Argentina has a deep-rooted culture of protests. I am too young to know when it started, but old enough to know it has a horrible effect on a country's image. I remember watching TV a few years ago and seeing tourist walking to and from the airport (Ezeiza Int'l Airport), just because there was a protest and cars were not allowed to approach the airport. Old people carrying bags and complaninig. Spanish tourists saying they will never return. Then again, they might have come here just to do some cheap shopping, but that does not give us any reason to overhaul their security and basic rights.Still, it seems we simply don't care. During 2006, protesters of all sorts bloqued roads 817 times. Almost 3 times a day (if you count weekends). Crazy. However, well below 2005, when roads were cut almost 1200 times during the year (by the way, almost half of the number of 2002, year of crisis in Argentina). And where are the rest of the people's rights? I mean, if you block the road and I want to cross it, you are manifesting your constitutional right to express yourself but I am not allowed "free transit" among Argentinean soil. However, after the 2002 incident which cost Eduardo Duhalde an early call to elections, during the portests which ended with some policemen killing youngsters Kosteki and Santillán, no one has had a taste for police repression. In fact, laissez-faire seems to be at the ordre du jour. Although it might buy Presidents time, it hurts the rest of the population a lot. We feel vulnerable. Unprotected. We are driven against the government by its own inaction. And that is never good for either side of the equation.
Any reason is a good reason to protest: lately, it has been higher salaries (the President's province has been "taken" by hords of people roaming the streets, and he has solved it ordering 3 salary increases in a year), it has also happened as result of a struggle for political control (UBA, Carlos Pellegrini school) and it continues as protests against certain government measures that minority groups dislike (i.e., Quebracho). It's not that I am totally against protest: I feel the cacerolazos (kitchen-pan) protests after the crisis should have been more widespread and far-reaching than they were, and so were protests against insecurity; but there is a limit to protest. When it becomes the standard way of asking for things, it might mean that there is something rotten in the way things work.
Worst of all is when people get results blocking roads and so on, it generates a belief that so doing is the only way of getting things done. And that is a dangerous road to go down, since we might end up going around the right way of protesting, which is carefully electing our representatives and removing them when they failed to keep their promises. So, I guess it's a matter of thinking with out heads and realizing that a careful, rational vote will take us further than a street protest which ultimately destroys country equity by making it a worse place to visit for tourists and to live in for locals.
We should keep this exceptional manner of protesting for times when it's really necessary. Otherwise, it becomes just like the story of the boy who always cried wolf ...
