ISSN 1852-0766 La Plata, year 2, Nº 3. Price: $2.-

Border Writers

My First Time

Page 10

Specials: ENELL 2009

Dossier: Bad Memories: Human rights abuses and

gay shantytowns in Buenos Aires

Page 11

Arts & Minds: A warped minds harvest

Page 6

Page 4

Borders always try to separate us, languages attempt to isolate us, languages compartmentalize our lives… what we are looking for is to find us; we long to be writing all

from the border, sharing.

Staff

Designer

Collaborators

Contact

Belen MatschkeIgnacio GelsoJeremías CórsicoManuel López NúñezManuel Losada

Clara Condenanza

Araceli BuffoneMichael Aidan

borderwriters@gmail.com

aulelenguas.blogspot.com

Index03

0406

0810

11

15

---> Editorial --->My First Time

---> Arts & Minds: A warped minds harvest

--->News ---> Specials: ENELL 2009

---> Dossier: Bad Memories:

--->Who wants to participate?

Human rights abuses and gay shantytowns in Buenos Aires

La Plata, year 2, Nº 3. Price: $2.-

Editor pro tem:

Manuel López NúñezAULE48 e 6 y 7 CP 1900Facultad de Humanidades UNLP La Plata Buenos Aires Argentina

Ask for your cd with this edition, it includes two

translation programmes and two English dictionaries. Price: $3

Border Writers

ISSN 1852-0766

slowly turned into a short magazine,

an attempt to do something

different, to innovate. Probably you

will not know, but those pages were

all covered with enthusiasm, with joy

and nerves, with confidence but with

doubts, with the feeling that we were

developing a project that was long-

time-waited. nd

And then, Border Writers' 2

edition was willing to see the light. st

After re-printing the 1 edition, we

were sure that the gap in the career

was beginning to get filled, not just

because the magazine itself but

because what the magazine's project

meant. So we start calling our fellow

students and encouraging them to

write/translate articles. Students

from Modern Languages, Philosophy,

Literature and Sociology took part of

the last Border Writers edition.

We hope you enjoy the

magazine, as much as we do. And we

also hope you will help us to continue

with this project. Remember, this

issue is now and for ever in your

hands!

See you soon!

Editorial

I guess in a nutshell, I was

always pretty made-up on the

nature-nurture debate, and never

digested too well the idea of being so

nurtured by my context, of being a

victim, if you like, of my society. I

wanted to be able to fit into

something else, to identify with other

peoples, to be of this world and not of

a nation, and in order to prove all of

this, I would sell my choking ever-so-

slightly dented n-reg rover metro,

take yet another overdraft, and throw

myself into another language,

another continent... another context.

I would throw myself into Peru.

I completed a period of

voluntary work in one of these

districts. I wanted to be constructive,

to contribute somehow, but instead,

instead they gave me an invaluable

education, a guided tour of poverty, it

was those ladies in that slum in fact,

that seemed to be volunteering to

have me.

I t f e l t i m p o s s i b l e t o

c o m p r e h e n d t h a t t h i s

was real, because my mind had been

devirginised already, by Europe. That

is to say that it was impossible to

imagine how that alternative

normal i ty was perce ived by

somebody that had never seen any

other reality before, by somebody to

whom it was indeed normality.

Awareness cannot be undone, and I

felt incapacitated by my first world

exposure.

The people there stopped

dead in what would be a street (just a

strip of sewage soaked dirt) and

stared at me, giggling and pointing at

this grotesquely and inelegantly tall

over-nourished European. They

didn't know how to react, and neither

did I.

I soon realised that I could live

with those children for four weeks,

give them all the love in the world,

and although that one little month

that I gave, gave something, it really

amounted to nothing. What these

places need, harshly, honestly, is

money - not an occasional influx of

gap year students looking to improve

their self-esteem or the extra-

My First Time

curricular section of their curriculum

vitae. What these places need, what

this world needs, is better politics.

I had almost forgotten that I

had never travelled before, that I

didn't really know anything of the

world outside of my working class

c h i l d h o o d a n d i m m i g r a n t

neighbourhood in the outskirts of

London where my granddad moved

from Cyprus in his early adult years.

