estoy con el campo

last night after dinner, when i was supposed to be studying, i instead got into a long conversation with my argentine mom, marcela, about politics in argentina.

some background: last night, the senate was voting on a tax that presidnet cristina kircher tried to put in place a few months ago. the tax is a steep tax on soy, which is a huge argentine export, that is tied to the world market value of soy. right now, the tax would be 45%. she tried to institute it a few months ago, but the people in the country began protesting, and this has been a contentous issue for a while now. it´s the reason we almost got stuck in iguazu--the protests were happening along the highway. it´s a strange issue, becuase it united both the poor farmers and the wealthy land owners. the people that elected cristina were the people in the country, she didnt win a single city when she was elected last year.

so last night was the vote in the senate. the tv isn´t on a lot at my house, but yesterday it and th e radio were on all day, as they were everywhere. the crazy thing about this tax is that it´s unconsitutional--their consitution says that a tax can´t be more than thirty five percent. but their constitution is only fifteen-ish years old, and marcela said that didn´t even really matter. everyone here is very distrustful of the government--everyone says its a given that there is corruption, and that all of the politicans are slimeballs (okay, my word, i dont think slimeball translates). and a huge part of the crash in 2001 was rampant corruption.

argentinians basically distrust all of their institutions. which got me thinking. no one in the states is particularly happy with the government and they haven´t been for a while, but we are all waiting it out until november, becuase we know there will be a peaceful change. and we have faith that while corruption may invade our institutions from time to time, our checks and balances will weed it out. sleaze and i love to run around getting angry about various things and asking where all of the crazies are, but we also have a politician that we really, really like.

i guess you just dont know how lucky you are til you leave.

in other exciting news: i dreamed a little in spanish the other night! granted, all i dreamt was an old woman saying ¨ella puede entender un poco¨and then it was all gibberish, but that´s a good sign, right?

we leave for peru on saturday, and i think my internet access might be a little limited when we´re there, but i´ll certainly update as soon as i can.

besos!