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Editor's Note: Pedro Brieger is an Argentine journalist and sociologist, author of more than seven books and collaborator in publications on international issues. He currently serves as director of NODAL, a portal dedicated exclusively to news from Latin America and the Caribbean. He collaborated with different national media such as Clarín, El Cronista, La Nación, Página / 12, Perfil and for magazines such as Noticias, Somos, Le Monde Diplomatique and Panorama. Throughout his career Brieger won important awards for his informative work on Argentine radio and television. The opinions expressed in this column are exclusive to the author.
(CNN Spanish) - Argentina is characterized by having noisy and happy mass street mobilizations. The folklore of football stadiums has long since taken to the streets with its melodies of popular songs, its rhythmic leaps from when in the stadiums the public was on its feet, but also from politics.
Many people outside of Argentina do not know that during the proscription of Peronism after the 1955 coup, the Peronist march - obviously also proscribed - was intoned in football stadiums with lyrics alluding to the preferred team as a way of circumventing the fierce censorship. Still less should they know that these (politicized) rhythms in the era of globalization even reached Japan and that the music of the Peronist march is now part of Japanese football folklore.
Since the return of democracy in Argentina in 1983, every March 24 mass marches have been held to commemorate the day of the 1976 coup d'état and the dictatorship that lasted until December 10, 1983. People move to the rhythm of he chants and jumps on the asphalt as if he were in the stands of a football stadium while the smell of perspiration is interspersed with the dense smoke from the grill where the choripán is prepared - a chorizo between two breads - sold in improvised stalls, while the classic mate passes from hand to hand among people who do not even know each other. Mate is shared. Always. And in the marches of the 24 the people that are not seen during the year melt into the embraces of the reunions and the emotions, remembering the thousands of disappeared.
This March 24 everything changed. In the first place, because President Alberto Fernández revitalized state agencies in the field of human rights and he himself recorded an allusive message. However, by order of the government, social isolation was decreed and the acts and mobilizations following the covid-19 were suspended. It was not easy for human rights organizations to make the decision not to mobilize, not to see each other's faces.
This 2020 there were no marches, nor choripán, much less mate, which is now taken in the Lebanese or Syrian style: each person with his own mate that is not shared.
But popular ingenuity did not decline. Thousands of white handkerchiefs -symbol of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo- sewn by hand, appeared on doors, balconies, windows and terraces, while virtually - with drawings, photos and videos - the white scarves "flew" on social networks .
The dictatorship - at the time - caused the confinement, instilling fear. The covid-19 pandemic prevented crowds from gathering on the streets on March 24. In any case, the probability is that sooner rather than later, the mate will circulate again from hand to hand when the doors open, when we meet again ...