Eat your heart out, Baskin Robbins, 'cos I ain't ever coming back

Heladeria count: 14
Current favorite: Volta
Runners-up: El Vesuvio (on Corrientes right next to the Obelisk) and Persicco
Left to visit: 3 – that is, of the ones I've had recommended to me. All existent is too many to count. Also one has moved so I'll have to hunt it down [insert battle cry].


Flavors include: - starting with the weirdest flavors I’ve seen (though some of even those pop up in every heladeria):
Kinotos/quinotos al wisky – kumquats! With whiskey. Who thought of that? The one time I tried this, it was not good, but it’s surprisingly common. As is champagne al limon. Ristreto granizado: ristreto is one step stronger than espresso, and granizado, which is often an option for popular flavors, is what I would call shredded with chocolate. Needless to say, caffeine-y!

Sambayon (yes, the wine and egg). Marscapone, mousse de limon, crema de chantilly, gancia (a type of ‘vino espumate’ – bubbly wine? It’s popular in Uruguay too). Other random ‘let’s add alcohol!’ flavors. Frambuesa (raspberry), maracuya (passionfruit), mango, pomelo rosado (pink grapefruit), frutilla (strawberry), durazo y naranja (peach and orange), blueberry mousse…

If you avoid strawberry ice cream (which I do in the U.S., because it always tastes like cotton candy and not actual strawberries), they really do it right here. The fruit flavors are delicious, because they use real fruit and not flavored syrup, and don’t use too much milk – sometimes none at all – which really lets the fruit stand out.

Then there’s the twelve or so variations on chocolate every place has (I am not exaggerating – I’d better take a picture of their menus one day), and a whole selection of ‘cremas,’ which I usually don’t bother with because I don’t find them as interesting. They’re like vanilla (with less vanilla flavoring) with nuts, or chocolate, or fruit, or dulce de leche swirls…
Speaking of, can’t forget that every place also usually has at least three variations on dulce de leche.

The apparent reason the ice cream is so good here is the Italian immigrants. The older places (El Vesuvio began in 1902!) sometimes have little blurbs about their history posted somewhere, and it usually begins with a variation on, "in such-a-year, the family such-and-such travelled from North Italy with their gelato skills..." which I think is always a good beginning.


My method of trying ice cream (yes, I have a method) is to get two flavors each time: one experimental, and one that I know I’ll probably like. That way I will be happy even if my ‘ooh, what’s that? Let’s get it!’ urges don’t prove fruitful. The smallest cone with two flavors is definitely enough – they tend to pile it high.
And that way I get to try all the different kinds of chocolate (it’s my safety) without missing the other things.

I also like to ask what things are and to try them beforehand, as it results in either lots of delicious varied spoonfuls or very confused workers trying to explain than it’s a “red fruit that grows in the forest, and it’s not a strawberry” – or, once, a man warning me very seriously that it “has alcohol, you know!” I guess I looked like At Risk Youth that day.

Presently, I mean to post addresses (if I kept track) and ratings and things, so that anyone in Buenos Aires can visit them, but for now I’m a little busy with my sugar coma. Mmm.
/end fluff

Life outside the bubble: ¿sos feminista?

A few days ago, there was a solid ten-minute segment on some talk show on how women don’t understand football. I got so annoyed by the repetition of clips of various overbleached, prominently cleavaged women looking confused as the host shot rapidfire technical sports questions at them that I gave the television the bird. I hadn’t meant him to, but my host father saw this. Fortunately, he thought it was hilarious – and once he stopped cracking up, he asked,

“¿Sos feminista?” (Are you a feminist?)
Ever been asked that question? Ever seen anyone be asked that question? I’ve heard it a couple of times recently. It sounds straightforward, but when I was asked it, I was taken aback and I’ve been trying to figure out why.
I can remember having heard it in the US too (outside of Wes, of course). Sometimes it’s perfectly innocent; sometimes it’s full-on mocking, and sometimes there’s an insidious ‘of course you have a right to your opinion, little one’ contempt lurking underneath. Sometimes it’s asked by people I have respect for (I like my host father); sometimes, no. But what caught my attention was the way that the person it’s directed at often goes, “Er… yes?” or even “No, I just think…” and shrinks away a little bit. (Including myself, this time: “…er, I think so, yes.”)

