As I left the paper on Sunday night, my worst fears were confirmed. The street, normally deserted save for people playing football on the five-a-side pitches and those who live under the highway, was heaving under the human and vehicular traffic. Hordes of jubilant or triumphant fans marched out of Boca, and cars were unable to move. There were no buses; I had no money in my wallet. I would have to walk.
Boca Juniors won the local football tournament at approximately 9 pm that Sunday evening. Thanks to a stubborn defensive record (the team let in four goals all season and lost no games), the title was already practically in their clutches; a win would do the trick. As a result, the celebrations started early, even before the 7 pm kick-off. What can only be presumed as fireworks thundered in the distance, and then closer, and then below and around and above the newspaper’s building. Windows shook. Sometimes it sounded very much like gunfire, as if an invasion was underway. I tried to ignore these thoughts, focus on writing the news, but the echoes of distant explosions continued through the night.
I left work shortly after 10 pm. My previous experiences with Boca fans coloured my approach to the prospect of walking home in their midst: the first game that I attempted to see in Argentina, in 2006, had seen me mugged and stripped of all valuables before entering the ground. It would be hyperbolic to compare the experience with a rape, but at the time, that was how it felt. The lingering distaste, anger and even fear still make it hard for me to actually enjoy walking in a crowd of Boca fans, jubilant or not.
On the other hand, as I had discovered in articles I had recently written about the club, the only people who can really afford to go to matches nowadays are the wealthy, tourists and those hooligan gang members who get distributed tickets and do little else in their lives. I knew that so long as I was close to the source of their joy, I would be safe.
I walked among them along Paseo Colón, heading towards Independencia Avenue, because I knew there were cashpoints there that could help me escape the horde. The fans were, more than anything, exceptionally pleased with themselves. These were football fans at their best, as people from all walks of life, wearing the blue-yellow-blue strip, greeted each other jovially and rejoiced. The man who sits on a mattress surrounded by dogs smiled a toothless grin at me and asked me how I was. A motorcyclist dawdled on the pavement, beatific smile plastered across his features.
In San Telmo proper, the mix of tourists and locals started to become more pronounced, and my hand lingered around my pocket as I entered the sealed-off cashpoint. A Gothic youth shook his head: both machines were empty. My heart sank, but I left, crossed Independencia and trudged towards the Plaza de Mayo. On the first corner I passed, a man sprawled, half in the street and half on the pavement, semi-conscious, a litre of Budweiser propped against his chest.
The cobbled streets drew me further, past more tourist spots filled to the brim, with occasional marching gangs shouting Boca slogans and wielding flags. Near Belgrano Avenue, towards the actual Plaza itself, the streets become more menacing. There had been a power failure, and several roads were blocked, and as my feet crunched broken glass and splintered wood, I could feel the presence of others in the darkness, near and around me.
At a corner, a man sat in a wheelchair, clutching his fake leg to his bosom, talking to an aged prostitute. Neither took the slight bit of interest in my presence. The woman was drinking wine out of a paper bag, which seemed faintly ridiculous: why bother with the bag?
Next to the Plaza itself, I found working cashpoints, and my heart soared. I could now leave this semi-dark existence and return to home, cosy, safe, peaceful home. I walked towards the Cabildo, and started to encounter a different kind of fan: those who had not set foot in the stadium that day. A group of five or six youths were standing by the subway entrance, banging several drums and greeting all the cars that drove past. I crossed towards the Cabildo itself, and instantly one of the group detached himself and stood next to me before the crossing.
Dressed in a vest and filthy jeans, the man had eyes that seemed unable to focus, and he waved his hands and made small jumps as if in a state of untold bliss. I crossed quickly, and then I realised that he had crossed ahead of me, was actually walking around me, circling me and coming up close behind me. I clutched my bag to my chest, and he looked at me, seeing through me, and his arms flew forward.
I ran. Sprinted straight away, driven by total fear. I ran towards the deserted Plaza, not even thinking about the oncoming traffic, which swept around me. I could easily have been hit, it just wasn’t playing on my mind. I had to escape. Once across, I looked behind me to see if the man was following me, but he just stood there, shaking slightly under the Cabildo arches.
My fear drove me to cross the street too quickly, almost being hit again, but I had to move. I walked up Saenz Peña, noticing a large group of youths on the other side of the street, following a middle-aged lady. I stopped, almost hid. The group passed the lady and continued, but there was a tangible menace in the hot air that seeped into everything that moved.
Close to Corrientes, I found a taxi, with a driver who spoke without opening his mouth. I didn’t care, I needed to leave. The car set off, stopping several times to let large groups of fans pass. Almost every group touched or banged the car as it stood stationary. The driver said something inaudible and we moved on.
As we drew nearer to 9 de Julio, and the Obelisk, the dull thuds started again. The sound of explosions, and never the flashes. Only when we actually came to cross the street were the white flashes of light visible. The taxi carefully maneuvered past straggles of people, and I turned to my right to gaze upon the Obelisk itself. Surrounded by people, with yellow and blue banners waving, immersed in a mist of smoke and noise. More than a celebration, it appeared to be a pagan ritual, as the crowd shifted and danced around the tower. The normally busy street lay deserted, except for the revolutionary fervour sweeping the adulating football fans. It was like a window into another world.
