Buenos Aires Is Not A Zoo, Literally...

Whenever I’m in Buenos Aires, I always pass by the Jardín Zoológico Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg, the historic zoo that is almost within sight of our apartment and often on my walking routes to sights, restaurants and other attractions of our Palermo neighborhood. The zoo occupies a prime property, and has some memorable architecture – for example, the Hindu motifs of the elephant house (pictured above).

The zoo has always been popular for families with children, but things have been changing in recent years. Mainly, it’s suffered considerable criticism for the conditions in which the animals were kept – not least for the death of a polar bear in the city’s suffocating summer. Thus, there have been calls to close the zoo and, when I walked by last month, small groups of picketers left visible demands for its closure, as pictured above (in previous years, I had seen even larger groups).

Then, earlier this week, city mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta announced the facility’s definitive closure, though it will reopen later this year as a vaguely defined “ecopark” that will rehabilitate animals rescued from illegal trafficking. Some native birds will be released into the riverfront wetlands of the Reserva Ecológica Costanera Sur (pictured above); the remaining zoo specimens will be distributed among “nature reserves” elsewhere in the country, except for those too old or infirm to be moved (they will remain on the zoo grounds, but kept from public view).

In the absence of greater detail, there remain some questions – how, for instance, can large non-native species such as elephants, hippos and rhinoceri be relocated to a suitable environment elsewhere? Also, I wonder, will they necessarily remove thriving native species such as the capybara and Patagonian mara (cavy, pictured above), the latter of which roams freely through the zoo grounds? Traditional zoos may be questionable, but I’m not sure it’s completely wrong to acquaint city children with some of the wildlife of their vast countryside.

Law(lessness?) of the Gaucho

Many years ago, while researching my doctoral dissertation on the Falkland Islands, I did extensive archival work in the Public Records Office at Kew and the Islands themselves, where I had unprecedented access of a sort that would not possible today. Some time after I left, the late Jane Cameron preserved and organized a wealth of documents to make them more usable but, at the same time, less easily available than they were to me.

One intriguing item I came across, in both places, was the tale of a renegade gaucho who remained in the Islands after 1833, when a British warship expelled most of a small Buenos Aires contingent that remained from a precarious colonization effort. As the sketch above (from the Illustrated London News of 1856) indicates, the gauchos helped capture feral cattle that provide subsistence and livelihood to the Islands’ inhabitants.

After the British vessel departed, leaving the settlement under the authority of another holdover, a Scotsman named Matthew Brisbane, who was soon murdered by the gaucho Antonio Rivero and several accomplices. It’s been nearly two centuries since the events in question, but Argentine ultra-nationalists have long invoked Rivero’s name to justify their irredentist claim to the Islands even though the murder probably had no political significance whatsoever. In all likelihood, it was a foreman-peon dispute.

Last year, though, the province of Tierra del Fuego began to enforce the so-called “Gaucho Rivero” law, preventing two British-flagged vessels from docking at Ushuaia. In a separate but not necessarily unrelated incident in Buenos Aires, political bullies even accosted cruise-ship passengers and vandalized company offices that provided support services. The bumper-sticker slogan above protests the "docking of pirate vessels" in Rivero's name.

Ushuaia businesses that depend on cruise ship visits were furious that the two vessels could not dock. In the words of local businessman Marcelo Lietti, even as he affirmed his belief in the Argentine claim to what they call the Malvinas, it was counter-productive to punish the cruise ship sector: “If the measure was intended to harm the English and the Falklands, the damage has been inflicted on all the people that were scheduled to work with the two cruises in Ushuaia.” It cost the city and its residents income, and damaged the city's reputation with the industry.

Nevertheless, the provincial government appears ready to up the ante this season, apparently unconcerned that it could have any negative effect on the tourism sector even as the tiny Chilean settlement of Puerto Williams looks toward drawing some of that traffic away. One friend of mine who operates a B&B in Ushuaia makes the following anonymous observation: “I don´t think any merchant in Ushuaia is happy with that stupid law. The only persons interested in that are politicians making politics and playing with our income.”

On the Road...or on the Screen?

It’s been a slow week as, recovering from my bicycle accident, I can’t sit at the desk more than a few minutes at a time before my broken ribs start aching. Nevertheless, I did manage to get out on Saturday to see On the Road, the Kerouac saga that’s recently been adapted to the screen after being filmed, in part, in Argentina. Having grown up after the Beats, I certainly read On the Road, but I can’t compare my own experiences with the flamboyant Bohemianism of Sal Paradise (Kerouac’s fictional persona), his friend and idol Jack Cassady (“Dean Moriarty” in the book and film), Allen Ginsberg (“Carlo Marx”), and William Burroughs (“Old Bull Lee,” played by honorary Argentine Viggo Mortensen, who grew up on the Pampas).

Partly, in seeing the film, I was hoping to be able to identify specific Argentine landscapes that so closely resemble parts of the western United States (such as the steppe of Neuquén province, in the photograph above). Brazilian director Walter Salles, though, was astute enough not to leave any obvious clues, especially given his experience in filming the Che Guevara epic The Motorcycle Diaries a few years ago.

Argentina, though, has its own history of road movies. I don’t pretend to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the country’s cinema, but there are a couple Patagonian road movies that, in addition to The Motorcycle Diaries, I would recommend. The first is director Carlos Sorín’s Historias Mínimas (Intimate Stories, 2002), three intertwined tales set in the coastal city of Puerto San Julián, in Patagonia’s Santa Cruz province. It’s more a slice-of-life film, available streaming on Netflix in the United States.

The second, director Marcelo Piñeyro’s Caballos Salvajes (Wild Horses, 1995) is a Robin Hood/Bonnie and Clyde bank-robber caper that begins in Buenos Aires but ends in the robbers’ fleeing to Patagonia to avoid both the police and the Mafia. It features two of Argentina’s finest actors, Héctor Alterio and Federico Luppi; while not apparently available on streaming video, it’s worth seeking out on DVD.

In Other News

On Saturday, I did a short radio interview on off-season travel to Chilean Patagonia for Rudy Maxa’s World, a syndicated travel program that is now available on streaming audio at the link indicated. Also, for anyone planning travel to Chile this fall (southern spring), I will be serving as a guest lecturer aboard the Navimag ferry shuttle between Puerto Montt and Puerto Natales between November 11 and 18. This covers the southbound segment to Natales and, after a day in port, the northbound return to Puerto Montt. If all goes well, we may do an encore in March.