The result of this express-exercise yielded the following conclusions: This individual identified himself as a native of the continent and saw me as a white occupier who had to leave his land. My policy options were to a) conquer and subjugate, which would be incredibly demodé, b) go native, alas I didn´t know how to translate Dances with Wolves to Spanish, c) or take the moral high ground of the arrogant/guilty anxious first world liberal by pretending to understand this person´s plight and claim to have the solution to his problems through a mixture of micro-finance, poorly read marxism and autarky. This seemed the natural fit, but of course without the problem solving part because I was on my way to a bar.
I told him my respect for his culture was deep and thought it was superior to the cold hearted, dehumanized ways of the West and would be glad to go back to Washington and make a sign reading "Free The Public Park in Argentina!" wearing the alpaca poncho I was expecting he´d provide at no cost because of the deep connection we had just established. He did not like this at all. Apparently he and four thousand others whom I had failed to notice because I was reading "The Economist" on my Blackberry were squatting the park. My promise to ask for the liberation of the park was interpreted by, we shall call him the Park-Man, as a call to evict him and his fellow squatters from what they had in recent hours made their permanent residence. Adding the word "Washington" to the mix evoked images of the Bay of Pigs and Khe Sahn that they had never seen, making them more angry.
Even though I told him I had friends who owned Che-Guevara shirts his anger was mounting rapidly, fortunately on the far side of this situation a large group of people started hurling stones at the squatters. These, Park-Man informed me were the neighbors of the area who did not want the park to be taken by squatters. He Quickly started mixing Molotov cocktails like a third world pyromaniac Tom Cruise to fend off the assailants.
Soon it was an all out battle between the squatters and the neighbors. My understanding from a recent article in the New York Times is that this got to the point that people got killed. The government of the city, with a misdemeanor-fighting police force begged the national government in charge of the city´s actual police to act. Cristina said she didn´t want to "oppress the people." The situation get really tribal to the point that the wounded started getting pulled out of ambulances and the government sent in the national guard. After giving some money to the squatters they reluctantly left.
This whole situation restored my faith in the Argentine political class because of the bold commitment showed to prove social science experiments are realizable in both scope and size. Some less sophisticated observers foolishly believed the government was allowing people to be killed in a neighborhood scuffle, the occupation of a public spaces, and refusing to use legitimate force to prevent either of those things. But I´m one to recognize testing (and proving!) of Hobbes theses when I see it. For starters, the organizer of the occupation was a political organizer for the governing party. This left me much relieved and cleared any suspicion of uncontrolled anarchy.
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