The rest of the journey was uneventful, except for the dangers presented by the uniformly terrible driving of our fellow motorists. I arrived home safe and sound, but my hand was shaking when I put the key into the lock.
6/12/11
13/9/11
Parsley
In recent weeks Argentina has become incensed by the kidnap and murder of an 11-year-old girl and the subsequent fallout. The case is shrouded by confusion and has somehow gained media coverage in a way that would suggest that the country is frustrated by ennui and has a desire to vent.
It started innocuously enough. Candela Rodríguez left her house in a humble neighbourhood in Hurlingham, Buenos Aires province, to meet up with some Scout group friends on August 22, but never made it. What followed were nine days of agonizing searching and constant demonstrations, led by her mother, Carola Labrador. The search was eventually extended to several neighbouring countries. Just over a week after her disappearance, the girl was found dead in a bag by the side of the motorway.
Aside from the fact that the kidnap and murder of a pubescent girl is essentially abhorrent, what exactly is so special about Candela? She was not the first girl to disappear in Argentina and not the first this year. However, her disappearance, barely a week after President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner posted a massive ‘victory’ in the primaries, seemingly nullifying any suggestion that she would not be re-elected in the October presidential elections, was taken up by local politicians, civil rights groups, celebrities and politicians as an issue that had to be addressed.
What was unclear from the start, and remains so today even after nine arrests, is what the motive behind her kidnapping was. This did not prevent the immediate supposition by several civil rights groups that Candela was kidnapped as part of a human trafficking ring. Outcry ensued. The President herself received a weeping Labrador at the Pink House. The mother insisted that the girl would be found, but wise heads sagely and forlornly believed that Candela had already been shipped north.
Until her body was found, about 30 blocks from where she lived. The discovery of Candela’s body turned the entire case on its head, as human traffickers evaporated and a motive gap emerged. It was then revealed that Labrador had received an attempt at a ransom or extorsion; on the same evening, it emerged that Candela’s father was in prison for motorway stick-ups. Before long, whisperings of drug involvement started to bubble up to the surface, and suggestions that other members of her family were involved in the drug trade, including perhaps her mother who might have known the kidnappers, made Candela’s case unique, more disturbing, and increasingly obscure.
Suddenly everyone looked sheepish. Several bandwagons that had been settled in for the long term vanished into the horizon, including the actors who declared a march in Candela’s name on Wednesday evening only to cancel it on Thursday morning. The media was not, and indeed has not been able to decide what the focus of the case is, torn between an ineffective or inept provincial police force (how was Candela undiscovered by 2,000 policemen if she was being held only 30 blocks from her home?), political focus on crime afflicting Buenos Aires (predominantly related to sex and drugs), or the grimy underside of a humble suburb.
One of the most amazing u-turns in the whole story has undoubtedly been the fall from grace of her family. The rapid shift of focus from distressed mother to drug-related criminality has exposed a sneering elitism behind Argentine media that calls to mind the reaction to Shannon Matthews’ ‘kidnap’ in the UK in 2008. The fact that the girl’s extended family seems to live in the area in which she was kidnapped and also be involved in activities that arouse suspicion has led to a media machine intent on digging up yet more dirt on characters that were previously portrayed as victims. So much for the benefits of the 24-hour rolling news cycle.
In terms of how politicians have dealt with the case, their approach has been far from measured. Opposition figures have leapt on the opportunity to slam an already besieged provincial police force in a province that accounts for 40% of Argentina’s electorate. The province governor, Daniel Scioli, encouraged sharp criticism for his arrival of the scene where Candela’s body was found by helicopter, leading to suggestions that her body had actually been discovered earlier than admitted and that the governor was waiting for the photographers to be ready.
Prosecutors have admitted to be overwhelmed and to be searching for a motive. The subsequent arrest of nine people, including a 75-year-old mechanic and his son, has not revealed an alleged ring of professional kidnappers and murderers, but a confused bunch of local characters, none of whom really fit the bill (two carpenters, two mechanics, a local drugs dealer, a beauty salon worker…). Parsley, synonymous in this country with innocence, has literally been thrown at some of the suspects’ houses in sprigs. More people get arrested by the day, and others have already been released. Perhaps hugging Candela’s mother at the Pink House wasn’t such a great idea after all.
Other commentators have already suggested that the case is so huge because Argentines are desperate for something of interest when faced with the probability that the President will be re-elected in October. What better than a case that seems to unite drugs, inept and/or crooked coppers, ineffective politicians, and a family of criminals to remind Argentina that, in a year of elections, there is more to the country than voting.
In that sense, it is unlikely that the real motivations behind Candela’s kidnap and murder will ever become clear. The only certainty in this case is that a young girl died tragically in a country where innocence is a precious commodity.
It started innocuously enough. Candela Rodríguez left her house in a humble neighbourhood in Hurlingham, Buenos Aires province, to meet up with some Scout group friends on August 22, but never made it. What followed were nine days of agonizing searching and constant demonstrations, led by her mother, Carola Labrador. The search was eventually extended to several neighbouring countries. Just over a week after her disappearance, the girl was found dead in a bag by the side of the motorway.
