Photo of gathering of those that support the new media law by Beatrice Murch and used under a Creative Commons license.

During the debate of the law, there was a lot of controversy going on at the radio and television stations. The main media group in the country, Clarin, which must let go a number of television channels, radio and a percentage of cable subscribers, provided completely negative coverage of the law and other media did the same. However, despite the discussions in the media, there were no massive protests in the streets, which was the scenario that took place during the debate for the raise of agricultural taxes in 2008. In the end, the government achieved an easy victory in the Senate. After December 10, the Congress will be renewed and the current Executive Branch will lose majority in both chambers of Congress.

At the blog Aristotelizar [es], they focus on the proccess of approval of the law in the Congress:

El tratamiento de la ley de medios arroja nuevas luces sobre el modo de gobernar del matrimonio presidencial que continúa erosionando la ya escasa credibilidad de las instituciones. Esta es una ley arcaica que se nutre del ideario del primer peronismo, a pesar de que el mundo ha cambiado y mucho, desde entonces.

At Nanopoder [es] blog, they forecast an extensive series of consequences, all bad, of the application of the law. There are also negative views of the new media law (or its treatment in the Congress, at least) at Un Alumno Diferente [es], El Atrilero [es], and El Observatorio Político [es].

On the side of those who see the approval of this law as something positive, Al Centro y Adentro [es] states:

La instalación del debate sobre una nueva ley de medios audiovisuales en el parlamento tuvo otro efecto en la población. Las franjas más progresistas de la población acompañaron, militándolo, el proyecto de ley que envió el Poder Ejecutivo al Legislativo. Esta vez la centroizquierda y casi todo el campo popular apoyaron la iniciativa del Gobierno (…). Las élites dominantes no pudieron imponer sus intereses particulares (…) en contra de la voluntad general.

More positive texts about this law can be found at Francisco José Bessone's blog [es], Arte y Brujería [es], Sin Zonceras [es], and Fin del Capitalismo ¿Salvaje? [es].

There was a long exchange of opinions at Twitter, which could be followed through the hashtags #leydemedios [es] and #leymedios [es] (media law).

Photo by Basilievich and used under a Creative Commons license.

As expected, many blogs wrote about the singer's death. The large majority published videos or songs, as a way to pay homage. Other wrote short descriptions about the sadness of the day. For example, in the blog La Cocina Plural [es], Tomy writes:

Tus acciones, tus palabras, tus canciones y tu voz despertaron alguna conciencia social…( algunas siguen dormidas), te echaremos de menos para siempre, que descanses allí donde estés

Mourning waiting in line to pay their respects to Mercedes Sosa. Photo by blmurch and used under a Creative Commons license.

Other blogs wrote short summaries of what happened on the day of her death. The blog La Carabina [es] writes that:

desde que se conoció su muerte (producida en la madrugada del domingo), sus admiradores han guardado pacientemente horas de fila para acceder al velatorio organizado en el salón de los Pasos Perdidos del Congreso, un honor sólo reservado para las más importantes personalidades políticas y culturales.

The singer's official website received a large number of messages before and after her death, due to the progressively worsening in her health condition. Fans also shared their condolences through Mercedes Sosa's Facebook page [es].

According to the sponsors of the measure, they want to create more jobs in Tierra del Fuego and to encourage the local manufacturing of a wide range of products. However, the reaction in the blogs was quick, and in general, the reactions condemn the preliminary approval. In the blog Denken Uber [es], Mariano Amartino wonders:

¿No es este otro más de los impuestos regresivos que existen en este país? Una persona de clase media o alta accede a una notebook de u$s2000 sin pagar tasas extras pero alguien que apenas puede pagar un clon de u$s500 para tener su primer PC debe pagar un 30% más. Si buscamos crear una “economía de la información”… gravar con un 30% además del casi 50% de impuestos que ya tienen y encima con un peso argentino débil ¿no es evitar que la base de la pirámide social acceda a las herramientas que tienen más posibilidades de sacarlos de la pobreza?

