Patagonia on Fire

On the outskirts of Argentina's Los Alerces National Park, west of the city of Esquel and near the border with Chile, an arson-set fire is threatening stands of the endemic alerce, the "Redwood of the South." Also known as the false larch, the alerce occurs in a narrow geographical range in the southern Andes, along both sides of the border, though a handful of isolated stands also occur near the Chilean coast. For centuries, it was a valuable timber species for its beautiful grain and resistance to rot; it's now protected in both countries, though there are legal loopholes that timbercutters have exploited, and also cases of clandestine cutting. Its presence on the Chilean side was one of the major reasons for the private conservation initiative at Parque Pumalín, but the potential loss of any alerce forests is cause for concern.

UPDATE: As of Friday, February 29, an unexpected heavy rain--the first since November--was helping firefighters control the blaze. According to the Buenos Aires daily Clarín, only about 100 hectares of the 263,000-hectare park had burned, so it looks as if the worst case scenario has been avoided.

Patrick Symmes, author of Chasing Che, has a fishing cabin near the town of Trevelin, on the southern edge of the park. He writes me that "Helicopters and airplanes were coming in and out of Trevelin's little grass airfield all the time."

Fencing the Forest?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the practice of fencing many parks and plazas in the city of Buenos Aires, even when there was no apparent reason to do so. Now the issue has come up in Santiago de Chile, where a group of neighbors and legislators are protesting a planned fence around the Parque Forestal greenbelt that runs along the Río Mapocho downtown. As I suggested before, some public open spaces do need protection from vandalism, but the closure of Parque Forestal would be a big blow to a liveable Santiago. I'm hoping the city consider alternatives before undertaking what should be a last-ditch option--fences are easier to erect than they are to remove.

Sentimental Hygiene?

Before anything else, apologies to the late Warren Zevon for my shameless reference to his great song, but it just seemed right.

Last week, in my neighborhood, we saw one side of the urban hygiene issue in Buenos Aires. Several neatly dressed young people set up an information table on the wooded Cerviño median strip near our apartment to explain the new city administration's plan to keep the streets clean: when to put out the garbage, where to put it, when it will be picked up, when the streets will be swept.

No word yet, though, when the city might place containers to help reduce the mess left by cartoneros scavengers when they rifle through the plastic bags left on the sidewalk in search of recyclables (piles of refuse like those in the photo to your right, taken in the historic barrio of Monserrat, are still a common sight in many parts of the city). According to one of the city delegation, barrios such as Monserrat and Palermo, with their highrise apartment buildings, would need several containers per block, and this would take up much of the parking and could block traffic.

This cartoneros issue made headlines last Friday when the administration booted out an encampment of them along the railroad tracks in the barrio of Belgrano. The scavengers had set up the camp because the Mitre railroad line has refused to provide them a special "white train" to carry their goods to their suburban pickup points. Belgrano neighbors complained because the accumulations of trash and lack of sanitary facilities caused, in their opinion, a public health hazard, and the administration agreed.

As it happened, I caught a glimpse of this as my commuter train passed through Belgrano on the way to Tigre, not enough to be able to say whether the eviction was unnecessarily forceful. Attorneys for the scavengers have filed a lawsuit, however, and today the scavengers were vigorously protesting on the Avenida de Mayo. It was noisy, with the bombo drums whose pounding sounds carry several blocks, and police were standing by just in case. Things stayed calm while I was there, but I always recommend to visitors that, if they don't understand what's going on in one of these political protests, to observe it from the periphery.

Meanwhile, any hygiene, sentimental or otherwise, is on hold.

The Mississippi of the Megalopolis

Last Friday morning I took a train north to the town of Tigre and, with my friend Cristián Soler (whom I met ten years ago in Tierra del Fuego), we took his father's boat to explore the channels of the Paraná delta. Tigre, in its early 20th century heyday, was the place where Buenos Aires's elite hung out and was home to numerous rowing clubs; Cristián's father's boat is a rowing scull damaged in an accident and then modified to support an outboard motor. Because of its shallow draft, it's ideal for exploring the delta's smallest channels, but when it goes out onto the Paraná de las Palmas and big freighters pass, the waves make me a little anxious.

The Paraná, which with the Río Uruguay forms the Río de la Plata (River Plate), is one of the world's great river systems. Winding nearly 4,000 km from its source in Brazil, it's longer than the Mississippi, which is probably its best analogue. Imagine the Mississippi delta and its bayous within 30 minutes of New York City, and you get some idea of the economic significance of the Paraná, and the recreational resources it provides, in proximity to Buenos Aires.

