Moving to and living in...Argentina

Latest ink on expats in Argentina from the Washington Post

The Puente de la Mujer's single mast -- with cables that suspend a portion of the bridge -- rotates 90 degrees in order to allow water traffic to pass.

Michael Lewis - Corbis

Expatriate Games

Travelers Are Heading to Buenos Aires for the Culture -- and Staying for the $250 Rent

By Allen Salkin

Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, April 23, 2006;  Page P01

Meghan Curry starts her day with a walk to the river. The former real estate agent from Denver, who is 26, holds hands with her fiance, Patricio de Vasconcellos, 31, a wavy-haired Argentine with dark eyes, as they gaze over the coffee-colored waters of the Rio de la Plata. Around midday, when de Vasconcellos heads to work at the wine shop where the two met a year ago, Curry settles into her two-bedroom apartment to work on her travel memoir and a collection of poetry. Then she might nap or head downtown for café con leche with friends at one of the city's thousands of outdoor cafes. Later, much later, it's time for a slow dinner on Buenos Aires time, where many restaurants don't open until 10 p.m.

Expatriate Games... this is the latest ink from the Washington Post about Buenos Aires. It seems that everyone wants to come here now. The secret is out. I feel that at least this article is more realistic about living here unlike some other articles that have been published recently. Although it is wonderful living here, there are the drawbacks, but so far the good outweighs the bad. We've begun making friends, and are hard at work integrating ourselves into the culture here. Of course that is the key word for us...integrating. Because I do feel that it's important to learn about the people here and not just drop in the for the inexpensive food and living. We're doing just that and are finding that we are much happier for it.

I hope that the article will stimulate plenty of comments!!!!

chau

Children stolen during Argentina's dirty war begin to resurface

Claudia Poblete shows a pictures of her mother, Marta Gertrudis Hlaczik, in a suburb of Buenos Aires. A few weeks after that photo was taken, her mother and father, Jose Liborio Poblete, were kidnaped by the ruling military dictatorship. Diego Giudice, KRT 

By Jack Chang

Knight Ridder Newspapers

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - For most of her life, Claudia Victoria Poblete lived a lie that began when she was 8 months old, during the darkest years of Argentina's brutal military dictatorship.

Poblete, now 28, was Mercedes Beatriz Landa then and was raised as an only child in a military family. It wasn't until 2000 that she learned the truth: Her father and mother, Jose Liborio Poblete and Marta Gertrudis Hlaczik, had been kidnapped by soldiers on Nov. 28, 1978, tortured and killed. The man she'd known as her father, Army Lt. Col. Ceferino Landa, had been a colleague of her parents' killers...

(click here to view entire report)

Argentina marks 30th anniversary of military coup

Open your online versions today of the Clarin or La Nacion and you will find a bevvy of stories about  the national holiday in Argentina.

Friday, March 24, 2006, is the 30th year anniversary of the military coup that resulted in seven years of terror and tortures, murders and unsolved disappearances. The regime held Argentinas's people in their grip from 1976 - 1983.

Nunca Mas (never again) were the cries heard at today's rally at the Plaza Mayo, in front of the Casa Rosada (the Pink House and also the seat of Argentina's government). The rally has drawn thousands as they come to remember the more than 30,000 people who disappeared (desparecidos) during the time now known as the "Dirty War". During that time, men, women, and children disappeared without a trace, many taken from their homes during the night in unmarked cars manned by the secret police. Their bodies have never been recovered.

The Plaza Mayo is also he location where the Abuelas de Plaza Mayo, or grandmothers of the disappeareds, have protested on a daily basis since 1977 to find out what happened to their children and grandchildren.

In 1983, after democracy was restored, a national commission was appointed to investigate what had happened to the desparecidos. The commission's report revealed systematic abductions, and the presence of approximately 340 secret detention centers where torture and murder occurred regularly. Former President Carlos Menem claimed the records detailing the atrocities had been lost or destroyed by the military after the Falklands War in 1982.

On the eve of the 30 year anniversary, President Nestor Kirchner declared that all military archives would be opened for public review. The hopes are that closure and peace will come to the families of those whose loved ones became one of the disappeareds.

As a future expat to Argentina, I wanted to have some basic understanding of what happened during this period. So I watched the movie Imagining Argentina about the playwright Carlos Rueda whose wife became one of the desparecidos. Of course, this is only one account of this period, but it did give me a better understanding of the atrocities that ccurred and the fear that people lived with on a daily basis. The movie was based on the book Imagining Argentina by  Lawrence Thornton.

Many other books have been written about the desparecidos, Abuelas de Plaza Mayo, and the general history of the regime.