Storms with 100 km/hr winds hit Paraguay, Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay early Wednesday morning, leaving nine people dead.

Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, was hit the hardest with over 5,000 houses destroyed, according to the Secretary of National Emergency (SEN). Storms in Asunción had winds above 140 km/hr causing electricity outages and damage to roads. Interior Minister Carmelo Caballero confirmed that five people died and 81 people were injured.

In the district of Roque Alonso, close to Asunción, four security force cadets died when their roof collapsed. “Roque Alonso will have to be reconstructed,” said Mayor of Roque Alonso, Heriberto Mármol.

In Bolivia, a mother and her son died as they were swept away by the flooding caused by torrential rain in the Santa Cruz region. In Uruguay, a man and his son were swept away and killed by the water while traveling in their car .

The northeast region of Argentina, Misiones, was also hit by the storm. There are fallen trees, electricity outages, and destroyed buildings according to the Municipal Office of Natural Disaster Prevention (OPAD).

In Buenos Aires, 26 people were evacuated due to strong winds and rain. The capital and some of its surrounding areas were put on alert yesterday after water levels in the Rio de la Plata rose dramatically.

The National Weather Service has lowered the alert to a level of orange. Thus far, 462 people have been evacuated and 140,000 homes are without electricity.

'Provincial Letters' by Blaise Pascal

In 1647, an odd case played out in French courts. A man named John d’Alba, unhappy with his wages, made off with a few pewter plates from the Jesuit college where he served; once caught, he was duly charged with larceny. When questioned, however, though he admitted to having taken the plates, he denied it was stealing—instead claiming he had simply been following the teachings of university priests, and showing the court a pamphlet authored by the one instructing him in cases of conscience. The judge was unsympathetic. According to Pascal, who tells the story in his brilliant, scathing ‘Provincial Letters’, the incensed order was given not only for the man to receive a good whipping at the college gates, but also for all materials with a doctrine “so illegal, pernicious, and contrary to all laws, natural, divine, and human” to be burnt. D’Alba didn’t stay around for the repercussions, disappearing from the scene along with the pewter.

The “pernicious” doctrine appealed to so unsuccessfully? ‘Probabilism’, a theological notion with roots in the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain. Initially taught by the Franciscans and Dominicans, it eventually came to be firmly associated with the Jesuits. The idea, briefly, was that right and wrong are not so obvious as they seem—that abstract reason must adapt itself to the specific case, and that many seemingly immoral or un-Catholic actions can be justified retrospectively by taking into account the circumstances.

Mere sophistry or moral relativism, say some—but as the D’Alba case shows, the ideas weren’t limited to dusty Latin texts. Nor was their influence limited to the continent. When Spanish Jesuit missionaries arrived in the Americas—including Argentina—they were confronted with native populations speaking other languages and following customs different from their own. At times these ran quite counter to the Catholic practices the missionaries espoused. And so, to continue living in harmony, the priests practised a flexible doctrine—adapting their arguments to the conditions, and in doing so drawing on theological ideas picked up in Europe.

Speaking crosswise

In the north-eastern Argentine province of Misiones, and just across the border in Paraguay and southern Brazil, lie the crumbling rust-coloured remains of the reducciones where Jesuit priests organised the indigenous into communities. Despite their somewhat difficult accessibility (requiring long walks down dusty roads), and slightly diminished grandeur (the buildings were destroyed during the war with Paraguay), they draw thousands of visitors per year. Most are Argentines, intrigued by “las ruinas” and by this period in their own past.

The first missionaries arrived in Argentina in 1585, after coming to Brazil (1553), Peru (1567), and Mexico (1572). Many were from the Extramadura region of Spain, notable for its harsh living conditions and bleak landscapes, the forge of many strong characters. Still, they found Argentina rough-going. The land wasn’t the problem—that was green and fertile. It was the strange-seeming culture of the natives, their disinterest in city life, commercial interests, and the particular form of religion that for the Spaniards meant civilization.

The most immediate challenge was language. Hundreds of native tongues could be heard in the area; luckily, most tribes could understand at least Guaraní. Unluckily for the Spaniards, Guaraní is a language incredibly difficult for the non-native, with words which can sound like a guttural staccato for a speaker of the Romance languages. Since preaching to an uncomprehending audience in Latin or Spanish would be inutile, however, the Jesuits immediately set themselves to work mastering the unfamiliar sounds and syntax—with surprising success, as several impressive grammars of the period attest.

