Argentina Summer 2009

Hi Everyone. My name is Martha Menendez. I’m a 2L in the JD/MBA program and I will be the publicity chair for ILS for the 2009-2010 school year.

I just got back from an amazing internship in Argentina this summer. Six of us were chosen by Professor Jack Garvey to spend one week in Cordoba and four in Buenos Aires. Two students were assigned internships at private law firms with the remainder of us interning in different departments within the Defensoría del Pueblo de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires.

THE LEGAL SYSTEM

Before getting into the specifics of my experience it’s important to understand a little bit about the legal system in Argentina. The Argentine Constitution was modeled after ours so it is very similar in the rights and protections it provides but there are some key differences to keep in mind.

Their government is made up of the same three branches that make up our own: Executive, Legislative and Judicial, but they have an additional, independent governmental body, the Public Ministry, whose purpose it is to ensure that justice is being served and that the interests of society are protected. While it is headed by an Attorney General of the Nation, the role that the AG takes in Argentina is a bit different from our understanding of that function. There, the AG works for the citizens, not for the government. Many times, the work of the Public Ministry is necessarily antagonistic to what the other branches are doing or seeking to do. This is why it is and must remain an independent body.

The Argentine Constitution has been amended and reformed several times, the last taking place in 1994. One of the most interesting amendments introduced that year incorporated a number of human rights treaties signed by Argentina into its constitution thereby granting these rights full constitutional weight. Given the country’s tumultuous political and social history this provision is quite extraordinary though in reality it has proven difficult to fully implement.

Another major difference between the U.S. and Argentina is Argentina’s open immigration policy. Anyone and everyone within its borders is protected equally under the constitution. Some social services require a two year residency before one is eligible to participate but basic social needs such as employment and healthcare are equally available to all.

THE DEFENSORIA

The Defensoría del Pueblo de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires works to make sure that the citizens of Buenos Aires are aware of their rights and is a place where they can bring any complaints they might have against the city or against any other citizens. Within the Defensoría, the Centro de Estudios para el Fortalecimiento Institucional (CEFI), sets upon the task of making sure that the Defensoría’s mission is served by educating the public and civil servants alike on what their rights are. This is where I was placed and it turned out to be a perfect fit for me.

For four weeks I was able to work mainly with social workers Romina Fleitas and Javier Contino who are in charge of finding out where the citizen’s basic human and civil rights are not being met, educating them about what their resources are and helping find ways to meet their needs. We went into some of the poorest neighborhoods where I was able to see the severe level of poverty which exists in Buenos Aires. As a tourist one would never see the true extent of this problem.

Basically the city is divided, if not literally, into the North and South parts. The invisible divider is Avenida Rivadavia. Most maps of Buenos Aires don’t even show the greater part of the city which is south of Rivadavia; that’s the extent to which the city turns a blind eye to the realities of the situation.

Buenos Aires has a long history of classism. According to Romina and Javier, the North part was always rich as the wealthy tended to live near the port. However the South had been more or less integrated until the flu epidemic at the beginning of the 20^th century. As epidemics tend to do, it hit the poor first and hardest. Those with financial resources fled to the North leaving only the poorest and the sickest behind. The dead were buried in the south in Parque Patricios, a park in what continues to be an especially impoverished area of the city. All the public hospitals are in this area as well.

This was an interesting bit of information considering we were in Argentina at the start of what was shaping up to be another influenza emergency. For anyone following the swine flu crisis outside of Argentina I’m sure it seemed an incredibly unfortunate time to be there but in all honesty, aside from the fact that schools had to be shut down for winter break two weeks early, the city seemed to go on as usual.

As far as the work I did, I wanted my project to be something that would be useful to CEFI. In the end they asked me to work on a comparative report of laws and policies dealing with homelessness as they are implemented in the cities of Buenos Aires and San Francisco. The number of homeless citizens in Buenos Aires is huge and has grown exponentially since their economic crisis in 2001. To further expand the problem there are only three shelters that provide services in this city of millions.

All in all, I fell in love with Argentina and its people. I wasn’t expecting the people to be so warm and helpful. Everyone greets you with a kiss which, to be honest, took a couple of days to get used to but now it’s one of the things I miss the most. As part of the measures to prevent swine flu, the health department recommended that people stop kissing everyone. This is obviously a deeply rooted custom because though they heeded all other recommendations, washing hands, carrying antibacterial lotion, this was not a habit they were willing or able to give up. It would have been rude.

There are undoubtedly a great deal of very serious problems that need to be dealt with in Argentina: government corruption, social apathy, poverty and unemployment, to name a few, but there’s also a sense among many, which I certainly felt, that we’re all in this together and together we’ll have to figure it out. Nobody at the Defensoría mopes around with the weight of the difficult, many times sad work they have to shoulder. To the contrary, they make the most of every day and treat each other like family. It was a great environment to be in and a contagious sort of lifestyle. It’s what made my time there so memorable and the reason I will surely return.