4. Political Places
Today a friend and I wandered around and discovered the capital. We found the Casa Rosada, (the “Pink House”, Argentina’s version of the White House). I read in a guide book that there are two theories for why it’s pink. One says there were two main political groups at the time, one with white for its symbol, the other with red, and that the Casa Rosada symbolizes a compromise. The other theory says that there was a tradition of painting a new house with bull’s blood (for good luck, I suppose) and that’s where the color originally came from. Come to think of it, I have no idea why the White House is white. To look pure? To match stone buildings nearby? Because the paint was cheap?
In this plaza, there are many protests about the people who have been disappeared in the past few decades. In the late 1900s, up until the 1980s, the government kidnapped and murdered people it deemed traitors or dissidents, people who spoke out against the government. The idea here was that if people were not officially arrested or officially executed, there was no crime. You could ask the government, “Where is my wife?” and they could answer, “Well, where did you leave her?” or “Do you think she ran off? Were you having marriage problems?” The government admitted nothing, and so was unstoppable; you cannot work against a crime that does not exist. Another reason for the disappearances was international outcry. I listened to a radio channel, in which someone said there had been a huge outcry over another South American country executing 5 people by firing squad. Argentina wanted to execute thousands. They couldn’t do it in the public eye without getting the world involved. The fear caused by the ambiguity also helped to make the disappearances a powerful tool, of course. Often bodies were weighted down and dropped in the ocean, to make the killings untraceable. It wasn’t until bodies started washing up on shore that people realized what was going on. (I’m taking my information from a Lonely Planet guide book, a radio show, and a movie).
Police vehicle at the plaza.
Mothers started protesting in this plaza, and still do. South America values families and the role of a mother deeply. By appealing to this, the mothers could protest the disappearances with impunity, or at least less risk than one who is not a symbol of nurturing. The mothers would demand to know where their children were, and now, I believe, are still now calling for a record of what happened to their (and others’) children and for accountability of the officers involved. As of 2007, I think that many of the smaller officers involved – prison guards and the like – had not been tried.
5. Flutes and Philosophy
Here’s my summary: I met a man who makes flutes and believes that everyone has masculine and feminine energy, and that your energy expresses who you are/what you will do and also has connections to the universe. 2012 will bring many changes, and, as I’m sure may of you have thought, society is not real.
I ended up talking for an hour or more with a man who makes traditional Andean flutes and a dance student who is traveling from Uruguay to Brazil. It was mostly in Spanish, so my understanding of his philosophy may be a bit vague.
The man’s name sounds like “Iguayki”, which means “friend” in a native language. When he heard me play one of his wooden flute/clarinets strongly and clearly, he said I have a energy to me that is expressed in music. Iguayki found a significance to my purple scarf; he says there are “indigo” people who are more connected with the world. My best guess is that he meant that these people have an indigo aurora and the colors I wore were a symbol of this.
Iguayki told me that there is energy in the relationship of your body to the world, and that everyone’s energy is always growing or waning, it fluctuates constantly. The other student’s energy was decreasing he said, but she didn’t seem upset about it. She had already been sitting with him (she was buying a few flutes) and seemed to agree with his ideas. There are also energy vampires, he told me, that you have to look out for. But it seems that good things can sap energy, too, as he says making his flutes is exhausting.
Iguayki used a blue painting of the universe as a diagram to explain his theories of the world. The moon is feminine and the sun is masculine and each person has a mix of both energies. Because I like men, he says that signifies that my feminine side is stronger, if I was a lesbian, it would mean that I had more masculine energy (presumably bisexuals have a balance). Based on my birth date he said my feminine energy is the 13th moon. There are 13 moons, and each one corresponds to a connection point of the body: the neck, 2 shoulders, 2 elbows, 2 hips, 2 wrist, 2 knees, 2 ankles.
My masculine side is the red dragon. It means that I will give to and help the world. The “red” signifies that I start things. I am the sort of person who gets things in motion (he did not say I followed through). The dragon means I will give food to “stomachaches”, or to the “heart” or the “mind”. (that’s how he worded it). He suggested this could manifest literally or metaphorically, but seemed to focus on tangible food. (This idea is especially interesting, because a fortune teller in Miami told me she saw my spirit walking and giving food to people along the way. I have yet to be worthy of any of these predictions). Iguayki told me I don’t need to actively do anything, I just need to be, to be open, to open my energy. Iguayki’s masculine energy is a blue shaman and relates to him imparting knowledge.
Iguayki also said 2012 is an important date of much change. Unlike the Mayans, he didn’t seem to think the world will end, just that we need to be ready and be flexible for a large shift. All the planets will be in the same place.
In our conversation, Iguayki also told me about how time is an illusion. I think much of society is an illusion or a game we trick ourselves into believing in because it makes life meaningful. An advertising company desperately cares if this phone sells or that, a D and D player might be furious if their imaginary character dies in an imaginary dungeon, and children would cry if Simba didn’t get to be the lion king. In reality, these don’t really matter very much, or really affect much. Survival matters, at least to the person trying to survive. But if we take this “rationality” and seeing things in perspective too far, nothing matters, and life dissolves into apathy. All of humanity can be rendered without point by noting that we cannot impact the greater galaxy we live on the edge of. But life is not fun without a point, so we must make molehills into mountains to give ourselves the fun of climbing them. The joy of life includes hating that there is a mountain in our way and relishing conquering it or being devastated if we have to walk around it or go another route. We need to believe in the illusions we make.
Sorry if all that sounded really pretentious.
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