The Butterfly Effect

This week my grandmother flew in from Buenos Aires, Argentina to visit my family for the holidays. On the ride back from the airport we started catching up and soon stumbled onto the topic of current Argentine politcs. At first I wasn't very interested in the conversation because I didn't think it to be relevant to my life and I also wasn't very interested in foreign politics. I became more engaged, however, as I began seeing connections between my life and Argentina's policies. President Kirchner's policies specifically seemed to have a big impact on my family and, by extension, myself. And so, I decided to dedicate this post to a reflection on how someone thousands of miles away can have an influence on my life.

Before I get into the philosophical aspects of it, I'd like to give a brief background on Kirchner's policies that are affecting my family in Argentina. This is a translated transcript of what my grandmother had to say about her country's politics:

“It's a very serious problem. The problem is that Kirchner has spent more money than the budget allows. Kirchner doesn't want people to spend money outside of Argentina so that she can use that money within the country to pay off all the debt she has put Argentina in. On top of that, there has been an since there were bad politics with Argentina's foreign commerce. Because of all this, it's now practically impossible to exchange pesos (Argentine currency) for dollars.  This has an impact mostly on the middle class, which can be seen with the increasing poverty rates. There's also a high indication of inflation, around 30% annually, which is making the Argentine peso lose value. The middle class wants to save up on dollars because its a more stable currency but its almost impossible to get them. But the rich, on the other hand, have a lot of dollars saved up outside of the country so it doesn’t impact them. But I'm not rich. . There's also the issue of internal debt. Kirchner has made it harder for people to fly anywhere, to leave the country. This is also political because there is more internal touristic consumerism since people can't leave Argentina. For example, people go to Mar de Plata and spend a lot of money that stays within the country. Because of inflation, people who use to be able to travel for 15 days can only travel for 10 days now. One dollar use to be one peso but now one dollar is 4.5 pesos and you can't even get the dollar because the banks won't give you the official currency. So instead people go to the “Blue Dollar,” which is an illegal market that sells one dollar for 6.5 pesos to anyone. A lot of people resort to unofficial means of getting dollars in order to be able to travel and visit their loved ones. But everything gets really expensive and its a horrible error that this president is committing. She's also driving people to get into boats and cross the river that divides Uruguay and Argentina to deposit their money in another country with a more coherent president.”

What I heard from my grandmother left me truly awe-stuck. I had no idea how terrible the political situation in Argentina was because I never take the time during my daily life to consider how things may work in other countries. I then realized that it has been far too long since I've taken a world history class and that I needed to start taking some initiative to be more aware of the world around me, especially in my own culture.

So now, the philosophical stuff. It's not very interesting, just me reflecting on the old conjecture that the flap of a butterflies wings could cause a hurricane halfway around the world. Although its not that extreme in my case, I am still being impacted by Kirchner. Because of some of her policies, its very difficult for my family to visit me. Consequentially, my interactions with all of my mother's side of the family and a fourth of my father's side is stricly over Skype. I think I should look more into the issue before I say anything else, but what I've heard so far has left me appalled.