Week 10 - Conclusions

Readings

1. Jan Knippers Black, "Conclusion: A new kind of togetherness," from Latin America: Its Problems and Its Promise, pp. 564-579 (2004)
2. Robert Gwynne and Cristóbal Kay, "The alternatives to neoliberalism," pp. 254-267 (2004)

To pull together our major course themes -- culture, politics, neoliberalism, social movements, violence, among others -- I'd like to end with a 30-minute presentation on YouTube by Prof. Noam Chomsky of MIT on future prospects for Latin America as it moves into the second decade of the 21st century.  I've chosen Chomsky for his critical stance on U.S. foreign policy in Latin America (and on neoliberalism generally) and because he will be speaking at SUNY-New Paltz at the end of the fall semester.  I hope you enjoy the clip -- Please watch parts 1, 2, and 3.

Week 9 - Brazil Cont'd

PART 1.  Challenges to Orthodox Catholicism: Liberation Theology and the Rise of Evangelical Christianity

Associated Readings

1. Leonardo Boff, "Church: Charisma and Power: Liberation Theology and the Institutional Church," pp. 107-136 (1981)
2. John Burdick, "Why Is the Black Evangelical Movement Growing in Brazil?" Journal of Latin American Studies 37, pp. 311-32 (2005)

I. What was/is Liberation Theology?

As with most of Latin America, the majority of Brazilians (around three-quarters) identify as Catholics.  While a detailed exposition of Catholic faith and church governance is beyond the scope of this blog, I will make a handful of introductory comments.  About one-sixth of the world's population (that is, about one billion people) are Catholics.  (That's about half of all Christians.)  The Catholic church is made up of one Western church (the Latin Rite) and 22 Eastern Catholic churches, divided into 2,782 jurisdictional areas around the world.  The Church looks to the Pope, currently Benedict XVI, as its highest human authority in matters of faith, morality and Church governance.  The Church community is composed of an ordained ministry and the laity.  Either may be members of religious communities like the Dominicans, Carmelites, Franciscans, Jesuits, Silesians and many others.

As those of you who are Catholic probably know, the Catholic church is hierarchical in comparison with other forms of Christianity.  That is, individual priests and congregations cannot tinker with official doctrine and worship practices.  Instead, the Catholic church is highly centralized and the final word rests with the Holy See, led by the Pope. (This means that major changes in Catholic governance and doctrine are extremely rare.) The role of the priest is also very specific within Catholicism, namely, to administer the sacraments.

Occasionally, the Holy See convenes councils to review church policy and practice.  The most recent such council took place from 1962 to 1965.  Known as the Second Vatican Council or "Vatican II" (the first had taken place nearly a century before), this council was convened by Pope John XXIII to reflect on the role of the church.  Within these discussions, radically new interpretations of Catholic principles emerged.  Vatican II was influenced heavily by bishops and theologians from Latin America, who argued that by ignoring political struggle, the church had failed to substantively help poor people in this part of the world.  The theology that emerged out of these discussions -- later called "Liberation Theology" -- proposed that Jesus Christ was not only the Redeemer but also the Liberator of the Oppressed.  It emphasizes the Christian mission to bring justice to the poor and oppressed, particularly through political activism.  One the architects of Liberation Theology was the Brazilian philosopher Leonardo Boff, whose text is assigned in this week's reading.  Boff is still very much alive, and continues to be highly influential in debates about democracy, globalization, and religion.


Liberation Theology has enjoyed widespread influence in Latin America and among the Jesuits, although its influence diminished within Catholicism after the Vatican issued official rejections of the theology in the 1980s and liberation theologians were harshly admonished by Pope John Paul II.  The current Pope, Benedict XVI, has also been long known as an opponent of certain strands of liberation theology, and issued several condemnations of tendencies within it.  Liberation theology has been described by proponents as "an interpretation of Christian faith through the poor's suffering, their struggle and hope, and a critique of society and the Catholic faith and Christianity through the eyes of the poor," and by detractors as a Christian form of Marxism.  If you haven't read Leonardo Boff's text yet, read it now.  Then, watch the short clip below to learn a bit more about Liberation Theology.

II.  Evangelical Christianity and Its Massive Growth in Recent Years

Anthropologist John Burdick's text for this week tells the story of the rise in recent years of Evangelical Christianity, especially among Afro-Brazilians.  Read this short article from The Guardian to understand the historical backdrop of Brazilian evangelism's emergence and defining characteristics.  Then watch the five-minute clip below to see some images of Evangelical Christians in Brazil.

