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PUERTO RICO HERALD
Don’t Cry For Them - They’re Movin' On
By Frances Negrón-Muntaner
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February 8, 2002
Copyright © 2002 PUERTO RICO HERALD. All Rights Reserved.
 It started as a trickle, affecting the youngest, the nervous, or simply the most perceptive. Now it’s a tsunami of ruined merchants, angry grandmothers, and former dogwalkers turned pizza deliverymen. Call them anything but Argentineans and please don’t pity them as they pour by the hundreds into Italy, Madrid, Israel and the multi-national capital of Latin America, South Florida: They are a clan with a plan.
Unlike Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Haitians, for instance, who leave their "heart" in their homelands, Miami-bound Argentineans talk about their country as it were a discarded fruit pit: "No sirve," (no good) is a nearly universal conclusion. To the question of whether they miss Buenos Aires, one of the most beautiful cities of the Americas, a young couple in their twenties who would not give me their name flatly said: "No. There is no future there, why think about it?" I guess that’s why their American pop song is "Don’t Cry for Me Argentina" and not "I Left My Heart in Mar del Plata." (Although it could be "leaving my plata behind nearly gave me a heart attack)."
Without a streak of sentimentality or even the melancholia of the political exiles of the 70’s, these young Argentineans also don’t care to discuss the economy or the political context that created the exodus. Curiously, some of the new immigrants exude a tense and unfocused anti-Americanism, not surprising for a people who according to a recent poll had the highest opinion of Fidel Castro in Latin America, but revealing given where they have chosen to land. Recent arrival Charlie, for example, enjoys walking down Miami streets with a Che Guevara T-shirt that reads "hasta la Victoria siempre." To date, Charlie confesses that the Cuban and Nicaraguan exile communities are more talk than action: "I’ve gotten some threats but no punches."
But really, these folks don’t want to reveal their Argentineaness or talk about Argentina, bah. One of my key sources, let’s call him Marcelo, a young man of Jewish ancestry and artistic inclinations, philosophizes that although some may be finding jobs in restaurants and stores owned by their countrymen, Argentineans feel highly uncomfortable about mixing with others from home, unless they’re family. "Most of us are doing jobs here that we would never do back home, so we rather not run into anyone. It’s too embarrassing."
Marcelo, who works two jobs, one of them cleaning windows, concludes: "When you see another Argentinean doing menial work, it’s like looking at yourself in the mirror." Although a far cry from the entrepreneurial Cuban concept of "mi socio," there is no reason to assume that the Argentineans are not going to make it in America. But they do have a different tool kit.
The big drill in the Argentinean survival kit is the fact that they are blessed (or cursed) with geographical dyslexia: most dryly deny that they are Latin Americans. Although arguably a national delusion — the product of a several century old mantra of "foreigners-r-us" — this means that most Argentineans in the United States do not identify as Latinos, hence end up both voiding this cultural resource and avoiding the stigmatizing baggage that comes along with it.
In fact, many Argentineans in Miami are getting ahead by emphasizing their Italian, Jewish, Spanish and even Lebanese roots, as if their Argentinean nationality had been a pure accident. "We came here to work and live a better future," suggests Maria, who is of Italian ancestry and works as a hostess in an Italian restaurant. As old-fashioned European immigrants, they are working seven days a week, night and day, cleaning floors, cooking, and pinching pennies, one by one — and not sending any back home to their cash-strapped cities. "We are doing in Miami what our ancestors did in Argentina when they arrived from war torn European cities," Marcelo adds. "We are forward-looking group. We are not interested in dwelling in the past."
But although the Argentineans fleeing to South Florida want to live in a place where capitalism "works," it is from Argentina that something miraculous can arise from the chaos. The people have made it clear that they no longer trust public authorities but they are also keeping the pressure on the government to create jobs and fight corruption, while taking destiny into their own hands. Without much support from the United States and with forgetful countrymen abroad who seem unlikely to send any migrant dollars, millions of Argentineans are now creating an alterative economy based on need rather than greed, and questioning itself as never before.
Certainly, the hardship endured by Argentineans who cannot even fully access their bank accounts until 2005 is nothing to rejoice about, but the spectacle of working and middle-class people looting supermarkets, pounding pans, and threatening to topple the Casa Rosada, forces us to see how fragile our subordinated economies are and how dangerous it is to entrust any country’s wealth to the privileged few — nationals or not. And this message should not be lost on Puerto Rico, where if someday those cupones stop coming, people will not be banging pots along the boulevards, but each other’s thick heads with even heavier doses of lead.
And at this point, to paraphrase Roy Orbison’s song, I have no doubt that quite a few of us "we’ll be crying."
Frances Negrón-Muntaner is a writer, scholar and filmmaker. Her column, The Writing On The Wall, appears courtesy of The San Juan Star. She can be reached at: Bikbaporub@aol.com
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