Argentina: has crisis struck the demoscene?
You may have seen the riots in the streets, the protests, the strikes, and the people claiming for their savings. You may also have seen malnourished children, hungry people, and hospitals and schools abandoned to the point of destruction. You may also know, if you're well informed, that the past four years' demoscene parties, the Flash parties, were held in Buenos Aires. If all these facts have triggered your curiosity about a country you don't know well, then this is the article for you. (Or, quite to the contrary, you may not even know where Argentina is while standing in front of a big map with a blinking arrow pointing to it.)
The Past
Has a demoscene ever really existed in Argentina?
The answer is yes. The demoscene is undoubtedly a European phenomenon, probably for a variety of reasons: European societies have a strong and vast cultural and artistic background, a good living standard, a high population density, etc. Although none of these societies meet all of these conditions, there are a few sceners spread around Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, Chile, Perú, Paraguay, and many other Latin American countries.
My birthplace used to be an important industrial country with a Welfare State kind of government. The average Argentinean had barely any reason to be envious of a person living in the first world; people had jobs, could spend money on entertainment, had good salaries, etc. The de-industrialization process began in 1976 when a military government took power, claiming that the country was in need of a 'strong hand' to stop the Marxist guerrillas that, they said, wanted to take over the nation. (Actually, there were no more than two thousand people spread in different guerrilla armies, not really a 'menace' compared to the Colombian FARC-EP).
This happened at a time when almost all of South America was in strong political upheaval, the USSR was a threat to the US, and the Cuban example was encouraging all Latin American socialist and allegedly socialist guerrilleros, such as the Montoneros who kidnapped powerful company owners to raise funds for their campaign. That's why the "Wicked Witch of the North" wanted Latin Americans under control and provided all the support for these human rights violating governments.
What these militaries did was a disaster. They pursued, jailed, tortured, and killed everyone they suspected of having different ideas than those of the 'free market', they indebted the country by 500%, they liberalized critical areas of the economy to external competition without any backup to the small national companies, thus increasing the unemployment rate, and they froze salaries and devalued the currency, which reduced acquisitive power, in the famous 'Rodrigazo' (Rodrigo was the economy minister who took these measures) of the 70s. The reason this government was still in power in 1980 was that people had absorbed the lies about the dangerous guerrilla and the need to destroy it. In 1982 the protests and discomfort with the government increased and the military needed to do something. Since they didn't have any better idea, they decided to recover the Malvinas islands (Falklands to some of you)... and the same people who had been protesting against the government in front of the 'pink house' (the government house) the day before the announcement of the take-over of the islands were now jumping and cheering with nationalist feelings, supporting the military campaign.
Luckily, we lost the war, and I say luckily because that sped up the end of the dictatorship. In 1983 we had elections won by Raul Alfonsín. This mustached guy was where all the Argentinean people deposited their hope. They thought he would give them a better living standard, social peace, etc. There is only one word that describes the 80's well: hyperinflation. For those of you who don't know what that is, I will explain: It's when one day 20 of your national currency is worth 20 US dollars, and the next day it's worth 15, and the next day, 5, and the next just fifty cents and then you have to get your bill changed by a bill with an added zero (200) which in turn starts losing value. Prices rose every hour following the tide of the behavior of the dollar, and imported goods were hard to buy.
That's maybe one of the reasons why Amigas didn't do well in the Argentinean market, 'cause they were expensive and were released amidst hyperinflation time. That made it very hard for a demoscene to appear. At that time, most of the people with a computer at home still kept Commodore 64's, and even C128 was popular until 1991. Nevertheless, some pioneers bought their Amigas and even started doing music and coding.
In 1989 the scandalous and corrupt figure of Carlos Saul Menem was elected president. In 1991 he instituted the 'convertibility', which gave 1 peso the same value as 1 dollar. At that time those who planned to buy a computer considered mostly the PC platform. People started buying XT's, 286's... but PC's were not a demo platform at that time. At the beginning of the 90's, there were a few pioneer PC BBS's on RemoteAccess (hah! Do you remember RemoteAccess?!) and other systems. The amount of BBS’s started growing, and around 1995-1996 there were hundreds of them. There was a peak period from 1994 to the end of 1996 when there were a lot of sceners, very few of them calling elite BBS’s like UDM (Unknown D-Mension), which ran pcboard (opposed to lame RA SysOps). Another elite BBS run by MADBiT was Fort Apache, and there was of course Masacre Brutal run by Diamond Darrell, with some others. In 1997 was the decay. The BBSs started to disappear, and the Internet became more popular. I think this was an important factor in the diminishing of the scene activity, because BBS’s kept the scene closed into the country's boundaries. Releases spread through all the BBS’s, and you knew that when you released something, many people would watch/listen to it, but the Internet created a lot of dispersion and the releases were lost in cyberspace. In 1998 the scene was almost dead, or very far in the process of it. That's when the idea of the Flash party came to light, invented first by Koza, a great coder who had recently been introduced to the scene, supported by Arlequin, a superb ansi/ascii artist, Darkman (ansi artist), Sludge (Linux guru), Spektor (musician), Acidbrain (ascii, code), and some others. The flashparty was a project that brought renewed hope that the Argentinian scene could be reborn. Four editions of the Flash party were held (98-2001). I have no news about this year's (2002) edition yet.
The 1998 edition was held inside a kind of huge garage which one of the sceners, Koza, got -almost- for free. The only good thing about it was that it was really big, like a hangar. We all chipped in for the projector that we rented, Arlequin and Octavo assembled the big speakers, and a guy who had DJ equipment contributed an amplifier. Since these were really hot summer days (It was after Christmas in December), and the place had no air conditioning, I can almost assure that it was indeed the hottest demoparty ever. The ceiling was made of tin with gaps in some places. Luckily it didn't rain, or all the computers would have been spoiled. We had to put our machines over wood boards which were set upon sawhorses, or wherever we could. We also had to provide ourselves with the proper electric plugs, and a coax cable network.