PART 2. Urban Realities: Drug Lords and Masculinity in Rio de Janeiro

Associated Readings

1. Ben Penglase, "The Owner of the Hill: Masculinity and Drug-Trafficking in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil." Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Anthropology 15(2), pp. 317-37 (2010)
2. John Lee Anderson, "Gangland: Who controls the streets of Rio de Janeiro?" The New Yorker, October 5, pp. 47-57 (2009)

Associated Films

“City of God” (2002, 130 minutes; sources: STL, Netflix/DVD, Blockbuster, Amazon.com)

I. Outsider Fantasies of Rio de Janeiro


With the FIFA Soccer World Cup coming to Brazil in 2012 and the Summer Olympics just two years later, the city of Rio de Janeiro will be getting a lot of attention.  Known as "the marvelous city" (a cidade maravilhosa), Rio has long functioned in the imagination of outsiders as a symbol for Brazil itself--or rather, for outsiders' fantasies of Brazil.  On the one had, Rio evokes images of beautiful beaches populated by scant-clad women and men, 





On the other hand, Rio increasingly triggers associations with urban violence, kidnapping, and flying bullets.  You can see the full range of these associations and stereotypes in the following 10-minutes clip from The Simpsons.  (Enjoy!)





Comedic value aside, this Simpsons episode serves as a reminder about something important:  that stereotypes utterly pervade our understandings of Rio (and of Brazil more generally).  The articles by Penglase and Anderson will take you deep into the favelas of Rio, giving powerful and troubling accounts of how young men and ordinary favela residents position themselves in different ways in relation to the drug trade, to gangs, and to their families.  The amazing film, "City of God" presents the violent, intersecting trajectories of a group of boys growing up in one of Rio's largest favelas.

Week 8 - Brazil

PART 1. Introduction to Brazil; Affirmative Action
Associated Readings

1. Peter Winn, “Capital Sins,” from Americas, pp. 165-199 (2006)
2. David Fleischer, “Brazil: From military regime to Workers’ Party Government,” from Latin America: Its Problems and Its Promise, pp. 470-482 (2011)
3. Seth Racusen, “Affirmative Action & Identity” from Brazil's New Racial Politics, pp. 89-122 (2010)

Associated Films

1. "Brazil in Black and White" (53 minutes, PBS, Blackboard video tab or via this link)

NOTE:  If you find yourself getting interested in Brazil, be aware that SUNY-New Paltz has an excellent study-abroad program in Rio, situated at a world-class university.  Check out the details here. 

I. Introducing Brazil (Draws from World Scholar/Latin America & the Caribbean, 2011)

Introduction
Brazil, the largest country in South America, contains twenty-six states and the federal district of Brasília (the nation's capital). Mostly tropical or semitropical in climate, the nation encompasses dense forests, including the Amazon Basin, as well a semiarid region in the northeast, mountains and plains in the southwest, midwestern savannahs, a long Atlantic coastline, and a vast wetland area.

Inhabited by numerous Amerindian groups, Brazil was first visited by the Portuguese in April 1500. Colonization efforts began in earnest in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with the arrival of European immigrants and the importation of enslaved Africans. Sugarcane (and later cotton and coffee), gold, and diamonds were the major commodities, and by 1807 the colony was both prosperous and ethnically diverse.

With Napoleon's invasion of Portugal in 1807, the prince regent fled to the colony, set up his government there, and expanded trade. Independence was declared in 1822, and after decades of monarchical rule, in 1889 Brazil became a republic. Troubled in its early years by economic and political crises, the nation continued to struggle throughout the twentieth century with questions of national identity and the quashing of freedoms by military dictatorships. A transition to democracy began in 1979 and culminated in popular elections in 1988. Former metalworker and union organizaer Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected president in 2002 and reelected in 2006.  Lula completed his second term at the end of last year (2010).  His chief of staff, a former Marxist rebel named Dilma Rousseff, launched a successful campaign and since January of this year, a woman presides over Latin America's largest country and economy.

First watch the following short narrated slide show by yours truly (25 minutes):



Watch the following recent "60 Minutes" episode (14 minutes) to get familiar with Lula, with Dilma, and with Brazil's emergence as a force to be reckoned with in the 21st century.



