Cordoba and Human Rights

Two weeks ago I went on the second program trip to the province of Cordoba, kind of smack dab in the middle of the country. We went to a town called Mina Clavero, where we spent the time doing a lot of hiking and chilling out. It kind of felt like a vacation from a vacation...the place where we were had lots of rivers, but with an arid climate. we hiked to three different parts of the water where we swam in the FREEZING cold water and sunned ourselves on the rocks. then the last day we also went horseback riding, which felt so strange considering that the last time i have been on a horse was utah! so fun though. we also went to this amazing museum that is pretty much a warehouse for some crazy french guy's collections--everything from silverware to bones to bugs to dresses to car parts to cameras. the pictures pretty much speak for themselves. and, being from the family i am, one of the best parts was eating the alfajors, which are famous in that region-little cake-snacks with dulce de leche in the middle...aMAzing.
This week has been extremely eventful for Argentina...and for me. Because I have mostly been writing here about my trips I haven´t been telling you as much about my daily life here in Buenos Aires. This week I finished my intensive spanish course (in which i got a 9 out of 10--see mom and dad? i do study!) which means that i have no class monday wednesday friday and my earliest class is at 4. yup, life's hard when youre yael.
Probably my favorite thing that i do in buenos aires--well, other than spending all day in the park--is volunteering as part of my class entitled aprendizaje y servicio ("service-learning"). The actual class is nothing special but the organization at which i work is absolutely incredible. It is called Familiares de Desaparecidos y Detenidos por Razones Políticas ("Relatives of the Disappeared and Political Prisoners"). the organization's mission statement has three parts: honoring and remembering those that were disappeared or detained during the Dirty War of 1976-1983, finding out the truth about what happened to them, and bringing the arbitrators to justice. when i was visiting it for the first time just to check it out, and they were explaining their mission and what they do, i asked whether everyone that worked there was a relative of a desaparecido. "primeramente," the guy said to me, "nadie trabaja acá¡. nosotros nos pertenecemos" ("first of all, nobody works here. we belong here"). and yes they are all relatives of someone who was either disappeared or taken as a political prisoner--mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, cousins, siblings, aunts and uncles...the youngest person that "belongs" there is 55. this means that there is an organization doing cutting-edge, often risky activist work and organizing that is composed almost entirely of people older than my parents and grandparents. you walk in and the place is just covered in posters from the past 30 years, books about both argentina and the dirty war and human rights in general, papers, ashtrays, yerba mates...they have a large archive of original archives that are catalogued solely by date. my project for the next few months is to organize, label and categorize their video "library" which consists of 100 or so mostly unmarked tapes that range from documentaries, to news programs to first-person testimonies, to photomontages...they need me to watch the tapes, label them, categorize them and alphabetize them. it goes without saying that this is a fantastic exercise for my language skills. but to watch all those videos? i can hardly think of something more fascinating and worthwhile to be doing here. though the work is interesting, it can get very tedious, and the real reason i love it is that i am able to interact and form connections with the people who work there. i cant even convey to you how amazing these people are--theyre only doing this so they can sleep at night. on my first visit, it came up somehow that i was jewish and my mother was israeli...big surprise there. this one little old lady who is in her mid to late eighties starts telling me about all the german families that lived on her street growing up and how during the war they had big maps of europe in their dining rooms and would mark off every country that germany invaded. the jewish kids and the german kids got along swell in school even though their parents were either jews of european descent or nazis. another woman informed me that jewish desaparecidos were given "tratamiento especial" and when i asked what especial meant she said they were tortured more harshly. after a long pause she turns to me and says "mi marido era judío" ("my husband was Jewish"). really, at that moment i wanted to cry. what these people are haunted by every moment...they sit around this table laughing and joking and poking fun at each other, asking me about what im studying and where i live, and then every once in a while the conversation turns serious for two minutes and there is a recognition of why they are there. i just cant imagine. I was also sitting the other day watching a documentary called the Aeropuerto Trelew the quality of which was extremely poor so i asked one of the guys that works there to give me some background info about what happened at Trelew airport to cause a documentary to be made about it. It turns out that in there is a large federal prison in the town of Trelew, a 13ish hour bus ride from Buenos Aires. In the 70's there were many political prisoners there and about 60 or 70 of them planned an escape. unfortunately, it went somewhat awry and only 20 or 30 of them got out of th prison and were taken by their collaborators to the airport at Trelew to get the hell out of argentina. after several hours of the prisoners being trapped in the airport, the army went in and gunned down all but 2 or 3 of them...keep in mind that these were almost all students in their early 20s who had been arrested for "crimes" such as distributing pamphlets, posting signs, leading discussions, and speaking out against the government repression. when the guy from familiares, whose name is Ramón but everyone calls him Mono (monkey) finished telling me the story, he added that one of the victims was a childhood friend with whom he had attended school from kindergarten through high school. and oh yeah, he knew other people that were killed too but wasnt as close with them. later on, monica, the woman who coordinates my visits, was telling me that she wouldnt be in on wednesday because she had a doctors appointment and Mono starts getting on her case about how she goes to the doctor for every little thing...monica starts bickering with him about how he never goes to the doctor and at his age he needs to and mono just goes "you know, its funny, the only time in my life i saw a doctor regularly was in prison." it turns out he was in prison for 10 years from 1974-1984, during which time he never saw his son and his wife was disappeared. monica pulled a book off the shelf goes "oh you should read this its his autobiography." of course. let me just say that there is a big difference between knowing that i work in an environment with activists who were likely to have been imprisoned, and having someone tell you they were in prison for 10 years. Had i not known this fact, i would NEVER have guessed that this had happened. he is one of the most warm, welcoming, kind, calm people i have ever met, always giving me big hugs and willing to explain anything i dont understand.
yesterday i saw four men who could not have been younger than 75 putting up posters near the congreso nacional about poverty in argentina and upcoming protests. people are so empowered here and its such a privilege to witness. there is such a sense of interconnectedness that i think comes from such deep trauma...its so unique and special.
Needless to say, all this has caused me to do a lot of thinking about my own life, and what im doing and studying...im thinking about shifting my humanties focus a little. i took a very long walk the other day through the city and i think what humanities is all about for me is human rights. the reason i am interested in peace and conflict studies really because i want to study how people are affected by the peace and conflict. i am studying humanities because i want to study humans. and i am starting to think more and more that what i need to be doing is studying and working to attain human rights. obviously i am not expecting to leave school, don my cape and fly off into the sunset to save the world, but im telling you, when the words human rights came up in my head i felt like it had been under my nose the whole time and it seemed so obvious that thats what i want to do. what "studying human rights" means, i really dont know. i know its one of those phrases that is so big and overbearing that everyone thinks they know what it means but nobody can define it. i just feel like im in the right place at the right time, and when i walk into familiares i know that thats exactly what i am supposed to be doing right now. i was trying, on my walk, to pinpoint why that place is so touching to me, and i really think its because these people believe with all their hearts that everyone deserves justice and a life worth living. I can only hope that i remain as concerned about the world around me in 50 years as these people are.

To see my photos of Jujuy and Córdoba, click the link below:
Jujuy and Córdoba