The Crush of Democracy - part 1

We generally don't realize how precious things are until they are lost, rediscovered and nearly lost again.

I can remember vividly talking with friends in Buenos Aires about how they felt just three and 1/2 years after that nation had regained its democracy after decades of dictatorial rule. There was a sensation in the air, a feeling of promise that was palpable despite the ever-present economic problems. Hyperinflation is a remarkable phenomenon, one can witness cost lifecycles that require decades in the United States play out over months in countries afflicted with this economic curse. Everyone wanted US dollars, American currency was the de facto Gold standard - it was an interesting time to be an expatriate in Argentina - it was 1987.

My most serious concerns upon my arrival to the Paris of South America related to which restaurants I was going to try out next, given my extended purchasing power and the abundance of incredible steak houses, pizza places and ice cream parlors - that and the girls, the entire city seemed to be populated with fashion models. There was no reason to believe that this time and place would shortly become a nexus for popular political transformation and if there had been any indication I doubt that those considerations would have captured my attention.

The people were happy, the city was alive and it seemed to me anyway that the world shared my youthful and relatively carefree perspective. Buenos Aires is as big as New York City but its character is so radically different that it didn't feel like being in a mega-city at all. Things were laid back - people actually took off during the afternoon for siestas, not that they were sleeping but the mid-day was open season for all types of leisure activity. People worked later to make up for it - this was fundamentally foreign to a boy who had grown up in and around Dayton, Ohio - but I liked it. Travelling abroad is one of the best educations a person can get, it forces us to view life through a different lens if at least for a little while and opens up possibilities that we would have never considered within the provincial confines of our homeland. It also helps one to appreciate those places where we came from even more - I remember playing the handful of CDs that I brought with me over and over again. Those songs evoke memories of the places I had lived, the people I had known and I enjoyed contrasting those experiences with the new ones that were juming out at me at a rapid clip.

At times I felt like an ambassador, at other times I felt like an infant groping for the most basic words to express my primal wants and needs. The folks in Buenos Aires think of themselves as a sort of extension of Europe, with some very intersting exceptions - like the Tango, which has no parallel anywhere on the planet. In many ways I was out of my depth, as naive as if I had come straight off of the farm (or more aptly in my case, out of the suburbs) and been placed squarely into the middle of the city of light. I very nearly decided to stay there for good, I was in love - with the city, with a girl from that city or perhaps with all of the girls in that city and more importantly I was taken with the idea that I could redefine myself there in that distant land.

It is a bit like a daydream until the military attempted a coup - on that day I at once witnessed the resolve of one nation to remain free and rediscovered my own appreciation for the freedoms I was born to...


Copyright 2008, Stephen Lahanas