Bitácora 1: el viaje gaucho 2007
My trip through part of South America began in Buenos Aires. First of 5 instalments.
March 2007. Argentina. After 2 weeks alone this has been an interesting trip. I couldn’t leave Buenos Aires, just like Lisbon it became a habit to get out of.
Graham Douglas
Small impressions slip away and need to be recalled. The dog-walkers with 20 dogs tied to trees in the Palermo park while they chat on their mobiles; the blue-rinse ladies in cafes near La Recoleta cemetery (the most over-rated ‘attraction’ in BA in my opinion).
The Palermo shops seem like art galleries or architects’ studios, there is so little space occupied by the items on sale compared to the high ceilings, even 20ft high doors; the Personal cellphone shop which features single phones on stainless steel podiums, only about 5 of them in the whole shop, each with a computer screen on the other side displaying the functions, like a sculpture or an oracle. In the end I felt the whole street was an art gallery, as if walking past each window/painting in turn and saying ‘I like that’, or ‘wow, they’ve really managed to explore perspective’. Or sitting in a train carriage and watching through the window as the spectacle changes. It reminds me of Toscana in Italy, where the landscape seems to imitate art with its perfectly groomed groves of poplars on immaculately rounded hills, and a hill town like San Gimigniano perfectly placed as if by a photographer for a coffee-table book.
Here in these small man-made temples of commerce, one little world after another passes by as one walks. And it is just the same in cyberspace, because each of these Aladdin’s caves has a website.
If I write this up all I have to do is give you a list of the websites and you can take the same walk, ‘advertise what you criticize’, can’t get more post modern than that ?
In La Boca, the old port area where thousands of immigrants from Italy and Spain arrived during the 19th century, I have a feeling of kinship, as if my family once passed through here, or at least immigrated somewhere similar: the odd pavements with steps up and down every few yards, but maybe it’s just that the houses remind me of North London.
The stunning art displays in MALBA and the museum of fine arts. David La Chapelle photo collages, baroque excess like the Czech photographer Jan Saudek mixed with Jeff Koons, and his superb video promos especially Macy Gray. The mobiles using light reflecting off curved metal strips.
But in the Microcentro where I stay there are so many cheap and run down cafes and hotels, with worn and stained carpets and dingy lighting, and at night there are rag and bone men with horses and carts that collect the rubbish for sale. In the outskirts it is worse, desperation and drugs. I will leave soon.
How life here is so connected, just like in Europe, always the mobile phone and the internet, and in the street the pirate CD’s , and the people walking, as if we are all on the same journey. Or perhaps that everything being so instant means none of us are really travelling anywhere, and we are all potential journalists of each other’s lives, history has ended. Well, until the Tsunami strikes…
On the bus out of town:
“200 families evicted from a squat by 500 armed ninjas” says the graffito,
Listening to Amadou and Mariam on the road to Cordoba,
Bought a cellphone second hand for 100 pesos, so I can talk to you,
“Planned Misery 1976-2007” says the graffito,
Ai Carla you are in my blood.
I went to an old-fashioned free cabaret in Cordoba that was great fun, with each act being interrupted by new arrivals from outside, including an overweight ‘transvestite’ who went round the audience sitting on guys’ laps and tickling their necks, don’t sit near the front unless you like this sort of thing. A Tango singer, an ‘American from Miami’ trying to impress the hostesses and getting his face slapped, a drunk who couldn’t stand. At the end a real tango dancer and a ‘Mexican’ woman singer who must have been nearly 70 but gave a great performance.
I remember a little bar called El Calentito near Callao in Madrid a few years ago that was like this, now closed.
In Salta I took a trip to Cafayate. It was an effort to get up for a 7.00 am start but glad I did, nice to travel in a group, away from my own thoughts with interesting people. One is an English girl who works for the Foreign Office and has lived abroad a lot. Full of squeaks and nervous jumps in the classic English Upper-Middle Class way, her natural enthusiasm not quite contained by her elegant inhibitions, she talks to everyone about everything and is very popular for that. Another is a 67 year old Jewish engineer who grew up in Buenos Aires, and has just done an MA in Argentine History.
He has very interesting things to say about how the 18th century Spanish came here with the culture of the Hidalgo (= son of someone), like the English gentleman who wasn’t supposed to get his hands dirty, except that the Spanish upper class were much more authoritarian, and blocked any kind of social progress right up until their power was broken by the Perons in the 1940’s.
(To be continued… in Bolivia)
NB - This was published in The Prisma Multicultural Newspaper in about 2010, but it is one of many that are still to be recovered from the archives, following the hack, several years ago.