My community values

Every community has its own values which characterizes it and gives it an identity, a tradition. Mine, here in Tucumán, Argentina, is one more, but at the same time, being part of it makes us feel special.

To begin with, and to more easily understand my community’s culture, the most important value is family and friends. Spending time with them is a priority and this distinguishes Tucumán even from other provinces in Argentina. Firstly, family is present throughout all your life as people usually live with their parents until they get married, at around 30. After this, parents continue seeing their children as families usually get together every Sunday at lunch time to eat a barbecue because this day is considered to be spent with them. Birthdays, Christmas and some important dates are spent with family too. Also, one of the things our parents teach us is to have a close relationship with our brothers or sisters and to help each other, if that is the case you will share with them all your life. Secondly, friends are very important as they are the ones who you share your life and your experiences with. In schools and universities we are used to studying in groups, helping each other with work and homework; friends are really supportive and necessary in life. They are present at every stage of life. We spend every weekend with them and during the week we see each other in the afternoon generally. The usual meeting place is a house where we drink “mate”, or at a bar, to have a coffee, a coke or a beer. At night, the typical and best social encounter is a barbecue with alcoholic drinks and a guitar, which are combined with jokes, anecdotes and laughter, the perfect plan. The most important days of the year for friends here are friends’ day, students’ day, New Year and birthdays, that can be shared with family.

Secondly, my community is not from the first world so the system is not strict or structured. In the first place, we think we rule time as we are not accustomed to being on time, and timetables and schedules are not respected. Our system is rather informal, queues are usually long and people have to wait a lot to be attended to. To sum up, Tucumán is a little province which makes everybody be related and know each other. This makes professional and formal relations even more difficult to exist. Also contacts are very important: you can avoid long lines, tests for the driver license and job interviews by them.

Everybody here has similar lives: people usually spend all their lives here, not everybody manages to have a university degree, so some people begin to work very young, others after university, then they get married, have children and grandchildren. Our daily lives are like this: shops and offices open between 8 o’clock in the morning until midday and then open again at 5 o’clock in the afternoon until 8 or 9; at schools classes can begin at 7 a.m. if you go in the morning or at 2 p.m. in the afternoons. At 8 p.m. people are returning home, then comes dinner and then people go to sleep. Some traditional activities are done at certain hours: in the morning the sidewalks are cleaned, after lunch everybody takes a nap and soap operas are seen in the afternoons. People begin to go out to have fun on Thursdays and also on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, so during these days there is more traffic and more people on the streets and public places. On weekends, teenagers go out around 12 o’clock at night, and return home around 5am as discos close at 4; many return later. Adults also go out, usually to have dinner with friends, but they return earlier than adolescents.

In conclusion, this society forms mediocre and lazy people but teaches you to love and value your people, your town, and your traditions and to accept the failures in it, as nothing is perfect. It is an informal and unstructured system but that is what makes it fun and adventurous. Here you can enjoy life and relationships, which is why I love it!
Eli Chaila