Aside from the fact that the kidnap and murder of a pubescent girl is essentially abhorrent, what exactly is so special about Candela? She was not the first girl to disappear in Argentina and not the first this year. However, her disappearance, barely a week after President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner posted a massive ‘victory’ in the primaries, seemingly nullifying any suggestion that she would not be re-elected in the October presidential elections, was taken up by local politicians, civil rights groups, celebrities and politicians as an issue that had to be addressed.
What was unclear from the start, and remains so today even after nine arrests, is what the motive behind her kidnapping was. This did not prevent the immediate supposition by several civil rights groups that Candela was kidnapped as part of a human trafficking ring. Outcry ensued. The President herself received a weeping Labrador at the Pink House. The mother insisted that the girl would be found, but wise heads sagely and forlornly believed that Candela had already been shipped north.
Until her body was found, about 30 blocks from where she lived. The discovery of Candela’s body turned the entire case on its head, as human traffickers evaporated and a motive gap emerged. It was then revealed that Labrador had received an attempt at a ransom or extorsion; on the same evening, it emerged that Candela’s father was in prison for motorway stick-ups. Before long, whisperings of drug involvement started to bubble up to the surface, and suggestions that other members of her family were involved in the drug trade, including perhaps her mother who might have known the kidnappers, made Candela’s case unique, more disturbing, and increasingly obscure.
Suddenly everyone looked sheepish. Several bandwagons that had been settled in for the long term vanished into the horizon, including the actors who declared a march in Candela’s name on Wednesday evening only to cancel it on Thursday morning. The media was not, and indeed has not been able to decide what the focus of the case is, torn between an ineffective or inept provincial police force (how was Candela undiscovered by 2,000 policemen if she was being held only 30 blocks from her home?), political focus on crime afflicting Buenos Aires (predominantly related to sex and drugs), or the grimy underside of a humble suburb.
One of the most amazing u-turns in the whole story has undoubtedly been the fall from grace of her family. The rapid shift of focus from distressed mother to drug-related criminality has exposed a sneering elitism behind Argentine media that calls to mind the reaction to Shannon Matthews’ ‘kidnap’ in the UK in 2008. The fact that the girl’s extended family seems to live in the area in which she was kidnapped and also be involved in activities that arouse suspicion has led to a media machine intent on digging up yet more dirt on characters that were previously portrayed as victims. So much for the benefits of the 24-hour rolling news cycle.
In terms of how politicians have dealt with the case, their approach has been far from measured. Opposition figures have leapt on the opportunity to slam an already besieged provincial police force in a province that accounts for 40% of Argentina’s electorate. The province governor, Daniel Scioli, encouraged sharp criticism for his arrival of the scene where Candela’s body was found by helicopter, leading to suggestions that her body had actually been discovered earlier than admitted and that the governor was waiting for the photographers to be ready.
Prosecutors have admitted to be overwhelmed and to be searching for a motive. The subsequent arrest of nine people, including a 75-year-old mechanic and his son, has not revealed an alleged ring of professional kidnappers and murderers, but a confused bunch of local characters, none of whom really fit the bill (two carpenters, two mechanics, a local drugs dealer, a beauty salon worker…). Parsley, synonymous in this country with innocence, has literally been thrown at some of the suspects’ houses in sprigs. More people get arrested by the day, and others have already been released. Perhaps hugging Candela’s mother at the Pink House wasn’t such a great idea after all.
Other commentators have already suggested that the case is so huge because Argentines are desperate for something of interest when faced with the probability that the President will be re-elected in October. What better than a case that seems to unite drugs, inept and/or crooked coppers, ineffective politicians, and a family of criminals to remind Argentina that, in a year of elections, there is more to the country than voting.
In that sense, it is unlikely that the real motivations behind Candela’s kidnap and murder will ever become clear. The only certainty in this case is that a young girl died tragically in a country where innocence is a precious commodity.
25/7/11
Bicentenary Revisited
It is no great statement to say that Buenos Aires is an angry or at least frustrated city. Nothing here works properly. Ask any foreigner and you will be greeted with a barrage of complaints, like taking a warm shower on a cold day: a predictably reassuring stream of malaise. It’s difficult to take the temperature of how Argentines themselves actually feel about their city, because there will always be something to complain about. This is part of its charm; if foreigners really want to experience the best of Buenos Aires, then they have to find the right things to complain about.
However, recently I have noticed a creeping frustration in the way that porteños speak about their city. All of its social and political systems are showing signs of creaking decay. It is an election year, which should herald a sweeping out of the cobwebs of failed political hegemonies and replacing them with bright shiny new ones, but, this being Argentina, not one real leader has emerged to challenge the President, with the closest to a real opposition figure choosing to run for mayor again instead, and nine other demi-clowns choosing to have a go instead. Of course, there are plenty of candidates, plenty of campaigns, but as the result appears to be such a foregone conclusion the question dancing around everybody’s mind is what exactly is the point.
The sense of frustration is not just political though. The slide to relegation of one of the twin favourite brothers of local Argentine soccer, River Plate, was as frustratingly slow as it was inevitable. The viral video hit of the irate middle-aged fan cursing his television set sparks widespread amusement, but really this man is the only one who is externalizing the sheer desperation of it all.
