Vamos viejo, que pasa?

Friends!

France, Portugal? Germany, Italy? Now it's an all European final, and my pesos are still on the Deutchies.

Hard to call the France/Portugal game. The French have been a surprise, played well, but don't strike me in any memorable way. I can't really remember players, their faces, or coaches/trainers. The Portuguese have heart, an amusing Brazilian coach, some excellent, excellent players and (as the game w/ Holland showed), aren't especially shy about flexing a little muscle. I guess I just don't have enough info to call it either way, but I'm going to root for the Portuguese, though my sense is the French might take it. As for the other two, the Italians are the Italians, the Germans, the Germans. What can I say? I like Klinsmann & Co., so it's them I'll be rooting for, ragazzi. Sorry.

On other fronts, lots of interesting news coming out of Argentina. They've now found some interesting documents on Plan Condor and Argentine involvement in Bolivia.

From what I understand these were documents discovered by the Argentines in Nicaragua, sent to Kirchner, who then turned them over to Evo. Only one BA paper made reference to the documents and I found no mention of them in any of the major Bolivian journals. They're important because even though we know Bolivia was involved in Plan Condor, we don't have the full story on what "really" went on. From people I've talked to, things were pretty bad, the news just didn't get out as it did with Argentina and Chile, for example.

And, after all the craziness yesterday, I did go to the Madres' 'Universidad Popular' to sit in on a class. I'm glad I went. The thing about the university is that anyone can go, irrespective of $, irrespective of education, qualifications, age, etc. And, from what I understand, all of the professors are either doing this for free or with very little pay. The professor in question was one I had interviewed before and she gives an excellent class. This semester it's Argentine history and the Madres. They're discussing the philosophical/strategic/ideological evolution of the Madres, tracking discourses and how they evolve with and/or confront parallel national and international discourses. Later the class split up and did group work evaluating a text of Cortazar's. Results quite good. Naturally, I sat in the back with the rest of the scoundrels and we had a grand old time. Funny how no matter where you are in the world, in a class, the back row always has something going on. I like Ines a lot (the prof) and, despite my choice of seat, have been invited back.

B.