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LONDON, England /
Sky News / World News / January 31, 2010
The president of Argentina has announced that pork
is a more effective sexual stimulant than Viagra,
as she tries to boost the country's pig industry.
By Heather Christie, Sky News Online
Buenos Aires -
Cristina Fernandez claimed she and her husband had just spent a fulfilling weekend of marital bliss after tucking into some barbecued chops.
"Eating pork improves your sex life. I'd say it's a lot nicer to eat a bit of grilled pork than take Viagra," she said in a speech to the leaders of Argentina's pig farming industry.
"And let me tell you, I am a big fan of pork meat, and I am not just saying that to look good here."
Where's the beef? Argentina's president Cristina Fernández, 57, is attempting to promote the pleasures of pig meat to her citizens, as the cattle industry goes through a crisis.
Photo: Eduardo Di Baia / AP
Ms Fernandez's half-joking comments were met with applause from the country's pork industry leaders. The light-hearted comments introduced Fernandez's proposed subsidies for Argentina's pig business. Fernandez was elected in 2007.
The president did, however, voice concern as to how her husband, former Argentinian president Nestor Kirchner, would react to her public revelation.
"I just realised what I said - Kirchner will kill me," she said.
The comment has been played repeatedly on television and radio stations, and has sparked fierce debate on whether Argentines, some of the world's most avid beef consumers, should add more pork to their diet.
Argentinians consume a little more than their body weight in beef every year and have little interest in replacing their beefy meals with chicken, pork or other meats.
The head of the association of pork producers, Juan Luis Uccelli, has supported Ms Fernandez's speech, saying that Denmark and Japan have a much more "harmonious" sexual life than Argentinians because they eat a lot of pig meat.
"In Osaka, Japan, there is a village in which the people who reached 105 years old and ate a lot of pork had a lot of sexual activity," he told a radio station.
Others were sceptical.
A specialist in sexual dysfunction, has told the Argentinian newspaper La Nacion that there was no study showing that pork meat significantly improves sexual activity.
Argentines are the world's biggest per capita consumers of beef, but the government has sought to promote pork as an alternative in recent years due to rising steak prices and as a way to diversify the meat industry.
"Trying it doesn't cost anything, so let's give it a go," Fernandez said in the televised speech.
Copyright ©2010 BskyB
Backgrounder
Who Is Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner?
Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner will have no trouble finding her way around Argentina's presidential palace, the Casa Rosada or Pink House.
For the past four years, it has been her husband's workplace and from 10 December it is set to be hers for the next four.
Cristina, as the majority of Argentines call her, has often been described as a strong-willed woman, obsessed with her image.
But she is a politician with a long track-record, a record many say facilitated the political rise of her husband, Argentine President Nestor Kirchner. There is no doubt that they make a formidable political couple.
Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was born 19 February, 1953, in La Plata, the capital of the province of Buenos Aires, where she graduated in law.
She married Mr Kirchner, who she met at university in 1975; a year later, the couple went to live in his home region, the southern province of Santa Cruz.
At the end of the 1980s Cristina Elizabeth Fernandez began her political career, first as a provincial then as a national deputy.
But it was her husband who rose through the Peronist ranks.
In 1991, Mr Kirchner was elected governor of Santa Cruz, a post he won twice more, while Cristina supported him in her capacity as a deputy.
Wives duel: When Mr Kirchner took office as president in 2003 - in the midst of one of the worst economic and social crises in the country - a similar pattern emerged. By then Cristina Fernandez was a senator herself with her own political weight in Congress, where she actively supported her husband's policies. Cristina cemented her political position in the congressional elections of 2005.
Taking 46% of the votes, she won in the province of Buenos Aires in a contest dubbed "the wives' duel", beating her main rival, Hilda Gonzalez, the wife of the former President Eduardo Duhalde (2002-2003).
During Mr Kirchner's administration, there was almost no decision taken in which she did not have a say, her influence exceeding that of an ordinary lawmaker. She was also the first senator to have an office within the presidential palace, provoking criticism from the opposition. The governing party insisted that the office was small and is hers by virtue of her position as first lady.
Now Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is set to take occupy the Casa Rosada in her own right. She is expected to continue her husband's policies, but with more emphasis on international ties, in particular easing the at times strained ties with Washington.
During the campaign she offered few specific policies, took part in no debates and avoided Argentine media interviews until the day before campaigning ended.
Evita: As a legislator, Cristina Fernandez was recognised for her intellectual strength and for her determined campaigning in the fields of human rights and women's issues. But some members of the opposition - and even her own party - seem daunted by her strong character, accusing her of arrogance.
She is said to be obsessed with her fitness and health, as well as her public image. She drinks mineral water from just one brand and often wears designer labels.
Analysts say that perhaps her weak spot is her inexperience in office. She is certainly taking over at a testing time for Argentina, where despite the economic recovery of recent years, many still live in poverty. Rising prices and continuing energy shortages seem set to pose very real challenges to her administration. Cristina Fernandez has been compared to Eva Peron, Argentina's legendary first lady who formed a formidable ruling partnership with her husband Juan Domingo Peron in the late 1940s and early 50s. But Evita was never elected. Cristina Fernandez, by contrast, has become Argentina's first elected female president. [rc]
By courtesy of BBC News
© BBC MMX
"I had never worked before, and now I produce kilos and kilos of dried fruit to sell. They taught me how to dry peaches, tomatoes, peppers and grapes, and I decided on my own to try it with melons and pears - and they were spectacular," Susana Robledo, a proud new entrepreneur from rural Argentina, told IPS.