Argentina’s international team were supposed to win the Copa América, held on their home turf this past July, in order to regain some of the glory lost under the embarrassment of the Diego Maradona reign, which culminated in the limp defeat against Germany last summer in South Africa. But instead the frustration continued, as a team whose combined worth dwarfed absolutely every other team in the competition scored an own goal against Bolivia, no goals against Colombia, three goals against an Under-23 side from Costa Rica and lost on penalties to Uruguay. This was a failure. The only people who really cared about the tournament were supposed to be the players, but their performance suggested that even they were disinterested.
And then there’s the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, a heroic civil rights organization slipping into the mire through either cack-handed financial management or criminal money laundering. And the Grandmothers, who have spent the better part of a decade claiming that the children of the owner of the Clarín media group were the “appropriated” children of persons disappeared in the last military dictatorship, only for the same children to take DNA tests and prove that this was not the case. And the country continues to grow economically, while inflation rises unchecked. And so on.
As I said at the start, Argentina is frustrated, but now more so than ever. Election years should be about hope (Obama 2008), change (Cameron & Clegg 2010), or at least the suggestion that either of those things could be around the corner. At this point, 14 months on from the Bicentennial celebrations, which were impressive but effectively meaningless, the only thing that has changed is that people seem less jubilant, less angry, and are more accepting of disappointment. For a Latin American country famed for its passion, frustration, that most British of imports, is becoming a national characteristic.
However, recently I have noticed a creeping frustration in the way that porteños speak about their city. All of its social and political systems are showing signs of creaking decay. It is an election year, which should herald a sweeping out of the cobwebs of failed political hegemonies and replacing them with bright shiny new ones, but, this being Argentina, not one real leader has emerged to challenge the President, with the closest to a real opposition figure choosing to run for mayor again instead, and nine other demi-clowns choosing to have a go instead. Of course, there are plenty of candidates, plenty of campaigns, but as the result appears to be such a foregone conclusion the question dancing around everybody’s mind is what exactly is the point.
The sense of frustration is not just political though. The slide to relegation of one of the twin favourite brothers of local Argentine soccer, River Plate, was as frustratingly slow as it was inevitable. The viral video hit of the irate middle-aged fan cursing his television set sparks widespread amusement, but really this man is the only one who is externalizing the sheer desperation of it all.
Argentina’s international team were supposed to win the Copa América, held on their home turf this past July, in order to regain some of the glory lost under the embarrassment of the Diego Maradona reign, which culminated in the limp defeat against Germany last summer in South Africa. But instead the frustration continued, as a team whose combined worth dwarfed absolutely every other team in the competition scored an own goal against Bolivia, no goals against Colombia, three goals against an Under-23 side from Costa Rica and lost on penalties to Uruguay. This was a failure. The only people who really cared about the tournament were supposed to be the players, but their performance suggested that even they were disinterested.
And then there’s the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, a heroic civil rights organization slipping into the mire through either cack-handed financial management or criminal money laundering. And the Grandmothers, who have spent the better part of a decade claiming that the children of the owner of the Clarín media group were the “appropriated” children of persons disappeared in the last military dictatorship, only for the same children to take DNA tests and prove that this was not the case. And the country continues to grow economically, while inflation rises unchecked. And so on.
As I said at the start, Argentina is frustrated, but now more so than ever. Election years should be about hope (Obama 2008), change (Cameron & Clegg 2010), or at least the suggestion that either of those things could be around the corner. At this point, 14 months on from the Bicentennial celebrations, which were impressive but effectively meaningless, the only thing that has changed is that people seem less jubilant, less angry, and are more accepting of disappointment. For a Latin American country famed for its passion, frustration, that most British of imports, is becoming a national characteristic.
2/6/11
Dentist
It’s fair to say that my new life has substantially changed my outlook on the world in which I live. For one thing, I feel more connected with this country, with this city. The office environment I used to inhabit was fine, up to a point, and the perspective and objectivity I learned while working there will be invaluable to me for the rest of my life. However, my office colleagues, with their wildly contrasting beliefs and ideas but ever-present respect for the opinions of others, would have long debates about things to do with this culture that I could never fully grasp. The argument itself, fine; but as I had no connection with what they were talking about, did not understand the basic facts, I could not offer an opinion and was therefore isolated. Again I learned that my understanding of this country and this people would always be limited – detailed, but still superficial.
My new job not only expects that I lack knowledge about a lot to do with this city and this country, but it demands that I work hard to learn. To fill in my own gaps. This is a fantastic experience for me. I’m told to cover a story, and I realize that in order to do so effectively I have to understand more about where the parties involved are coming from. I am forced to expand what I know about pretty much everything. The difference is that in my previous job there were buffers, cotton wool walls that allowed me to bounce gently off ideas; in my new place of work, opinions have to be formed and facts have to be learned in the blink of an eye in order to be able to work effectively.
There is also a great deal of focus on individuals and what they represent. No politician is just a politician – they are the current incarnation of an ever-changing thought process. Each person that we write about is important because of what has come before them and what they might do in the future. Our trade is the present, but the present is only given as much value as we put into it.