And suddenly, as i f d irect ly

transplanted from that with no buffer

in-between, bypassing my memories

of university and my early adult

academic life, I was sitting on a flight

to Peru… and like granddad, I went

alone.

I feel that travelling alone was

the best decision that I had made. I

later real ised that travel l ing

accompanied you seem to find

yourselves encapsulated by some

sort of impenetrable globe clouding

your senses, invoked by a constant if

imperceptible communication

between yourself and peer, by the

importing of shared social norms, a

point of common comparison and

something is unexceptionally lost in

the processing of this new alien land

and its precious culture shock

offering.

Alone, in that unfamiliar land,

I came undone. The world become

unst i tched before me and I

questioned if anybody had even

convinced me that it was all nicely

held together in the first place, asking

those hardened passers-by why

nobody had done anything yet about

what I was seeing. I saw the victims of

the first world, I saw things that made

me want to call my mum and ask her if

she knew about all of this, and why

she had never told me. For me it

changed my eyes, the purpose of my

life, and I couldn't go back home and

just forget about everything that I

had seen, and I've been working with

various organisations since, and it's

still not enough.

For me, it was slums over age

old ruins, bodies over bones, and the

streets of modern day Peru over

historic tales of a lost Inca past. For

too many people, it was about Machu

Picchu.

6

Arts & mindsA Warped Mind's Harvest

Art causes. And what any art

might cause is both the craft and the

game of the artist. And looking

through Jorge Pietra's pieces I'm

filled with images of him stroking a

bald feline creature and giggling into

his little white beard aloft an

oversized chess board at his feet.

Cause and consequence,

might then be, the artist's history and

his product, respectively.

Jorge Pietra, born on 28th

December 1951 in Buenos Aires,

graduated at La Escuela de Bellas

Artes where, in this era, his greatest

influence was surrealism and more

specifically the Dada movement. In

1976 Pietra realised his first

exhibition in Buenos Aires, one day

before the military coup which would

be the motivation to leave his home

country for a number of years. He has

since returned and earned himself

somewhat of a cult following of loyal

and curios clientele.

Pietra's work takes on rather

distinct

phases, somewhat reminiscent of the

growth and deterioration of the

human body which in one phase of its

existence may be completely

unrecognisable from its earlier or

later forms. The morph of a

caterpillar into a butterfly and its

subsequent decay, or the training,

realisation and dementia of a great

mind. All such dark ideas are played

with in a terrifyingly light-hearted

fashion. Art, here, contradicts.

These phases reflect Pietra's

“internal world” as well as they do

the external factors which shape it.

Many of Pietra's pieces cause an

uncomfortable sense of political fear,

indeed much of Pietra's work has

been “clearly affected by political

situations such as repression, the

disappearances and the Falklands'

war,” Pietra affirms.

The more you look at one of

Pietra's pieces the more you notice,

t h e m o r e y o u s e e , a l m o s t

sarcastically affirming a sound

economic investment. The use of

space is incredible and there's an

unsettling feeling of falling into

dimensions that you didn't learn

about at school. You start to play with

the angles from which you look at the

pieces, you feel a little dizzy, and you

start over again. Art, here, lasts.

A s a t i r i c a l t h e a t r e o f

reference, suggestion, imposition

and avoidance comes together in

what looks like a painted collage,

where seemingly taking apart a set of

any of Pietra's paintings and sticking

them back together again would give

the same effect, to the untrained eye.

The relationship with one of

Pietra's pieces in an ongoing one, and

the more time you might spend with

it, nurturing it, the more you

understand one another. “Every

painting has an intention, but much

of the time you only discover what

that was after finishing the painting,”

Pietra explains. It's almost as though

you could count the sittings in which

each painting might have been

fashioned, and discern the mood of

their God in the twisted worlds he

decides, at his whim, to create.

NewsLa Plata, May 11th, 2009.

Dear Classmates/Colleagues to be,

I'm writing to express my

concern, not at all new, about some

issues that involve us all as students of

the Modern Languages Department.