Robledo is one of more than 200 women who participated in the Women Entrepreneurs Programme organised by the non-profit organisation Estudios y Proyectos (EyP) in the rural towns of El Colorado, in the northeastern Argentine province of Formosa, and Lujan de Cuyo, in the midwestern province of Mendoza, where she lives.
Rural woman in Argentina engaging in one of her invisible daily tasks. Credit:Courtesy of Estudios y Proyectos
In the past, surplus fruit crops were simply left to rot. Now that Robledo has learned different techniques for dehydrating and preserving fruit, as well as tips on marketing, she stores kilos of various types of fruit in her freezer and sells them at the different markets held regularly in this region of Mendoza, where the local economy is primarily centred around vineyards and wineries.
The EyP project is aimed at developing rural women’s entrepreneurial skills in order to help them become economically independent. To this end, the organisation also works on such issues as women’s rights to land ownership and the problems they face in obtaining loans - as well as their right to decide how many children they want to have, or to protect themselves from domestic violence.
When women’s rights are laid out for them, "they take ownership and demand respect for them," Liliana Seiras, the director of the project, told IPS. "We approach them from the angle of production, but we always move deeper into the underlying issue of women’s rights, to help them gradually move towards their own empowerment."
For their part, the participants have only one complaint about the project and their trainers: "Why didn’t they come sooner?" This is the sentiment voiced by Paulina Gil, now in her 70s, who took part in the project in El Colorado.
"Our work was worth nothing in the past. The men toyed with us, hit us, threw us out of the house with our kids and moved other women in with them," recounts Gil in a video produced by the organisation.
The video reveals the violence and deprivation of rights and opportunities faced by these rural women, a situation made more acute by their geographical isolation, as well as their isolation from one another. This is a phenomenon that the programme is also working to overcome, by promoting links and partnerships among the women, including joint business ventures.
Although every country has its own unique circumstances, rural women in Argentina face a similar situation to those in the rest of Latin America.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) states that there are 24 million "invisible" women producers in Latin America, and this invisibility is heightened in rural areas, where women work in the same places where they carry out their domestic tasks and reproductive roles.
Agricultural engineer Cristina Biaggi, author of "Estudios de Mujeres Rurales en Argentina" (Studies on Rural Women in Argentina), told IPS that the invisibility of women’s work in the countryside is the result of cultural factors that lead them to think of themselves as their husbands’ helpers, as opposed to producers in their own right.
According to official statistics, only 21 percent of rural Argentine women consider themselves to be "employed", while 10 percent are classified as "unemployed". The remaining 70 percent are neither involved in nor seeking paid employment. As a result, they appear in the statistics as "inactive", despite the fact that they work around the clock.
The "inactive" category is gender-biased because it does not adequately capture the work performed by rural women, said Biaggi, who stressed that their under-representation is partly due to the way they themselves view their work.
Susana Robledo, 55, quoted earlier, is a prime example. She told us that she "had never worked before," until participating in the Women Entrepreneurs Programme. In fact, she and other women like her are not only responsible for housework and child-rearing, but also take part in sowing, weeding and harvesting crops, raising livestock, milking cows and sometimes even producing crafts.
Nevertheless, Robledo, a 55-year-old mother of two sons - one of them already married - had never considered herself a rural producer, despite working side by side with her husband on their small farm.
In El Colorado, many women only came to recognise their capacities after their husbands left. "It’s amazing how many women there have been left on their own to raise their children," commented Seiras.
When the provincial government stopped providing subsidies for cotton farming, the men went to the city to look for work, and most of them never came back.
The women were left with the burden of supporting their families, without an income, and also without legal title to their land, which meant that they were not eligible for loans, for example. In circumstances like this, it is no surprise that the training programme has been so successful, and so highly appreciated.
"The first thing we did was to set up a silo and grain sheller to store surplus crops that could be used as animal feed," said Seiras. Through a few small changes and training aimed at improving production, the women were able to begin selling their goods directly to consumers in the various public markets held in the area.
But first it was crucial to work on their low self-esteem and lack of awareness of their rights, Seiras stressed.
In Mendoza, the first activity organised by EyP was a weekly hairdressing and manicure session for participants in the programme. "We taught them how to style their hair and to make skin lotions with honey, milk or cucumber," she said.
"A month of ‘beauty salon’ sessions was like fertilising a field. It improved their self-esteem, and they were ready to begin training," she explained.
The women were trained in a number of different activities until they found the one that best suited their abilities and needs. These ranged from weaving to the preparation of dried fruit and aromatic herbs, sausages and even pre-baked pizza crust.
Many of the participants are women originally from Bolivia who came to Argentina as temporary workers hired to pick garlic or onions and ended up staying. They face conditions of extreme subjugation, but have only recently begun to recognise this fact, noted Seiras. [rc]
Copyright © 2007 IPS - Inter Press Service News Agency.