I have also found myself learning things that nobody would ever have thought to tell me. This week I have learned a lot about brutal murders. The reason for this is simple: an individual who has spent a lot of time in the news for a lot of reasons (the list includes potential money laundering, which bounces into state responsibility of public funds, the role of civil rights movements in contemporary Argentina, and so on) is also a convicted murderer. Nobody seems to care. This may be an indictment of the dark past that is sometimes eluded to in shadowy references, a past that nobody wants to talk about because touching on it produces such a confused explosion of emotion – but that’s nothing to do with this one individual. He and his brother were convicted of a horrific murder, and a murder of no less than their parents; last week he ‘resigned’ as the funds manager for a massive civil rights organization. One simply couldn’t make this up.
Last week an elderly gentleman was being interviewed by one of the major TV stations, so I enquired as to his identity. Who’s the gent in the specs? Ah, that’s what’s-his-name, the dentist who got so fed up of living with his wife, mother-in-law and nagging daughters that he blew them all away with a shotgun. He’s just got out of prison. I saw him the other day buying a newspaper, pipes up a colleague.
[That sound in the back of your mind is your mental jaw dropping. I know what it sounds like, believe me.]
And there he is, on TV, breezily chatting about what it feels like to be out and how he’d happily have done the same thing again. There is nothing terrifying about him as a person, except for what he’s capable of and has done as a person. It’s hard to fear him; many people empathize with him. I can’t, just yet.
And then there were the two boys who… Actually, as I’m starting to discover, the list is endless. And each case individually reveals particular aspects of Argentine society that you won’t see written about in guidebooks or even talked about in films or on TV. This is an extremely complicated country. I feel like I’m just scratching the surface.
On a final note, this morning I was in a shop, when I saw a little old man with specs walking by clutching a document wallet. From the back he looked identical to the killer dentist. Without realizing what I was doing, I was suddenly following him, walking behind, trying to guess where he was going so I could get in front of him, and when I did, what I’d say to him. And I stopped. Of course I had nothing to say to him. I just wanted to see, to touch him, to make sure that he was real.
My new job not only expects that I lack knowledge about a lot to do with this city and this country, but it demands that I work hard to learn. To fill in my own gaps. This is a fantastic experience for me. I’m told to cover a story, and I realize that in order to do so effectively I have to understand more about where the parties involved are coming from. I am forced to expand what I know about pretty much everything. The difference is that in my previous job there were buffers, cotton wool walls that allowed me to bounce gently off ideas; in my new place of work, opinions have to be formed and facts have to be learned in the blink of an eye in order to be able to work effectively.
There is also a great deal of focus on individuals and what they represent. No politician is just a politician – they are the current incarnation of an ever-changing thought process. Each person that we write about is important because of what has come before them and what they might do in the future. Our trade is the present, but the present is only given as much value as we put into it.
I have also found myself learning things that nobody would ever have thought to tell me. This week I have learned a lot about brutal murders. The reason for this is simple: an individual who has spent a lot of time in the news for a lot of reasons (the list includes potential money laundering, which bounces into state responsibility of public funds, the role of civil rights movements in contemporary Argentina, and so on) is also a convicted murderer. Nobody seems to care. This may be an indictment of the dark past that is sometimes eluded to in shadowy references, a past that nobody wants to talk about because touching on it produces such a confused explosion of emotion – but that’s nothing to do with this one individual. He and his brother were convicted of a horrific murder, and a murder of no less than their parents; last week he ‘resigned’ as the funds manager for a massive civil rights organization. One simply couldn’t make this up.
Last week an elderly gentleman was being interviewed by one of the major TV stations, so I enquired as to his identity. Who’s the gent in the specs? Ah, that’s what’s-his-name, the dentist who got so fed up of living with his wife, mother-in-law and nagging daughters that he blew them all away with a shotgun. He’s just got out of prison. I saw him the other day buying a newspaper, pipes up a colleague.
[That sound in the back of your mind is your mental jaw dropping. I know what it sounds like, believe me.]
And there he is, on TV, breezily chatting about what it feels like to be out and how he’d happily have done the same thing again. There is nothing terrifying about him as a person, except for what he’s capable of and has done as a person. It’s hard to fear him; many people empathize with him. I can’t, just yet.
And then there were the two boys who… Actually, as I’m starting to discover, the list is endless. And each case individually reveals particular aspects of Argentine society that you won’t see written about in guidebooks or even talked about in films or on TV. This is an extremely complicated country. I feel like I’m just scratching the surface.
On a final note, this morning I was in a shop, when I saw a little old man with specs walking by clutching a document wallet. From the back he looked identical to the killer dentist. Without realizing what I was doing, I was suddenly following him, walking behind, trying to guess where he was going so I could get in front of him, and when I did, what I’d say to him. And I stopped. Of course I had nothing to say to him. I just wanted to see, to touch him, to make sure that he was real.
19/4/11
Alem y San Martin 6:05 pm Monday
Buenos Aires is the city where I have lived longest. As such, it will always be alive to me. It is beautiful, sexy, glorious, dishonest and filthy. The concept of truth is cheap and mercurial here: everything depends on the eye of the beholder and whether the beholder is having a good day. The city and its people are by turns welcoming and unforgiving; this is a city that hates and loves in the same breath, but it breathes, it moves and it is alive.
My bus on the way to work passed an olive green 1970s Ford Falcon, broken down in the middle of a busy road. The sight of the car still makes me shiver.
