The Cob That Makes the World Go Round

It turns out I should have packed my “I heart corn” t-shirt, after all.

For, what does the first person I talk to in my first Argentine bar say? That his brother is getting his PhD at Iowa State. My primer porteño (Buenos Aires-an) pal comes from a family of corn scientists — as does apparently everyone in this country who isn’t a fashion model and/or pregnant. Like in Iowa, corn is king here. It’s inescapable: My host father 'Tin is a retired cereal exporter who used to do business with a Hawkeye state company, and his son, also in the corn biz, turned down an offer to study abroad in Ames. I still can’t figure out why.

So, given the constant barrage of biofuel-fueled news I’ve read in Iowa newspapers, I was curious to hear what ‘Tin thinks about etanol (creative translation, huh?). Especially in light of Bush's voyage to these parts last week, it's all the talk down here, too. Tonight I got my wish. After our usual dinner banter about the myriad varieties of Argentine pumpkins (which appears to be a national food), discussion somehow turned toward geopolitics. And ‘Tin, who normally remains silently bemused at his wife’s English-and-Spanish-laced chattiness, piped up.

I held my breath as he tried to unravel centuries’ worth of trade agreements into a logical explanation of why Argentina works the way it does. Why this country refuses to export its plentiful oil bubbling underneath Patagonia, why it refrains from jumping too far into the sugar cane-etanol trend, why the people here are relatively wealthy and the oil-laden Bolivians aren’t. Did I mention he doesn't speak English?

Needless to say, I didn’t necessarily get everything he said (aka, it might as well have been in Arabic), but it was fascinating, nonetheless. At the monstrous gas station catering to the Mercedes crowd across from our apartment, petrol sells for about US $4/gallon. But, unlike Iowa, there’s no corn involved. Back in the ‘60s, the military made gas from the plentiful maíz gracing the Argentine landscape, but these days, they don’t bother. There’s just not enough of a need, ‘Tin said. After all, Argentina has less than 40 million people, with a third of them in Buenos Aires. So the oil seeping from nearly every region of the country works just fine. Why not just export it and use the money to buy toilets that can actually flush? Doing so would be strategically suicidal, according to my sources. Thus, Argentina was left behind when Bush made his Latin America tour. With regard to etanol, the Argentines say no gracias.

Now it’s back to futbol here, with politics left until the next commercial break. I’m quickly learning that if I’m going to survive, I have to learn to converse about the two national past-times. I’ve got the corn-politics thing down; now, I just need to figure out how to say the goalie made a touchdown…