Please now watch the following clip about President Dilma Rousseff, from lefty journalist Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" video podcast (9 minutes).



For a very-recent update on Dilma -- how the first 100 days of her presidency have gone -- please read this short article. 

II. Racial Categories and Affirmative Action

To launch our inquiry into racial categories, racial inequality, and affirmative action in Brazil, let me begin with three generalizations about USians:

#1.  By and large, we are comfortable with the category, "race." 

By this I mean that we tend to take for granted that everyone naturally has a race, that is, that human beings naturally occupy race categories.  So, when I am asked to identify my "race" on a survey such as the census, the question isn't strange or vexing to me since I take for granted that people have races, I know what the main race categories are, and I know which one I fit into.  Conversely, when asked to identify the "race" of Denzel Washingon and George Clooney, the answers come forth easily enough:  Denzel is Black/African-American and George is Caucasian/white.

#2.  Identifying a person's "race" signifies more than just skin color.

When I invoke these racial categories, I am referencing more than simply the color of each actor's skin.  (And, of course, the skin color of Caucasians isn't white at all; it's pinkish/orange-ish.)  That is, the category "race" reaches farther and deeper than mere superficial physical characteristics.  To identify someone's race is to say something who they are in some essential way.  I am not necessarily talking about racism here; just that as a category, "race" has more-than-merely-descriptive connotations. 

#3.  Race is inherited from one's parents and it doesn't change. 

In other words, my status as a "white guy" is fundamentally linked to the race categories my parents fall into (both also "white").  The anthropological term we use for this sort of status category is "ascribed" -- meaning, you can't change it, it's fixed at birth.  We don't generally think of race as a "situational" term.

Now, another generalization:  In Brazil, generalizations 1-3 above traditionally do not apply.  In other words, until fairly recently, most Brazilians wouldn't be comfortable with the question, "What's his race?"  This is not to say that Brazilians don't have or don't use vocabulary to refer to physical differences such as skin color.  They do!  But, the larger category into which terms like branco (white) and negro ("black") fit isn't raça ("race"); it's cor ("color").

Another major difference in Brazil is that race isn't an ascribed category--to the contrary, the same person might identify as branco in one setting and then moreno (mixed color) in another.  Brazilians have virtually dozens of terms that refer to physical differences of the sort that we in the U.S. would think of as "racial."  The Brazilian vocabulary for describing "racial" differences is thus both extensive and highly flexible.

You might be asking at this point, if race doesn't exist in Brazil, what about racism?  For most of the 20th century, the most common answer to this question was:  If there's no race, there can be no racism.  Indeed, many of Brazil's major 20th-century intellectuals proudly declared their country a "racial democracy" where racial hybridity and mixing (rather then racial contrast and difference) is what makes Brazil so distinctive, so special.  Even today, many a Brazilian will say to you (should you ask about this) that race isn't important, what is important is class.  What matters in life is not whether you are black, but whether you are poor.

The problem with this way of thinking, of course, is that if you look around the country, you will see a troubling pattern:  Race or no race, poor people in Brazil tend to be darker-skinned.  Similarly, people who secure entry into the best universities (and thus get the best jobs) tend to be white.

The reality expressed in the preceding sentence is the basis for Brazil's consideration of affirmative action (which they call "racial quotas") initiatives over the past decade.  Read Seth Racusen's corresponding article and then watch the film "Brazil in Black and White" (53 minutes) now to learn about the history behind this controversial initiative and how it's playing out in the handful of Brazilian universities that have implemented affirmative action.


PART 2. Latin America’s Largest Social Movement: The Landless Workers’ Movement (MST)
Associated Readings

1. Tim Padgett, “Brazil’s landless rebels,” Time, January 19 (1998)
2. John Hammond, “Law and disorder: The Brazilian landless farmworkers’ movement,” pp. 469-489 (1999)
3. Wendy Wolford, “This land is ours now: spatial imaginaries and the struggle for land in Brazil.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94, pp. 409-424 (2004)

Associated Films

1. "Raiz Forte" (“Strong Roots”) (2001, 41 minutes) 

To learn about the MST, read the introductory articles by Padgett and Hammond.  Then, consider the questions, What motivates people to join this movement?  With this question in mind, read Wendy Wolford's article, which compares the motivations of southern and northeastern Brazilians with respect to reasons for getting involved.  Then, watch the amazing film, "Raiz Forte" (Strong Roots) to see what the MST actually looks like "on the ground."

