Within the first moments of my arrival to the protest, I am
reeling. Dozens of young Argentine activists are milling about like moths
around a speaker who is discussing something through a megaphone and bathed in
an aura of electric greenish-blue light emanating from the front of the ancient
university building.
This is the evocative leftist branch of the University of Buenos Aires- a place where the legacy
of Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara is still coursing like blood through the
veins of the decaying institution. I try not to think about how as a yanqui, my
country historically represents just the sort of international interference in
Latin American affairs that the speaker is railing against.
As I jostle through the crowd of young protesters toward the
entrance, the scene of focused intensity is amplified by the dizzying smell of
cigarettes and sweat lingering in the humid air. Inside, the cinder block walls
that make up the hallways are crumbling and intimate groups of students engaged
in fervent discussion look like they were transported from the sixties era of
political ferment.
Weeks later, I meet Hector in the quiet courtyard of the
university. A young man with matted hair and an exquisite smile, Hector has
been planting vegetables on a patch of land in the university’s courtyard ever
since he has been hired as a gardener.
“We believe that everyone should have the same amount of food to eat and that
no one should ever have to go hungry", Hector explains as he picks up a
few fresh-looking carrots out of the soil and shakes the dirt off of them. As
he works, I notice that his tattered pants are practically falling off of his
thin frame.
I listen mesmerized as he nonchalantly describes hunger, poverty,
disease in the federal capital- aspects of street life that I will never truly understand. Hector admonishes the capitalist system for being all about "money, money, money”. Before my astonished eyes, the 21st
century socialist goes on to wrap up the radishes, carrots, and parsley each
separately in a newspaper and hands them to me ceremoniously as a vegetable
bouquet of flowers.
It feels inappropriate that I, representing American wealth and affluence,
should accept a gift from him. However, as dusk sets in and luminous
processions of students make their way out onto the streets again, I walk home
with the fresh produce in my hand and overwhelmed by an unbearable emotion.
It’s difficult to say whether it is the personality of the individual or the
atmosphere that causes my revelation. I had been determined not to fall under
the spell of the university. However it is precisely in this moment that I am
filled with a new energy and a new hope; maybe the blended tapestry of the
human race could one day reach mutual understanding, after all. This is Che’s
Revenge: the possibly of being permeated by one’s surroundings to the point of
being changed forever.