From the tenth floor of an office building on the corner of Plaza San Martín, one can see a snapshot of Buenos Aires resplendent, particularly in the glowing twilight of early evening. To the left there is Retiro, almost invisible, obscured by the politely dominant clocktower. Built by the British when the British were still openly respected (but never loved), its four faces are vital yet often disagree. The tower stands surrounded by a quaint little fence in a pleasant square and although it is passed by hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis, it is probably the monument in Buenos Aires that has been least-defiled by graffiti. The graffiteurs, strangely, respect the fence.
To the right, Alem, the business district avenue, stretches into the middle distance, flanked by tall, proud office buildings that are only remarkable because they are set against the wide horizon of the river behind. The towers themselves seem dated, and have no bearing on the lives of the antlike beings scurrying at their feet. In the distance, new monuments are rising in Puerto Madero, designed for gawping rather than inhabiting. Glass pantheons that will stand in tribute to an imagined progress that has yet to materialize – a testament to a city that often forgets itself, stretching beyond the present to a projected future that may never make it.
And in the center of the frame, beyond the depressingly predictable Sheraton, lies the river. The ‘silver river’, as the Spanish first called it, and which for decades has been nothing but brown, thick like Willy Wonka’s chocolate river – except that isn’t chocolate. Two centuries of overuse and under-cleansing have left it tired and worn.
And yet…
When the sun is setting...when the sky is so clear that the casual observer can see Uruguay on the far bank…when the storm clouds have turned the sky to pitch and a small sliver of light penetrates the dark to cast a silver line across the moody surface…The river is Buenos Aires, and it is beautiful.
My bus on the way to work passed an olive green 1970s Ford Falcon, broken down in the middle of a busy road. The sight of the car still makes me shiver.
From the tenth floor of an office building on the corner of Plaza San Martín, one can see a snapshot of Buenos Aires resplendent, particularly in the glowing twilight of early evening. To the left there is Retiro, almost invisible, obscured by the politely dominant clocktower. Built by the British when the British were still openly respected (but never loved), its four faces are vital yet often disagree. The tower stands surrounded by a quaint little fence in a pleasant square and although it is passed by hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis, it is probably the monument in Buenos Aires that has been least-defiled by graffiti. The graffiteurs, strangely, respect the fence.
To the right, Alem, the business district avenue, stretches into the middle distance, flanked by tall, proud office buildings that are only remarkable because they are set against the wide horizon of the river behind. The towers themselves seem dated, and have no bearing on the lives of the antlike beings scurrying at their feet. In the distance, new monuments are rising in Puerto Madero, designed for gawping rather than inhabiting. Glass pantheons that will stand in tribute to an imagined progress that has yet to materialize – a testament to a city that often forgets itself, stretching beyond the present to a projected future that may never make it.
And in the center of the frame, beyond the depressingly predictable Sheraton, lies the river. The ‘silver river’, as the Spanish first called it, and which for decades has been nothing but brown, thick like Willy Wonka’s chocolate river – except that isn’t chocolate. Two centuries of overuse and under-cleansing have left it tired and worn.
And yet…
When the sun is setting...when the sky is so clear that the casual observer can see Uruguay on the far bank…when the storm clouds have turned the sky to pitch and a small sliver of light penetrates the dark to cast a silver line across the moody surface…The river is Buenos Aires, and it is beautiful.
18/2/11
Adventist
The lady who comes to clean my flat twice a week handed in her notice via SMS at 11:30 pm the other night. She’s a hard worker, and in the almost three years that we have been in our particular commercial partnership, she has had to put up with a lot, including hoax (but no less terrifying) kidnapping threats, living with a dog for a few months (a new experience for both of us) and a lot of cleaning up on mornings after. I have absolutely no complaints: she has been loyal and dependable but now wants to spend more time looking after her children. I wish her well.
Now the search starts for a replacement. In other cultures this might be viewed as an entirely pointless exercise: why looking for a cleaning lady when by doing so one is admitting that one cannot clean up after oneself? In Latin America, however, the opposite is the norm: one leads such busy lives that one simply cannot be expected to clean up after oneself. A little lazy, perhaps, but it has worked fine for me.
The problem is finding a person one can rely on. This is an employee, about whom one normally knows the bare minimum, who will be working in one’s house while one is at work. There is hardly ever any personal interaction: I think I saw my previous cleaning lady about ten times in person over something close to thirty months. Every month I left her payment on the kitchen table, and when I came back from work it was gone. I never saw her, but I knew when she had come: my floor was clean, my dishes washed, my clothes ready to be worn, my bed made. This is a person who exists in spaces that are to me entirely intimate and yet I never see her. Trust is therefore paramount: she is an almost total stranger and she knows more about my daily life than most of my closest friends.
One often hears tales of things going wrong with such employees. A friend of mine came home early once to find their employee going through the belongings of someone who was on holiday in the belief that because they had left the country, they wouldn’t be needing their snail shell facial cream; another had a pair of crutches disappear for a week or so only to just as mysteriously reappear; one friend became so convinced that his employee was taking money from him that he set up a hidden camera to catch her unawares.
A colleague recently told me about one of the strangest reasons I’ve heard to dismiss a cleaning lady. His had been working for him for over ten years, was reliable and cleaned very well – a total professional. Once he came home early for a doctor’s appointment, and opened the door only to walk in on a meeting of about fifteen Adventists, bibles in hand. His flat had become their meeting hall; the employee had to go. Cleaning and religion just don’t mix.
