Montevideo, Uruguay & Rosario, Argentina: Writing Our Own History
Action
While touring the colonial downtown of Montevideo in February, we came upon the following plaques providing historical information about buildings and locations throughout the downtown:
The bottom of the plaques contain the logos of their sponsors, such as IBM.
Now, as we walk around Rosario we regularly come face to face with graffiti declaring “Pocho Vive” (Pocho lives):
The graffiti is often accompanied by stylized spray painted stencils of ants. During one of our first interviews in Rosario, we couldn’t help but ask who or what Pocho was. We learned that Pocho LePratti was a community activist who grew up in a middle class family in Uruguay but chose to work with children in a shantytown in Rosario called Ludueña. During the Argentinean economic crisis and mass protests of December 2001, he was fatally shot and killed by police officers as he climbed the stairs to the roof of the school where he was preparing food for the children. A website dedicated to the memory of Pocho explains: “Pocho developed an ant’s work, sharing hope, brotherly love and a spirit of struggle among the least favored of this society. It was this that his assassins sought to kill.”
Pocho’s house in Ludeña has been turned into a homeless shelter, a documentary about him has been shown twice (that we know of) in Rosario in the past two months, and numerous people’s libraries throughout Argentina bear his name. Pocho’s ants crawl around the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires as well.
In Rosario, there’s a campaign to name a street after Pocho Lepratti. The street signs have been painted over on President Roca Street, which was named after an Argentine president who began a campaign of massacring indigenous tribes in the south of the country:
Pocho’s story isn’t the only one being told via graffiti in the streets of Argentina. In Rosario there are 380 stencils of bikes painted throughout the city such as the one in a picture above. Each bicycle represents someone who was disappeared during the last dictatorship. When the military kidnapped youths, they often nabbed them in the street leaving their bikes behind. There are also stencils of sneakers painted around the country in homage to the youths who died in a nightclub fire in Buenos Aires in December 2004.
Reflection
As Peter Gabriel sings of anti-apartheid activist Stephen Biko, “You can blow out a candle, but you can’t blow out the fire.” What people have done with Pocho’s story impresses me more than the story of Pocho the individual. The people of Ludueña have developed a means of maintaining a collective memory of someone intimately involved in their struggles to lead a dignified life. Pocho’s story is more relevant to them than that of Sarmiento or Mitre (two Argentine historical figures who have streets in Rosario named after them). The people of Ludueña have assumed the responsibility of sharing his story and their struggles with much of Argentina outside of their barrio. I don’t remember what the plaques in Montevideo said, and I still have no idea who Mitre and Sarmiento are, but thanks to the army of ants stenciling, spray painting graffiti, filming movies, and singing songs about Pocho, I know who he is.
Question
How might the fact that the plaques in Montevideo have corporate sponsors affect their content, if at all? Who are the streets named after in your community? Who are local heroes in your community and how did you learn about them?
While touring the colonial downtown of Montevideo in February, we came upon the following plaques providing historical information about buildings and locations throughout the downtown:
The bottom of the plaques contain the logos of their sponsors, such as IBM.
Now, as we walk around Rosario we regularly come face to face with graffiti declaring “Pocho Vive” (Pocho lives):
The graffiti is often accompanied by stylized spray painted stencils of ants. During one of our first interviews in Rosario, we couldn’t help but ask who or what Pocho was. We learned that Pocho LePratti was a community activist who grew up in a middle class family in Uruguay but chose to work with children in a shantytown in Rosario called Ludueña. During the Argentinean economic crisis and mass protests of December 2001, he was fatally shot and killed by police officers as he climbed the stairs to the roof of the school where he was preparing food for the children. A website dedicated to the memory of Pocho explains: “Pocho developed an ant’s work, sharing hope, brotherly love and a spirit of struggle among the least favored of this society. It was this that his assassins sought to kill.”
Pocho’s house in Ludeña has been turned into a homeless shelter, a documentary about him has been shown twice (that we know of) in Rosario in the past two months, and numerous people’s libraries throughout Argentina bear his name. Pocho’s ants crawl around the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires as well.
In Rosario, there’s a campaign to name a street after Pocho Lepratti. The street signs have been painted over on President Roca Street, which was named after an Argentine president who began a campaign of massacring indigenous tribes in the south of the country:
Pocho’s story isn’t the only one being told via graffiti in the streets of Argentina. In Rosario there are 380 stencils of bikes painted throughout the city such as the one in a picture above. Each bicycle represents someone who was disappeared during the last dictatorship. When the military kidnapped youths, they often nabbed them in the street leaving their bikes behind. There are also stencils of sneakers painted around the country in homage to the youths who died in a nightclub fire in Buenos Aires in December 2004.
Reflection
As Peter Gabriel sings of anti-apartheid activist Stephen Biko, “You can blow out a candle, but you can’t blow out the fire.” What people have done with Pocho’s story impresses me more than the story of Pocho the individual. The people of Ludueña have developed a means of maintaining a collective memory of someone intimately involved in their struggles to lead a dignified life. Pocho’s story is more relevant to them than that of Sarmiento or Mitre (two Argentine historical figures who have streets in Rosario named after them). The people of Ludueña have assumed the responsibility of sharing his story and their struggles with much of Argentina outside of their barrio. I don’t remember what the plaques in Montevideo said, and I still have no idea who Mitre and Sarmiento are, but thanks to the army of ants stenciling, spray painting graffiti, filming movies, and singing songs about Pocho, I know who he is.
Question
How might the fact that the plaques in Montevideo have corporate sponsors affect their content, if at all? Who are the streets named after in your community? Who are local heroes in your community and how did you learn about them?
2 Comments:
At 11:24 AM, Jen said…
I'm not really sure how the corporate sponsorship affects the content. But it might be more that when the people of a community put the information up, it's more accessible and known than if some random person comes in and puts up a random sign about history in the area - Renate, remember the odd Savannah signs? :) The only one I remember really is that "Jingle Bells" was written in Savannah, and that's because 1) I think it's odd that a place without snow is the origin of that song, and 2) I know the song. So I think that's the bigger indicator for the interest in the content.
I don't know much about the local heroes in the community. From what I've heard, they are all confederate heroes :). And we know that the civil war issues have not died yet in the south.
As an aside, did you know that there is a Confederate Memorial Day and some things shut down for it? Crazy
At 2:30 PM, lernerm said…
I tend to be suspicious of corporate sponsorship of anything, be it NPR or whatever. AS for naming of streets in Baltimore, most are named after dead British nobility (Charles Street, Calvert, etc)- not many oddly enough are named after LIncoln or Jefferson. Local heroes tend to be two types- those covered by the press, such as peole who organize the building of a local playground, and those who are more radical and whose good deeds may go unnoticed. Based on what Josh has told me I think that in general people in other countries seem to be more politically aware than in the US - most grafitti in the US for example is about local gangs and the like rather than political heroes such as the ones you guys have mentioned.
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