I very much liked. The student who'd prepared it had already left, but her classmates were looking after her stuff and gave me her cell number. I called her to tell her that I like the print and to ask her whether she has to turn it in at the end of the semester or whether she would entertain selling it to me. She called me back a couple hours later and told me that her professor told her she could sell it if she wants. Unfortunately for me, she also consulted him on price and she wanted market price for a Gallery in posh Recoleta rather than a sidewalk on the Avenue. Oh well, next time don't speak spanish with an American accent. I suppose the bloqueos aren't all that different from protests and pickets in the States - they're for the most part peaceful, authorized, etc... But, they seem to be a more ubiquitous and accepted form of complaining here and occur in ways that range from the very organized and problematic to the impromptu and odd. For example, in April and May the government attempted to increase the export duty (or tax) on the powerful beef, soy and wheat industry (agriculture is the biggest industry here). Farmers or their supporters responded by blocking the highways leading into Buenos Aires with their trucks and such for a period. There was a period of days to a week or two where you couldn't find meat, milk, eggs and other staples in the market because of shortages. The government's position was that the farmers were making record profits from high worldwide commodity prices so that they should be sharing some of that with the rest of the country (just like the debate over record oil company profits at home). However, in addition to duking it out in the media and congress, the farmers blocked the roads in order to make their point in a way people, and hence the government, will feel more acutely. The police are reluctant to intervene and forceably remove protesters because they don't want to escalate things. They'd rather talk, negotiate, make half-promises and let the situation diffuse on its own. In this case, the farmers gave in and let traffic roll again. The export duty increase bill lost by a single vote in congress in July. That episode may have been the biggest news all year here, because of the food shortages and because the deciding vote against it was cast by the Vice President (imagine a Bush bill in the senate being defeated by a single vote cast by Cheney, then you have the picture).

At the other end of the spectrum are protests that seem odd. For example, there was a heat wave this week that caused power outages and, according to the papers, some of the people in the affected neighborhoods protested in the street for a while. Hardly seems worth the effort in 100 degree heat with 99% humidity.