Argentina

The Stories We Tell

By Matthew Kind, CASA Argentina Fall 2018 (Harvard University '20)

I believe every study abroad student has a, "smack you in your face, make a fool out of yourself, welcome to a new country, WHAAAMM" moment that lets you know you’re away from Harvard and in the real world. Mine came during my first week of class at the largest public university in South America, La Universidad de Buenos Aires Facultad de Derecho. My professor...

Falling in love with Buenos Aires and Argentina through my study abroad experience

By Claudia Villalona, CASA Argentina Fall 2017 (Brown '19)

I arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina for my semester abroad on a chilly and wet winter’s day in the middle of July, having no idea what the next six months would bring. Looking back almost a year later, it is still hard for me to precisely pinpoint what captured my heart and compelled me to stay for another semester. Nonetheless, my time abroad was an experience that truly changed my life: I immersed myself in a culture that was unfamiliar to me and I learned so much...

Learning Beyond the Classroom: Engaging with Politics in Argentina while Studying Abroad

by Evan Lehmann, CASA Argentina Fall 2017 (Brown University '19)

While I was first visiting the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras of Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA), I wandered into a classroom and was met with two students blanketing the walls in political campaign flyers. With my incredibly non-Argentinian Spanish, I asked if I could help, with hopes of learning a bit about the country’s upcoming elections. “Sí, claro,” one of them responded, and for the next hour, we talked about Argentina’s political climate. I learned about the resurgence...

Travel Journal: Mendoza, Argentina

By Alexandra Chukwumah, CASA Argentina Fall 2017 (Brown University ’19)

I am currently studying abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It has been a dream come true so far!

I absolutely love being in a big city and being able to feel rooted. I live with a host in a neighborhood of the city called Recoleta, which is one of the nicer neighborhoods.... Read more about Travel Journal: Mendoza, Argentina

A Counterclockwise Summer

By Lauren Spohn, SIP 2017 (Harvard College '20)

“Do the toilets really flush counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere?” That was the first question my mom asked me when she picked me up from the airport after my summer abroad in Buenos Aires. I smiled and offered a quick reply, “It’s not just the toilets that run counterclockwise in Argentina.”... Read more about A Counterclockwise Summer

A Breath of Fresh Air: My First Experience in Buenos Aires

By Isabel Bernhard, SIP 2017 (Harvard College ‘20)

This past summer of 2017, I participated in the David Rockefeller Center’s Student Internship Program (“SIP”) in Argentina. I am a rising sophomore intending to study Social Studies and hoped to link my high school focus in Spanish with my current interest in Political Science. I was excited about SIP because among its opportunities, it offered the chance to intern in the municipal government of Buenos Aires for eight weeks. ... Read more about A Breath of Fresh Air: My First Experience in Buenos Aires

Aprovechá la Argentina

In Spring 2017, I participated in CASA Buenos Aires (well, Fall 2017, since Argentina is in the Southern Hemisphere). I study History and Literature with a specialization in Latin America, so I am always looking for opportunities to go abroad.... Read more about Aprovechá la Argentina

An Alternative Look at the Argentine Default

On the eve of Argentina’s eighth default, the HPR’s Ignacio Sabate published an article questioning whether history was repeating itself in Argentina. Sabate, like countless writers before him, observed that Argentina’s long history of financial troubles could be proof that the country still “has not learned its lesson.” This portrayal of Argentina appeals to our naïve belief in a just world. We can pretend that default and its consequences are a scourge reserved for countries that lack...

Buenos Aires, that city that thinks of itself as a country

I knew that Buenos Aires had gotten into my bones when I was standing between a desolate highway and a gorge in northwest Argentina, looking beyond the icy river to the stone railway bridge, the one the hostel owner back in Humahuaca had said you simply had to walk under and you would find the Incan cave, and I thought, “I want to go home.”

...

Summer of Service: The Argentine League for the Rights of Man

On my first day of work at the Liga Argentina por los Derechos del Hombre (The Argentine League for the Rights of Man), the oldest human rights organization in Argentina and maybe all of Latin America my mentor, Dr. Gerardo Etcheverry, mentioned to me that the term “human rights” does not appear in the organization’s title because the concept had yet to be invented.

The organization (colloquially known as “La Liga”) was founded in 1937 as a space to encourage free opposition to the government, and during periods of repressive government, most notably the military dictatorship of...