A lot of people went to the party, including people from outside the scene, who were just passing by. We even got a news article published in the most popular newspaper. That was, in my opinion, the greatest party of all, because it was really "elite" and with no commercial attachments. Although we had no security whatsoever, nothing terribly bad happened. The organizing was not great, and a lot of people complained that it was very bad, everything got delayed, there were no entries for some categories, things didn't work, etc., but we didn't charge any entrance fees anyhow. All in all, I think we had a good time back then.
In 1999 Acidbrain's father, a great ansi/ascii maker and coder, convinced people in the cultural centre "General San Martin" of Buenos Aires to support our parties and give us a space, because he had many contacts. The place was a little small, but very comfortable, with proper UTP network setup, nice desks for the machines, a free projector, and a cool sound system with a mixer. With no entrance fee and total government support, that was great. Air conditioning was even available although they didn't realize it until the last party day!!!
In 2000 the organizers got a BIG place for the party. It was bigger than the 'hangar', the A/C was on, there was a 100mbps net with an internet connection for everybody, two projectors, and a great sound system with its own sound technician! There were no entrance fee either. The only downside was that there were two stages on the two ends of the big room. The projector with the demos, etc. was aimed at on one of them, and electronic music groups performed on the other stage. I like electronic music and electronic musicians cause I'm one of them myself, but the bad thing was that A LOT of people came for at night when the artists performed (the big room was full), but for the demoscene activities there were very few people (this demonstrates that the demoscene is not for the masses), but I won't complain 'cause the party was great anyway. There was even a lot of publicity, with posters all around the city of Buenos Aires.
2001 was also a cool party, very similar to that of 2000, in the same place. The only difference was that it was held in June, in winter, as opposed to the normal parties that were held in November or December. This gave the impression that the 2000 and 2001 parties were TOO close together, as if there was no time between them. That also reflected in that there were only few entries for almost every category.
Sadly, the flashparty didn't achieve its objective, which was making coders, musicians and artists sit in front of their computers and do stuff. There were always less entries than would have been reasonable and expectable.
The main thing the Argentinean demoscene has always been short of is CODERS. This was the hardest kind of scener to find, and this fact was evident because in almost all the flashparties (except the last one maybe) there had been many music, gfx, and ansi-ascii entries, and almost no demos (except the last one when Panoramix submitted his wonderful demo). Even in 1998 there were only two entries. The winner, Alchemy by Fac, was coded by a Mexican scener, who is of course a great coder and friendly guy. The second best was a kind of unfinished. It was coded by Esabb, who is an Argentinian coder who, with more incentives, would have done more stuff.
In 1999 Fac saved our day by entering his very cool demo "monamixx." Irondude, another Mexican scener, entered a very good production too. I entered a shitty demo coded in Turbo Pascal (geekodelic) with music by me, and esabb entered some unfinished work. There was nothing else in the demo categories! The music and gfx categories were still the most brilliant and full of different entries/categories with a varied range of styles and techniques.
In the 2000 party there were no demos that I could remember. In 2001 panoramix made what I think is the best Argentinean demo at the moment.
Perspectives for the future
In the present day, the situation is very hard for all the Argentinean citizens: unemployment reached more than 20% of the population, it is assumed that half the inhabitants have trouble finding a steady job, and more than 40% of the people live below the poverty line. The Argentinean Peso was devalued to almost 3,70 Pesos per Dollar, while the average salary is only 500 Pesos. That means that it takes the whole salary of 5 months' work to buy a barely decent computer. This means that for some years, until the hypothetical time when economy recovers, computers and technology in general will be unreachable for those Argentineans with more important needs to fulfill. Considering that there are usually one or two demosceners over thousands of computer owners, this will make it very hard for new artists to appear, since those with no computers won't have the chance to get one. This kind of thinking is almost frivolous, considering the serious situation a lot of people are in in my country.
It's been almost a year since I lost contact with other sceners, so I don't know how the crisis affects them in particular. In general, I should say that there is less interest because of the small amount of people, and because those who have gone independent and have a job (computer specialized jobs are more required) are working extra hours because of a certain degree of exploitation, and thus have no time or will for the creative act.
Considering these facts, I don't think the scene should expect more government support; there are many other more important things to spend money on. The main problem to make a demoparty is not the economical one, because the money can be gathered with effort. The flash 98 demonstrated that a demoparty with no support is possible. Our trouble is the lack of an active scene, with people releasing stuff. Apparently some sceners started losing interest for the different reasons stated above, while others began a couple life, or shifted their areas of development from demo coding and gfx to web programming and design, or those who tracked music started doing mp3 for commercial release, etc...
Considering this, and the apparent lack of a new generation of sceners, or a new scene community, perhaps the scene in my country is dead for ever. I HOPE I'm wrong. At least I'm always looking forward to make it alive again.
About the banning of foreign words
In one of the releases of Hugi I read an article by Adok, where he writes that in Argentina the use of foreign words in signs and posters is forbidden. Well, that's partially true, because that restriction was recently imposed only in one small district in the far suburbs of Buenos Aires called Escobar, governed by Luis Patti, who was a police officer during the last dictatorship, said to torture arrested people with an electric goad. He's a fascist ultranationalist piece of shit. Personally, I don't think using foreign words in signs is dangerous; the most dangerous things are these right-wing shitty governments in the suburbs.
I'll leave the subject of domination and language for another article, since it is a very debatable and interesting issue.
Greetings from Buenos Aires
NOTE: All the opinions presented in this article are on my behalf and don't represent any other Argentinean (demo)scener's opinion.