Carnaval sem Cachaça?

I visit Brazil only infrequently these days but, when I've done so it’s usually the border town of Foz do Iguaçu because it’s been part of my beat when writing guidebooks about Argentina. After foreigners see the Argentine side of the famous falls, they almost always cross the Tancredo Neves bridge to see them from the Brazilian side.

The Brazilian side of the Cataratas do Iguaçu (Iguazú Falls)

I once took an intensive summer course in Portuguese—the equivalent of a full year at university level—but it’s only my fourth-best language after English, Spanish and German. Brazilians have been remarkably patient when I lapse into Spanish cognates, though I don’t always understand their responses.

In Buenos Aires, Carnaval is a decentralized neighborhood phenomenon.

Montevideo's Museo del Carnaval depicts the origins of Uruguay's tradition.

I’ve traveled a bit in northern Brazil—Porto Velho, Manaus, Salvador (Bahia) and Belém—but know the megacities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro only through their airports. That means I’ve missed the signature event of Brazilian Carnaval, though I’ve seen its counterpart in Argentina (where it’s experienced a neighborhood-oriented revival) and Uruguay (where it’s seriously under-appreciated by foreigners).

Moqueca de peixe is a flavorful fish dish.

I enjoy Brazilian food—particularly moqueca de peixe—and really appreciate the refreshing cachaça-based cocktail known as the caipirinha, made of cane liquor, lime and sugar. Brazilians themselves, though, probably consume far larger amounts of beer, especially during Carnaval.

Care for a caipirinha, Mr Mayor?

That is, unless Rio mayor Marcelo Crivella has his way. Somehow, Brazil’s liveliest party town elected this evangelical bishop to its highest office in 2017, and he has just asked that cariocas (Rio residents) refrain from drinking alcohol during Carnaval celebrations. He also embraces creationism, and objects to homosexuality and abortion rights.

If Mayor Crivella truly trusts in what he preaches, though, perhaps he could just pray that his constituents refrain from drinking during the festivities. Then again, his for-profit Universal Church of the Kingdom of God may well take a cut from alcohol sales.

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Dancing in the Mud? Andean Aftermath

There’s dancing in the streets of Buenos Aires today, just as there is in New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro – it’s Fat Tuesday, and Carnaval celebrations are in full swing. It’s not the spectacle in the Argentine capital that it is in Brazil or Louisiana, but neighborhood murgas (troupes) still kick up their heels. So do those in Gualeguaychú, the acknowledged capital of Argentine Carnaval, and in Uruguay (whose Museo del Carnaval in Montevideo - pictured below - is well worth a visit).

Meanwhile, in the Andes on both sides of the border, Argentines and Chilean are digging their way out of the mud left by summer storms in Argentina’s Mendoza province, which have closed the main border crossing, and the Chilean village of San Pedro de Atacama, which received almost unprecedented rainfall. In the short term, there’s been no solution for the disruptions caused by these unusual weather events.

Last Friday, I speculated that Chile’s southerly Paso Vergara might be an alternative crossing to Argentina but, according to the Mendoza daily Los Andes, the Vergara is also closed. That leaves only the Paso Pehuenche (pictured above, looking toward the Chilean side) from Talca to Malargüe, but the paper adds that the increased traffic has overwhelmed the customs and immigrations facilities along the route, “with lines of vehicles one kilometer long, and an almost five hour wait at the border post of Las Loicas,” on the Argentine side. Lines at the Chilean border post of La Mina were even longer.

With insufficient facilities at a rarely used crossing, Argentine authorities have kept the border open beyond the normal 6 p.m. closure, but that’s only helped slightly. According to one eastbound traveler, the usual five-hour journey from Talca to Malargüe took 11 hours this time. It’s still looking like a challenging season, especially with Mendoza’s wine harvest festival on the horizon.

Meanwhile, I received a couple first-hand reports from and about San Pedro de Atacama. My friend Martin Beeris, owner of the Cosmo Andino travel agency in San Pedro, reports that “The road to Calama got washed away, big, big holes really. All sites closed for three full days, only now slowly getting back to normal. The Río San Pedro returned to its course, where it used to run years ago” before authorities decided to build housing projects there. “It's a mudpool right now, many people have debris, rocks and shit up to their necks, some have actually lost their homes. No lives lost and that's a miracle. I had not seen this kind of rain since 2001, possibly even 1988. 33 millimetres in less than one hour, the first time we got wet.”