Now that I’m thinking about this –
“Um, I’m not really a feminist, I just think that generalizing women as stupid isn’t right.”

I’m sorry, what?

What am I missing here? So there’s resentment for sexual harassment laws, and for the fact that employers sometimes have to hire people who challenge their world views just a little bit, and who might go on maternity leave sometime in the future. So there are angry bra-burning penis-hating lesbians in existence. Are any of those things particularly pertinent?

To me (fill me in if I’ve missed something), feminism is the belief that women should have equal rights. If I’m glad every day that I’m not a man, or if I think that women don’t like soccer or bother to understand it because we require something slightly less trivial to catch our attention, that’s my own opinion and I won’t bother you with it. What I really, really, really don’t understand is why anyone should think they could mock someone else for believing in equality. I don’t even understand why you would want to tease someone ironically, as you’d do at Wes, for those beliefs. Equality: women are people too. Women are as much real people as men are. That sounds stupidly obvious to me. Why, then, does it stick out as something that someone could hold in contempt, or as something that makes someone uncomfortable enough that they have to tease a person who voices it out loud?

Maybe feminism sticks out to men in this machista culture (Argentina) because it’s new, because for them it’s normal to think of domestic abuse as the woman’s personal problem or of rape as female-provoked – because they can’t imagine having those kinds of problems, obviously the problems are merely womens’ and women should deal with them by themselves. Maybe they only ‘put up’ with feminism because it’s made itself a political nuisance, but they’re not going to listen to what the feminists are saying.
I don’t think the message is so hard to understand that if they were listening, they’d disagree. All it is is this: women are human beings, and they deserve everything men do.

The part that maybe I take for granted, the part that’s maybe why I don’t understand, is that I believe that this idea should resonate with everyone. That if you think about it, this is absolutely logical – that people who don’t think this aren’t thinking; that women who don’t think this are practicing self-hatred just a little bit. (Really, though, what evidence does any woman have to make her decide that her place in life is subservient to a whole bunch of people she’s never met, just because of their gender?)

Apparently, some people are stupid. I would appreciate it if everyone understood how dumb a question “Are you a feminist?” is. I would appreciate it if I hadn’t briefly felt hesitation in answering it. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to and I did hesitate.
I would like to change this. I can’t force people to understand; I can’t stop them from being stupid. But I can change my own reaction.

I would like to say, “Yes, I am a feminist. I don’t hate men. I hate rape. I hate the idea of one human being assaulting another and getting away with it. I hate the idea that someone could assume I’m stupid or incompetent or defenseless or temperamental because I have breasts; that I only value material things because I like shiny shoes and think every woman should have the perfect bra (it’s empowering, damnit); or that someone else should be more valuable than I for no reason other than gender.
Are these things a problem?”

I probably won’t. (Especially not in Spanish, because that’s a lot of subjunctive tense).
If I can restrain myself, I might not even say, “So, you don’t think women are people too?” in contemptuous tones.

What I will say is what I really want everyone else to say too. I know some of the girls I’ve seen who go “uh, no, but –” in response, taken aback (hopefully by the stupidity of the question), believe in those very simple equal rights like I do. The only answer I want to hear to that question is the truth, without hesitation, confusion, or shame (because the people asking that question are the ones who should be ashamed):
YES.

(And while you’re at it, my far-too-skinny female friend, the answer to “do you want this delicious free cookie?” is always YES too).

guia fotografica de Jujuy

That's 'hoo-HOO-ey,' in case you were interested.
I don't feel like research, so I shall simply plop these photos down. They're possibly a bit small, but it's the kind of landscape that makes all photos look small anyway.

Here is where Jujuy is. The Andes, border with Chile and Bolivia.

Here are things I saw:
In the clouds.

