La Presidenta

And now for an unplanned break in the middle of my Peruvian/Bolivian travelogue. As you may be completely unaware, Argentina now has a woman president. On purpose. Uh, I mean Argentina elected a woman president for the first time ever. The only other time a woman was in power was immediately after Perón died and his widow took over... which was right before the 70s military dictatorship seized power, kidnapped various political opponents, took them up in helicopters, and subsequently shoved them out over the ocean... but that's a whole other story.

Since school is out, one of my little extracurricular activities was going to the presidential inauguration yesterday. It was the biggest news story of the day and I figured this will be good for the next time someone asks me if I've ever been to a presidential inauguration and I can then give them one of those smarmy Barney Fife snorts plus a smug "in which country?" retort. Ha.

OK, yesterday (Dec 10) was "inauguration Monday," although officially, la presidenta Cristina took office the previous Sunday. But the only thing going on at that time was a state dinner with the presidents of nearly every Latin American country in attendance. Watching the news coverage of it was a lot like watching a high school cafeteria popularity contest or something, at least from my amateur gringo perspective. However, the very nutty Hugo Chavez was in attendance, so it was amusing. "Hugo, por qué no te callas?" as the king of Spain would say.

Anyway, the outgoing president of Argentina is Cristina's husband, Nestor Kirchner. Unlike the obvious correlations that will likely be attempted in next year's U.S. election, half of this country doesn't hate Cristina. The worst her political opposition feels about her is a semi-bored ambivalence about her candidacy. But I digress... in most of these pics you'll see a bunch of signs and flags and banners and stuff. Every one of them is related to a union of some sort. The unions in this country are out of hand, actually. But they're still run by the mafia, just like in the good old US of A.

It was a semi-holiday (no school and the city was basically at a standstill) while the main streets downtown were shut down for the inauguration parade route. This is a view of the (allegedly) widest street in the world, Avenida 9 de Julio. Normally it has at least 12 or 13 lanes of traffic going in each direction, of which 7 of those lanes are actually painted/striped on the street. But it was entertaining to stand around on the busiest streets in the city while they were abandoned.

Also as you can see, there were cops galore all over the city. It was a fairly hot day (almost 90 degrees) with little-to-no wind, so they were quite the little troopers standing there waiting for the presidential motorcade to finally get underway.

Which was supposedly going to happen around 3pm but actually took until 5pm. There were news choppers and television crews all over the place, secret service agents running amok, ambulances and paddy wagons, and just a lot of very "official looking" people that were most likely plain old bureaucrats reveling in their day in the sun. Literally. But it all felt very presidential inauguration-ish.

Humorously, most of the union reps were on the sidelines beating drums and blowing off fire crackers (not wimpy Blackcats and lady fingers but some serious M-80 powered stuff that sounded like gunshots) which, at a US presidential election, would be HIGHLY frowned upon by the secret service. Also, a lot of the unions are at odds with each other so there was the occasional fight in front of the Casa Rosada (Argentina's version of the White House)... another activity that would also most likely end up on someone's "permanent record" with the US government. But not here!

Eventually I made it down to the Plaza de Mayo, which is in front of the Casa Rosada (in the background of the picture above) where things were set up for a "democracy concert" later in the evening, featuring legendary Argentine singer Mercedes Sosa among others. If you want to hear some traditional argentine folkloric music, her greatest hits CD "30 Años" is a pretty good overview. Plus people will think you're quite sophisticated and cosmopolitan.

After the plaza I needed to keep working on my sunburn (I didn't plan on being out and about all afternoon and it's summer down here, you know) so I went and staked out some real estate to watch the parade. I had a pretty good spot at the main crossroads of Ave 9 de Julio and Ave de Mayo, with the obelisco in the background. It's a knock-off of the Washington monument, about a quarter size of it, I think. And there was quite a procession, with the Argentine military in traditional regalia, riding their horses, plus the military band playing the anthem and other songs.

But it was worth going down there because I did see both the outgoing and incoming presidents plus, as a bonus, took this photo on the right. That's Nestor Kirchner, the ex-president, waving from the car. The extremely shadowy figure that you can vaguely kinda sorta make out beside him is the new president, Cristina. If you click on the picture and enlarge it, she's looking directly towards the camera. What amazing photographic skills! And don't ask me why the president of a country putts around in an Audi sedan, but that's what they had.

So, that was Election Fever 2007 in Argentina... next time I'll get back to my story about Lake Titicaca and Bolivia and whatever else still remains to be told about that trek.