“[…] some of you are just gonna float along, eating spicy foods, humming black people's music into your 30s. Well into your 30s, languishing. This group of pods is gonna do a lot of languishing. And you're gonna take some heat for it. Sadly, you will. Europe's a little easier. They seem to understand a little better. So does South America. I went to Argentina one time, and everyone just seemed to be sitting around. It was beautiful.”
Owen Wilson – You, Me and Dupree
It’s very important to make a proper introduction of oneself before making any statement. Therefore I will start with a personal tale.
This story begins a lovely day of spring, a few years ago when I was at home and I sat down to watch TV. I was flipping channels and suddenly I stopped in a news network. I saw some people carrying a coffin and at a certain point some of them began to fight. I honestly don’t know why there were fighting in a funeral, I can understand fist-fights in weddings, birthdays even baby showers, but fight in a funeral seems disrespectful. I continued watching and things turned nasty: all of the sudden some guy who looked extremely out of his mind pulls out a gun and starts shooting in front of the camera. Later he declared that “Si no hubiera disparado muchos compañeros hubieran resultado heridos” since when you shoot someone in order to protect him?
That day was October the seventeenth; a day well known for all Argentineans as the day of political loyalty. So let me get this straight, to honor General Peron’s life his followers started a riot in his funeral, I wish someone did that for me. The important thing is that by watching that I understood one of the most significant concepts that an Argentinean could ever understand: I understood the meaning of peronism.
I used to think that peronism was a political position identified somehow with Peron’s way of thinking or governing however in its true meaning peronism is the word that clearly represents the stupid nationalism of Argentina. Perhaps Peron learned from Il Duce how to encourage a nation by raising a national proud; honestly I don’t know about that and frankly I don’t care. A side from what has historically happened; peronism is something that’s happening today thirty-five years after Peron’s death. It’s clear now that it has nothing to do with him.
Peronism (meaning stupid Argentinean pride) has extended itself from politics to every branch of the Argentinean culture. The funny thing is when it collides with globalization. Now we praise German engineering, we love Japanese electronics and we cannot wait to go see American movies but if anyone asks “lo nuestro es lo mejor”.
The main problem, I think, it’s that we’re still drinking from the old fascist font. We think of Argentina as some kind of umbilicus mundi: a place where everything takes place.
These are the vestiges of fascist –now turned to shit- education. We cannot be fed by Quilmes beer advertisings before every World Cup making us believe that we are the best in everything and no-one can stop us, because it’s not true. Sadly we’re not the best in anything due to our lack of humbleness. It’s time to wake up and see the truth.
What I wanted to do with this website is try to show a little just how deranged we are from the world’s way of thinking. I don’t consider myself a peronist and certainly I’m not a gorilla, once again it’s not about politics it’s about our believings.
“We are what we believe” said Dr. Fred Alan Wolf, if we want to be something different –apparently we do otherwise we won’t be always complaining about everything- we have to start believing in new things.
