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El Transbordador in Spanish 

Aspiro a que este blog (y sus sitios relacionados) sean un vehículo. Una conexión. Un viaje compartido con otros, no importa que sea corto. Un eslabón que forme parte de los itinerarios de otras personas aunque sea sólo por un momento, lo que puede transformarse en bastante tiempo para quienes lo aborden con frecuencia. Traigan su equipaje. Los veo en el transbordador.

South Africa 2010 :: Participative leadership

by Toto Imperatore

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Being used to see Maradona as an uncontrolled big mouth who is unable to hold a word and does not care the way he speaks, the first adjective that comes to one's mind is "arrogant". However, as a trainer, Diego is humble. He proved to be so once Argentina classificated to South Africa's World Cup: he thanked the players for having re-validated him as a coach. Diego still feels as a football player, so he fully identificates with his coachees. He tells Messi that he wants him to become greater than Maradona himself. He listens to every man in his team, both from the technical staff and from the troop of players, and assimilates everybody's contributions. Together with Mancuso and Enrique, the three of them think colectively of decisions to be made. Diego does not feel ashamed if he has to pick somebody else's proposal. He talks to his players and his players talk to him. His dialogue with Verón is frequent during the matches, whether the midfielder is in the field or sitting on the bench. Maradona talks of training shifts as sessions in which collective ellaboration takes place: he says "we discussed", "we realized". "we prepared this or that" instead of "I told them", "I explained them" or "I put them to exercise this or that".

Decisions that have to do with material resolution are delegated by Diego to his players. When he chose the backs he prioritized experience above youth and speed. Heinze, Samuel, Demichelis, Burdisso if it is his turn, deliberate and make decisions on the field. Mascherano participates in such brief brainstorms too; to put things in order he swaps verbal and gestual messages with team-mates at his back or ahead of him during the matches. In free and corner kicks there are quick exchanges among players in which they choose what to do. Deliberation does not mean dilation or hesitation. Strong links of mutual respect between them all bring such processes rapidly to converge to useful decisions.

The managing style Maradona has inaugurated is far aside the method-and-obedience style of most football coaches. It is participative leadership. It does not only seem to work; it seems to make Diego happy, and his players too. How much does happiness worth?
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I wish you dream with little angels

By Toto Imperatore
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Among the nights of my childhood, the ones when childhood was real were those at which mom tucked me in bed to sleep, and dad came in, kissed me on my forehead and wished me: "dream with little angels". It wasn't every night, because dad used to work until late and he often arrived home when I was already asleep. But at those "full service" nigths the whole meaning of childhood, of being a child, was to fall asleep under the protecting ceiling of my home, tucked in by mom, with my forehead anointed by dad's kiss and that omen of dreaming with the little angels slowly vanishing in my ears.

Four a.m. is an ambiguous border between today and tomorrow or maybe between yesterday and today, it is not clear. To my eyes, Buenos Aires does not look these days the same it did in my childhood. At 4 a.m. streets become sort of a huge bedroom for hundreds of homeless ("people in street situation", according to the politically correct, anesthetic euphemism). Some are jobless cardboard collectors who have just finished their work and lain down by the side of their loaded carts, waiting for sunrise to make their way back to their distant homes. But most do not have any other home than the openess of the hostile streets, which at that hour are empty. Many of them are children. Then, what this picture shows cannot be surprising, except for the fact that it happens right at the Republic Square that brackets the Obelisc, the heart of downtown Buenos Aires. These three little kids have chosen to sleep at the center of the tile yard, on a grill through which the subway's warmth breathes out.

I was lucky that the image is not neat. I was told that, if the children's faces had been recognizeable, I might have been sued and punished. That is because they are minors and, when publishing their identity, I would have violated their rights --rights the law protects. It does not look like that, does it? ... Sad nonsense! When I saw them I thought of the little angels to which my dad entrusted my dreams. Who wished these kids they dreamed with little angels a while ago, when they went to sleep? Nobody for sure. Maybe they cannot even dream with little angels, because they are little angels themselves. Sleeping is the most vulnerable situation a human being can be in. Not having a home is the most vulnerable situation a child can be in. A child sleeping in the streets is the most vulnerable of the angels.

