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.