Benjamin Barton: Argentina

Ben Baron: The Arts, Service, and Cultural Emersion in Argentina

With my Wilson Language Grant, I completed the Experiment in International Living’s program “Argentina: Visual Arts, Photography, and Service”, and I had an incredible experience. My time there was divided into two parts, a 10 day orientation in Buenos Aires and a 14 day period in Santa Fe. In Buenos Aires in the mornings, we learned about photography and planned our service project in Santa Fe. This was all done in Spanish, and I think these daily four hour sessions really improved my Spanish listening skills. In the afternoon, we would explore Buenos Aires and use our photography skill to try to capture the city. Buenos Aires was an amazing target for these pictures because it is such a diverse city, having an array of different architecture and neighborhoods. It was also the art capital of South America, and we visited many art museums which contained some of the most famous pieces in South America. What I found equally interesting was Buenos Aires’ street art. The city is famous for its street art, 70% of which was political. We were in Buenos Aires in a very politically charged time. The new president had just taken office, and decreed that Argentineans, who formerly saved their money in dollars because it was a more stable currency, now must save their money in pesos. The people were outraged, and many used street art to express their opinions. One of the most interesting things I saw in Argentina was a demonstration by the Mothers of the Disappeared, mothers whose children had been executed by the military government of the 70’s many years ago, and had themselves started the peaceful movement against this government and to find out the whereabouts of their disappeared children. Since then, they advocated for political transparency and freedom of speech, which are still controversial issues in Argentina. One of the original mothers had died, and the other original mothers were there sprinkling her ashes in the presidential square, where they had all started the movement 47 years ago. One of them made a speech, stating that the death was a tragedy, but she saw the woman’s spirit in today’s youth, many of whom were becoming passionate about politics.

The photo above is one of the photos I took while experimenting with the photography techniques we learned. This picture exhibits two of the unique things about Buenos Aires; the mix of classical and modern architecture, and the artistic street art.

During our time in Buenos Aires, we visited many art museums. This is my favorite painting from the trip, and is from the Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art.

This is the Mothers of the Disappeared demonstrating in the presidential square. These were the same women who have been demonstrating every Thursday in the square since 1975, and still carried pictures of their disappeared relatives with them.

This is a photo I took down Buenos Aires’ equivalent of Broadway, 9 de Julio Street. We were lucky enough to stay in a hotel one block off of it, so we were relatively close to everything.

The second half of the trip we spent in Santa Fe, a mid sized city of 600,000. I had an incredible experience with my host family. I had six host brothers and sisters, the youngest of which was 21, and my host father owned a chainsaw store. I always felt included and welcome, and my host siblings would always take me out with them, whether it was to play soccer with their friends, go fishing, go 4-wheeling, go to a soccer game of Santa Fe’s local club, or go to asides, and much more. Asadas were probably one of the most pleasant surprises I experienced in Argentina. Because meat is so cheap, people will have cookouts where you pay 5-10 dollars and you can eat as much bread and steaks as you can. Those were probably some of the best meals of my life.

This is a photo of the grill at an asada. The meat is cooked with chars from the fire, and sadas were some of the first meals of my life in which there was more great food than I could possibly eat.

The service project was teaching photography and some English to underprivileged children at San Francisco School. With photography, we taught them how to take, develop, and make positives of their pictures. The medium we were using was pinhole photography.  In pinhole photography, the camera consists of a can, photo paper, and a lens, and the picture can easily be developed with normal dark room chemicals. The children there were extremely enthusiastic and happy about learning, which made our jobs a very pleasant experience. They were also very funny, and we spent many afternoons playing tag, football, or soccer with them in the park outside the church. As it turns out, they were also talented artists, and teachers and students alike were very pleased with how their photos came out. Probably the most interesting part of the trip was that my group leader, I, and another experimenter were able to be on an Argentinean talk show named ENTRE MATE Y MATE to talk about our service project. I was not able to record it because it was broadcast live and then again when I was not home, but I am trying to get the video for the school and took a lot of pictures of the studio.

This is us teaching the class. On the table are the dark room chemicals which we will help the children to use to develop their photos.

Here is a photo and the positive version that one of the children took. It is of a fountain in the park outside the church.

Here is the studio where they shot the program. I will have a copy of the actual video soon.

I had an amazing time in Argentina. I greatly improved my Spanish, I was able to complete a meaningful service project, and I had many incredible experiences and met a lot of very interesting people. Probably the biggest lesson I learned is that kindness and other values that MBA teaches are universal values. Towards the beginning of my trip, my communication wasn’t completely there, but being friendly and polite could speak louder than my words could and break the language and culture barriers. I cannot thank the Wilson family, Mr. Gaither, Dr. Gaffney, and Sr. Kamm enough for making this unbelievable experience possible.