Another blog that was created to oppose the proposed measure, No al impuestazo! [es] (No to the Tax Hike!) and it also encourages the use of the hashtag #noalimpuestazo on Twitter. In addition, Fabio Baccaglioni of Fabio.com.ar [es] writes:

lo preocupante del caso es que la urgencia por generar ingresos para las arcas estatales nos va a jugar gravemente en contra como país

This is something that Roger Schultz of eLaws [es] adds:

en un país donde la barrera cambiaria (3.80 a 1) mas el arancel impositivo vigente cercano al 50% IVA e ingresos brutos, antes de este aumento Argentina ya era el país de Sudamérica más caro para comprar tecnología

The negative opinions went further than the blogs and there have now been campaigns on YouTube, such as the one started by journalist Federico Aikawa [es]:

There are also campaigns on Facebook, such as the Cause: No to the Technological Tax Hike [es] and the group “My Mobile Phone is not a Luxury Object [es]“

On the other hand, Gabriel Carol of the blog Patria Sí, Colonia No [es], there is support for the preliminary approval and he writes:

Por 136 votos contra 61, la Cámara de Diputados aprobó el proyecto de ley que aplica gravámenes impositivos a los productos electrónicos importados y establece una reducción tributaria a los fabricados en Tierra del Fuego, y que posibilitará el desarrollo de un polo tecnológico en la provincia y la preservación de los puestos de trabajo en el sector.

The legal actions has forced the blog to close claiming that the blog had been infringing on a registered trademark. The blog is now closed, at least temporarily, due to the possibility of facing a fine or other economic sanction handed down by the Argentine justice system. However, many Argentine bloggers think that there is another reason for the legal actions.

According to the creators of the blog What's the Matter Clarín? [es], they main page states, because the rest of the content is offline “because of the legal actions started against the blog by one of the companies that make up the Clarín Group and they are forced to limit access to all of the content produced over the past three months.”

According to the blog ALT1040 [es], “The (Clarín) Group argues for the closing of the blog because the word Clarín is a registered trademark and one cannot use it as a domain by third parties. The underlying reason is to silence a journalist critical of them.” In the blog Mundo Perverso [es], Diego F. writes:

La cuestión es que la gente del pequeño y mediano monopolio ha decidido llevar un paso más allá el embate contra los blogs y ahora luego de aprietes e intimaciones judiciales obligaron a dar de baja el sitio. Así como lo leen: un hecho de censura consumado. Utilizando su poder económico y sus equipos de abogados se la agarraron contra los que denunciamos sus tropelías.

Those who were behind the Qué Te Pasa Clarín? site opened a new blog called Guotpasshornet [es] that has been collecting the repercussions from the case, as well as links to other sites that have been writing about the topic. A long list has already been compiled and more being added each day.

The blog's name comes from a reference to the poor relationship between the Argentine government and the Clarín Group. The phrase, “What's the Matter Clarín, Are You Nervous?” was said by ex-President Néstor Kirchner during a speech in which he voiced his displeasure with the coverage provided by the Clarín newspaper of the government of his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

Photo of voting station by Jorge Gobbi

In the province of Buenos Aires, the most heavily populated in the country, the Union PRO, an alliance between Peronist dissidents and the PRO party, came out ahead. This alliance is led by Mauricio Macri, who is the current mayor of the city of Buenos Aires, and is considered to be more right-leaning than the positions of Kirchner. In the city of Buenos Aires, the PRO party won was expected, but with a smaller margin of votes that had been predicted. The surprise came with the good showing from the center-left candidate and film director, Fernando “Pino” Solanas, a Peronist critic of the government's policies. He received 24% of the votes versus 31% from the PRO, while the Civic Coalition of Elisa Carrió finished in third place. The government's party was defeated in many of the other most heavily populated provinces, such as Córdoba, Santa Fe and Mendoza. However, it achieved victory in 12 other districts.

