Getting to Buenos Aires, and a disclaimer
A sort of disclaimer:
“Travel writing” is a tiresome genre that is at the bottom of the creative literary ladder. One reason is that travel writing blends travelogue and personal reflection, neither of which is as useful as a good Michelin guide to restaurants and monuments. This part of my blog adheres strictly to this model of general irrelevancy, combined with personal reflection. These are a few impressions of the trip — the sort of selective view that travelers have when they have a few days and a lot of kilometers to travel. It is not a good guide to anything (except the answer to one trivia question, see below), but it has some thoughts that are specific to my own experience of Buenos (particular the architecture and culture of power). It is the first of two parts on Argentina, the second being a many-kilometer trip through Patagonia (buses, vast spaces, and glaciers).
The first 5-airport day
For people who sometimes speak of “Latinos” as a single concept, our trip from Maranhao to Argentina couldn’t have offered more insight into the poverty of this generalization. Sao Luis is on the equator and is strongly influenced by its slave history and current economic backwardness. Buenos Aires feels like a modern “European” city whose ethnic diversity is more displayed in the faces of people who are descended from the original peoples of the region (and Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Bolivia).
This was a trip from the equator to roughly the 42nd parallel south of the equator — about the same roughly distance to the south as from the equator to Chicago in the north. In other words, from the tropical center of the world to the southern regions of glaciers, snowy mountains. It is only a bit further to Tierra del Fuego where penguins look out to the water where the next stop is Antarctica.
The trip to Buenos Aires and Patagonia was a brief 10-day journey. I had to reset my Brazilian visa because I had reached the end of the number of days I could stay in one visit. As a kind of holiday present to ourselves, we spent several days in Buenos Aires, then to Barriloche (the Argentinian ski capital), and flinally by bus to Patagonia. The trip ended in El Calafate which has an airport from which we flew back through Buenos Aires to Sao Paulo, Brazil for the holidays.
We followed the famous Route 40 which links Patagonia with the rest of Argentina. It is thousands of kilometers over diverse roads — paved, unpaved, and somewhere in between.
The first day/night was a five-airport journey from Sao Luis to Brasilia to Sao Paulo (Congonhas Airport), Sao Paulo Garulhos Airport, to Buenos Aires.
The 1:30 am flight to Brasilia got us there just before dawn (photo below).
Buenos Aires and the Change of Government
The long administration of Peronist government ended with the retirement of Christina Kirchner and the defeat of her designated successor, former Vice President Daniel Scioli, by Mauricio Macri. It was the end, at least for now, of the Peronist tradition that had been carried in recent years by Nestor, and then Christina, Kirchner. The transition was tense as Kirchner refused to attend the inauguration and gave a militant midnight speech to her supporters as she left the Casa Rosada.
Feelings were high and the streets around the Plaza de Mayo and the Casa Rosada (the Argentinian “White House”) were a mix of excitement and tension, ratified by the presence of riot-prepared police and armored vehicles.
Outgoing President Christina Kirchner was said to be so angry at her party’s having lost the election that there were stories (true or not) that she turned off the hot water, gave the staff a holiday, and bugged the telephones.
Maurico Macri won the presidential election in the urban areas of Buenos Aires where he attracted professionals, investors and businessmen, and younger voters. He won by only a couple of percentage points, having lost in the outlying rural regions and working class districts of Argentina (see photo above of the Macri mural in Perito Mereno)
The Plaza do Mayo is a place for demonstrations. The photo below is one of a long-standing encampment of veterans. As nearly as we could tell, their service was mainly in the Falklands War with Britain (for the islands off the Argentinian coast known as the Malvinas). This is a critical incident for the self-examination of Argentinians — they lost the war to the British, precipitating the fall of the military government. The defeat helped produce a fledgling democracy, but the veterans were lost in the dishonor of defeat.
Plaza de Mayo is also a place where the mothers and relatives of the desaparecidos — the “disappeared” — demonstrated for justice (and even just information) about those they lost during the “dirty war” of the military dictatorship (1976 to 1983). There may have been as many 30,000 lost in the government’s war against its own population, until it was forced from power following Argentina’s defeat in the Falklands War. This veterans’ camp in the plaza in front of the Casa Rosada is another sign of the unresolved recent history of Argentina’s politics.
Recoleta Cemetery: Architecture of Death and Power
Recoleta Cemetery is a testament to the architecture of power — buildings and avenues designed to impress, show power and wealth, and remind most people that this is beyond their reach.
Parts of street life give a similar feel, but not just the beautiful Casa Rosada, the Teatro Colon, and other government, commercial and religious buildings. The very design of the city seems designed to show power.
There is a classic trivia question: “What is the widest street in the world.” Answer: In the background of the photo below — the Avenida 9 de Mayo. It is some 300 feet wide, has multiple traffic lights in crossing, and has more lanes of traffic than you count as you wend your way across.
It is a modern adaptation of an imperial road, designed to parade huge armies and horse cavalry, then soldiers, and police. If this were Russia or China it would occasionally be filled with missiles and tanks. the closest things to tanks we saw were the paramilitary vehicles at the inauguration designed to be used against its own population. A street to inhabit with power.
Buenos Aires also has scores of theaters and the legendary Teatro Colon, more or less across the Avenida 9 de Mayo where we were having coffee (photo below).
It is a marvel to cross, though that takes a while and is not without its dangers. We found our way to the other side to get to the Teatro Colon, the most famous of Buenos Aires’ hundreds of theaters. There is no street that feels like this in the world, though the streets leading to the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin has a similar feel of armies and historical power.
Imagine a street the width of two football (or soccer) fields filled with armies, tanks, politicians, rockets, and gaudy marshals on horseback. It is not so long ago this power in Argentina has a military dictatorship “disappeared” thousands of citizens, still without a trace.
This man with a cart of boxes (photo below) is incongruously pulling it across the widest street in the world.
Puerto Madera
The old area of working docks has been refurbished as a tourist district with office and commercial buildings, and a wealth of restaurants.
The ship below was once used to supply Antarctic explorers. Photographs nearby show its sister ship sinking in the Antarctic ice. It was a reminder of how close the tip of Argentina is to the end of Latin America. I think Sidney, Australia is closer to this dock than Chicago.
A rare opportunity: One of Simone’s former artistic directors and choreographers
Buenos Aires is full of tango clubs, tango lessons, tango shows, and touts on the street who can take you to one or another. The shows are famous, but we found something much better. Oscar Araiz was the artistic director of the Geneva Grand Theatre when Simone danced there. He is now semi-retired in Buenos Aires. When we visited him he was recreating one of his classic works, “Tango,” in which Simone danced some years ago in Geneva. He was still exceptionally creative and developing a new work with several young professional male dances and an unusual vocal score by Mahler.
We spent an evening with Oscar and sat in on his rehearsal the following day. It was held at the University of San Martin on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.
