HA HA! So yesterday I showed up at my museum job at the Casa Anahi, and the volunteers working that day inform me (of course I find out day of, and never before….) that there will be a dedicational act today at 5 in front of them museum. The government will be giving Chicha Mariani (the ex-president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo) a small subsidy for the maintenance of the museum. This is the first time she has ever accepted offerings or money from the government. She has always turned it down because she doesn’t want to sell out or loose sight of her goals or be manipulated into pursuing the objectives of the government. And more so, that it is the government itself that caused all these problems. She is quite a fighter!
But one has to accept help at some point. She is now over 80, blind and mostly deaf. She has spent all her personal funds on the museum and in search of her still missing granddaughter, Clara Anahi. The house is really important to her, La Plata, and the living memory of the dictatorship. So she finally broke down and decided to accept the governments offer of a small amount of funds to be dedicated to maintaining the museum. And the act was that day.
So I show up for work, and half an hour later, the set up crew shows up, and the rest of the afternoon was just a whirlwind of trying to get ready, and dealing with a whole group of incompetent political aides. You know who are worse than politicians? Political aides….because they have to be stupid enough to tolerate politicians and do all there dirty work…and like it! The woman who was there was something else….to the point where we got into a fight with her (including me, arguing in spanish) that we didn’t think that having the Argentine flag in background of the ceremony was a good symbolic idea, since it was the government of Argentina (with massive use and abuse of the flag) that created this disaster. But she argued that the people who disappeared were also Argentine…and I argued that yes, but that the government is identified with the flag…that the SYMBOLISM of the flat…yeah, it was really lost on her. So the flag stayed. Because it would look good near the mayor.
Well after much ado, the ceremony happened…the mayor showed up half hour late, and proceeded to take his seat before, and without offering an assisting hand to the blind and deaf 80 year old trying to find her seat next to him….now that is a political endorsement if I have ever heard one….
There are a few articles in the papers today, here is one if someone wants to try their spanish. Here is also the official photograph from the paper of all our hard work….you can see the house in the background (it is a good shot of the gapping hole left by the tank missile in the front) and of course the flag behind the mayor (in the middle)
So as I said in the title…I was caught in the act….