Week 7 - Argentina

Week 7 - Argentina
PART 1. Economic Crisis, Clientelism, and the Legacies of Juan and Eva Perón; Tango
Associated Readings

1. Peter Winn, “Perón! Perón!” pp. 133-160 (2006)
2. Eduardo Archetti, “Masculinity, Primitivism, and Power: Gaucho, Tango, and the Shaping of Argentine National Identity" from Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Latin America Since Independence, pp. 200-216 (2007)

Associated Handout

1. Handout 7 - Argentina and Perón

Associated Films

1. “Memoria del Saqueo” (2004, 113 minutes; Source: YouTube, see below) 

I. Introducing Argentina (Draws from World Scholar/Latin America & the Caribbean, 2011)
Argentina, the second-largest country in South America, shares borders with Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Chile. Have a look at the map below to appreciate Argentina's hugeness:

Predominantly temperate in climate, the country varies in terrain from highlands in the north, to the tropical forest in the northeast, fertile pampas or plains throughout the central portion, the isolated Patagonia region to the south, and the Andes Mountains to the west.
Argentina's capital is Buenos Aires.  With a population of around 13 million, Buenos Aires is South America's third largest city (after Brazil's São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro).  It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent. Strongly influenced by European culture, Buenos Aires is sometimes referred to as the "Paris of South America."  Architecturally, it is an extraordinary place, with a dizzying array of styles and traditions.  Here are a handful of photos I took a couple years back:

Buenos Aires' expansive Avenida 9 de julio crossing the Washington Monument-like Obelisk

Apartment Buildings

 

The city's Department of Water and Power (Not bad, right?)

Buenos Aires is the site of the Teatro Colón, an internationally rated opera house, and several symphony orchestras. The city has numerous museums related to history, fine arts, modern arts, decorative arts, popular arts, sacred art, arts and crafts, theatre and popular music. The city is home to hundreds of bookstores, public libraries and cultural associations (it is sometimes called "the city of books"), as well as the largest concentration of active theaters in Latin America.  Truly, there are bookstores, some tiny and some large like the photos below, everywhere.

It has a world-famous zoo and Botanical Garden, a large number of landscaped parks and squares, as well as churches and places of worship of many denominations.  Buenos Aires is also known for its European-style cafes, long and narrow and serving up some of the best café and sweets imaginable:

A random factoid:  Buenos Aires has more practicing psychoanalysts than any other country in Latin America.  Appropriately enough, most of them work in a neighborhood called "Villa Freud."

Buenos Aires is also, as you might know, internationally known for its vibrant tango scene.  We'll learn a lot about tango -- its history, its significance for national identity, and the forms of masculinity and femininity it reflects -- in this week's reading by Eduardo Archetti.  Here's a short clip of a tango band playing on the streets of one of B.A.'s oldest colonial neighborhoods, San Telmo:

Spanish settlement of Argentina began in the 1530s, and colonizing projects continued despite sharp Indian resistance. The region supplied agricultural products and livestock to silver mining communities in Bolivia. Beginning in the 1750s, Buenos Aires became a major port and the home of an elite class of merchants. In 1810, a junta claimed control of Buenos Aires, and in 1816 the independence of Argentina proper was achieved, ending Spanish control over the area.

In the late nineteenth century (1800s), thriving agriculture, foreign investment, and continued European immigration helped make Argentina an economic powerhouse. However, economic problems and political struggles followed in the twentieth century, with military regimes alternating with democratically elected civilian governments through the 1980s.  In 1982, Argentina suffered a humiliating military defeat by Great Britain in the Falkland Islands War.

Since the colonial period, Argentina's political leaders have often been what are referred to as caudillos, that is, charismatic, populist leaders of authoritarian regimes.  Make a mental note of this term, as we will revisit it when we arrive to Juan Perón.

From 1976 to 1983, Argentina was controlled by a brutal military junta.  Known as the "Dirty War," this time period is remembered by today's Argentines with horror for state-sponsored violence and the "disappearing" of more than 9,000 citizens.  Please now watch the following half-hour-long BBC documentary about the Dirty War.


Democratic civilian rule returned to Argentina in 1983, but its economic woes continued. 