I post this picture so that I, you, all of us, dream with little angels from now on. So that night after night the politicians, all the officials both of our Federal Government and of the Government of Buenos Aires City where scenes like this take place everyday, dream with little angels. With these little angels. With all the little angels like these who are left unprotected. Should that dream disturb us, disturb them, so that no single night we would skip dreaming with little angels.

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The Prowler of La Matanza

Commissioner Cordon and the dynamic duo, in the hunt of the Prowler of La Matanza.

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A cruel new threat is casted over the gotham city of Conceitopolis. Around its streets, some of them half-lighted (certainly not those of the fanciest districts where the public space has been privatized), some cut across by the craters of unfinished pothole repairs or blocked by road work fences with no light signs at all, the sinister shadow of a new public enemy wanders. It's the gloomy Prowler of La Matanza.

Guided by the Commissioner Burt Zak Cordon, the superheros of Good recharge their powers to fight this scourge.

It would be useful if the noble commissioner provided clues to rapidly recognize the wicked. That would let the people of Conceitopolis take precautions and, eventually, alert the forces of the Law with no delay. The commissioner has to know, for sure, some few more things about the Prowler, besides the fact that he or she comes from La Matanza: perhaps he can reveal info about the Prowler's ethnic roots, or about the pigmentation of his or her skin, the aspect of his or her dress and shoes, his or her jergon and gestures, his or her conduct.

Some decades ago, the ruling generals used to advice the population about the behavior and appearance of the arch enemies of those times. Should the commissioner attempt a description of the like, it would be helpful to better know him (not as much the Prowler of La Matanza as the Commissioner himself).

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Now let us have a look at the facts:

The new chief of the new police of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (CABA), Eugenio Burzaco, wants his troops to be legally empowered to arrest people who "prowl" at town. He insisted that adding the legal figure of "prowling" to the Capital City's violation code would be highly convenient, and justified his initiative by saying: "It's a very useful tool because if somebody living in La Matanza is in the Capital City but cannot explain what he or she is doing there, that figure will be enough justification to arrest that person" ("La Nación", 01-23-2009).

Out of the 24 municipalities sorrounding the CABA, which together form the giant urban conglomerate know as "Greater Buenos Aires" (GBA), La Matanza is the most largely populated one. According to  the census of 2001, it had 1,255,000 inhabitants, which will certainly overpass 1.4 million the coming year, when the next census will take place. Only the CABA itself and 5 Argentine provinces else have a larger number of inhabitants (including among the five the Buenos Aires Province, to which La Matanza belongs).

Let's next visit some of the differences between La Matanza and the CABA:

1) Most of La Matanza's inhabitants are young people: in 2001, 54% of its population was under 30; the same age cluster made only 40% of total CABA's population.

2) The segment with unsatisfied basic needs reached 20% of La Matanza's and just 7.8% of the CABA's total population, always according to the 2001 census.

3) A recent study by private researchers ("La Nación", 06-18-2009) threw 36.8% poverty and 11.8% indigence indexes for GBA, which at CABA were much lower: 13.9% and 3.1% respectively. But in the farthest urban belt, in which a vast area of La Matanza falls, poverty climbed up to 49.1% and indigence up to 17.2%. Such figures difer from those reported by INDEC, the Federal Government's statitics bureau, for whom poverty was 17.8% and indigence 4.7% at GBA in 2008, 2nd Half. But even picking these benevolent official figures, the gap between GBA and CABA is still nothing but dramatic.

4) Scarcely 39% of La Matanza's homes had in-house water supply and sewerage facilities in 2001, while at the CABA almost every home, 99%, did enjoy such privileged condition.

5) Again according to the 2001 census, no more than 42% of La Matanza's inhabitantes were protected by some kind of health insurance system, while the same figure was 74% at the CABA.

It can be concluded, then, that the Chief Police Officer expects the potential agressors to be clearly differentiated from the average inhabitant of the Capital City: they will most likely be young, maybe poor, and will probably turn up in sub-optimal hygien and health conditions. A good frist step to start pointing to the prawlers and mobilizing City forces against them.

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