We’ve seen throughout the book that empires rose and fell, and that is the case for the new empires of the 20th and 21st centuries; corporations, that is.
It was very interesting to find in the book the map of the world with a visual representation of the McDonald’s restaurants on p.732, and that made me think about all the other products that I had seen coming, going, and staying in Buenos Aires (Argentina), as well as their transformation.
In Buenos Aires, aside from McDonald’s we also had Burger King and Wendy’s. Burger King managed to survive, but Wendy’s was short-lived, and it closed its doors a few years after it opened. Similar fate awaited Dunkin Donuts and Pizza Hut; they vanished in just a couple of years. Who, if I may ask, did the market research for these last two companies, and convinced them that it was a good idea to open businesses in a city with more Italian pizzerias and French/Italian-style bakeries than the market can handle? Who knows… In any case, aside from McDonald’s and Burger King, people did not like the rest. That was until Starbucks.
Starbucks sells a product, but also a style. It’s the invasion of the paper cup and plastic lid, but it’s also the crude reflection of social change: people are abandoning taking the time to sit down and have coffee with friends or relatives. The “Starbucks culture” praises individuality and a certain alienation from the rest. Before Starbucks, coffee shops did not serve coffee in paper coffee cups… that was heretical! Coffee was always served in porcelain cups, even when it was delivered from a nearby coffee shop to your office. Granted, some people are still going to coffee shops and enjoying coffee with friends (luckily there aren’t enough Starbucks in Bs. As. yet, though they are rapidly multiplying), but Starbucks is definitely marking a shift in “porteños’”societal habits. The Starbucks culture says “I am hip, trendy, I don’t have time for you, and I don’t need you” and it is appealing to certain sectors of society. That is the kind of cultural invasion that I don’t particularly like.
In that regard McDonalds was less harmful, although we can’t say the same about its food! Joking aside, it was interesting to see that the “porteño” culture actually transformed McDonalds. We don’t like drip coffee, especially if it has been sitting there for hours. We simply don’t pay for drip coffee (we call it “umbrella juice”), and we do not like the pastries that were offered with it, so that was an area that did not make McDonald’s any profit. The Styrofoam cup that burns like hell didn’t catch anybody’s attention, either. So McDonald’s opened an espresso McCafe, and added local pastries, and that’s when it started being profitable. That was an example of the local culture assimilating the “cultural penetration” as Strayer calls it, but also modifying it to its taste.
Now, behind the cultural invasion, there is also the willingness of the invaded to accept and assimilate, and that is the problem when it comes to products and services and the image they bring with them: the fact that they are appealing. People try to emulate or live the fabricated life that is sold, through the consumption of such products and services. Unlike the colonialist invasions, cultural invasions are less rejected, less fought against; they are even embraced willingly in some cases.
I hope there are still “traditional” coffee shops in Bs.As. by the time I go back... and that I still have friends who are willing to sit with me and enjoy a "real" cup of coffee!
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Friday, July 8, 2011
Chapters 21-22, follow up on last post
Continuing along the lines of the previous post, here is my modest contribution of events that were happening in Argentina during the same period covered in chapters 21-22. Strayer touched a bit on the beginning of the times I’ll describe here, when he mentioned in Chapter 18 the 2.5 million European immigrants that arrived in Bs.As. between 1870 and 1915 (Strayer, p.552).
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Buenos Aires received a huge wave of European immigrants. With exports on the rise and the political power in the hands of the elite, the Argentinean middle and lower classes began to push for more political representation and social recognition. The immigrants had brought with them communism, anarchism, and socialism, and their ideas started finding fertile grounds among the middle and lower classes; mostly an ideological movement with few actual attacks on the elite or its property. At the other extreme of this movement was the Argentine Patriotic League, an alliance of upper class youths characterized by their anti-Semitism, anti-communism, and xenophobia. The League made immigrant and, in particular anarchists, the target of violent attacks.[1]
This was, in a few words, the socio-political context of the early 1900s in Buenos Aires. It is important to note that, aside from two particular incidents that decidedly scarred the history of the country, communism, socialism and anarchism in Argentina were never as extreme in their behavior as they were in other parts of the world. While the basic ideals were professed, these groups were mostly interested in a moderate version of what they preached.
What followed in Argentina were the populist governments of Hipolito Yrigoyen (who paid no attention to the already weakened anarchist movement, and had no intentions of supporting them, or of entering any conflict) [1], then the Peronist era, and during this long period governments made every effort to stay away from any form of extreme leftist movement or ideology.