II. Juan and Eva Perón

The following section closely follows Handout 7 ("Argentina and Perón," available on Bb; please review this handout as you move through the corresponding blog sections)
 
In this week's reading by Peter Winn, you will learn about the most important last name in 20th-century Argentinian history:  Perón (pronounced like "pear-own").  Juan Domingo Perón, elected to the presidency three times, first came to power in the mid-1940s.  A military man by training (he had been a colonel in the army), Perón was a populist who rejected identifying as liberal or conservative.


"Ni izquierda ni derecha" ("neither left nor right"), he famous declared in his '46 campaign, and indeed his brand of politics drew was inspired by both capitalist conservatism and pro-communist, worker-oriented communism.  Before his bid to the presidency, Perón had been head of the federal Department of Labor, where he had successfully defended the rights of workers.  This priority carried into his presidency, as he created strong unions, increased the minimum wage, and instituted an eight-hour workday as well as paid vacation time.  He became, in short, a hero and champion of the working class (colloquially referred to as "los descamisados," that is, "the shirtless").  He also had a deeply troubling fascination with Nazism and fascism, but this is a story for another occasion.

Matching and perhaps even eclipsing the massive popular appeal of Juan Perón was the love and devotion Argentina developed for Perón's wife, Maria Eva Duarte -- known more commonly in the affectionate diminuitive as "Evita", and immortalized in the Broadway musical of the same name, as well as the 1996 film with Madonna.   Indeed, Eva was crucial to her husband's popularity among workers and, for her successful fight for female suffrage, among women as well.  If you have some extra time and like musicals, consider watching the feature-length Madonna film - Hollywood trappings aside, it gives a good account of Eva's rise from a poor girl in the countryside to the influential woman in her country's history.  Please, in any case, watch the following 10-minute documentary:


Also have a look at this short clip I shot of Evita's tomb in Buenos Aires:



III. Peronism and Clientelism
Among Perón’s major legacies have been the party he created, the Partido Justicialista (Justice Party) and the political movement he founded, commonly known as Peronism, and of which he remains the central symbol to this day.  Since its creation in 1945, Peronist candidates have won eight out of ten presidential elections, and Perón himself remains the only Argentine to be elected president three times.  Argentina’s current president, Cristina Kirchner, is a Peronist to the core.  As a political ideology, Peronism is defined as an “authoritarian populism” rooted in the masses, emphasizing a strong centralized government and autonomy from foreign influences.

Here I'd like to introduce a new term -- "clientelism" -- used by political scientists to describe a particular kind of relationship between politicians and ordinary citizens (known as "patrons" and "clients," respectively).  Simply put, clientelism refers to an exchange between politicians and voters of material private goods for votes.

Some important characteristics of clientelism:

1. It is based in personal relationships that link patrons and clients together in a system in which jobs, favors, and protection are exchanged for labor, support, and loyalty.
2. It concentrates power in the hands of the individual politician, who decides personally how to distribute resources according to personal preferences.
3. Its relationships (between patron and client) are personalized, ongoing and reciprocal. 

One of Peronism's major legacies is that it relies heavily on clientelism at the grassroots.  That means that in cities like Buenos Aires, grassroots community leaders often spend a lot of their time distributing goods that their "patron" has provided them with and in exchange for which they must guarantee a strong vote the next time elections come around.  In Javier Auyero's reading about the 2001 riots in Buenos Aires, we'll see what this looks like on the ground.

Typically in political science, clientelism is presented in negative terms.  (No one says, "I'm a clientelist and proud of it!")  The primary critiques of clientelism are:

1. It is not (genuinely) democratic.
   It often involves the exploitation of the poor.
   It discourages unbiased provision of public goods.
2. It is often associated with political monopolies.
3. It stifles efficiency of the market.

One problem with much of the scholarship on clientelism in Argentina and elsewhere in Latin America is that it typically treats this form of political practice as a "traditional" form of corruption--a vestige from the pre-democratic past when Latin Americans hadn't yet learned how to organize society in a "modern" democratic manner.  So, what's wrong with this understanding of clientelism?  As you read Javier Auyero's texts on the 2001 riots in Buenos Aires, think carefully about the following he makes:

Clientelism is not just the persistence of traditional hierarchical structures, but also a response to their breakdown.