Last week, upon the resolution

of the elections for Student's

Representatives to de Juntas

Consultivas Departamentales (JCDs),

the English and French INDEPENDENT

students made it clear that whenever

we agree on something and act

collectively we can take hold of the

institutional spaces that legitimately

belong to us, without the help of

anyone foreign to the courses of study

of this Department.

On Wednesday and Thursday

(May 6 and 7), I had the opportunity of

witnessing, not without emotion, how

a great number of students gathered at

our school to exercise our right to elect

our representatives. There may be

many of you who don't actually know

why you were called on to come and

vote, or what the Juntas

Consultivas Departamentales

are, what their function is, and how can

we profit from them. Well, I'll try to shed

some light over this matter.

T h e J u nta s Co n s u l t i v a s

Departamentales, according to the

statute that rules their functioning, are a

t r ipart i te body of un ivers i ty

administration which serves the

function of advising the Head of the

Department. This advisory body is

formed by Representatives of the

Faculty, of the Graduates and of the

Students. To this latter group belonged

the Representatives we elected in May.

You can consult the statute ruling the

activity of this consultative body on the

u n i v e r s i t y w e b s i t e :

www.fahce.unlp.edu.ar. I will limit

myself here to say that this is an

institutional space where discussion

and deliberation about many matters

that concern us as students take place;

just to name one, this is where Teacher

Selections are carried out.

To sum up, the Juntas

Consultivas Departamentales provide

one of the very few opportunities we

students have to state our doubts,

problems, complaints, and this is what

should be highlighted.

However, this is not the only

way in which students can speak up,

and set their issues clear. Another

opportunity is the Comisión de

Estudiantes/Delegados, though this is

not an institutionalised deliberative

body.

So far, there has been no sign

whatsoever of the generation of such a

body for the Modern Languages

students. THIS is the actual reason for

this letter.

For many years, especially since

the first time I was elected as a Student

Representative to the JCDs in 2005, the

idea has hovered in my mind of finally

forming the 'Comisión' with the aim of

building the bridges necessary

between students and representatives,

for us to be properly represented. From

quite some time ago up to the present, I

have also realised that the Centro de

Estudiantes represents less the

students than clearly political interests,

that little have to do with us.

This is why I'm calling all of you

Languages Students to actively

PARTICIPATE. This call is to all of us who

have queries about the issues

that concern our courses of study; to all

of us who find it worth involving

ourselves in the struggle to change the

participation patterns that have been

imposed on us up to now; to all of us

who consider that a good training takes

place only if all aspects of the student's

life that contribute to a good academic

and social performance are integrated

during that training; to all of us who

believe that solidarity among

classmates/colleagues to be is not an

extinct value; and to all of us who think

that change must start somewhere,

and it better start within ourselves.

All of those who could take the

hint: I invite you to contact me, and to

show me that I'm not as crazy as I

thought, that there are many more like

me out there that feel the same way but

may not dare say it.

Thank you very much for

reading.

Yours faithfully,

Virginia Araceli Buffone

Profesorado/Traductorado Inglés

comisionlenguas@gmail.com

The ENELL (National Meeting of Language and Literature students) is a space of reflection about the issues that concern us as students of this courses of study that stem from our need to share our experiences and knowledge, and to think of ourselves, collectively, as subjects of knowledge, and so as knowledge producers as well, beyond the limits of the institution. That is why from its beginning, the organization of the ENELL was carried out by independent student organizations of different parts of the country that worked with the aim of promoting discussions about our worries. The ENELL thinks itself as a space of reciprocal and horizontal enrichment.

The ENEL, the National Meeting of Language was born almost five years ago. But last year it became the ENELL, with the objective of generating a space of exchange of knowledge and experiences between students of different courses of study. It began also as an opportunity to create an alternative in fields of teaching, research and translation; mainly. Since 2005 until today, the objectives and approaches of the ENELL were

expanded, pointing to the potential contributions that we

Students

can make as future professionals of language and literature, thinking in the fact that we are and we will be actors in the educational system and in the educative process, and so, in one way or another, we influence in the social change.

The ENELL seeks to generate, first of all, links between students of different universities and encourage discussions about the matters that we have in our training and in our later professional performance.