Any change in language affects what one says as well as how one says it. Guaraní didn’t have words for many of the Catholic terms the missionaries were trying to impart. And so the priests “translated”—putting highly abstract ideas into more practical indigenous language. The interpretive flexibility didn’t go unnoticed. Critics pounced, denouncing the “pagan” teachings before the Tribunal de la Santa of the inquisition in Lima. In this case, the supposed offenders were pardoned—the judges understood the missionaries’ argument that the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception is difficult to explain elegantly when words like “grace” or “conception” do not exist.

The ruins of San Ignacio Miní in north-eastern Argentina (courtesy of wikimedia)

A pragmatic coexistence

On the reducciones, while it was the Spaniards who managed everything, the “tubichá” (chief) of each tribe gave formal approval and was specially treated. Organisation was based on a mixed system of public and private property, which in their writings the priests attribute to influences as diverse as Tommaso Campanella and Plato. In fact, it was an organic twist on the ideas of the Indian community—each family received its own piece of land, or “abambaé,” which it worked three days a week; another three days it worked a different property “belonging to God”, called the “tupambaé”. Food produced on the latter went to the old, the sick, and the children; there, Indians also worked in their workshops, made tributes, and built up the food reserves.

The reducciones were largely self-sustaining, basing themselves around workshops—blacksmiths, carpenters, spinners, potters, sculptors, bakers, silversmiths, and rosary manufacturers. What could not be made was purchased with the money made by selling yerba mate to Spain. As in medieval times, there was a hierarchical structure of apprenticeship, with work tools held in common and an equitable distribution of benefits; all was shared and there were no salaries.

The fine arts were thought of practically, and adapted to incorporate the aesthetics of indigenous crafters. If paintings and miniature wooden statues were well-made and kept the Indians at work and thinking of God, what did it matter if they bore no resemblance to any European image of the divine? Architecture was conceived of in a similarly utilitarian way. As the priest P. Diego de Torres wrote in 1614: “The churches must be brightly lit, so that they can follow the service well and read the prayers in their book. The acoustics must be such that one can hear the preacher and that the hymn reaches the masses. Easy access to the Holy Table is necessary so that one can give the communion without disorder… The plan of the building, the style of construction, are left open to the preference of the donors, the taste of the architects, and the subordination of circumstances.”

Education (of both sexes, rare for the time) went by the classical Ratio Studiorum, fitted to the individual case. It was a two-way learning process: Indians mimicked priests in religion and education, and Jesuits adapted to indigenous practices, an exchange not entirely free of biases. For the priests, the indigenous were largely thought of as children who had to be protected from their own supposedly worse instincts—largely cultural stereotypes. Ana Maria Galileano’s ‘Las Reducciones Guaraníticas’, published by the Argentine government’s Ministry of Culture and Education, is a snapshot of both the philosophy and the prejudice. “To civilize the aborigines, the Jesuits adapted to their mentality and their habits,” she writes. “They were able to halt their warlike impulses and exaggerated taste for alcohol, and, developing their artistic and manual aptitudes, attract them by means of sumptuous temples and solemn ceremonies with songs and an orchestra, to a sincere expression of the worship due to the grandeur of God.”

A subversive doctrine?

Both Jesuit justifications and probabilist or proto-probabilist texts by thinkers like Vitoria, Cano, Soto, and Molina can now be found bound in large Latinate tomes in the Argentine universities in Córdoba and other major cities. In colonial times, the schools of law reinforced the teachings, both through explicit study of the texts themselves, and through the training of lawyers to argue and resolve cases of doubt by providing a plurality of possible acceptable answers.

Not everyone liked this flexibility. The Jesuits gained a negative reputation for “worldliness”, the soothsayers of the “leyenda negra“, due to their willingness to adapt and to work with governments; but since their doctrine was pragmatic and anti-systemic, and focused on the individual case without recourse to a larger legal framework, it could just as easily go the other way. It took as justification the voices of church authorities, but these might be tailored to justify nearly any action retrospectively. In the Argentine context, the Jesuit flexibility was subversive in two ways: It was used by some to defend indigenous rights on the reducciones when the Spanish crown would rather simply rule the natives, and it was used by some to justify clearly anti-government or illegal practices like tyrannicide.

Eventually, the Spanish crown came to see these nonconformist ethics as a threat. In the 1750s, Spain and Portugal negotiated a treaty expelling the reducciones from Río de la Plata; Jesuits and Guaranís combined forces in protest, but were defeated by a joint Iberian force. In 1767 the Jesuits themselves were expelled from Argentina, an act Spain justified by exaggerating the number of probabilists who were “laxists”—the extreme of probabilism, in which nearly anything goes. Portugal was only too willing to help; its minister Marqués de Pombal published several notes meant to discredit the Jesuits, so that his country would have less resistance for its own South American conquests.