Now the search starts for a replacement. In other cultures this might be viewed as an entirely pointless exercise: why looking for a cleaning lady when by doing so one is admitting that one cannot clean up after oneself? In Latin America, however, the opposite is the norm: one leads such busy lives that one simply cannot be expected to clean up after oneself. A little lazy, perhaps, but it has worked fine for me.
The problem is finding a person one can rely on. This is an employee, about whom one normally knows the bare minimum, who will be working in one’s house while one is at work. There is hardly ever any personal interaction: I think I saw my previous cleaning lady about ten times in person over something close to thirty months. Every month I left her payment on the kitchen table, and when I came back from work it was gone. I never saw her, but I knew when she had come: my floor was clean, my dishes washed, my clothes ready to be worn, my bed made. This is a person who exists in spaces that are to me entirely intimate and yet I never see her. Trust is therefore paramount: she is an almost total stranger and she knows more about my daily life than most of my closest friends.
One often hears tales of things going wrong with such employees. A friend of mine came home early once to find their employee going through the belongings of someone who was on holiday in the belief that because they had left the country, they wouldn’t be needing their snail shell facial cream; another had a pair of crutches disappear for a week or so only to just as mysteriously reappear; one friend became so convinced that his employee was taking money from him that he set up a hidden camera to catch her unawares.
A colleague recently told me about one of the strangest reasons I’ve heard to dismiss a cleaning lady. His had been working for him for over ten years, was reliable and cleaned very well – a total professional. Once he came home early for a doctor’s appointment, and opened the door only to walk in on a meeting of about fifteen Adventists, bibles in hand. His flat had become their meeting hall; the employee had to go. Cleaning and religion just don’t mix.
4/2/11
Brontosauri
Every morning I am greeted by a familiar sight that reminds me exactly what my journey to work means. I get to the street corner, the sun hits me and washes me in heat and light, and the buses rumble past. Hundreds. Each clad in its own distinctive, often garish colours. They move like a confused pack, each individual unit with its own thought-processes and desires bubbling beneath the surface, forced to follow the same path as the others by the herd mentality (otherwise known as ‘traffic’). When the light goes green, these lumbering beasts charge forward, stumbling at speed, like a pack of brontosauri thundering across a prehistoric plain towards water. These ancient beasts breathe smoke that taints the air and stains our lungs; without them, we would never get to work on time.
The late ariser or lazy commuter is sometimes forced to take a taxi for expediency’s sake. The taxis are nimble, as they must be, for they are forced to travel in the wake and very thoroughfare trodden by the larger beasts. The taxi sees things from the ground level; the bus driver cannot. They are never friends. The amount of near misses alone between these two species alone contributes to the general chaotic atmosphere in the streets of our great city. We would be lost without either of them.
This week, the government of the City of Buenos Aires, in its infinite wisdom, changed all the bus routes. It happened on a Wednesday, for reasons that are not clear. The change also coincided with the return to work of several thousand holiday-makers who had fled the punishing summer heat. In short, it was timed to cause maximum chaos, and it succeeded. Literally thousands of people headed to where they normally caught their bus home, only to find that the bus stop no longer existed. Directions were given to a new stop, which in many cases was up to five or six blocks away, and never in a straight line. The bus routes were altered completely; the commute had been permanently affected.
I waited for my particular bus, but it was clear that the people in charge hadn’t counted on a) +30 degrees in mid-summer and b) the fact that their drivers were also intensely confused by the changes. After waiting at what seemed to be an improvised bus stop but could easily have been another lane on the busiest avenue in the world, burning gently in the afternoon sun, a bus finally arrived. We climbed on, fighting our way through the already cramped space with our heads held high like divers struggling for air.
The man in charge with steering our particular dinosaur was having a tough time from the off, as we sailed past streets that used to be bus stops to be greeted by furious demands by passengers which he could only counter with ‘but it’s not a stop anymore…’ Moreover, the way he was driving and the route he was taking heavily implied that he had no idea what he was doing, or in fact was making it up as he went along – a supposition that was not removed as he drifted from the uttermost right-hand lane to the extreme left of a seriously busy avenue as if he had just learned to drive. All around one could catch glimpses of similarly confused pedestrians and bus-drivers, as the brontosauri launched into new adventures praying that they wouldn’t hit anyone or each other. Once the journey got going, the new route was actually much quicker than the old, but the great plains of rush hour Buenos Aires were briefly filled with the tuneful moans of irate motorists pounding horns, a sound that seemed as old as time.
The late ariser or lazy commuter is sometimes forced to take a taxi for expediency’s sake. The taxis are nimble, as they must be, for they are forced to travel in the wake and very thoroughfare trodden by the larger beasts. The taxi sees things from the ground level; the bus driver cannot. They are never friends. The amount of near misses alone between these two species alone contributes to the general chaotic atmosphere in the streets of our great city. We would be lost without either of them.
This week, the government of the City of Buenos Aires, in its infinite wisdom, changed all the bus routes. It happened on a Wednesday, for reasons that are not clear. The change also coincided with the return to work of several thousand holiday-makers who had fled the punishing summer heat. In short, it was timed to cause maximum chaos, and it succeeded. Literally thousands of people headed to where they normally caught their bus home, only to find that the bus stop no longer existed. Directions were given to a new stop, which in many cases was up to five or six blocks away, and never in a straight line. The bus routes were altered completely; the commute had been permanently affected.