These elections were characterized by new ways of coverage. The most interesting was the extensive use of Twitter by many of the media outlets, as well as by users. Using the hashtag #urna2009 (ballot box 2009), there was information published from polling places and there was extensive coverage of the tabulation of votes. The hashtag was used by various media outlets, such as La Nación [es] and Perfil [es]. These two media outlets also published the updates from their journalists via CoverItLive. There were also other sites, such as Stream.Zauber [es], that tried innovative interfaces to present the information, using a combination of Twitter, Facebook, video taken from Ustream and newspaper RSS feeds.

Photo of the closure of the Kirchner campaign by Mariano Pernicone and used under a Creative Commons license: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pernicleto/3663297215/

In the blogs, there were many highlighted posts. In center-left blogs that support the government, Alejandro of La Barbaerie [es] analyzes the election's winners and losers and writes that “the most important thing is not to win, rather to make the other lose.” Diego F. of Mundo Perverso [es] also writes about the defeat as a “source of legitimacy,” but also writes that there might be some temptation to write about the things that the government did wrong, but rather the things that it did right during their administration should be what is written. Artepolítica [es] writes about what the defeat on 6/29 means for those that have been supporters of this government:

3. Nos deja el esqueleto, la base, la plataforma, de lo que debe ser un modelo económico para la indepencia económica, la sobernia política y la justicia social. Nos deja la convicción que otro país es posible.

En el 2001 nadie tenía la más puta idea de cómo reencauzar el crecimiento económico. Y donde dice “nadie” incluímos principalmente a nosotros. Hoy sabemos por dónde ir, sabemos cuales fueron los huecos, sabemos cuales fueron los errores.

4. Nos deja mejor organizados, nos deja encontrados, nos deja con un enorme futuro por delante.

In blogs critical of the government, Martín Varsavsky, an Argentine businessman based in Spain, analyzes the elections in his entry “Liberals vs. Socialists in Argentina [es].” In PapBlog [es], Fernando Arocena compiles a top ten of interesting links and noteworthy news. Walter Bove of FunkBlogJob [es] writes about a “crushing defeat for Kirchnerism”

Por otra parte, lamentablemente, a partir de pasado mañana van a empezar a aparecer en el tapete todos los graves problemas que tiene nuestro país, la mayoría de ellos por la imprevisión, por la falta de políticas, y la absoluta inoperancia del matrimonio gobernante. La gripe A, la desocupación, la caída de actividad económica, la inseguridad, la incertidumbre social, y fundamentalmente, como frutilla van a empezar a tomar estado público algunos casos de corrupción y de malos manejos de gobierno que por ahora se venían disimulando por parte del Gobierno K.

Like previous legislative elections, many of the winners were in good positions for the elections of 2011, such as Macri and Carlos Reutemann, senator-elect in Santa Fe. Many will be watching the next moves by the Kirchner government now that it appears to be weakened in Parliament. However, they still have more than 2 more years for the completion of their term.

The blog Mundo Perverso [es] recounts how Clarín was able to close his YouTube account on two occasions, and now has threatened to close a third account. For now, the account remains active, but Diego F. was forced to delete the videos in question. He writes:

Este blog no tiene fines de lucro, no hay publicidad ni uso monetario del material que se publica, el cual tiene como finalidad informar a la ciudadanía de cuestiones estrictamente políticas. Ninguna empresa privada tiene el derecho a censurar declaraciones de funcionarios públicos, y esto que está pasando debería preocuparnos a todos porque a todos nos afecta: nos están tratando de robar la voz.

Other blogs like Registro Mundo [es] and Banya08 [es] were also sent warning e-mails instructing them to remove the videos in question.

In the next few days, a group of Argentine bloggers will release a statement condemning the policy of the closing of YouTube accounts by the request of Artear SA, the audio-visual division of the media group, and that freedom of speech and the circulation of information about public affairs are guaranteed.

Mundo Perverso [es] has compiled a long list of blogs that have expressed solidarity with him. The blog La Barbarie [es] agrees that the proceedings from the Clarín group are not justified, and that this constitutes a case of censorship, as does lawyer and law professor Gustavo Arballo of Saber Derecho [es] who writes:

Mas alla del tema hay que ponerlo en su real dimensión: es censura. Estamos acostumbrados a identificar la “censura” con algo que hace el Estado contra un gran medio. Pero la naturaleza de la censura es más amplia y en este caso estamos ante una censura de un particular grande (que abusa de su posición dominante) a un particular chico.

