Conclusions from Lake Lácar

So I'm sitting here in this little cafe, on the lake Lácar in Patagonia on my last morning. Got up early to attempt to do some of this looming work that will all be turned in less than two weeks now. Crazy how fast it's all going.

But I came to wonderful realizations. I'm copying and pasting from an email I sent out this morning:

Basically, I'm working on the conclusions of my research paper and for the first time really sat down and thought about what politics and political involvement means to me. Let's see if I can put this into words. I've been sitting here talking to youth for the past two weeks about why they're involved in politics in this tiny town. After my interviews I try and analyze similarities- are they involved because its good social network? Because they want to reclaim public space? For personal reasons of transcendence? ect. I really entered into this experience trying to compare it to my own involvement with the Obama campaign and obviously, it's impossible to do so based on the pure logistical differences between their political system and ours. But it hit me today that it's so much more than that. I was involved because it was fun, it was social, ect but more so than that-- it was a way to promote a cause/ideal that I believed it.

What I've found from my research is that here in San Martín, politics is a necessity. People are involved because the whole town is focused on that which the tourist wants and they don't pay attention to the neighborhoods that have been pushed off to the peripheries (both physically and socially). They are involved because the only other option is to lay down and accept social/economic marginizlacion. And to me that is so sad. There is no basic belief in the power of the system, and honestly, I feel lucky to both have been involved when I was, and to have grown up under such a belief system. Obviously, its something that was intrenched in me long before I signed into work for the campaign, but sitting here-- thousands of miles away from home, and realizing such a strong, and wonderful belief in the power of a person to change the world is pretty incredible to me. It makes me sad that due to historical/social history of this place, its inconcievable to most citizens.

Obviously reading my paper and understanding the social/historical context of this small mountian town is important to understanding the true implications of what I came to realize today - but I just feel like this is the culmination of what I've been wondering here in Argentina. Since that first time sitting down with my host family and getting chills as I showed them Obama and JFK's speeches, explaining to them why one would "waste" their own time to promote the career of a politician, I feel like I've come a long way to here.

I find it ironic that studying someone else's system and reasons for being involved led me to understand myself even better. Nonetheless, it's quite interesting.