The pyramid is not an actual ancient ruin. It's a monument to a archaeologist from the 20s, put there to confuse future archaeologists. The wall in front of it is a reconstruction from the 20s of ancient ruins (using their original stones and - of course! - making complete bollocks of any possible future archaeology to be done with the originals).


Cerra de Siete Colores.


Graveyard. The most colorful thing we saw.


Salt flats.
"In time of rain and in nocturnal hour, circulate with caution."

Que dulce la venganza - or, making telenovelas out of Argentine news

Argentine politics are really interesting, as it turns out - now that I

can actually understand the rapid-fire news announcers or the people on 6-7-8, this type of political debate show we watch at dinner every night.

The first debate of the night was over a new law that will break up (to some extent) the monopoly that the Clarín group has over Argentina's media by restricting the number of media licenses per proprietor. According to my host family, this company has control of most of the television news networks as well as Argentina's largest newspaper (clarin.com) and as such can hugely sway politics. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is the first president to oppose the media group's boa-constrictor-hold (note: she decided to do this after she was elected) and as such is encountering significant difficulties in getting her law through. Unsurprisingly, bad press from Clarín's media is also causing her support among the people to decrease.

La Presidenta (getting a little peeved there)

Now, the second large ongoing controversy here is a little more history-related, and a lot more depressing - fitting, as a it's a result of the dictatorship. Probably some of you know the background to this; and it seems kind of really obvious to me because it's such a big entrenched thing here, but here's a sum-up anyway: during the Dirty War of '76-'83, the right-wing military dictatorship was slyly and massively 'disappearing' anyone they even vaguely suspected of leftist activities or Peronism. President Kirchner was a member of the Peronist Youth in the 1970s - which means she had definitely been at risk of being 'disappeared.'

The 'disappeared' people were literally that - they'd go to the store and not come back, or be dragged out of their houses and into Ford Falcons in the middle of the night, never to be seen again. Apparently some were tortured or held in prisons; many (this is grisly) were flung out of planes into the Atlantic Ocean so there were no bodies and no evidence. It gets more upsetting: many of the desaparecidos were young, and some of them were pregnant women whose children, it is now evident from DNA tests, were given to people who supported the dictatorship, or members of the upper class who would pay for them. It's suspected that up to 30,000 people were disappeared; it's bad enough that the government wouldn't even persecute those responsible for some time - in the name of 'moving on.' Now that these children are surfacing, it's obviously a big conflict - the relations of the desaparecidos want the children found, or even 'given back;' the adopted parents might or might not want the children to know their history...

Here's where the yellow journalist in me starts salivating: In 1976, Ernestina Herrera de Noble, who has been the director of Clarín since 1969, adopted two infants. You can guess where this is going: in 2002 the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo filed a lawsuit against her demanding that she submit them to DNA tests; she fought to deny the demand. Apparently the case is still in litigation, with Kirchner proposing in 2009 that in cases related to crimes against humanity, the submission of DNA samples be compulsory. Of course, Kirchner's opponents took it as a personal attack on Mrs. Noble, with whom (juicier still!) until recently Kirchner had maintained 'cordial relations.'

Mrs. Noble and her adoptive childers.

Obviously, I'm probably only skimming the surface of this whole thing - I just learned about it, and I'm getting portions of my information from answers.com - but wow. It's practically a telenovela. Baby-stealing and all. (I wonder what Mrs. Noble's kids - who're what, in their 30s now? - think of this. And why they're letting their adopted mother decide for them).

In case you didn't tune in for an excitable and generalizing sum-up of very serious history, according to my Lista de Heladerías, I've visited eight. This is very distressing news, as though I've visited a good number of those twice (and I'm sure a couple I haven't written down), I found an article in my hostel in Uruguay on historic heladerías en Buenos Aires that gave me the names of twelve more, not to mention the eight other ones I've already written down and haven't gone to yet. Gotta get cracking! I suppose I could cross some off the list for completely failing to put their addresses online or in the article, too...

