The Morning(s) After - Musings on Vaccines and Travel

Tuesday afternoon, I received my first dosage of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, and am scheduled for the follow-up in about a month. The vaccination itself was painless but, later that night, my left shoulder started feeling sore and I could not shift positions as I normally would during sleep. In the morning I awoke with a slight headache, but that subsided after a walk with the dog(s) – unfortunately, as I’m recovering from ankle surgery, I’m in a walking boot and can’t handle them myself, but my wife and daughter can still hold the leashes.

 

Since then, the pain has dissipated and I look forward to receiving the booster shot that should provide immunity from the virus—liberating me, in theory, to travel again, though there are so many contingencies that I don’t anticipate returning to South America until at least the end of the year.

My passport paperwork awaits submission.

One of those contingencies is a new passport. Mine expired in September and, under the previous US administration (as inept as it was loathsome), the State Department inexplicably started slow-walking these essential documents for a time. In fact, even some Republicans called the policy “unacceptable,” “inadequate,” and “slow and inefficient.” Hearing other anecdotal evidence from friends and acquaintances, and given that I wasn’t likely to travel any time soon, I chose to delay my renewal application until the Biden-Harris administration replaced the worst Secretary of State in the country’s history.

Now it’s the morning after a four-year nightmare and, while I have no immediate travel plans, I feel confident to submitting my application to a professionally run government department. Moderna and a new government may be the vaccines we needed, but they’re only a start. Still, it seems, we may be better in a better position than our trans-Atlantic cousins suffering through the self-inflicted economic and political traumas of Brextremism—not to mention their own issues with the pandemic.

Should the Borders Open?

In March, after the COVID pandemic drove me back to California, I put aside thoughts of returning to Argentina and Chile for the foreseeable future. It didn’t help, of course, that my passport expired in September and, amidst evidence that the US Government was slow-walking renewals, I couldn’t even find the document in question—making its renewal a moot point. Somehow, in the process of self-quarantining on my return, it had gone astray.

We thought we’d searched everywhere possible, with no luck whatsoever. But then, in the process of finding a Hawai’i guidebook for my daughter, who was flying there for a ten-day holiday, my wife stumbled upon the document in a basement bookshelf. I had no memory of putting it there, but I’m relieved that it’s still in my possession.

 

In theory, I could now apply for a renewal right now, but to what end? Historically speaking, a US passport has opened doors to the world, but the current administration’s mismanagement of the greatest public health crisis in a century has rapidly devalued our citizenship. Ideally, the current election will reverse the process but, even so, it’s not likely to happen overnight. We will need a major U-turn.

 

Desperately Premature?

In the meantime, how are things looking beyond the Equator? Just a few days ago, the government of Argentine President Alberto Fernández made the surprising decision to open its borders to neighboring countries—Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia and Chile—in the interest of reactivating its economy for the approaching summer. There will be no quarantine, but some limitations: there will be no overland entry points—only by air or river (in the case of Uruguay)—and and a negative COVID test in the country of origin will be obligatory.

Are the immigration lines at Buenos Aires's international airport likely to match this any time soon?

This leaves some questions unanswered, though. Uruguay, which has been the continent’s most successful country in controlling the COVID crisis, has announced that it will not reciprocate, keeping its borders closed to foreign tourists. It may be most concerned with its porous northern border—the Uruguayan city of Chuy and its Brazilian neighbor Chui, for instance, share a main avenue that marks the limit between the countries. Still, even if Uruguay allows its citizens to cross the river to Buenos Aires, it’s not likely to reciprocate toward Argentines heading the other direction.

Argentina may be counting on the passenger ferries from Uruguay, but will Uruguay reciprocate?

The statement issued by Argentina’s tourism minister, Matías Lammens, left some things unsaid. While citizens of neighboring countries are presumably clear to cross the border, what about resident non-citizens—say, a US citizen living permanently in Chile? What about legal tourists to bordering countries, such as Brazil, which still allows US citizens to enter by air? Can they cross into Argentina as well?

 

Who’ll Go, and How’ll They Get Around?

One question, of course, is whether anybody will want to go. After an early lockdown seemed successful, Argentina’s per capita COVID stats are a bit better than Chile’s but worse than Brazil’s in terms of total cases, though not quite so bad as Peru’s. Another question is the practicality of logistics in a country that now requires special permission for inter-provincial travel, with internal checkpoints at every provincial border.

Argentina's current COVID-19 statistics are not encouraging (https://ncov2019.live/data/southamerica)

In the course of writing a magazine article on coastal Patagonia, which I submitted last weekend, I heard from one operator that “transportation between cities is restricted, except for emergencies, flights are resuming but only for medical issues and special cases, not for tourists, and I think it will be difficult to open again before the end of the year. All our 2020 reservations were canceled, but there’s a ray of light toward the season’s end, in February or March, if the situation improves, but there’s lots of uncertainty at present.” Another eco-resort was unable to open on October 1st, its usual date—“We have all our hygiene and security protocols in place, but the outlook is uncertain and far from encouraging. Hopefully we’ll be able to open when summer starts, at least!”

 

It’s worth adding that Chile is also considering reopening its border to tourists. One eco-lodge operation in northern Patagonia just wrote me that “I think we’ll open in early December, right now we’re looking at the security protocols, we’ll also offering a half-price deal if a group wants to take over the whole lodge for a minimum of four days without additional services except for lodging and kitchen access.”

 

In Tentative Conclusion…

For my part, in search of normality, I’ll take it step by step. In that sense, I actually enjoyed having my teeth cleaned yesterday—my dentist’s reopening is, hopefully, an early indicator that things in California have begun to return to normal (Joe Biden’s victory should make it even more so!). Before we started, the hygienist required me to cleanse my mouth with a wash of iodine and mint (not hydrochloroquine!) and they refrained from polishing the teeth, as that could spread aerosols.

 

That said, this will be the first winter in recent memory that I will spend entirely in the Northern Hemisphere. Though I miss South America, I’m personally not confident enough to plan my return for another year or so.

G-20? The Buenos Aires Aftermath (With a Nod to FDR)

In early 2016, on the occasion of President Barack Obama’s trip to Buenos Aires, I wrote a short summary of US presidents’ visits to Argentina. It started with Theodore Roosevelt (an ex-president at the time of his visit) and continued with Dwight D. Eisenhower, the recently deceased George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. Now, for better or worse (evidence suggests the latter), it’s time for an update.

More than a few Argentines thought little of George W. Bush.

Over the weekend, as almost everybody knows, Donald Trump traveled to Argentina’s capital for the annual G-20 summit of the world’s leading economies, at the Centro Costa Salguero (not far from our apartment in Palermo). With concerns about security, the Argentine government declared Friday a holiday and encouraged people to leave town for a long weekend. Trains and subways were shut down for the duration and, from all accounts, the city felt like a ghost town.

Trump's own punctuation, subconsciously at least, undermines his legitimacy.

In an interview today, Argentine president Mauricio Macri revealed that Trump didn’t even want to attend and, from his apparent disinterest in diplomacy, he couldn’t wait to get out. In fact, when Trump was supposed to join the other heads of state for a photo, he marched right past Macri and off the stage (though he eventually rejoined). He did assent to most of the conference’s outcomes with the notable exception of the Paris agreements on climate change, where his denial of the issues makes the US a pariah on the most critical environmental crisis of these times. Ironically enough, in a tweet he issued today, he appears to have doubts about his own legitimacy.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the streets of Buenos Aires, 1936

When I wrote the previous article, I was unaware that Franklin D. Roosevelt—arguably the greatest president ever—had visited the Argentine capital in 1936, on an extended cruise through the Americas (at the time, there was no Air Force One to jet the chief executive overseas). Roosevelt spent only three days in Buenos Aires, from November 30 to December 2, addressing the Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace. One of his goals was to encourage a front of opposition to encroaching European fascism. The text of his speech is online at the FDR Presidential Library.

It’s noteworthy that, in 1961, local authorities changed the name of Calle Guanacache, in the northern barrio of Belgrano, to Franklin D. Roosevelt. The current White House occupant, who’s succeeded in making the rest of the world share the skepticism that many Argentines always do of US presidents, is unlikely ever to achieve any such recognition.

Would You Like the Good News First? Money & Visa Updates

In the context of southern South America, two topics about which I often write are money and visas, and on both I have good news and bad news. Here, today, I’ll deal with the two topics separately.

MONEY

Less than two weeks ago, I dealt with the issue of Argentina’s ATMs and the fact that they’re such a quilombo (a slang term, meaning a mess, that derives from an earlier usage that meant a brothel). I haven’t used an ATM in that time but good news is that, according to The Wall Street Journal’s local correspondent Taos Turner, Argentine banks have raised the limit for individual transactions to A$3,300 (about US$192; when I made my last withdrawal, I could only obtain A$2,000, about US$143). This is a step forward, though it still doesn’t come close to the permitted amounts from Chilean and Uruguayan ATMs.

For foreign account-holders, the cost of an Argentine ATM transaction rose by 67 percent in November.

The bad news is that the banks have raised their transaction charge to A$175 (almost exactly US$10), as opposed to the previous charge of A$106.20 (about US$6). That sounds bad, and it is, but with the new withdrawal limit that amounts to only 5.3 percent as opposed the earlier 5.31 percent. In Argentine banking, that appears to count as progress…

VISAS

In visa matters, the news is better, especially for Australians and Canadians. Early last year, Argentina suspended its so-called “reciprocity fee” for US visitors, in hopes that Argentines would gain access to the United States’ Visa Waiver Program, which permits cheaper and more expeditious travel to the Colossus of the North. That, however, occurred before a far more xenophobic administration took over the US government, and Chile remains the only South American country eligible for the Visa Waiver (unless you want to count Guyane, which is an overseas département of France). In principle, if the US refuses to reciprocate, Argentina could reinstate the fee for US visitors.

Soon, both Australian and Canadian visitors will be exempt from Argentina's "reciprocity" fee.

Recently, however, it’s taken steps in the other direction. The previous Argentine administration had also inflicted “reciprocity” fees on Australians and Canadians, but the current government eliminated the fee for Aussies last July, and has taken steps to to do so for Canadians by the first of the year. Nationals of both countries will find one less obstacle if they desire to visit Buenos Aires and beyond.

Brazil is also making it a bit easier to visit that country although, in my opinion, it still has a long way to go. I’ve not crossed the Brazilian border in some time, but applying for a Brazilian visa has always been inconvenient. It used to involve going in person but, when I tried to do so in Buenos Aires, the consulate there informed me that they could not issue a visa because my intended visit was too far in the future (to the best of my memory, it was two or three months before). I was able to get one-day service at the Puerto Iguazú consulate, to cross to the Brazilian side of the falls, but they would only accept payment in Argentine pesos, even though the visa fee was advertised in US dollars.

For US passport holders, the pleasure of a day-trip from Argentina to Brazil's side of Iguazú Falls will still cost US$160.

Now, though, intending visitors can apply for the visa online, but the Brazilians are still missing an opportunity that the Argentines are taking advantage of—eliminating the visa entirely would do much more to encourage travel to South America’s largest country. In fact, the Brazilians did so briefly last year, when they suspended all tourist visa requirements during the Olympics.

The argument, of course, is that as long as the US and other countries oblige Brazilians to obtain advance visas, it’s only fair Brazil should require the same for citizens of those countries. To some degree I sympathize with that argument and, as an advocate of open borders, I think US visa requirements are far too restrictive. That said, from a purely pragmatic viewpoint, Brazil gains nothing from subjecting potential visitors to bureaucratic obstacles. Argentina appears to have learned that lesson.

After the Apocalypse

From the late 1970s, when I first visited southernmost South America, both Argentina and Chile were under the boots of murderous military dictatorships. As a foreigner, with a US passport, I had the privilege of leaving at any time, though that did not prevent some anxious moments, especially in Argentina. I never experienced the 1973 coup by Chile’s General Augusto Pinochet – the photo above depicts an Atacama desert memorial to victims of the coup’s “Caravan of Death” in the Atacama desert - nor the 1976 takeover by Argentina’s “Proceso” junta (the photograph below is part of the Parque de la Memoria in the Buenos Aires barrio of Núñez).

Many of my Argentine and Chilean friends did, and I was quick to sympathize with them, but sympathy and genuine empathy are different matters. Even after I married an Argentine, and heard her tales of life under tyranny, I never felt those sorts of emotion until last Tuesday, when the unspeakable Donald Trump – a disgracefully corrupt racist and misogynist authoritarian - became president-elect of my own country. Even though Trump’s Republican campaign may have broken no rules – except perhaps those of poor taste – it felt like a coup.

Part of the Republican strategy, but not all of it, was to limit voting by disenfranchising potential Democratic voters – in Wisconsin, for instance, the Republican legislature passed a restrictive voter ID law that probably gave the state to Trump. In other states, Republican administrations reduced the number of polling places and voting hours to make it harder for their opponents to participate in the election.

Before leaving for Santiago, where I arrived Thursday morning, I wrote my friend Marializ Maldonado about these demoralizing developments. Marializ, now a journalist, was a university student when I met her, and her brother Víctor – expelled from the Universidad de Chile for his political activity – now works in crisis management at Chile’s Interior Ministry. I recall that, not long after I met them, we went to a small clandestine labor union retreat near the beach town of Los Vilos, and issues of how to deal with life under dictatorship were part of the discussion. I also heard a wealth of Pinochet jokes, which I won’t go into at present.

Marializ’s response to Trump’s victory was immediate support – “It’s macabre... Now we have to show solidarity with you the way you did to us for so many years.” When I sent her a copy of the California legislative leadership’s response to the events – a statement on protecting immigrants and minorities threatened by the incoming president and his lackeys – she found it “Inspiring! That’s the right attitude.”

My Argentine wife and her brother especially suffered far more under the Argentine dictatorship – his first wife disappeared shortly after giving birth to a son, and only recently did they locate her remains. That said, Pinochet and the Argentine junta lacked the immense capacity for outright destruction – especially internationally – that Trump does.

So, you look for bright spots, and I encountered one Wednesday morning at Oakland International Airport as I went to board a short flight to Los Angeles. As I went through security and greeted the TSA agent – a middle-aged black woman - with the cheeriest “good morning” I could muster, she replied by asking me how I was. When I responded that I hadn’t slept much the previous night, she said hadn’t been able to either. When I suggested it was probably for the same reason, she responded with a big hug – rather than a frisk - that lifted my spirits.

Book Fair Buenos Aires: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly & the Offbeat

One of my favorite Buenos Aires events has always been the Feria del Libro, the region’s biggest book fair, comprising 45,000 square meters of space at the elegant Sociedad Rural fairgrounds. It started on Sunday, when I walked past the entrance after having lunch in Las Cañitas – it’s gratifying to see so many Argentine readers lined up to buy tickets – but I wasn’t able to go myself until Wednesday afternoon.

A showcase for Argentine book culture, though foreign participation appears less conspicuous than it used to be, the Feria consists of hundreds of stands that include bookstores, publishers, distributors, provincial governments and newspapers. They vary in quality of course – I quickly bypassed the Confederación Espiritista Argentina (Argentine Spiritualist Confederation, pictured above), nor do I have much patience with other self-help organizations (including Alcoholics Anonymous) and psychoanalysis.

One thing I did find encouraging was the presence of English-language bookstores and distributors, such as Kel Ediciones and Estari Libros. In a country regarded as the region’s most most proficient in English, the so-called “currency clamp” and import restrictions had limited the arrival of Anglo-friendly titles – the former trade secretary Guillermo Moreno even claimed that the ink in books printed outside Argentina contained “dangerous levels of lead.” In response to my question, one bookstore at the show confirmed that the situation has improved considerably.

The US Embassy stand, meanwhile, seemed more oriented toward travel and tourism, with information on visiting the States as Argentina advances toward inclusion in the Visa Waiver Program. I was surprised that the invited US “literary figures” included two cheesy romance novelists, but amused that a chalkboard let visitors scribble graffiti – some of it humorously critical.

My own favorite stand belonged to Aves Argentinas, which included a number of worthwhile natural history guides. Having spent a year-plus in the Falkland Islands, I also found the abundance of titles on the 1982 war and its aftermath to be startling, even though such “banal nationalism” (a phrase from Michael Billig via Klaus Dodds) is an obsession for many Argentines.

Ever since my boyhood – I’m a post WWII “baby boomer” – Argentina has had an unfortunate reputation as a haven for Nazi war criminals and, as Uki Goñi has chronicled in The Real Odessa, it’s a cliché that's not undeserved - even though some have been brought to justice. I was startled, though, to realize that there’s such a cottage industry of books claiming that Hitler himself took refuge here.

I was also surprised at the absence of books on travel and tourism, even though the Ministerio de Turismo does have a stand at the entrance to the main exhibit hall. As a guidebook author, though, I found it disturbing that the only book in my genre was one (at bottom of photo) that included Adolf’s and Eva Braun’s supposed haunts in Bariloche. Unfortunately, there always seem to be somebody who'll believe in the preposterous.

Welcome Back! Argentina Ends "Reciprocity," Forever?

When US president Barack Obama arrived in Buenos Aires last month, it wasn’t for a Patagonia vacation – though he did manage to take some time in the Andean lakeside resort of Bariloche – but he accomplished something that many travelers thinking of a Patagonia cruise or other similar holiday have reason to be grateful for.

In 2009, the government of Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner imposed a so-called “reciprocity fee” of US$160 on US visitors to Argentina – equivalent to the charge that Argentines pay to apply for a US visa. Leaving aside the question of fairness, the fee and its awkward bureaucracy created a disincentive for foreign visitors, including Australians and Canadians (who pay US$100 each). At a time when Argentina needed hard currency (as it still does, to help pay off its debts), this was a curious and counter-productive policy decision.

During Obama’s visit, though, the government of recently inaugurated President Mauricio Macri announced the fee’s suspension - pending progress on incorporating Argentina into the Visa Waiver Program that allows certain nationalities to enter the United States for tourism or business without an advance visa. The Obama administration responded by eliminating consular interviews for some but not all visa-seeking Argentines, but the presumably there will be additional progress sooner rather than later. It’s worth adding that Chile once collected a similar fee, but eliminated it in 2013, after being accepted into the Visa Waiver Program.

Recently, when I passed through immigration at Buenos Aires’ international airport (pictured above), I still carried proof of having paid the fee six years ago (pictured below, it was valid for ten years), just in case, since I wasn’t sure when the suspension would take effect. Other US citizens in line had no concerns, but Australians and Canadians are still on the hook, as I confirmed with telephone calls to their consulates. With luck and some official dedication, the measure will become permanent for US citizens and soon be extended to their Australian and Canadian counterparts.

Holiday or Not? US Presidents in Argentina

When Air Force One landed outside Buenos Aires on Wednesday, Barack Obama became the sixth US president to visit Argentina – technically speaking, that is, for reasons to be explained below. In the last year of his presidency, Obama’s schedule-makers arranged a trip to follow his path-breaking visit to Cuba this week, but that caused something of a kerfuffle because the date of his visit to Buenos Aires – March 24 – coincided with the 40th anniversary of the coup that toppled the government of President Isabel Martínez de Perón in 1976 and started a reign of terror that became known as the Guerra Sucia (Dirty War) – for which many Argentines have blamed the United States.

With that as background, it could be helpful to provide a short chronology of those presidential visits – the first of which was Theodore Roosevelt in 1913 – or was he? By that time, Roosevelt was an ex-president whose term had expired in 1909, and he had lost as a third-party candidate in 1912. He did visit Buenos Aires, but his heart was in Patagonia, where he met the pioneer Argentine conservationist Francisco P. Moreno in Bariloche (in the photo above Moreno, dressed in white, stands to Roosevelt’s left).

In truth, then, the first US president to visit Argentina officially was Dwight D. Eisenhower, who spent four days in Buenos Aires, Mar del Plata and Bariloche in February of 1960. Hosted by then President Arturo Frondizi, he even addressed the Argentine Congress but, at the same time, police tear-gassed demonstrators loyal to the exiled Juan Domingo Perón. In Bariloche, though, Eisenhower fished and golfed while staying at the classic Hotel Llao Llao (pictured above).

It was another 30 years before President George H.W. Bush’s visit coincided with a military uprising by so-called carapintadas, rogue junior officers who had staged several rebellious incidents in previous years. Bush, to his credit, did not cancel or postpone his trip at a time when many still considered Argentine democracy a fragile flower.  He did, however, play tennis with then President Carlos Menem (pictured above).

President Bill Clinton’s October 1997 visit included a breakfast with Menem, where (in retrospect) he overstated the success of Argentine economic reforms that ended in the economic collapse of 2001 and their reversal under the populism of Presidents Néstor Kirchner and his successor/wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Clinton also met with Jewish leaders concerned about Buenos Aires terrorist bombings in 1992 and 1994 – neither of which has been solved – and participated in a televised town hall. Like Eisenhower, he stayed at the Llao Llao, indulged himself in golf there, and also went for an excursion on Lago Nahuel Huapi  (pictured above) and spoke about global warming.

All those visits were congenial, but the 2005 visit of George W. Bush – for the fourth Summit of the Americas in the seaside resort of Mar del Plata (pictured above) – was a disaster. It may not have been so catastrophic as his Iraq invasion but, as the New York Times editorialized,  "he and his delegation failed to get even a minimally face-saving outcome at the collapsed trade talks and allowed a loudmouthed opportunist like [President Hugo Chávez] of Venezuela to steal the show." There was no thought of a recreational breather - the widely despised Bush Jr. left with his tail between his legs.

Most recently, last week, President Obama received a warm welcome from newly elected Mauricio Macri, who succeeded Fernández de Kirchner (whose relations with the US were tense at best). Obama’s arrival put the conservative Macri in the awkward position of having to acknowledge “Dirty War” crimes of a period he’d probably rather ignore. One stop was the riverside Parque de la Memoria, dedicated to victims of the dictatorship, where the US president tossed a wreath into the water. The wall depicted above registers names of the victims, one of whom was my brother-in-law’s first wife.

Obama took some flack for his arrival at this sensitive time – in fairness, presidential itineraries are not easy to arrange – but he responded by announcing the release of confidential documents about US encouragement of the 1976 coup. That was not enough for large crowds of the previous president’s supporters, who seemed to think he was a coup-mongering second coming of George W. Bush.

Obama had made some untimely public criticisms of Fernández de Kirchner, but the visit still seems to mark the end of her administration’s international isolationism. Following the meetings with Macri, the Obamas headed for Bariloche – now the traditional destination of US presidents in the country – where they stayed at the Llao Llao, took a boat trip on Nahuel Huapi, and Obama himself sipped a brew at the Cervecería Berlina (pictured above).