The two blogs point to Article 28 in the Law 11723 [es] that establishes that “general interest news can be used, transmitted or retransmitted; but when they are published in their original version it is necessary to cite the source.” This was something that was respected in the case of the videos published on YouTube and was objected to by the Clarín Group.

The beginning of the construction caused several reactions of protest, and groups of neighbors of this county tore down the wall and destroyed many of the concrete blocks that were going to be used. The construction was defended by San Isidro's mayor, Gustavo Posse, after much criticism appeared in the media. Even the president of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, talked about the subject: “The wall is an involution. I am amazed, it's a separatist measure. Instead of separating, we have to build”.

According to Econoblog [es], the request to build the wall “was made by the neighbors of La Horqueta to stop the thieves”, and that “the wall will stop the people from Villa Jardin neighborhood from crossing the streets towards the neighborhood of La Horqueta”. This location is one of the most expensive ones in San Isidro.

At Siete Crisantemos [es] they analyze the results of a survey in La Nacion newspaper, where most voters support the construction of the wall, adding:

Yo no vivo ni en San Isidro ni en San Fernando, y no puedo decir que tan insegura es esa zona en particular; pero ya con lo que es Capital Federal me doy una idea. Sin embargo me parece vergonzoso plantear como solución un muro que en realidad no terminaría de resolver nada, como tampoco lo haría la pena de muerte, pero ese ya es otro tema. Cada vez más escucho en todos lados que este tipo de soluciones son las que realmente podrían ser efectivas, y que ese sea el pensamiento de la mayoría realmente me resulta triste.

At La Runfla [es] they state with irony that we are not talking about the West Bank in Palestine, but two localities in Buenos Aires. At Listao [es], they make fun of the mayor Posse, saying he copied his ideas from Micky Vanilla, a humor character from argentinian actor Diego Capusotto, that “makes pop music just for fun” and in this way tries to disguise the racist contents of his lyrics. Video of Micky Vanilla, with english subtitles

Finally, the Clarin newspaper blog Que Parezca un Accidente [es] reports that the neighbors opposed to the wall tore down what was left leaving behind a project that just spent important public funds, and Alex Piedo sarcastically writes:

Ahí lo tienen. Una simpática construcción, un muro cuyo único fin era mostrar al resto del mundo y sus alrededores, la capacidad y habilidad de los constructores de San Isidro, destruído, derribado, demolido inmediatamente por la desidia de aquellos que se oponen al progreso y al engrandecimiento de la Argentina toda. Un montón de dinero tirado a la basura por la mano de aquellos que se oponen al desafiante reto de la Argentina potencia.

According to Página Impar [es], former president Néstor Kirchner, who happens to be the husband of the current president “was behind the decision to change the national elections date to the 28th of June, after a meeting with congressmen from his party”. The decision was made quickly, and the Chief of Government of the city of Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri, also announced that the local elections would take place on June 28 making it a different date from the national elections. With the decision of the government, now both will happen on the same day.

According to Artepolítica [es], the reasons for this change are the international economic crisis that is expected to worsen after August; and the elections in the city of Buenos Aires (where the government expects the opposition to divide its votes among several options) and in Santa Fe, where the Peronism is looking for a single candidate.

Brujipedia [es] points out that:

Hace una semana Néstor Kirchner pensaba diferente. (…) A los gritos, Kirchner preguntó: “¿Por qué adelantan tanto las elecciones? ¿Qué le pasa a la burocracia política? ¿Tienen miedo de perder que separan las elecciones?”