Yrigoyen’s first presidency largely avoided the violent police repressions of anarchists, communists and socialists of his predecessor (President Alvear), therefore chilling confrontations. Later on, and in a political move, Yrigoyen still avoided anarchists, but began dealing with trade unions [1]. Peron’s government fostered the syndicalist’s relationship with his government, and syndicalism rapidly replaced the “fresh-from-Europe” anarchism, communism and socialism of the early 1900s.
The beginnings of the populist movements in the early 1900s are significant in Argentinean history for what happened decades later. Although revolutionary ideas of communist, socialist and anarchist nature never reached massive support, they stained the Argentinean political scene for decades to come. They were part of the chaos that unleashed after Peron’s death, and part of the reason for the military coups that followed. With the missile crisis still fresh in its mind, the U.S. backed and supported these military “anti-Communist” governments [1], which ended the lives of tenths of thousands of “disappeared” people, and ruined forever the lives of tenths of thousands of others. The bloodiest chapter of state violence in Argentinean history had begun.
Note: The two incidents (their full descriptions would merit several more posts) were the violent police repression of workers during a protest on May 1st, 1909, commanded by the chief of police Ramon L. Falcon; and the vengeance (at the hands of the anarchists) for the workers killed during that protest. In short, Falcon repressed the anarchists violently, then Simon Radowitzky, an 18 year-old Russian immigrant, dropped a bomb in Falcon’s coach, killing him and his assistant. A full description of these particular events can be found in Osvaldo Bayer’s essay titled “Simon Radowitzky.”
[1] Nouzeilles, G. & Montaldo, G. (Eds) The Argentina Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Duke University Press, 2002
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Buenos Aires received a huge wave of European immigrants. With exports on the rise and the political power in the hands of the elite, the Argentinean middle and lower classes began to push for more political representation and social recognition. The immigrants had brought with them communism, anarchism, and socialism, and their ideas started finding fertile grounds among the middle and lower classes; mostly an ideological movement with few actual attacks on the elite or its property. At the other extreme of this movement was the Argentine Patriotic League, an alliance of upper class youths characterized by their anti-Semitism, anti-communism, and xenophobia. The League made immigrant and, in particular anarchists, the target of violent attacks.[1]
This was, in a few words, the socio-political context of the early 1900s in Buenos Aires. It is important to note that, aside from two particular incidents that decidedly scarred the history of the country, communism, socialism and anarchism in Argentina were never as extreme in their behavior as they were in other parts of the world. While the basic ideals were professed, these groups were mostly interested in a moderate version of what they preached.
What followed in Argentina were the populist governments of Hipolito Yrigoyen (who paid no attention to the already weakened anarchist movement, and had no intentions of supporting them, or of entering any conflict) [1], then the Peronist era, and during this long period governments made every effort to stay away from any form of extreme leftist movement or ideology.
Yrigoyen’s first presidency largely avoided the violent police repressions of anarchists, communists and socialists of his predecessor (President Alvear), therefore chilling confrontations. Later on, and in a political move, Yrigoyen still avoided anarchists, but began dealing with trade unions [1]. Peron’s government fostered the syndicalist’s relationship with his government, and syndicalism rapidly replaced the “fresh-from-Europe” anarchism, communism and socialism of the early 1900s.
The beginnings of the populist movements in the early 1900s are significant in Argentinean history for what happened decades later. Although revolutionary ideas of communist, socialist and anarchist nature never reached massive support, they stained the Argentinean political scene for decades to come. They were part of the chaos that unleashed after Peron’s death, and part of the reason for the military coups that followed. With the missile crisis still fresh in its mind, the U.S. backed and supported these military “anti-Communist” governments [1], which ended the lives of tenths of thousands of “disappeared” people, and ruined forever the lives of tenths of thousands of others. The bloodiest chapter of state violence in Argentinean history had begun.
Note: The two incidents (their full descriptions would merit several more posts) were the violent police repression of workers during a protest on May 1st, 1909, commanded by the chief of police Ramon L. Falcon; and the vengeance (at the hands of the anarchists) for the workers killed during that protest. In short, Falcon repressed the anarchists violently, then Simon Radowitzky, an 18 year-old Russian immigrant, dropped a bomb in Falcon’s coach, killing him and his assistant. A full description of these particular events can be found in Osvaldo Bayer’s essay titled “Simon Radowitzky.”
[1] Nouzeilles, G. & Montaldo, G. (Eds) The Argentina Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Duke University Press, 2002
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