Raising the Moral

July 4th, 2008 Posted in culture

Written by Shanie

I came across this article today and thought it worthy of sharing.

First off, I thought that the author, Brandon Sack, did an excellent job of writing it.

But secondly, and more importantly, I think he verbalizes a distinct truth about the demonstrating in Argentina…a nation okay with people speaking out for their rights and the rights of human kind. Which is something he feels is strongly lacking in the United States (and I must agree).

There has been some talk on travel boards about how people feel they maybe shouldn’t travel to Argentina because of what was going on with the farmer’s strikes. I feel this is losing the focus. Traveling to another country is about opening yourself up to learning about another culture. Argentina looks at demonstrating as a healthy must within their society. The public demonstrations have been (except for a few flukes: ie the top of a light post falling,hitting and killing someone, and police pushing the head cheese of one of the four farmer’s unions while trying to break up a road block) peaceful. The passionate Argentines are actually a great group of people to watch and learn from when they are speaking out for something they believe in.

Our first trip to Argentina was our honeymoon. It was 2002 and the country was still in turmoil from the array of problems caused by a run through of four presidents in about as many months and the devaluation of the peso.

The last few days of the trip were in Buenos Aires. We were walking down the pedestrian mall Florida, doing some shopping. All of a sudden people started cheering, throwing colored paper out windows, clapping, whistling, hugging each other, drivers honking horns. The million-plus people walking and driving the Florida shopping district were all acting as if they had just found out their collective dream had been fulfilled.

We walked into a store to find out what was going on.

The store clerk explained to us that the people of the country had decided to, twice a week at a pre-determined time, clap, cheer, and make some noise to help boost the moral of the country and show the government that the people would persevere.

I love that. What a great reason to demonstrate. I bet there were some people after Hurricane Katrina that could of used that type of support.

  1. 2 Responses to “Raising the Moral”

  2. By Quickroute on Jul 9, 2008

    It’s true. Many other countries just tolerate their governments antics and hope the problem goes away. Argentina has learned the hard way that if you kick and scream a bit you can make a difference.

  3. By Patagonia on Jul 9, 2008

    Tienes razon Quickroute…sometimes it’s okay to kick and scream.(:

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