My favorite so far: Persicco, which is kind of expensive but so very worth it: the chocolate amargo (that's bitter, which is code for most chocolaty) is... I don't know, my friend described it as "rich enough to ice a cake with." Yummm. And the limon (not mousse de limon) is everything anyone would dream of when they're out for a week with a brain-boiling fever. Which I did, all those months ago.

The ice cream article I read listed this one place where apparently Gardel (that's Carlos Gardel, the famous tango singer martyred in a plane crash) was a 'fanatic' of the lemon flavor... so that will be fun.

I forgot two words yesterday!

One: matear - yup, the process of drinking mate has its own verb.

and two: cicatriz, which is a far superior way to say 'scar' than English has.

Apologies for being an ice-cream- and word-snob (I just like them, damnit)

oh, and ¡Viva Cristina!,

Lindsey

Fun Times with Candles, Cortos y Caserolazos

A list of Delicious and Probably Useless Words (because I collect them; I think I remember puñal [dagger] before I remember cuchillo [knife] - whoops):

guiñar - to wink
gruñir - to growl. The most adorable story I've ever read - where I learned this word - is one by Cortázar called "El discurso del oso." It's about a page long and I kind of want to illustrate it and read it to small children.
cafishear - 'hmm, that one has an interesting ring to it,' I thought. Guess what it means? 'To pimp.'
vanagloriarse - okay, this may not actually entertain anyone else in the world, but you guys. It's 'vainglorious.' AS A VERB. A REFLEXIVE verb! That definitely warrants caps.

And some lunfardo (slang):
¡Que lio! What a mess!
¡Que bárbaro! Literally, "How barbaric!" (which I quite like) but they use it for both "how awful!" and "cool!"
Che - yup, that Argentine thing (as you know, that's where Che Guevara's nickname comes from). Means: yo, hey you, man, buddy... everyone's che.

A few days after the Bicentenario, I witnessed two men fighting each other on the street - serious fighting; one of them actually picked up a loose paving stone and ran after the other with it - and I heard this rather upright older man go, "¡Que loca mierda!" in amazement. I'll let you translate that one yourself.


There's the Congreso building (where my Subte stop is) lit up all pretty for the Bicentenario!

When I woke up yesterday morning I discovered that my heater wouldn't turn on. I wasn't all that surprised, because the electricity in my room is sometimes so sketchy that my lights flicker when I plug my computer in.

I then discovered, however, that the power outage covered not only in my room, or the building, but an enormous chunk of the neighborhood - when I looked of the balcony that night a disturbingly large swathe of buildings was pitch-black. The Subte was working; the traffic lights weren't - which made crossing Rivadavia something of an adventure. I would have had to climb down and up ten flights of stairs in complete blackness (aside from the occasional candle on the landing) if I hadn't found my flashlight at the bottom of a drawer. It was shocking how normally people carried on with their day; when I came home in the evening many businesses were still open - just darker than usual.

According to my host mother, cortos this long (it lasted about 20 hours in all) are not usual. I guess they're common enough, though, that people have a tradition of taking to the streets with casserole pots and cooking spoons and creating a ruckus in protest. They call these caserolazos, and my host mother was quite happy to lean out the window and join in.
Apparently this all started only in 2001, when the utility outages were so bad that several people died, and the caserolazos marched all the way to the Casa Rosada and caused the resignation of President de la Rua. As you do. (It should be mentioned that during that whole mess they were going through presidents like I go through episodes of Glee - one a day, or something).

I think I'm finally assimilating (some). My tongue is scarred from drinking mate; I don't even blink when the Subte announces it's having a tantrum today, and just hop on a bus; I understand not just the rapid-fire spanish but much of the lunfardo - more often than not, that is, which is something. Crossing the street like a porteño (or maybe just a city person, how would I know) has become so automatic that the other day I accidentally crossed a street in the wrong direction just because the walk light turned on as I went by. I also reached for a word while talking to a fellow American - in English - and the only one that came up was Spanish. Progress!

And because I really have to go work on my monografía now, I leave you with another picture of Jujuy: