A Testimonial after Returning from Living Abroad
I wanted to introduce myself as your wayward journalist covering important news on Emerging Markets as the world becomes one. Covering the business of the BRICKM nations is not exactly my forte. I studied literature through college. However, I have firsthand knowledge of how important one nation is to another, how one market effects another, how one trade defines another, how all nations inevitable lean on each other.
From April to December of 2009 I lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina. My apartment was in a sleepy corner of the Recoleta, a neighborhood in the Capital Federal. Cafes line the streets. Stray dogs eat empanadas in front of panaderias. Buenos Aires is a city of great traffic accidents, a hectic metropolis where the rich and the poor live across the street (like most big cities in South America). A city of insouciance and melancholy. A city of all night ice cream parlors. A city of strikes and piqueteros. A city of brave and fading elegance.
During business hours, I worked as a professor of English for General Mills, Latin America.
Through my work I was able to see Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Peru. The landscape of South America is still very uneven. Buenos Aires has two neighborhoods of glass skyscrapers and twenty neighborhoods where people sleep in homes made of leaf and mud. All across the continent there is one road that connects each city. From Sao Paulo to Rio de Janiero there is only an unlit, two-lane road that snakes through hills of dense jungle, thousands of diesel trucks and double-decker buses bumper to bumper all night long.
Still there are innumerable treasures all over the continent. A way of life is possible there that is extinct here. For example, on Sunday every single Argentine no matter how old returns home to have a barbecue with family. Most of the city is quiet. It is a day reserved for family. All across Peru, families farm high in the mountains using the same methods as the Inca. The past seems closer in South America, whereas in the Western World we are constantly cycling the future.
I return to the United States fresh, escaping the humidity below the Tropic of Capricorn. Even though most countries in South America don’t understand our country they still esteem us even while they are hoping for our comeuppance. Our trains run on-time. Our cemeteries are not stacked with monuments to past dictators.
I want to Thank You in advance for reading my articles. They will be unbiased and fully disclosed. I am simply a wayward journalist who works for you.