Argentine Academics

I am living in very high company here in my apartment in Belgrano. Tonight at dinner, my host mother told me all about her work as a sociologist. After ten years of research she published the first book in the whole country on the topic of rape. In the process of her research, with funding from the Dutch government, she opened the very first women's crisis center in the whole city! She was the expert for a long time for the academic world in the theme of how society constructs the image of a victim of rape, and she's been on many TV Shows and done many interviews about the subject.
Now, she is working on a documentary about a woman who was a survivor of the worst concentration camp during the military dictatorship and a man survived four concentration camps during the second world war. This documentary is all about how these two have stepped outside the roles that society has constructed for them as "survivors" and "victims". She says, that when she's done translating the narration into English, she's going to give the translation to me to correct!
In the process of telling me all this, we got to discussing the world of academia here in Argentina. She told me all about how being a university professor is not at all a well paid position, and in addition to not being well paid, there's no such thing as privately funded research here unless the funding comes from international foundations. So professors are grossly underpaid AND have to maintain themselves while working on research IN ADDITION to paying out of pocket to get it published. Ines was lucky, and since her book was the first of its kind, the publisher liked it so much he bought it and paid for everything. Others, she said are not so lucky.
In spite of all of this, she told me, there is a flourishing academic world! Professors live very humbly in poorer neighborhoods with minimal luxuries, but they teach for the love of teaching and live off of different posts that they hold. A teaching position in UBA (university of buenos aires), one in a different province, a seminar position for a company, and other such jobs. I find it so interesting, because all of this makes me anticipate professors who are very passionate about what they do and from whom I'll learn loads.
Going back to what I said initially, Ines has a very high end circle of friends. Famous writers and poets and journalists. I feel honored to learn from the wisdom this woman has to offer me and I can only look forward to the coming months living and learning from her!