On top of that, a Dutch cyclist who was camping nearby got swept away by a mudflow but, fortunately, Carabineros police rescued him, “buried in mud and water, in precarious conditions and dressed only in shorts,” after receiving reports of an unattended tent and bicycle. With temperatures below freezing at night, the cyclist was fortunate to suffer only a broken leg and is now hospitalized in Antofagasta.

On Friday, I also speculated that the Hotel Alto Atacama might have been affected by the floods, and hotel publicist Kristina Schreck tells me that “the Alto is closed until Feb. 17 until we can get everything in order. We've been moving reservations and/or returning money to clients booked during this time.” It was not, as I had guessed, an issue of access up the narrow river canyon, but that “The pools flooded and the generator area was flooded so they're trying to fix that - less of an access issue and more of a cleaning up issue.” It’s probably a tossup whether Mendoza or San Pedro returns to normality first.

Win This App!

Soon, as the new edition of Moon Handbooks Chile comes out later this month, I will have a contest to give away some free copies on this blog. In the meantime, for those of you have an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, I am giving away ten copies of my Argentina Travel Adventures and Chile Travel Adventures apps, with no strings attached.

Simply write me at southerncone (at) mac.com, and I will send a code for a free download of either Argentina or Chile, up to a total of ten (no more than one per person, please). For those of you who use Android devices, I regret that Google does not permit such promotions, so you’ll have to shell out US$2.99 (which presumably should not break your budget).

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.

A Bridge Too Near?

From Buenos Aires to Uruguay, the closest overland crossing is the one between the Argentine city of Gualeguaychú (Entre Ríos province), on the right bank of the Río Uruguay, and the smaller city of Fray Bentos, on the left bank. This is, generally, a cheaper way of reaching Uruguayan attractions such as the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Colonia del Sacramento and the capital city of Montevideo, which are only an hour and 2-1/2 hours, respectively, by Buquebús catamaran from Buenos Aires’s Puerto Madero waterfront.

That overland crossing, though, has been closed for four years by Argentine pickets protesting the Botnia pulp plant erected on the Uruguayan side of the border. Since late last month, though, the Puente Internacional General San Martín has been open again to private and commercial traffic so that bus service can once again operate on the most direct route between the two countries. Visitors to Gualeguaychú, even if they don’t plan to continue to Colonia or Montevideo, can at least do a day trip to Fray Bentos, which includes attractions such its as Museo de la Revolución Industrial (the former Liebig’s Extract of Meat factory, pictured above) and the handsome Teatro Young. Likewise, visitors from Uruguay could once again cross the river to enjoy’s Gualeguaychú’s Carnaval del País, a celebration whose exuberant dancers (pictured below at an event in Buenos Aires) are only part of the Rio-type atmosphere. Merchants on both sides of the bridge, at least, should be dancing at the prospect of increased commerce between the cities.

I have written about Gualeguaychú and the Botnia controversy several times, and don’t care too spend much more time on the political intricacies at the local, national, and international level; there’s an excellent summary of this in a recent issue of The Economist. Suffice it to say that, while the bridge is open at present and the two governments are showing good will toward a solution that would include monitoring the river with a third party to break any impasse, it’s not clear that the asambleístas who have recently retreated from blocking the bridge will continue to do so: if, after 60 days, the two governments do not come to a final agreement that’s to their liking, they’ve vowed to resume their blockade.

Pulp Friction: Argentina, Uruguay and The Hague

Just two days before Earth Day, the International Court of Justice in The Hague settled, presumably, a longstanding dispute between Argentina and Uruguay over a pulp plant on the Río Uruguay, the border between the two countries. The Finnish company Botnia built the US$1.1 billion plant in the Uruguayan city of Fray Bentos, across the San Martín bridge from the Argentine city of Gualeguaychú, in Entre Ríos province. Fray Bentos was once the site of the Liebig Extract of Meat Company, which produced canned corned beef that was widely distributed in Europe, and the bouillon cubes known as Oxo; its site is now a museum.

Best known as the home of Argentina’s Carnaval del País (National Carnival), Gualeguaychú has acquired an undesirable notoriety over the past several years as a handful of protestors have, in effect, controlled the border by blocking the bridge over the river. The Court’s Solomonic ruling allowed both sides to claim victory: it agreed with Argentina that Uruguay violated a 1975 treaty by not consulting with Argentina over the plant, but also agreed with Uruguay that there was no evidence that it was causing any pollution whatsoever. Uruguay will not need to move the plant - the most expensive project in Uruguayan history - or pay any sort of compensation to Argentina. It will, however, need to consult with Argentina on any further developments on the fluvial border between the two countries.

The ruling, though, does not touch on the controversial issue of the border blockade, which for four years has virtually eliminated traffic and commerce through what, historically, has been the busiest border crossing between the two countries. In effect, the administration of former President Néstor Kirchner and the current government of his wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, have abdicated control of the border - normally administered by Argentine customs and immigration. Technically, it’s still controlled by customs and immigration, but picketers have blocked the approaches and threatened anyone who wants to travel to Uruguay. Buses from Buenos Aires now have to use more northerly crossings at Colón (100 km north) or Concordia (a further 100 km), adding time and expense to any trip to Montevideo.

The issue, according to an editorial in yesterday's Buenos Aires Herald, is that “Ultimately no court in the world can tell an administration how to deal with the chronic domestic matter of protesters who block roads to voice demands. It is the President who after The Hague must now address the same question pending since 2006: should authorities allow an international bridge to be blocked forever?” According to an article in the Buenos Aires daily Clarín, meanwhile, the intransigent protestors do not appear ready to abandon their blockade, having refused an offer from the governor of Entre Ríos to even discuss the topic.

Meanwhile, Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana has called on the protestors to respect the Court’s ruling, and Fernández de Kirchner is due to meet with newly elected Uruguayan President José Mujica next Wednesday, a conclave at which the topic will undoubtedly come up. It’s still anybody’s guess, though, whether Uruguayans will be able to attend the 2011 Carnaval in Gualeguaychú.

Buenos Aires: Carnaval Meets Chinese New Year's

New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro get all the press, but Argentina too enjoys Carnaval in the weeks before Lent. The biggest celebrations take place in the Mesopotamian cities of Gualeguaychú and Corrientes, but over the past decade or so it’s taken off in Buenos Aires. In fact, as I walked downtown on Monday, the pounding drums that I originally assumed to be part of a political demonstration - I was only a few blocks from the Congreso Nacional and the booming “bombos” are part of every protest - turned out to be murgas (community dance troupes) from the city’s southern and western barrios.

Unlike the spectacle of Rio or the chaos of New Orleans, Carnaval celebrations in Buenos Aires tend to be relatively small, neighborhood-oriented events, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t lively. With leaping dancers directed by whistle-blowing leaders, the advancing parades resemble African-American “stepping” in some ways. In fact, some of the participants are clearly Afro-Argentine, even though that population is less conspicuous than it was in the 19th century - “forgotten, but not gone” in the words of historian George Reid Andrews.

The murgas often bear colorful names - my favorite is Los Mocosos de Liniers (“The Snots of Liniers”) and their costumes are equally colorful even if Carnaval is not so flamboyant as in Brazil, Argentina’s Mesopotamian provinces, or Uruguay for that matter. Uruguay still maintains a fairly large Afro-Uruguayan population, generally estimated at about five percent, and their influence is far more conspicuous in Montevideo and other coastal cities and towns.

Carnaval is not the only celebration in Buenos Aires at this season. Last weekend, tens of thousands of Porteños crowded the barrio of Belgrano, where Chinese New Year’s parades now take place. Last year, in fact, the ambassador of the People’s Republic sponsored construction of a portal to the barrio’s Chinatown, which is most obvious on both sides of Arribeños street.

Argentina Mourns Sosa, Uruguay Celebrates Candombe

Earlier this month, two significant events took place in the Southern Cone musical scene. On the one hand, Argentine folksinger Mercedes Sosa, who gave outspoken performances in public even after the military coup of 1976 before being forced into exile, died at the age of 74. Sosa, perhaps the most beloved performer in all of Argentina, was honored by a three-day official mourning period, with her ashes to be scattered among her northwestern birthplace of Tucumán, the western city of Mendoza, and the city of Buenos Aires. Sosa won three Latin Grammy awards in the last decade, but was no purist, performing with artists such as Argentine rock icon Charly García and Colombian pop singer Shakira.

On a more positive note, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared Uruguayan candombe, a music and dance that derives from Afro-Uruguayan tradition, as part of the world's Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Mostly concentrated in Montevideo’s Barrio Sur, the Afro-Uruguayan population is only about 5.5 percent of the country’s 3.6 million people, but candombe, with its rhythmic drumming on barrel-shaped tamboriles is not exclusive to Afro-Uruguayans, as the accompanying photograph, taken in the World Heritage Site of Colonia, would suggest. It is most commonly seen in January or February, during Carnaval festivities, which are not so exuberant as in Brazil, but considerably more so than in Argentina.

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.