Date: November 6th 2005

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Hello all,

Our second day in Buenos Aires was a lot of fun. We ended up running into our friend Mike McGuire from Washington DC just wandering around the city. He was on his way to a protest outside the Bauen hotel so we joined him. It turns out that the hotel was one of many hotels and factories and other businesses that was taken over by its workers. The way it works is the workers decided that the hotel was not treating them properly and that it in essence owed them a lot of back pay. They then claim (in court) that they are creditors, and essentially reposes the property, booting the bosses-owners out. This happened at the Bauen hotel two or three years ago. It has been worker owned and operated ever since, though there have been many battles both in and out of court. The day before yesterday, a judge ordered the hotel to be shut down. The workers, up for another battle organized a massive rally and march for that very same day. We met up with them just as the march was le aving the hotel heading for the court house. We took the streets and marched along with them. Once at the courthouse, they started shaking the massive 6 foot tall metal fence surounding the entrance to the courthouse. We stayed near the back, but got some good shots of the fence as it was whacked with sticks and threatened to come down. There were a few dozen officers inside the fence and a line of riot cops at the ready a block away. The fence was not taken down, the the drumming hitting the fence with sticks, and singing and chanting were loud enough that anyone inside knew just what was going on. We stayed at the rally for a few hours and then decided to go find an all you can eat buffet (for about US$2.50) as we had not eaten all day.

After a couple hours napping in our hostel, we went to a radical library that our friend Dave had told us about. It closed at 8 and since we were tired and had a long afternoon nap it was after 8 before we had figured out the subway system and made it to the library. The people there instantly invited us in and gave us a tour of the space. it included a library, a yoga lounge, a livingroom type artmaking space, a kitchen with outdoor patio dining, a room for a local indymedia type media outlet, and a few other office and storage rooms. They seem to sell a lot of products that are made in factories that have been repossessed and are now owned and operated by the workers. They were telling us all about how their collective runs and that just earlier that day they had had a big meeting about gender dynamics in the collective and had worked out a number of ways to fight the patriarchy that was causing some trouble internally (some things are the same everywhere). While I cou ld only understand bits and pieces it was good to see how other radical communities deal with the same struggles we are constantly fighting at home.

Even though the space was officially closed, they invited us to join them for dinner. We had a very fun and lively evening with a mix of Spanish and a little English. They were all local radicals about our age who run the collective and library. We learned a lot and had a great time. While they are not heading out to the main protests in Mar del Plata, they are organizing local solidarity actions. If we have a few days in BA at the end of our trip we certainly plan on visiting them again. They were incredibly amazed and enthralled by out camel backs, so we may leave one here with them when we leave!

We left on an 8am train to Mar del Plata and arrived midafternoon. We are checked into a nice little hotel, for about US$7 per person. Mar del Plata is a very touristy town south of BA on the beach. According to the "Lonely Planet Guide" the only reason to ever go here in the summer is so you can never again call a beach crowded anywhere else. However, this is still early spring and chilly enough to need our long sleeve shirts, so the beaches that stretch as far as one can see are mostly deserted. This afternoon we plan to visit the fishing piers where we should be able to get within a meter of a large sea lion colony.

On our way into town, we saw a wheatpasted sign for a documentary showing last night at a local library so we decided to go to that. We met a bunch of local anarchists (who turned out to be very young, 16-19 yrs old). After the long movie which we all found very difficult to interpret, they invited us back to their house for matte. It sounds as if we will be offered free housing for more of the time we are here after tonight. They were all upset at us for paying the US 75 cents to get into the movie!

Overall I feel like we are getting connected to a bunch of local groups and are learning our way around the city. They plan to have 10,000 uniformed police and military officers plus however manyothers. We are currently researching exactly what is going on, what streets will be closed, etc., and have started in depth discussions of our plans for the week, though a lot of it will depend on how it goes. A few different groups have asked us to participate in their actions and to run with them during the protest, but dont worry, our first priority is still to watch, learn, and stay safe!

I'll write more at another date, Hope all is well with everyone at home. I´m writing these emails just quickly without any editing, but feel free to share with anyone interested if they want!

- Jamie Moorby