Buenos Aires Story #2

One night we meet some of our friends for happy hour. To give some background on them, they are in their mid to late 20’s, college educated, speak at LEAST 2 languages and have traveled to the USA multiple times, as well as to Europe and to various South American countries. While they may not follow US politics as closely as we do, they are aware of what goes on (when they are in the States, it is usually for extended periods). Since BA is having local elections, we were asking about the candidates and the differences between them. The consensus among them was that it didn’t matter who won, nothing would change. It was also interesting to hear them talk about “left and right” – they told us that there isn’t really a “right” in Argentina – a politician in Argentina who is “right” is really just not as far left as everyone else. This subject, of course, led us into US politics.

I asked them why do most Argentine’s dislike GWB. The answer, from more than one, was the war in Iraq. They do not view it as a war on terror – they view it as a big, strong country fighting a small, weak one – and doing it for the oil. And it’s not that they condone terrorists or 9/11, but they see it as us wanting something that Iraq has (oil), and coming up with some pre-text to start a conflict. And more than one of them expressed the concern that we might do the same to Argentina. I was incredulous and asked why, for what? The answer was – water. Their concern is that water will be the next resource that we (the USA) will run out of; Argentina has a large reserve/supply and therefore, we’ll come down and take it. C and I just looked at each other and could not believe what we were hearing. We said, even if the US needed water, Canada was much closer and/or we would come up with some technology to convert salt water to fresh. Their response was that Canada was our neighbor, our friend and we wouldn’t “take’ from them. We told them that our government had nothing against Argentina, so why would we “take” from them? The reply - you don’t treat us like friends. You don’t make us feel welcomed when we come to the States. You treat us like an enemy. We are small country and if the US wants water from us, they will come up with a reason to start a conflict and Argentina could not fight us.

Now, this “treating us like a friend/enemy” is a sentiment that we had heard before, not only from Argentines, but from Brazilians as well. And not only on this trip, but on our last one as well. 2 years ago, we were having breakfast at our hotel and at our table were an older (50-60) couple from Brazil. They were talking to us about 9/11 and the aftermath. They kept asking us – why didn’t you just kick out all the Arabs after 9/11? That is what Brazil would have done, that is what almost any country would have done. Why at airports do you treat everyone as an enemy, when most of them are your friends? If you treat a friend like an enemy, then why are you surprised that you have no friends?

Our friends said almost the same thing. They did not understand why they get searched ( people from non-Arab countries, non-Muslims). If a certain people are your enemy, those are the ones you search or detain or not let in or kick out. We tried to explain that internal US politics and political correctness dictated that we treat EVERYONE the same, thus we treat EVERYONE like an enemy. That was a concept that they, and others we talked to, didn’t get.
They also told us that when they travel, especially to the US, they don’t use their Argentina passport. That most Argentines have 2 passports – since Argentina was settled mostly by Europeans (Germans, Spanish, and Italians), most have passports from Argentina and from the country of a grand-parent (if that grand-parent was a citizen of say, Italy, then you could have an Italian passport as well). This surprised me. We were told that it was because eve though the security rules were the same, that US officials treated them “differently” if they used a non-Argentina passport (that being said, I also think that the rules/restrictions on what you can bring into/out of Argentina using an Argentina passport has something to do with it)