In this way, we try to generate the interaction between students of both courses of study which, although they face the same object of study –the language- they do it from different perspectives. So, we consider it important to question language and literature as objects of study to multiply the forms in which we approach them, extending them to the extra-academic perspectives.

On the other hand, we seek to give impulse to the reflection upon linguistic and discursive policies and their domination mechanisms; and to investigate different alternative practices, in order to rethink our posit ion from a cr i t ica l and simultaneously creative point of view; and to promote, from there, instances of workshop where the knowledge production is prioritized over knowledge accumulation.

ENELL 2009

Bad Memories: Human rights

abuses and gay shantytowns

in Buenos Aires

Ten years ago, various human

rights groups approached Buenos

Aires' government with the idea of

constructing 'El Parque de la

Memoria' (the park of memory). The

purpose was to fashion a tribute to

the citizens who were disappeared

during the years of state terrorism

suffered during the 1970s and early

80s before the restoration of

Argentine democracy in 1983.

El Parque de la Memoria, an

area consisting of 31 acres of land set

on the fringe of el Río de la Plata,

boasts numerous sculptures, plaques

and an unmistakable political

message: 'nunca más' (never again).

Yet beyond the geometrically mind-

bending and inexcusably modern

monuments to Argentina's historical

carnage lies a history, which in the

park's construction, has been widely

forgotten.

Years before, by the very

same edge of el Río de la Plata, the

seed of Buenos Aires' first gay villa

(shantytown) was sown by the

chance encounter between a

homeless homosexual couple and a

transvestite who lived in a hut,

concealed amongst the trees. They

f o r m e d a f r i e n d s h i p w h i c h

culminated in the two men building

themselves a dwelling at her side and

the existence of the site subsequently

became well known throughout the

homeless homosexual community.

The idea quickly emerged to create

a n e n v i r o n m e n t i n w h i c h

homosexuals would be able to live in

harmony free from the oppression

and discrimination that many had

experienced within other sectors of

Argentine society.

In 1994 Cardinal Antonio

Quarracino, then Archbishop of

Buenos Aires, suggested the sending

of 'all homosexuals to an island

where they might live how they wish,

without affecting the rest of society'.

The archbishop's proposition was not

too far from the aspirations of a

number of homosexuals who

Dossier

decided to follow Quarracino's advice

in an exodus to the villa. It was in fact

soon after these comments were

made that the villa saw a steep rise in

its population and really began to

take shape as a more authentic

community. “This is our island…here

we raised our flag,” affirmed Pedro,

one of the villa's founders, in

reference to Quarracino's comments.

But far from being an island,

this was university-owned land and in

1996 proceedings were initiated

before the federal judge Adolfo

Bagnasco to have the villa removed

from the university's turf. As a result,

in June 1998 whilst the dwellers were

in negotiations with the government

of Buenos Aires and awaiting a

meeting already organised for just

days ahead, they were forcibly

evicted from their makeshift homes

by federal police. The villa was then

set alight which, according to

residents, was the third attack of

arson suffered by the villa at the

hands of the police. The others, of

1987 and 91, obliged occupants to

abandon their abodes and

confined domestic animals, grabbing

what they could of their few personal

possessions. “The first time our 12

dogs died trapped in the smoke and

unable to escape… nothing matters

to them (the police). In fact, in 1998

they started the fire with children

inside and everything,” describes

Pedro.

In spite of the mounted police

presence guarding the access points

of the villa for months after the 1998

ev ict ion, the presence of a

transvestite who continued living as

the villa's only resident managed to

go unnoticed. Two years on many of

the former residents had returned to

the scene to repopulate the terrain

that they had once claimed as their

own.

The population now included

families from other villas and was no

longer exclusively homosexual,

although the ethos was still one of

acceptance and understanding of the

homosexual populace of the

c o m m u n i t y. T h e n u m b e r o f

inhabitants of the villa grew

considerably and a 2003 consensus

carried out by social science students

from the neighbouring Ciudad

Universitaria put the figure at 195

(118 males and 77 females).

