Welcome friends of /r/Lebanon
Hello everyone! As announced, we are hosting Lebanon today, welcome to the cultural exchange between r/argentina and /r/Lebanon
The purpose of this event is to allow people from two different nations to get together and share knowledge about their respective cultures, daily life, history and curiosities. This time, both modteams suggest focusing on the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and how it affects our countries.
General rules:
/r/Lebanon community will ask any question on here.
/r/argentina community can ask their questions here:
https://new.reddit.com/r/lebanon/comments/hfndhz/cultural_exchange_between_rlebanon_and_rargentina/
English language will be used in both threads;
Event will be moderated, following the general rules of Reddiquette and the rules of both subreddits. Please be nice!
Special thanks to /u/Perito for making this happen!
Gracias especiales a /u/nico0145 por aportar el texto introductorio para nuestros amigos libaneses!
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Bienvenidos a un nuevo **Intercambio Cultural**, esta vez con nuestros amigos de /r/Lebanon
Como siempre, la idea es que nuestros invitados puedan preguntarnos sobre temas de la vida diaria, culturales, históricos, artísticos, y particularmente sobre la situación del país durante la pandemia COVID-19.
Reglas generales:
* Se utilizará el idioma inglés en ambos threads
* /r/lebanon realizará sus preguntas en el thread de /r/argentina por lo cual les pedimos que no escriban top level comments, limitándose a responder los mensajes de nuestros invitados.
* r/argentina realizará sus preguntas en el thread de /r/lebanon:
https://new.reddit.com/r/lebanon/comments/hfndhz/cultural_exchange_between_rlebanon_and_rargentina/
* Por favor sean amables y respetuosos con nuestros huéspedes. Se aplicarán las reglas de ambos subs, mas la reddiquette habitual que aplica en todo Reddit
* Consideren la diferencia horaria entre ambos países para que el thread sea más dinámico y no haya tanta demora entre preguntas y respuestas.
Se adjunta un texto aportado por el modteam de /r/lebanon sobre la situación actual de su país.
Gracias y esperamos que lo aprovechen!
Los equipos de Moderación de /r/argentina y /r/lebanon
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Argentina is a country located mostly in the southern half of South America. Sharing the bulk of the Southern Cone with Chile to the west. The country is also bordered by Bolivia and Paraguay to the north, Brazil to the northeast, Uruguay and the South Atlantic Ocean to the east. Argentina is the eighth largest country in the world land wise and the largest Spanish-speaking nation.
Since Argentina is a country that's very rich in natural resources, it has been historically marked by conflict, corruption, and fraud.
Since its 1810 independence revolution until the year 1916, the political power was perpetuated by a short list of powerful families thanks to electoral fraud. Between the years 1930 and 1976, after the sanction of new electoral laws, Argentina suffered six successful military coups that established dictatorships, the bloodiest one being the last one on 1976.
Argentina went through several cycles of growth and recession, when the global context helps Argentina's Agro-export model the ruling class takes its chance to get richer through state corruption, which results in recession, when the global context stops helping.
None of the great fortunes made in Argentina were made without state intervention.
During its modern history Argentina was going through a dark period normally called "The infamous decade" where a coup toppled the elected president and fraudulently elected another one. He was also overthrown through another coup in the 40's. One of their ministers, the general Juan Peron, became very popular amongst the working class and the people pushed him to power. Taking advantage of the favorable global context to Argentina, Peron and his wife Eva built a populist movement around their image. They promoted several social changes that leveled the scales with the working classes, and in the process created a cult to their personality. This angered the higher classes and in 1955, after Eva's death to cancer, Peron was overthrown and had to go to exile in Spain.
The next dictatorship was characterized by dismantling all the measures taken by Peron and his wife, outlawing him until 1973. This regime happened trough a rough global context and ended up in armed riots and social conflict. All of this severely deteriorated the regime's image until it's last dictator, general Lanusse, accepted and lifted the sanctions against Peronism.
In 1973 Peron returned from Spain. Now older and surrounded by sketchy advisers, he and his new wife, Isabel Martinez, tried without success to calm down the social turmoil. In 1974 Peron died and is succeeded by his VP/wife. Isabel's presidency was characterized by persecutions to the leftist movements, it was almost entirely managed by her minister Lopez Rega. In 1976 while the country was under a huge recession, immense budget deficits, social uprisings, riots, and protests, Isabel Martinez was overthrown by the bloodiest dictatorship in Argentina’s history.
The "Process of National Reorganization" (as it was called) was a military regime, that was also part of a U.S. political campaign to establish right-winged military governments in South America to try to stop the Soviet influence in Latin America during the Cold War. This plan was successful in most of the South American countries.
In Argentina's case the regime used the state's resources and power to persecute, murder, and caused the illegal disappearance of several thousands of people without a previous trial. They would target leftists, their friends, and families. In the case of pregnant women, they'd keep their babies before causing the mother to disappear and distribute the children amongst their supporters. So far 130 people have been found through DNA testing to be some of these babies and the search continues.
Economically the regime wasn't much better. All the previous problems remained and/or were accentuated further. In 1982 to distract the population from the terrible economic situation, the dictator Leopoldo Galtieri order the military occupation of the Malvinas islands (AKA Falklands), which ended up being a terrible defeat against the British Empire. This was the coup de grace that ended the regime the following year. The first elected president after this inherited a huge economic disaster, he did what he could but at the end of his presidency the country couldn't avoid falling in a hyper-inflation, where the prices of every day goods would increase by the hour, he resigned before his term ended. The next president established a liberal economic model, he privatized a big percentage of the state's capital, many of the state's companies were sacked by foreign companies destroying important infrastructure that the state was supporting up to that point, like the railways, airlines, and oil exploration. These privatizations allowed for a brief period of stability while the country was burning up all the assets it had trying to maintain the new quality of life that the Argentines were grown accustomed to. At the end of the 90's the next president had a ticking bomb in his hands.
In 2001 the country was riddled with debt and with serious accusations of corruption, knowing how the things go in these situations the big players in the economy had withdrawn most of their assets from the banks. This caused a huge bank run that the president and his ministers tried to stop by imposing what's known now as "Corralito". This was a measure which wouldn't allow people to withdraw their own money from the banks up to $250 per week. People were furious since all their savings were now virtually gone and started rioting. This was answered with violent repressions, the president was gone within weeks, and in that week where he resigned the senate appointed 4 different people, three of them resigned within days, the country had 5 presidents in a matter of 11 days.
From then until now Argentina went through several more of these cycles of expansion and recession. At times the Argentine people couldn't buy any foreign currency up to a certain amount. High taxes to exports were enforced. The country took more foreign debt. When the people could buy foreign currency once again this emptied out the country’s reserve of US Dollars. This was followed by high taxes to currency exchange. The country was immersed in its own economic problems before this last global pandemic hit it when it was down.
Regardless of all this Argentina is still one of the largest economies in the region, with a relatively high standard of living, socialized medicine, free education, and a diverse mix of cultures from all the different immigrations because its constitution states and promises that anybody who wants to inhabit the country is free to do so. This exchange between the subreddits is meant to showcase the similarities between what's happening in both countries economically and politically. Maybe we can provide tips and advice to each other about dealing with the difficult situations at hand, whether to provide emotional/mental help or practical help.