Multiplying truths

Pascal accuses the Jesuits of using complicated arguments to further their own worldly ambitions, rather than purely loving God; their flexible ideas “merely serve to betray, by their contrariety, the duplicity of your hearts… ‘Vae duplici corde, et ingredienti duabus viis! Woe be to the double hearts, and the sinner that goeth two ways!’” But Pascal himself drew on similar resources in his own ‘Pensées’, in his famous wager with God. Moral theories based on uncertainty, chance, double possibility, and probability, were particularly frequent and rich during this time—partly due to the influence of the Enlightenment, with its skepticism, unsettling scientific advances, stirrings of secularism, and questioning of moral certainties.

The probablism and religious syncretism of the Argentine reductions might thus be worth turning to once again, as one possible response to still-existing problems. As one Jesuit priest in Argentina wrote, quoting Loyola: “The same illness cannot be treated invariably in all cases in the same way; one must rather consider the nature of the patient.”

A group of 700 members of the police force have taken over the main communications centre in Misiones, northern Argentina.

The protest began on Tuesday night at 11pm, when 300 policemen broke in to the Comando Radioeléctrico communications centre in Posadas, the capital of Missiones province. More police, including retired members as well as firefighters joined the group as the night went on. The protesters came from all over the province, and family members have been waiting outside in support.

The police are demanding better working conditions, including new uniforms and equipment, and to be unionised. They are also calling for a raise in salaries, protesting for a basic annual wage of two million pesos.

Julio Lezken, the under-Secretary for Security of Misiones, visited the scene and said that an increase of salary “depends on the national collective bargaining talks”.

According to reports, announcements are scheduled for today for the protesting police.

Jasper Wegman

Jasper Wegman is a Dutch consultant trainer who saw the opportunity to put his three passions – travelling, volunteering, and working with people – to good use here in Argentina. He has set up two projects since 2006: Che Amigo, a foundation dedicated to education in poorer parts of the north or Argentina, helping source resources for teaching underprivileged Argentine children; and Seminarios en Un Día, which works with leadership in companies. Wegman is now permanently based in Buenos Aires.

When did you get to Buenos Aires and why?

In Holland I studied economics and for two years I worked as a consultant trainer in personal development, teaching things such as leadership. I always liked to travel: I worked in Holland, but sometimes in Moscow as well, and the Red Cross in Africa. But in the end I never wanted to go back – I like travelling, meeting people and seeing lots of cultures… so in 2004 I quit my job at the time and travelled around South America for a year to learn some Spanish to do some voluntary work

The plan was to stay for one year, take a trip around the world and stay for about eights months in South America. I wanted to learn more about poverty, to see things and to help. In Holland for the last ten years I always did voluntary work because I like to contribute to society. I wanted to do something, so I thought, while I’m not working this is the time for me to explore what’s going on. I went to Peru and Bolivia and did some voluntary work and then I came to Buenos Aires. The thing with Buenos Aires is that it’s easier for me to stay longer, to work a little bit and even to teach some English. I was thinking about teaching some economics at a bilingual school so I thought ‘ok, I’ll stay here for a couple of months’.

What next?

Well after a while I started to run out of money and I had been away from home for a year and a half – so I went back to Holland to start to work again. But I’d got to know Argentina and the situation a little bit so I thought let’s start with a more concrete idea; lets start to do fundraising in Holland for a school in Jujuy or in Salta. It’s easier to start a foundation in Holland. With some friends I organised parties and ‘fiestas de Argentina’ and auctions, a raffle… a lot of things. At the end of 2005 I wrote a business plan.

So then you moved here?

Yeah that was the idea. So I was like: ok, this is what I like to do – the Che Amigo project – but then there was always the question of how I was going to finance it. I spent a whole year in Holland talking with a lot of people about it, I came here to do some research to think about it. And then about two years ago I was in Africa doing some voluntary work for the Red Cross teaching young people about leadership and I thought that since this is what I do in Holland and it’s what I like to do – working on personal growth – and I have this connection with Argentina, and Che Amigo is doing fine, why not just start something, like that here in Argentina? It would be for young people to get to know about taking initiative, taking responsibility, starting up projects yourself. I think it’s a good way to fight against poverty and to give other people a chance as well.

