Argentina's Sober Voters?

Just a couple days ago, I wrote about tomorrow’s Argentine election, and I have a little more to say today. Argentine politics is always interesting even though, arguably, it’s among most dysfunctional in the hemisphere, if not the world. As a baseball fan, I find it analogous to cricket – the skills may be similar and, though the rules sometimes seem impenetrable, I find some things to admire.

Of course, Argentine politics lends itself to satire, as a recent article in The New York Times noted (the video at the link includes English subtitles). The ostensible candidate, Omar Obaca, is an Afro-Argentine who, in the video above, promises to improve the hideously polluted Riachuelo of Buenos Aires by paving it, thus relieving traffic congestion as well. However improbable the election of Barack Obama might have seemed before 2008, the Obaca “campaign” achieves unreachable heights in that regard, and offers some real insights.

Some of Argentina’s election measures, though, are worth consideration. While the presidential election cycle there may not be the mind-numbing marathon it is in the US, it is long, but at least the Argentines know when to stop – the electoral code officially ended the campaign as of yesterday, so there are no rallies nor door-to-door electioneering nor TV or radio ads - so that voters, presumably, may reflect on the available choices. On top of that, from 8 p.m. this evening, the so-called ley seca ("dry law") prohibits the sale of alcohol, so that voters may make sober choices.

Of course, that doesn’t prevent people from stocking up before 8 p.m., and one could question whether Argentine voters have made sober choices in the past. Voting is obligatory, by the way – something I don’t necessarily agree with, but the US could certainly do more to encourage voter participation through easy, universal registration.

Afro Uruguay: Aspiring to the Screen

Some months ago, on this blog, I reviewed the novel Perla by Carolina de Robertis, an Oakland neighbor whom I’ve not yet met in person. Her “Dirty War” fiction, set in Argentina, is a valuable read, as is her translation of Roberto Ampuero’s The Neruda Case, but she’s just brought another intriguing project to my attention: early next year, thanks partly to a Fulbright fellowship, she and her wife Pamela Harris will be relocating to Montevideo, Uruguay, to produce a documentary film called Afro Uruguay: Forward Together, about that country’s underappreciated black community.

I’ve written peripherally about this topic myself, primarily touching on Uruguay’s Carnaval celebrations and Montevideo’s outstanding Museo del Carnaval that helps put them into context – especially for visitors who don’t have the good fortune to visit at that time of the year. I don’t pretend to have any specialist knowledge, but it’s probably fair to say that the Afro-Uruguayan heritage of candombe music and dance recalls Buenos Aires’s Afro-Argentine traditions before they were swamped by the massive European immigration of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the memorable phrase of historian George Reid Andrews, the Argentine capital’s black population was “forgotten, but not gone.”

Producing a documentary is a challenging and expensive proposition, so De Robertis and Harris are seeking additional funding of US$15,000 through a Kickstarter campaign for tax-deductible pledges. With 22 days to go, they have obtained pledges of roughly US$2,000. Pledges as small at US$1 are welcome and, with the prestige of Fulbright behind it, this project has a quality pedigree. I will be submitting my own modest pledge to support this investigation of the Southern Cone’s cultural diversity, and I encourage my readers to do so as well.

Bo Diddley's a Gaucho!

At first, this entry might sound awkward, but I can't let the week go by without acknowledging the death of Ellas McDaniel, better known as Bo Diddley, the subject of an extensive New York Times obituary to which I can at least add an anecdote.

I never saw Bo play live, but I did see him in person, coincidentally thanks to my Southern Cone interests. In 1984, after finishing up several weeks of historical research on the Falkland/Malvinas Islands in the Public Records Office at Kew, I flew from London back to Baltimore/Washington International Airport. On board, I noticed a bulky, vaguely familiar black man but never made the connection until, at the luggage carousel in Baltimore, his voice rang out "Anybody see a gui-tar here name of Bo Diddley?"

He may not have said it with his signature Afro-Cuban clave beat - as important to contemporary music as Chuck Berry's guitar - but it was a performance I've never forgotten. Every year, as I spend several months driving around Argentina and Chile while updating my guidebooks, this world music pioneer remains part of my iPod soundtrack. I always enjoy the classic "Say Man," with its good-natured trash talk between Bo and maraca player Jerome Green:

Green: Where you from?
Bo: South America.
Green: What's that?
Bo: South America.
Green: You don't look like no South American to me.
Bo: I'm still from South America.
Green: What part?
Bo: South Texas!

In fact, this exchange is not so different from the Argentine gaucho's payada de contrapunto, an improvised singing duel that was usually friendly but could end in a knife fight. According to historian Richard Slatta, many gaucho payadores were Afro-Argentines - a parallelism that makes Bo's lyrical bragadoccio credible.

Historical Demolition in San Telmo

Anyone who's been to Buenos Aires in the past few years realizes that the city's undergone a construction boom, with high-rise towers replacing traditional low-rise buildings in many parts of the city. This is nothing new - 50 years ago, in our Palermo neighborhood near the zoo and botanical gardens, most buildings were handsome palacetes, like the one in this photograph taken from our balcony (at ground level, it's now a fine café and the upper floors are undergoing restoration; note the sleek new apartments to its right, though). Our own apartment is part of a nine-story building that dates from 1976 and, though it has some nice touches such as parquet floors, its exterior is unremarkable.

In 1976, Argentina's vicious military dictatorship would have made it impossible to mount any public opposition to demolition of the city's architectural heritage, but that's no longer the case. Yesterday, for instance, the Buenos Aires daily Clarín reported the unauthorized demolition of the former residence of Pedro Benoit, the architect who planned the city of La Plata, capital of Buenos Aires province. The demolition went ahead despite protests by a citizens' group called Basta de Demoler (roughly translatable as "No More Demolitions"), as municipal inspectors claimed to have no authority to stop it.

The building, though, was not the only victim: The entire wall facing Avenida Independencia was covered with the landmark mural Carnaval de Antaño (Carnival of Yesteryear), one of few public nods to the Afro-Argentine population that was so notable and numerous in Argentina's early republic (a detail of the mural appears to the right). According to historian George Reid Andrews, successive censuses that systematically undercounted that population, followed by massive European immigration, soon meant that Afro-Argentines were "forgotten, but not gone."

The artists who painted the Carnaval mural, which won a prize from the city in 1990, came out in force to reproduce their work on the sidewalk near the demolished building, but the damage to the city's historic core and memory will be permanent.

Uruguay's Different Drummers

Carnaval may have seen a revival in Buenos Aires, but it's never really gone away in Uruguay. In both countries, former slave communities played a major role in its development; in Argentina, though their visibility waned as successive governments, promoting a progressive "European" country, shunted them into the background. In the words of historian George Reid Andrews, Afro-Argentines were "forgotten, but not gone."

Across the River Plate, though, Afro-Uruguayans remained far more visible and their heritage still permeates the culture. Last night in Colonia, while returning from dinner, I came upon a small but lively parade of candombe dancers and drummers who beat their colorful tambores with an inexorable African rhythm (though none of them was, to my eyes, obviously Afro-Uruguayan). One measure of the enduring African heritage has become might have been the elderly woman, aided by a cane, who danced down the street as best she could, somehow managing to stay a step ahead of the drummers.