This comment refers to the decision of the government of the province of Catamarca that brought forward the elections to separate them from the nationals. Now, it's his wife's government that makes a similar decision. And in La Política al Poder [es], they state that “the official argumentation is not convincing.” The reason for the change of the election date would be that:

el gobierno lo hace por que cree que le conviene y esto es más que suficiente, asume la iniciativa, cambia el escenario y los pone a todos a correr, por que el tiempo es poco, los 225 días faltantes para la elección se redujeron a 100…

Now, the draft law of the Argentine government will go to the Congress, where it must be approved in less than two weeks if it it wants to meet the electoral datelines.

Photo by Jorge Gobbi

On November 8, the second edition of Wordcamp Argentina took place in Buenos Aires. As was the case at the first Wordcamp, the most important guest was Matt Mullenweg, Wordpress' main developer. Matt told the attendees about the new features of WP 2.7, which has a lot to do with AJAX and includes a long awaited functionality: automatic updates with only one click -something that applies to plugins since version 2.6. Mullenweg also referred to “the death of blogs”, a polemic that has been making the rounds for the past few weeks, as Ezequiel Apesteguía [es] summarizes here:

“Matt también negó la muerte de los blogs y dijo que están en su mejor momento. Explicó que el futuro de WordPress radica en la posibilidad de ser móvil y social: deberíamos ser capaces de convertir un blog en nuestra casa, para publicar una foto allí y que se distribuya automáticamente a otras redes sociales, por ejemplo”.

Ezequiel also published a video, although a little shakey, of Mullenweg's presentation:

The morning started with the presence of Alejandro Piscitelli, professor and researcher of the Universidad de Buenos Aires, who spoke about many issues related to the Web 2.0 and the cognitive changes linked to the Internet and the media. There was a space for discussions such as how to earn money with your blog, the problems of getting advertising, how to develop corporate blogs, and how to measure the success of your site among many other topics.

There are summaries of what happened in the Wordcamp Argentina 2008 at Denken Uber [es]; Infoxicados [es]; Dotpod [es]; Optimizada [es]; I Wanna Be Sedated [es]; SEO; Ramiro Arturi [es]; DrGen [es]; PsicoGeek [es]; Fabio; and Cookieface [es].

Photo by JMRobledo and used under a Creative Commons license

For any Argentine that travels throughout the world, any conversation with a local resident usually includes mention of one surname: Maradona. Diego Maradona must be the most famous Argentine in the world, and anything that he does usually becomes news. It is even more newsworthy, when he is named the next Coach of the Argentine national football team. After the resignation of Alfio Basile due to less than stellar results, the Argentine Football Federation left many in suspense by taking its time in choosing between several candidates. Many Argentines are left wondering how the greatest footballer to play would fare as coach and ensure that the country qualifies for the World Cup 2010.

In the blog E-Blog [es], Leandro Zanoni defends the decision and says:

La Asociación del Fútbol Argentino (AFA) hizo justicia con la historia. Nadie hoy por hoy merece el puesto más que Diego…Grondona se dio cuenta de que hoy la selección necesita otra cosa, un golpe de timón, un motivador y un líder a quien respetar y no tanto título local acumulado.

There is also a defense of Maradona in English at World Cup Blog.

On the other hand, BlogBis [es] criticizes the hiring of Maradona and says that there were better candidates:

Sobran entrenadores capacitados y profesionales en el país. Pero no se opta por primar la profesionalidad ni la capacidad sino por conceptos tales como “pasión por la camiseta”, “dá ánimos a los jugadores”, etc”… Como jugador hizo historia pero como entrenador ha sido lamentable. Pero sus antecedentes no valen aquí. La adoración endiosada es lo que ha ganado

Other opinion on this subject can be found at the blog of Marcelo Gantman [es]; Cuaderno Contable [es]; Selección Deportiva [es]; y Empresas Contables [es].

On the side of those who oppose, there are two quite evident arguments: that this is a sacking of a lot of Argentineans' retirement contributions, and the only reason for this change is to increase the government's revenues in the short term. Guillermo Riera of Demasiada Información [es] states:

De seguir con el sistema de reparto, en veinte años el Estado estará imposibilitado para pagar jubilación alguna, sencillamente porque habrá tantos jubilados que no habrá recaudación que alcance.