I said ok I want to start something like I do in Holland, to put on seminars for companies here about leadership and sustainability and things like this, which is what I also like to do. It makes a bit of money and then a cut of what they pay for a ticket goes to Che Amigo. At the moment we are also saving money for training courses, training young people in leadership so that then they can start helping in their own community.

The last four years I came here for about one or two months a year. At that point I was looking for local partners and NGOs. I talked with a lot of people about the project and where can we contribute.

At first everything was done on a voluntary basis so I had my job in Holland as a freelance trainer whilst at the same time organizing a lot of fundraising events there for my social projects in Argentina. When we started the school in Salta and I started to come here once or twice in a year.

Che Amigo program in Salta (Photo courtesy of Jasper Wegman)

What is your role in the process? Do you teach?

No, we trained young Bolivians. A friend of mine, Christine, spent the last four years training these Bolivians to be the trainers at Che Amigo, so they teach the young people. I believe in not being ‘the white guy who does it better’ – they are young, they come from vulnerable backgrounds as well and they are examples to the young people. She worked with this group aged between 23 and 30. They’ll next be back in January, which is when we start the leadership course. They’ll be setting up their own social project and in January and February we do the next step of our training.

Is it voluntary for them?

They got given a small payment at first but I was really impressed with them so from now they will get paid because they are doing a really great job.

How do you work?

I work at home for myself, organizing fundraising and making contacts in Holland, and for the schools we involve them and integrate them and do fundraising with children in Holland for example. What I’m doing here is trying to find some good partners and I have some good partners a lot of our project is a school in Salta it’s quite famous they won a prize here as well it’s a big secondary school with alberga and everything, and I’ve just been there to organize a training course for young Bolivians

Tell me about Seminarios En Un Dia

I have now finished the program and the webpage for Seminarios En Un Dia, and we’re launching it on the 23rd August. After that I’m going to crack down on marketing – speaking to people, visiting companies, giving one-hour presentations…things like this. I talk to them about being aware of sustainability, how you can contribute, what you can change. I think in Argentina at the moment there are real problems with leadership so it’s nice to talk to people about it. With the seminars I just want to make people aware – for me the social part of business is really important. To make people think of other ways to do things, to keep young people and use their talents. I don’t like, say, hiring someone for six months to do a job and then it’s done. I like to talk about things, confront people, and then they go away and really think about it. That’s the idea with the seminars – working on the social aspects. I mean, something like Che Amigo is my passion.

Do you teach the seminars in English or Spanish?

Spanish. I start in Spanish when I can and for the rest I use a translator. Some parts are ok but when it gets more difficult she helps me.

How have you found training and consultancy in Argentina in contrast with Holland?

It’s difficult but I think there is a worldwide problem with leadership. I think today we need to work on leadership in other ways: now it’s more about motivation and sustainability. In Holland we’re at a different point. Yes there are a lot of problems as well – you have the economic crisis that started in Europe and in the States, but here they have other problems. So it’s not that one is better or worse than the other.

Jasper as a consultant

Is it interesting for you to work in the two different climates?

Yes, of course. I think from my experience of working in a different climate, like in Holland, companies here can learn something from that. And obviously it’s interesting for me to learn how they work. I’m from a different culture: my whole identity is results-driven and efficient, and here it’s not so. For example, I worked with this small company here to build my website, and in the six months that I worked with them I got three account managers as each quit their job – one girl went to New Zealand to travel, and the other girl really liked it but it was too far from home. I mean, people told me Argentina’s different but they have the same problems as in Holland – so many young people are leaving companies because they want something different. The challenge here for companies is how to keep these people – perhaps to work in another way, more flexible for people to work at home. In Holland this is really popular at the moment – talking about the ‘new way of working’: flexible, social media etc. In Argentina this is not so popular yet. With Che Amigo it’s more to give young people possibilities. That’s a problem here as well which you have less in Holland – here you get so many great young people that won’t even get a chance to use their talents. I spoke with young people in the north – really nice 15- and 16-year-olds – they had to fight just to go to school. For me, school and university aren’t so hard to go to, but they had to fight to travel, to work, to negotiate with their parents to get money. It’s sad and terrible. Everyone at least deserves the chance to get education so they can make decisions for their own life. A lot of people here are excluded from the system. Of course, I’m not going to change it but to contribute a little means a lot. It’s the passion I have and it gives me much more pleaser than working in Holland in a bank or something.

What’s the future for Che Amigo and Seminarious En Un Dia?