In 2004 a case study was

jointly released by the World

Organisation Against Torture and the

Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales,

realised on the basis of interviews

with the inhabitants of the villa,

police and other official bodies

involved. Their findings were that the

inhabitants of the villa suffered

systematic and repeated violence at

the hands of the police including

brutal raids, beatings, verbal abuse,

rapes and arbitrary detainments.

José Roselli, an activist for

transgender rights, stated that on top

of the habitual problems of life in

such extreme poverty, the principal

difficulty for residents was abuse by

police.

The case study printed that

'the violations of rights were

generalised although the situation of

women and, above all, homosexual

men was especially grave. In these

cases, sexual cruelty was added to

the habitual practices which, in some

cases, resulted in rapes and grave

abuses.'

T h e e n t r a n c e s t o t h e

shantytown were often deliberately

blocked by great mounds of earth

and debris, as was the nearest water

supply to which the residents had

access. This often made the use of the

polluted water from el Río de la Plata

the only viable option for the villa's

residents.

The majority of the occupants of the

shantytown were cartoneros, who

make their living from the collection

and onward sale of the city's

recyclable waste. The blocking of the

access points of the villa made their

livelihoods increasingly difficult as

the carts that they used to collect the

waste could not enter the grounds.

Arbitrary detainments were

plentiful and in an interview

conducted for the aforementioned

case study a police officer confessed,

“…if I bring somebody in 14 times to

establish their identity they're going

to say 'enough, once is okay, twice

even, but three times is a

barbarity.' But…these people (the

villa's inhabitants) are likely to be

ignorant of the law. So I take

advantage of that situation and

maybe I'm committing a crime, but

hey.”

Pedro tells of how the

residents would have to pay-off the

police officers with sex as to not be

detained in police holdings.

Bringing to an end the villa's two

decades of existence and its long and

confrontational history with the

p o l i c e w a s t h e e v e n t u a l

materialisation of an unrelated

proposal by human rights groups to

use the area for the abovementioned

El Parque de la Memoria. Towards the

end of 2006 the residents of the villa

were given money to leave the site

allowing them to purchase very basic

property elsewhere.

The authorities then moved in

to destroy the pokey huts and

crooked shelters of this community

that, for so many, had represented

the only place in the world in which

they had widely experienced love,

acceptance and

tolerance. Documentary makers

filmed the emotive departure of

Pedro and other inhabitants of the

villa whilst they retold anecdotes of

the love and companionship that

they had experienced in the villa, in

spite of the years' tribulations.

The monuments that now

stand here do not speak of this

struggle or of the failings of more

recent governments to protect the

human rights of this generation's

populace. They speak of the

atrocities of previous governments,

all the while reaffirming the

importance of a collective national

memory in the struggle to ensure

that history does not repeat itself.

These very monuments and

honourable ideas have inadvertently

brushed under the carpet yet

another history of all-too-common

human rights abuses in Argentina.

And everybody is still speaking of

progress.

14

From au l e we conceive culture as a carrier of the many cultural forms of expression that produce the identity of a people in relation to its values and constant resistance against the dominant imposition. Film-m a k i n g i s p r o b a b l y t h e paradigm in art as it has internal ized itself in the conscience of the masses producing knowledge that is set in a shared subject iv i ty, adopt ing mechan isms of sporadic resistance through the culture of image. It is not possible to elaborate a finished plan of an individual against the constant struggle of

Whooo...wants to participate?

We invite you to look into our new DVDteca where you will find all kind of movies for free!

This new project is an attempt to interact with other students in many different w a y s ,

you may come to aule's table, take the DVD you want, watch it and then you take it back... by this, we can debate about the movie once you've seen it.

s u p p r e s s i o n o f r e g i o n a l identit ies and systematic exclusion of a group of people, if it is not through participation and knowledge about what this system needs as a priority for its own reproduction. Through its prices, the “commercial” side of films provokes a systematic elimination of this necessary confrontation. We propose to break away from this practice and share the phenomenon to rethink their values that might be useful to undermine their basis and create our own images with all the possible tools.

ENELL Don´t Forget!ENELL 2009

2, 3 &4OCTOBER!!!

2008