I waited for my particular bus, but it was clear that the people in charge hadn’t counted on a) +30 degrees in mid-summer and b) the fact that their drivers were also intensely confused by the changes. After waiting at what seemed to be an improvised bus stop but could easily have been another lane on the busiest avenue in the world, burning gently in the afternoon sun, a bus finally arrived. We climbed on, fighting our way through the already cramped space with our heads held high like divers struggling for air.
The man in charge with steering our particular dinosaur was having a tough time from the off, as we sailed past streets that used to be bus stops to be greeted by furious demands by passengers which he could only counter with ‘but it’s not a stop anymore…’ Moreover, the way he was driving and the route he was taking heavily implied that he had no idea what he was doing, or in fact was making it up as he went along – a supposition that was not removed as he drifted from the uttermost right-hand lane to the extreme left of a seriously busy avenue as if he had just learned to drive. All around one could catch glimpses of similarly confused pedestrians and bus-drivers, as the brontosauri launched into new adventures praying that they wouldn’t hit anyone or each other. Once the journey got going, the new route was actually much quicker than the old, but the great plains of rush hour Buenos Aires were briefly filled with the tuneful moans of irate motorists pounding horns, a sound that seemed as old as time.
25/1/11
Morel
A conversation I just had with a colleague has revealed something to me that I find a bit disturbing but recognize I am powerless to change. Social media and an online presence is all very well, and in fact entirely unavoidable in a world that depends on the internet, but who turns off the switch when you ‘leave the room’?
‘La invención de Morel’ (The Invention of Morel), written by Adolfo Bioy Casares in Buenos Aires in 1940, is a short novel that describes a man alone on a desert island who sees and falls in love with a mysterious woman who appears to him at certain times of the day but disappears and will not speak to him at others. I won’t spoil the book for anybody who wants to read it, and I recommend that everybody does, but suffice to say that in ‘La invención de Morel’, which Borgés himself qualified as ‘perfect’, Bioy Casares foresaw an aspect of the new age of post-reality that we currently inhabit, in which through the compilation of images and actions we create an online presence that we bring to life but will not die when we do.
Recent deaths of either people I know or people who acquaintances of mine known have seen their Facebook profiles turn into shrines, where ‘friends’ or connections can place endless tributes - some of which are truly touching, and some of which venture beyond the limits that physical reality places on us. Let me explain. A friend of yours dies; you leave an emotional message to that friend the same way you would leave any message on Facebook, communicating directly with that friend although that friend will never read it or be aware that it exists and will certainly never respond. If someone else is to come across the friend’s Facebook profile, the profile will be just as alive as it ever was when the friend was, because nobody dies on Facebook – your profile never disappears, or at least not up to now. Without ever knowing it, your presence will exist forever, and, although the interaction will be one-way, the people that inhabit the world you already left will be able to ‘communicate’ with you as if you never had. Over this, like death, you have no control.
Bioy Casares in ‘Morel’ wrote “I believe we will not gain immortality because we have yet to evolve our resistance to death.” Facebook, and the world of online presences and profiles, where children who have yet to be born (let alone aware of conscious thought) have profiles and people who are long departed will never fade away, is taking us as a society one illusory step towards such a resistance. It will remain illusory though – like everything online, your presence is only as real as you believe it is.
‘La invención de Morel’ (The Invention of Morel), written by Adolfo Bioy Casares in Buenos Aires in 1940, is a short novel that describes a man alone on a desert island who sees and falls in love with a mysterious woman who appears to him at certain times of the day but disappears and will not speak to him at others. I won’t spoil the book for anybody who wants to read it, and I recommend that everybody does, but suffice to say that in ‘La invención de Morel’, which Borgés himself qualified as ‘perfect’, Bioy Casares foresaw an aspect of the new age of post-reality that we currently inhabit, in which through the compilation of images and actions we create an online presence that we bring to life but will not die when we do.
Recent deaths of either people I know or people who acquaintances of mine known have seen their Facebook profiles turn into shrines, where ‘friends’ or connections can place endless tributes - some of which are truly touching, and some of which venture beyond the limits that physical reality places on us. Let me explain. A friend of yours dies; you leave an emotional message to that friend the same way you would leave any message on Facebook, communicating directly with that friend although that friend will never read it or be aware that it exists and will certainly never respond. If someone else is to come across the friend’s Facebook profile, the profile will be just as alive as it ever was when the friend was, because nobody dies on Facebook – your profile never disappears, or at least not up to now. Without ever knowing it, your presence will exist forever, and, although the interaction will be one-way, the people that inhabit the world you already left will be able to ‘communicate’ with you as if you never had. Over this, like death, you have no control.
Bioy Casares in ‘Morel’ wrote “I believe we will not gain immortality because we have yet to evolve our resistance to death.” Facebook, and the world of online presences and profiles, where children who have yet to be born (let alone aware of conscious thought) have profiles and people who are long departed will never fade away, is taking us as a society one illusory step towards such a resistance. It will remain illusory though – like everything online, your presence is only as real as you believe it is.
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