>The ad smallpox has been particularly notorious (and nefarious) in
>Buenos Aires since the late 1980s and (I suspect) in most large Third
>World capitals. Starved to death, for example, the local city
>administration (Intendencia de Buenos Aires, now pompously and
>reactionarily known as Gobierno de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos
>Aires) gave by those times the care of public squares to private
>"sponsors" who, in exchange for advertising, would take care of them.
>
>This, of course, ended up with the squares and parks on the North
>side of the city being properly (even excessively) gardened and
>polished, while those in the poverty-striken Southern quarters being
>abandoned to their (sad) luck. In the squares of the North, however,
>the advertising mania crept quite fast from the small notices "It is
>you and MoneyMakers Inc. who take care of this square" to outrageous
>situations such as the one I recently saw at the elegant Sargento
>Cabral square.
>
>This square is named after a semi-mythical character of early
>Argentinian history, a simple sergeant from the province of
>Corrientes who, during the first battle waged by General San Martín
>in America, the San Lorenzo battle, shielded the General with his own
>body against an advancing Royalist soldier, thus receiving a deadly
>bayonet thrust. Cabral's last words, the tradition goes, were "I die
>in content, we have routed the enemy".
>
>Unlikely as it happens to have been, the anecdote has been used by
>Argentinian educative system to foster the sense of devotion to a
>higher ideal and of human greatness. The image of Cabral dying in the
>arms of the General has inspired noble feelings in many generations
>of Argentinian children.
>
>Well, this elegant square is under the care of a chain of
>supermarkets, the Disco chain of supermarkets. Some weeks ago I was
>there, and to my surprise I saw that the square was presided not by
>the usual Argentine flag, but by three flags which looked like the
>Japanese flag. I wondered how could this be, and approached the flags
>only to discover that they were flags of the chain of supermarkets,
>which strongly resemble the Japanese flag!
I would have thought that we would approve the replacement of
nationalist-militarist iconography--that you win honor by killing
others and dying for your hierarchical superiors--with consumptionist
iconography--that you win a more contented lifestyle by buying your
groceries more cheaply at our supermarket.
This is very weird. The unmediated and unshielded access by
nationalist-militarists to your brain is one of the (small)
disadvantages, not one of the advantages of poverty...
Brad Delong
