Don't cry for me Argentina

A brief commentary from last weekend's trip to Mendoza, Argentina

Argentina has held an interesting place in my mind for quite a while. I don't know if it's the tango, the beef, patagonia, or a city called "good air" (Buenos Aires), but I was very excited to get the chance to visit the western part of Arg. last weekend.

My bus, Andesmar, left Santiago a little after midnight (only 30 mins behind schedule) on Friday night/Sat. morning, Feb 8/9th. We arrived at the border crossing around 3 a.m., and left the border crossing around 6:30 a.m. A brief aside/commentary about the border-crossing experience. It is very clear that the Chileans and Argentineans do not have free trade agreements, or open border agreements, because every piece of baggage was inspected (but only a few pieces of fruit were confiscated). The border crossing was neither efficient nor warm (at 4000 meters in the middle of the night, we were freezing). About 8 busses were in front of us when we crossed into Argentina, and 4 were in front of us when we crossed back to Chile, but only one immigration agent (one for each country) processed our papers. However, this was actually not the bottleneck ... rather, the customs (Aduana) were amoebicly slow. And the passengers seemed to not care to be speedy either.

For example, Friday night we were all huddled around the Argentinian customs inspection area waiting for our bags to be inspected. The customs lady points to a bag and asks whose it is. She doesn't use a loud voice, but she can be heard. No one responds. Being in no hurry herself, she asks again about a minute later whose bag this is. Eventually someone gasps with (mock?) surprise, "Oh, that is my bag!" and goes over to the agent. Seriously --- our ONLY task at that area was to stand there & wait for our bag to be identified and go over to it while it is inspected. So it never ceased to amaze me why people were otherwise preoccupied and couldn't be bothered to pay attention to see if their bag was next to be inspected. Could this be cultural?, where a "rushed" attitude is frowned upon (maybe by the other passengers, or by the aduana inspections agents)? If you actually hurried over to your bag, was that a sign of weakness (making you more likely to be inspected rigorously)? Or did people really not mind standing in ~40 degree air for over half an hour at 5:30 a.m. with a warm bus and a seat beckoning them as soon as the inspection process was completed? I thought maybe it's an education thing .... the first bus I took was the cheapest one (no reclining seats), and many of the passengers seemed to be street vendors (their bags were filled with trinkets, hand-woven clothes, etc.). Thus maybe they didn't really understand the customs process and/or were wary of the uniformed officer, thus were in no hurry to get moving (because that would mean they had to interact with the international police). Regardless, there definitely can be some significant time savings at the border with simple behavior changes from the passengers and the customs agents.

Efficiency is definitely not something common here in South America, but I think certain parts of life could definitely be greatly improved just by a few simple changes. Like paying attention to the aduana when she identifies your bag to be checked. From the administrative side, I have no idea what Chile & Argentina have to lose by putting a little more energy into open borders. More robust trade is good for both countries' citizenry. They can keep their [in my mind silly, but it's their country] restrictions on fruits, vegetables, and meats. They can also maintain their scrutiny against illegal drugs. But is another x-ray machine, or three more customs employees, really that prohibitively expensive?

Oh well, enough of that rant! At least the Santiago int'l airport is pretty good! Perhaps it would have been worth it to pay $150 extra to fly to Mendoza instead of drive!