Manifestacion - It's a rally, it's a gathering, it's a protest, it's a Tuesday!

Email recieved by all of our BA staff this morning, as a warning :

Avisaron de la recepción de abajo que a las 14/14:30hs va a haber una manifestación frente al edificio y van a vallar la calle (para que los que tienen autos estacionados en frente en la calle).

The WorldLingo translation :

They warned of the reception of down that to 14/14: 30hs is going to have a manifestation in front of the building and are going to fence the street (so that those that have cars parked opposite in the street).

We had barriers up in front of our building this morning and then the protesters came just after the lunch hour with drums and noisemaker firecrackers and speeches and pamphlets (which were just thrown up in the air to scatter in the breeze and litter the parking lot and nearby park).

They came to protest against ARCOR - a food processing company which is located on the second and third floor of our building. The crowd was about a hundred paid protesters.

They banged away at the drums for over 2 hours, shouted things with a megaphone, fired off a pile of fireworks and generally made noise. No injuries or damage to the building but there were eggs tossed at the windows. After that, they just rolled up thier banners and walk away and left their mess....literally.

A city cleaning crew then came in behind them and picked up the mess, washed down the spray painted sidewalks, cleaned the windows, used leaf blowers to gather up the pamphlets. Things were all cleaned up in a couple of hours. Other than a few loose pamphlets, you wouldnt know they were here. These protests happen every day somewhere in Argentina.

With the warning, the protest, the clean up and the resumption of normalcy - the circle of life exists within an Argentine protest.

They havent been around for awhile. It has been at least 2 months since they were out front.

There you go, 'Protest in a Bag'....

Ahhh....it feels good to be alive in BA!

B.