We arrived late to the graduation. The entire block was full and there wasn’t a free seat in sight. Hundreds of people filled the street. Some people came dressed from work, and others, who had loved ones graduating, were dressed in their best clothes, cameras ready. I had no idea it would be such an elegant event. Incongruously it was held in the street that the neighbors had shut down, with chairs lent from the recuperated factory hosting the event, neighbor’s homes, a retirement home across the street and wood benches constructed just for the event. The stage was a makeshift construction with a hand-held microphone from the 1980s. But the people, the people attending were so elegant. The women graduating looked like they were going to their proms or quince celebrations in elaborate dresses, hair and faces made up and high heeled shoes – although many were decades older than fifteen or prom age. The spirit, joy, and pride on their faces and those of their families and neighbors was palpable. It was contagious. The pride was for graduating high school: something many people in poor and low working-class neighborhoods in Argentina do not get to do. For me, the joy of course was sharing in their pride at graduating, but also in recognizing how ‘regular’ this sort of thing had become for the community. The graduation took place in the street in front of the recuperated print shop Chilavert where the students had completed their three years of study: a street that the workers and families had shut down because they needed to. It was all so normal – normal in the revolutionary sense that Che Guevara spoke of normal – remarking that when the extraordinary becomes everyday you know it is a revolutionary time.
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