Dos Días de la Independencia

Two independence days in one week, how could I be any more lucky?! Of course last week the 4th of July was celebrated in the United States, our Independence Day, but also celebrated within the week was Argentina's Independence Day on July 9th. While there is little (to none) to be said for my July 4th celebrations (I wore a small pin to work that has Argentina and the US flag together), I experienced some new facets of Argentine culture on July 9th and thought I'd reflect on them a bit in my entry today.

Last week one of my students, Marisol Colombo, invited me to a traditional folk celebration that occurs in her town each year on July 9th. Eager to take her up on this invitation, I headed to the bus station on Saturday morning to travel to her town, Makallé, that sits approximately 43 kilometers northwest of Resistencia. Bus terminal experiences are always "enriching," especially when you miss your bus by minutes because you're waiting in line for a ticket and the attendant had to leave his post twice in the course of the last 10 minutes before your bus is scheduled to leave. Clearly I'm not bitter at all about this. So, yes, I missed my bus. However, it was with great fortune that missing my bus allowed me to meet a wonderful woman from Resistencia who is originally from Makallé. She got us to the next bus terminal to make an appropriate bus transfer, shared a lot about herself along the way, and offered her contact information if I should ever need anything in Resistencia. What a blessing amidst the minor hassle of a missed bus!

Marisol met me at the bus stop in Makallé and we walked to her house. After a brief house tour and lunch with her family, Marisol and I headed to the other side of town where they host a very traditional festival each year. An overcast day, we took along an umbrella and crossed our fingers that we wouldn't get poured on as there had already been some light rain showers while we were eating lunch. As we approached the festival I was greeted with a sight not unlike something I might see at my own county fair in Ohio. I think I'll let my pictures tell the rest of the story of my day at this XXI Provincial Festival in Makallé...

First, there was a tractor on display for the kids to climb into and pretend like they were driving. With this particular aspect, I couldn't get too much closer to one of my own country fairs at home.

Posing with a couple of gauchos. Marisol shared with me that Argentina's Independence Day, July 9th, is basically the only day all year that you can get by with wearing the traditional gaucho outfit and not be thought mildly crazy. Of course there are still real gauchos in certain parts of Argentina but I'm not sure if they still wear all these traditional clothes.

Our mid-afternoon snack called a Cubanito. Basically, this is an ice cream cone filled with dulce de leche. Heaven in a crispy waffle cone? Yes please! I have also seen cubanitos sold in other places with the cone dipped in chocolate. Marisol and I witnessed, just after purchasing our cubanitos, a man walk by the small cubanito table and accidentally knock over a tray of probably 15 treats. It was all we could do not to fall to the ground looking at the shocked faces of him and the vendor. Which leads me to my next picture...

I'm pretty sure that this young man who knocked over the tray of cubanitos might have been mildly intoxicated as there was a lot of alcohol at this festival. In fact, when asked by Marisol what called my attention most at the independence day celebration, I remarked on the abundance of open containers that wouldn't be allowed in such an unrestricted fashion at a similar celebration in the United States. In the photo above, you can see several men selling alcohol at their booth. I was trying to capture a candid shot but clearly one of them saw that I was taking a picture. I suppose he simply has allowed me to preserve in a photographic memory the mood of gaiety in the booth where he was working.

Every fair has its share of venders of things, useful things and not-so-useful things, and this festival was no exception. Here, Marisol posed with a gaucho hat that she liked at the nicest booth of the festival's vendors. Things for sale ranged from gaucho gear to small toys to typical Argentine handicrafts to useless nicknacks. But really, what fair would be complete without its share of vendors selling useless nicknacks?

This is the best shot that I could get of the doma, a type of rodeo where the jinete, cowboy who is going to "tame" the horse, mounts the horse that is tied to the pole in this picture. The jinete wears spurs on his boots, (I think) there are spurs of some form on the stirrups at the horse's side, and the jinete also swings a whip with a fairly sharp metal piece [to hit the horse], all to agitate the horse to an angry state. Just like a rodeo in the U.S., the jinete has a goal time to stay on the horse and not be thrown off. At the end of this time, the announcer beckons to a couple of other riders who swoop in on either side of the bucking horse to pluck off the jinete holding on for dear life. Unlike the U.S. however where this crazy riding usually involves the possibility of some prize money, Marisol told me that the jinetes do this each year simply for fun and to keep the cultural tradition alive. She also told me her dad hates the doma as he is a doctor and often has to work at this event. You do the math on that one...

Here we have a line-up of folks on horses, trying to get a better view of the doma by being a bit elevated above the fence and crowd. Rather interesting to me too was the great mix of horses, pedestrians, motor bikes, trucks, and cars that all passed through the same pathways to enter and exit the festival. Sometimes the order among the disorder of major events in Argentina astounds me.

Capturing the children's attention at this festival was this Ferris Wheel. Most notable, however, is how it was powered. If you look toward the bottom left direction of the wheel's platform, you will see the ride operator who, in this case, quite literally provided the force that made the wheel turn. I feel as this could create limits regarding patrons' maximum weight rather than the weight and height minimums we see in the United States to board certain amusement park rides. ;)

Once the doma concluded, a band began to play on the stage that we see on the right side of this photo. All the people gathered in this picture were dancing chammamé which is an Argentine folk dance that I have mentioned before. Shortly after I took this photo, it started raining. Hard. Obviously the electric equipment had to be covered but as the rain died off a bit, the musicians started right back in without sound amplification. Marisol told me that the music and dancing, which had started around 5 PM, would continue until 6 or 7 AM the next morning!

And so you have my complete Independence Day celebration in Makallé. After warming up with a coffee at Marisol's house, I boarded the bus back to Resistencia. However, I was far from the end of my independence day celebrations. I reconvened that evening to have an asado and go out dancing with my basketball teammates. I couldn't have asked for a more perfect mix of traditional and contemporary cultural traditions to commemorate 9 de julio.

This post is rather delayed because, as you can see, my weekend was rather full and I spent most of Sunday writing a mid-term report and planning lessons for my week. Then, yesterday, I went to a teammate's house to watch the Copa América 2011 Argentina v. Costa Rica game, hosted in Córdoba, which Argentina won 3-0. My friends' responses to the game were something like, "ugh, that was an awful game..." While I am learning quite a bit about soccer as I watch it more and more often, I still am not quite sure what constitutes a "great" game. Anyhow, it was a good thing that Argentina won as it was a do-or-die situation and a win was a must for the team to advance out of its pool play bracket. Next game: Saturday at 19:15 against Chile, Peru or Uruguay (to be determined today)!