The future? You see, the thing is for the first four years or five years it was like a hobby, which was really nice, but now it has expanded so much that it’s full time, yet still completely voluntary and unpaid. It means I go months and months with no income. Of course with Seminarios En Un Dia I get a little bit of money but it all comes in at one point in a year and then when that eventually runs out it’s like ‘ok, where do we go from here?’ But I think we’re doing fine working this way – you get a lot of new contacts and ideas. I’m looking for ways that will allow me to work like this for my whole life. It’s no longer possible for me to go back to Holland to a bank, for example, and do training over there. I did that for a couple of years but now, no. So I’m looking for ideas as to how we can grow, what are the possibilities? For myself I make 18-month to two-year plans.

Do you want to take it anywhere else? Anywhere else in South America?

I think Argentina is big enough to work with, and there’s a lot of work to do. I think it’s good to focus on certain places because then you have more impact. At the moment I have a project in Buenos Aires in the villas, and a big project in Salta – all these young people came to train and they are now going to start their own project so we’re going to continue this training to help them. So in Buenos Aires, Millones and Salta we now have new projects being set up and it’s a lot of work for the next year or two years. Then I’ll reassess what’s going on. Of course I’d like to do more but I think we’ll start with this. I would also like to work more with the Bolivians that Christine trained a while ago, that are now our trainers. So whenever they come to Argentina we do some training together.

Two people have died in Misiones province due to an outbreak of Yellow Fever. The deaths of several monkeys in the same region, suspected to be as a result of the disease, have also fuelled fears that the disease might spread to other parts of the country.

Health authorities are working to ensure that anyone travelling to the Northeast, and especially the province of Misiones, is properly vaccinated.

However, this is already proving an enormous task as Hugo Fernández, National Director of Illnesses and Risks at the Ministry of Health suggested to BBC Mundo: “In Buenos Aires we are vaccinating more than 2,500 people per day in just five health centres.”

Fernández added that monkeys from both the Northeast and from the state of Corrientes are being examined in order to determine the nature of the outbreak.

The authorities in neighbouring Paraguay, concerned that the outbreak might reach their population, have taken action to prevent the spread of Yellow Fever including tightening up border control and issuing vaccinations.

The circumstances represent an interesting role reversal for the two countries, as just a year ago Argentina was taking measures to prevent the infection being carried over the border from Paraguay.

Yellow Fever, transmitted by Aedes Aegypti and heamagogus mosquitoes, has an unpleasant history in Argentina, causing 14,000 deaths in the 1871 epidemic of Buenos Aires. The disease is characterised by a fever, headaches, muscular pains and, in the fatal cases, a form of toxic liver disease.

Photo by David Partington

Escape the Iguazú crowds in an idyllic Misiones cabin.

When you visit a country, it’s a good idea to try to get some perspective. And unless you can bum a ride in President Kirchner’s helicopter, climbing a mountain is the best way.

A good place for this is Posada la Bonita, since a visit to Iguazú Falls is most likely part of your travel itinerary. Since everyone is looking to spend a few days amid butterflies, orchids and the majestic mist that rises from the bottom of the falls, it can sometimes be difficult to hear yourself think.

That is why escaping up into the forest may be the best way to get some peace – and some perspective.  

We travelled overnight from Buenos Aires to San Vicente – a 16-hour bus ride on coche-cama seats and with service of light meals, coffee, whisky and even champagne! In contrast to the noisy streets of Buenos Aires, it was calming to wake up with the bus cruising empty the highways of Misiones province with greenery on all sides.

On arrival in San Vicente a man in a pick-up truck met us for a transfer to Posada La Bonita, where we were to spend three nights staying in a well-prepped rustic cabin, full board.

It was soon apparent to us why this accommodation just let on a full-board basis, as the cabins of Posada La Bonita are a long way from anywhere at the end of an 18km dirt road. Unless you have your own transport, it is not easy to go anywhere else to eat.

No bother; the rolling green forest stretching from our window into the Brazilian distance coupled with hearty country food kept us happy and full.

Activities up on the hills are obviously leisurely; aside from wandering around by foot, horseback riding is a great way to get up and down. Make sure you pack that 500-page novel you’ve been meaning to read.

True to Argentine style, breakfast is coffee, freshly squeezed juice, and bread with preserves. Since there are only two cabins at the top of the hill we usually dined more or less alone. Fireplaces are kept alive in the winter to make nights more comfortable. Plus, the romantic glow makes the experience perfect for couples.

For more information on Posada La Bonita (in English and Spanish) for to www.posadalabonita.com.ar Cost is around $150 per person per day, plus drinks. You can take the bus from Buenos Aires to San Vicente and to Iguazú can be arranged by Franco Martini, the owner, at a cost of $100 each.