PART 2. Collective Violence
Associated Readings

1. Peter Calvert, “Argentina: Decline and revival,” from Latin America, Its Problems and Its Promise, pp. 524-537 (2011)
2. Javier Auyero, Introduction, Chapter 1, and Conclusions from Routine Politics and Violence in Argentina: The Gray Zone of State Power, pp. 1-54 and 151-158

I. Argentina Economic Crisis of 2001 (selections drawn from http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/sap/Argentina_crisis.php)
In order to fully understand the events described in this week's ethnographic case study by sociologist Javier Auyero, you must first grasp the backdrop for Argentina's 2001 economic crisis.  During the 1990's Argentina was heralded as a successful developing its economy:  Foreign investors poured billions of dollars into the country, inflation rates were lower than those in the U.S. at the same time, and the economy was one of fastest-growing economies in Latin America.  Argentina was the darling of international financial lending, strictly adhering to the IMF advice.

But in 2001 the Argentine economy reached its breaking point. The government announced that its foreign debt could not be paid back and billions of dollars in government spending would be cut. This translated to government employees receiving a salary reduction of 13% (Pastor and Wise 2001).  While at the same time unemployment skyrocketed to nearly 20% (Stiglitz 2002).  In one year Buenos Aires fell from being the most expensive city in Latin America to the cheapest city (Latin Trade 2003).
 
How did an A-plus student fail?
The exact cause of Argentina' economic melt down is contested.  Some argue that it was due to the poor policy advice from the IMF (Stiglitz 2002) and others, the IMF among them, blame the irresponsibility and corruption of the Argentine government (Krueger 2002).  Central to all the arguments, however, is the failure Argentina's fixed exchange rate policy.
 
During the 1980s and early 1990's, on the advice from the IMF, the government opted to fix the Argentine peso's exchange rate to the U.S. dollar (1 dollar = 1 peso). The fixed exchange rate was intended to be a stabilizing force for the economy after a period of hyperinflation (up to 200%).  This policy essentially made the peso and dollar interchangeable.  Both currencies circulated through the economy, ATMs dispensed dollars and pesos and bank loans could be made in either currency.
 
The problem with Argentine fixed exchange rate was it caused the peso to increase in value at the same rate as the dollar during the economic boom of the 1990's.  A rising currency value caused Argentina's exports to become more expensive relative to the country's imports.  Since Argentina's largest trading partners are Brazil and the European Union, whose currencies were valued much lower than the peso, the Argentine export market was stalled limiting the growth of the economy.

Who was affected?
Argentina's economic crisis affected every level of Argentine society and created an air of uncertainty for the future of Argentina.  To quell the crisis the IMF recommended that the government dramatically cut spending.  These cuts led to reduced public-sector wages and pensions and a delay in pension benefits for over 1.4 million retirees and their families (Lewis 2002).  In addition, as the unemployment rate grew, more people sought unemployment insurance and other social services, the very services being cut.  Many people were forced to find jobs in the informal sector that paid very little and offered almost no security for the future (see Jeter 2003).

Argentine workers began to withdraw their savings in pesos from banks in exchange for U.S. dollars for fear that rising prices would leave their savings worthless.  To curb this cash flight the Argentine government limited cash withdraws to $250 per month and freezing bank assets all together for short periods (Krauss 2001).  Additionally, for those who took out loans in dollars were faced with repayments that nearly doubled due to the rising interest rates (Lewis 2002).  This left people squeezed between rising prices, job uncertainty and limited access to money.
 
Stunned by their nation's economic unraveling Argentines took to the streets in Buenos Aires in a protest that turned violent.  The protest was described as a spontaneous demonstration of citizens outraged by the lack of leadership their government exhibited (Evans 2003).  The magnitude of the protests and the level of public dissatisfaction with the government's handling of the economy lead to the resignation of the President of Argentina, Fernando de la Rua and the nation's Economic Minister, Domingo Cavallo.  It was these protests and riots that form the focus of Javier Auyero's study on the "gray zone of politics."

If you haven't yet viewed the film, "Memoria del Saqueo" (which tells the story of the 2001 crisis), please view it now.

Finally, to get an inspiring update on how porteños (residents of Buenos Aires) have been fairing in the aftermath of the economic crisis, watch at least the first 10-15 minutes of "Argentina: Turning Around" ("videos" tab on Bb or http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/media_that_matters_8_argentina_turning_around/).