Esteban Grinberg of De Todo Un Poco [es] points out that

La excusa del gobierno para hacer estatizar las jubilaciones, es la perdida de rentabilidad que han sufrido las AFJP producto de la crisis mundial, que se calcula en un 20%. Un argumento demasiado apresurado y conyuntural como para modificar drasticamente el sistema de jubilaciones.

There are more opinions against the measures at No Me Parece [es], Speedy González es de la DEA [es] and La Historia Paralela [es].

On the side of those who are in favor, it is being said that AFJPs have been a complete failure and that the pensions paid are even lower than the public system's. Besides, they charge high commission fees to their affiliates, even when they have negative returns. At Los 3 Chiflados [es] they point out the system only helped the banks in making business deals with the State and that it never really channeled the funds towards productive investments. Mendieta el Renegáu [es] adds that many media companies are campaigning against this change because AFJPs are big advertisers on their programs. More opinions in favor can be read at El Bar de Moe [es] and Miguel Contissa [es]. The latter states that among the administrative expenses the AFJPs could charge their affiliates was advertising in the media.

Other summaries about the topic of the disappearing of th AFJPs can be found at Traders del Merval [es]; Kust [es]; Al Centro y Adentro [es]; and Leo Piccioli [es].

The structure is very similar to Twitter's; we can write up to 140 characters, which most users take advantage of to write news in the form of headlines. Each piece of news can be tagged with many words. In the left column, we can find the most popular tags. We can comment in each others posts as well as reply to them, but we can't follow certain users or filter contents, except for the tags.

Pablo Mancini interviewed Ryan Sholin, who's behind the project, and he points out that Reporting On “is a non profit project financed by Knight News Challenge in order to improve local news, connecting people who don't talk with each other enough”. And he adds: “once the site is working with a healthy amount of applications, I will make the code open source and invite developers and journalists to improve it so they can launch their own versions of the site”.

Also talk about Reporting On: Bloc de Periodista (en español); The Exploding Newsroom; Random Mumblings; and Linchpen. At DigiDave you can find another interview to Sholin.

Photo by Jorge Gobbi

On August 20th, the third edition of Dia de Weblogs (Weblogs Day) took place in Buenos Aires, and it took place, as it does every year, at Palermo University. This time, there were several topics in debate, which were not limited to blogs only. There was a space to discuss about entrepreneurs, mass media and new projects on the Internet. During the last part of the program, many projects related to the Web were presented and I had the chance to talk about Global Voices Online and what it is about.

Federico Picone made a summary of the event [es] , and he says in his blog: “Just another moment in the Argentinean blogosphere that helps you see in person all of the people that you only know by their 32×32 pixels avatar and where the definition of “Social Web” takes meaning.” At PuntoGeek [es] , the topic of Global Voices was brought up, and the participation was even filmed (in Spanish).

Other references to the meetup can be found at La Propaladora [es] and Tutiday [es]. At Blocky [es], they made a summary of the journey's “most shocking phrases”. In my case, I also liveblogged from the event itself, which appeared in Infoxicados [es] .

Many events in Argentina related to weblogs and Web 2.0 were announced for the rest of the year. In Buenos Aires: WeMedia, Barcamp and StartMeUp. There will also be regional editions of Weblogs Day in Mar del Plata and Rosario.

Finally, we'd like to thank Matías Dutto and the organizers of Weblogs Day for providing us a space to spread the word about Global Voices Online.

At Viva el Campo [es], they celebrated the decision with cheers: “Viva la Patria!” (Long Live the Motherland!), and they summarized the Senate's session where the law project of mobile retentions was rejected. At Paro Agropecuario [es] they make a call to build a better country, and they also hope the President continues her duties, for which she was elected -a response to “coup d'etat” accusations that sectors close to the Government attributed to those who carried out the protest. At Ciudadanos Participando [es] they say “Kirchner's has her Waterloo”.

