Bicentenary

All is well here after a chaotic bicentenary weekend. The majority of the 9 de Julio has been blocked since this time last week and remains so, due to the mounting and subsequent dismounting of vast stages and television screens. The journey to and from work has been a nightmare as the poorly organised and under-developed public transport system took an unprecedented hit, more akin to a London commute than Buenos Aires is used to. Buses decided to take alternative routes without informing passengers, and if you caught one of those buses and tried to get on and/or remonstrate with the driver, you took your life in your hands. In short, the city wasn't really ready for the big week, and it showed.

The national government had a very public spat over the last week or so regarding the bicentennial celebrations with the city government, or Macri, to be more specific. Macri made a disparaging remark about Nestor, so CFK announced she wouldn't be attending the showpiece re-opening of the Teatro Colón on Monday night because Macri would be there; he responded with a polite but strongly worded letter lamenting the absence of the President; she responded with another letter claiming that she didn't want to cause Macri any 'mortificación personal' through her presence; he immediately responded with another letter etc etc etc. Childish politics, completely out of step with the celebratory context. I then learned that Macri and the anti-government supporters (eg the city of Buenos Aires) would be holding a closing ceremony in a cathedral in the city on the 25th, while Cristina would be holding hers in Lujan. It would have been interesting to see her inciting hatred against people like me LIVE, but I couldn’t.

However, I did make trips to the 9 de Julio on the evening of the 24th and the afternoon of the 25th. More than anything, it was a serious, once-in-a-lifetime event stretched over four days and five nights, and it would have been churlish not to have attended at least part of it. There was a huge parade on the 23rd, which my friend Trevor and his Argentine girlfriend Tami went to, and several massive open-air concerts were planned, but, this being Argentina, as soon as the parade had just passed its peak, the heavens opened and didn't stop thundering from about 4 pm til 7 am the following day. The 24th saw the opening of the Colón after three years of renovations, and I went with a few friends, all of them shorter than I, to see the open air dancing events and light shows. The 9 de Julio was heaving, and we had to push quite far in in order to get an elusive half-decent view for my companions, angering many patriotic souls by putting myself between them and their event. In the end, we could see little, arrived too late, and were left wandering the streets with all the other lost souls; eventually, I walked home.

The 25th was similar. We arrived in the Plaza de Mayo earlier and found it filled with a multitude of political groups and movements, each with their flags and all espousing the 'Viva Patria! Viva!' refrain with various tinges of anti-wealthy/anti-British sentiments. We slid away at some point and made our way to the 9 de Julio to see the stands: each province had provided a stand which encapsulated everything that was unique about their province. The idea was great, but the execution was poor: each stand had a queue of about 100 people waiting to get in, and spilled into the masses of people trudging up the road and pushing into each other. We couldn't even get close to a single one, so we tried the food stalls on the other side of the street, and found most of them to be shut, selling rubbish products or rammed with people. Once in this melee, we couldn't get out without fighting against the current. The current didn't like that one bit and fought back. Eventually we managed to find a way out through the backstreets.

As we floated our way through the backstreets near the 9 de Julio, crowds of people drifted towards and around us clutching flags and marching in the direction we had just come. Their faces were etched with jubilation and determination, and they scowled at us tall whiteys as we passed. It was dreamlike. We obviously weren't supposed to be there, and people treated us as if we weren't there. A famous sindicalista walking in front of us was repeatedly stopped and saluted by the marching workers, but when we got close to him we could hear he was whingeing about the traffic to his companion. We found our way onto a packed subte train and made good our escape to the calm of Palermo.

The celebrations revealed something to me. In many senses, this was a celebration of what it really means to be Argentine: beyond the cultural exports of tango and folklore, football and Che Guevara, beef and wine, being Argentine means crying when you hear the national anthem, is about rejoicing in revolutions and overthrow, and inspiring deep-rooted passion and anger about injustices meted out on an unfortunate population. In this sense, I have never felt as un-Argentine as I did yesterday. Sure, I know most of the words to the national anthem. I love watching them play football. I opine freely about Argentine politics, culture, history, and literature, and claim a deeper knowledge than most about the country. I have a passport and a DNI. But I am not Argentine. The people on the streets yesterday feel something that I can only grasp at, pretend to. I know it, they know it, and when they look at me they know that I do not belong.

On Sunday night I was talking to some middle/upper-middle class Argentines, and they were horrified and disgusted by the amount of money that had been spent on the celebration which could have gone into much more worthy and needy causes, and also by the political grandstanding and manipulation by the ruling classes. Yesterday as I stood in the Plaza de Mayo waiting for my friends and watching flag-bearing groups march into the space, I thought how impressive it was to see so many young people who are politically motivated. My next thought was how naive I had been, and how manipulative and manipulated these people are. Then the Malvinas veterans marched by, there was a standing ovation, and I suddenly felt very British, well-dressed and alone at the wrong time. When we were in the crush on the 9 de Julio, an Argentine asked me whether I was an 'ingles bueno' or an 'ingles trucho' - the ingleses truchos have their own passports and separate queues at airports because 'they think they're special', apparently. Much of the celebration was really quite uncomfortable for me, and I'm glad it's over. Last night saw an incredible light show projected onto the Cabildo, and an official dinner with Lula, Chavez, Morales & Co. all in attendance. Cristina danced. Macri didn't. I was watching the final episode ever of Lost, all nationalism already a distant memory.

Apart from the football, of course. Monday saw the thrashing of Canada by Argentina at the same time as England tepidly dismissed Mexico, but at least England was playing a real team that had qualified for the World Cup while Argentina where basically playing against part-timers. The best part of the Argentina performance was the introduction to the national anthem, played quite brilliantly on the harmonica by an Argentine rock singer. Unless they get their act together, this Argentina team is going to have a harsh awakening in the World Cup, which will do nobody any good.

I think that's probably enough for now.