Mendieta el Renegau [es] asks to understand Julio Cobos' position and discusses it without kicking him out of the Government. At Homo Economicus [es] they wonder about the consequences of the Government's defeat. And at El Blog del Ingeniero [es] they assure that, in fact, in this long four months conflict, nobody has won and it's more likely we all lost. Meanwhile, at Arte Política [es] , an user of the community started a post to allow users to insult “Cleto”, Julio Cobos' middle name, who untied the poll against the Government he's part of. Despite the title, you can find a debate about Cobos' role in the rejection of the law project.

By the way, La Nacion newspaper has a section called “Soy Corresponsal“, where readers can publish texts and pictures, and it had the Senate's voting as the main topic. For those who are looking for posts in English, there isn't much, but you can check out Understanding Argentina; By The Fault and Open Democracy.

Photo of Roadblock in Córdoba province taken by Pablo David Flores and used under a Creative Commons license.

For example, currently, the soybean industry pays 40%-45% taxes. The increase led to a rough conflict: for weeks, the sectors linked to the countryside closed the roads and didn't allow the circulation of trucks with grains, milk and meat. The result was a shortage of many basic products in the big cities. While the measures where temporarily dropped on two occasions, there's still a high degree of conflict going on between the Government, who hasn't lowered taxes, and those sectors linked to the countryside, which demand a decrease in taxes.

But, how have bloggers covered the topic of the conflict between the Government and the countryside? Let's see some opinions.

Let's start by the side of those who have a critical view of the protest measures of the sectors linked to the countryside. At Debate¨Politico [es] they published a text by Adolfo Perez Esquivel, a defendant of human rights in Argentina and Nobel Peace Prize winner, who sustains that “large national and international soybean companies are manipulating and pressuring the Government to lower the retentions. They make millions, but they want more and more, and they don't care about environmental damage, the consequences of monocultives, the reduction of natural forests, the indiscriminate use of agro-toxins, and the health and nourishment of the population.” At Arte Política [es] they reproduce a communique from the Frente Campesino (Rural Farmer's Front), where they criticize the measures of the sectors linked to the countryside. At Claro de Luna [es] they analyze and criticize the posture of the sectors in favor of the strong measures by the rural sectors, which tried to identify the “countryside” with “the country”. And finally, at Los Tres Chiflados [es], a group blog of economists, Larry, one of the authors, still expects an apology “for the second most antidemocratic act since the return to democracy”, in reference to the decision of sectors linked to the countryside to close the roads and cause a shortage of food products in the big cities.

Before going to the blogs that criticizes the Government and had a closer position to the countryside, you can check out two interesting materials. On one side, Andy Tow [es] mapped the location of road closing and the Gini coefficient, which measures the degree of economic inequity within the population. His conclusions: where there's more income equality, there were more protests. But, and this is interesting, there were also a coincidence between the areas of protests and soybean harvesting areas, the ones that received the highest taxes. On the other side, a group of people from Entre Rios province, who are in the design field, made a drawing of the Argentinean president, Cristina Fernandez, in a soybean field.

The other side opted for defending the countryside and this included harsh criticism against the Kirchner's government. One of the interesting points is that many blogs that are dedicated to defend the countryside position were created by producers that participated in the protests. At Marca Liquida [es], they criticized the Government's speech about the negative consequences of the soybean harvest; for instance, that it doesn't generate employment. At Patria Chacarera [es], they argue that the Government doesn't want to solve any of the problems that led to conflict and that, in fact, they're provoking more protest measures. This blog, by the way, has as a goal to publish posts that sustain the reasons by which retentions are unfair fiscal measures. Another blog, Viva el Campo [es] is gathering signatures for an Internet claim, with the objective to impulse the measures that led to the raise of retentions. A group of producers from Trenque Lauquen, province of Buenos Aires, have created a site [es] to tell their reasons for supporting the protest measures. And at Refundar la Republica Argentina [es] they don't hold back in attacks and insults for the Government's agriculture policy.

These days, the groups that represent sectors of the countryside have stopped the protest measures and have started negotiations with the Government again, looking to modify the increases in the taxes to exports. But the agreement, for now, doesn't seem too close.