In a long day, leaving Tigre around 10 a.m., we spent about eight hours exploring the delta's smaller arroyos in what is called the Primera Sección, a relatively accessible part where many Porteños have summer homes but isleños (as the permanent residents are called) have more rustic residences on palafitos (pilings or stilts). The difference between the two is not always clear--in the place in the photograph to your right, for instance, a once handsome house has gone to seed and the soil it stands on may soon wash away. In all likelihood, some isleños will stay there until it slides into the river. Meanwhile, they'll eke out a living growing fruit, cutting timber, and producing crafts for the Mercado de Frutos in Tigre.

The delta is full of wildlife--plenty of birds, plus capybaras (Rottweiler-sized rodents) and even otters, but the bigger animals are in remote areas and harder to spot. The most abundant wildlife, at times at least, are the mosquitos that attack anyone who steps on land, so carry repellent. It's also full of accommodations, ranging from a modestly priced but excellent hostel Marcopolo Inn Náutico to the luxury La Becasina lodge. On the weekends, the delta's packed with people who come to spend a day at riverside beaches and enjoy a barbecue at its campgrounds or restaurants, but the rest of the time it's as if there's hardly anyone around.

Animal City

Dick Cavett once said that his friend Woody Allen was "at two with nature" and, with their similar urban sensibilites, Buenos Aires residents are also often wary of exotic fauna they perceive to be dangerous (as this photograph taken in Palermo might suggest). Still, Porteños love their dogs and cats.

As office workers and apartment dwellers, though, many Porteños have to hire paseaperros to exercise their dogs or even take them on longer excursions or beach holidays, as I wrote a couple years ago in Latin Trade magazine. Few of them neuter their dogs, though for apartment-bound canines that may be a lesser issue than it is in provincial towns (yesterday, when I visited the riverside suburb of Tigre, the number of street dogs was disheartening).

Both residents and visitors constantly complain of dog droppings in the streets. In today's Buenos Aires Herald, for instance, a Canadian visitor deplores "the stench of faeces and urine," and it's true that many--if not most--dog owners are irresponsible about cleaning up after their pets. Though I'm a dog lover (I wish our Alaskan malamute Malbec could accompany us to Buenos Aires), I resent the quantities of soretes that often speckle the sidewalks in our middle- to upper-middle class neighborhood here.

That said, I notice changes. It's now more common, though far from universal, to see dog owners using plastic bags to clean up after their animals. When walking around town, I myself carry a couple extra bags to hand to people who feign unawareness that their dog is dumping on the sidewalk, but when presented with a way to pick it up they find it hard to refuse. In reality, I think such a simple solution probably never occurred to them, and they often thank me even if they're taken aback at first.

Twenty years ago, frankly, it would never have occurred to me in California, even though I was a dog owner then as well. At some point there, we reached a critical mass where it became unacceptable to allow dogs to do their business on the sidewalk, and now it's the exception when they do so. I think this is happening in Buenos Aires as well, even if it takes some time to become the rule.

The same is not true with cats, however, in public spaces such as the Botanical Gardens. Only blocks from our apartment, the gardens are infested with scrawny, sickly, feral felines that leave an overpowering odor; because of their presence, the gardens are an almost bird-free zone. At night the cats often invade a nearby children's playground to use its sandy surface as kitty litter. Many people abandon cats in fenced schoolyards, where they may get fed--but not vaccinated or neutered--by well-meaning but misguided people. It's something that needs urgent attention, but will be far harder to solve than cleaner sidewalks.

When the Desert Blooms

It wasn't so long ago--the mid-1990s--that the northern Chilean desert had almost no coastal roads, and visiting port cities such as Iquique required an hour's detour or more from the Panamerican highway, which followed the interior rail routes established during the 19th-century nitrate boom. When I took the then unpaved road from Iquique south to Antofagasta in 1992, I met no other vehicles on a stunning Pacific shoreline route that's now the main paved highway connecting the north and south.

Things continue to change, though. A friend in La Serena has informed me that a new coastal road, from the port of Huasco north to Parque Nacional Llanos de Challe to Bahía Inglesa, is now open for traffic. I took the first part of this road, in the Norte Chico region about 700 km north of Santiago, a few years ago but could not continue beyond the village of Carrizal Bajo and had to backtrack east to the Panamericana in order to continue to Copiapó and Bahía Inglesa. Later this year I'll check out the new route.

Rarely visited, the vicinity of Llanos de Challe is one of the best places to see the "Desierto Florido," when sporadic spring rains cause ephemeral wildflower blooms that carpet the desert floor. This most often happens in September, but the rains are sporadic and geographically unpredictable. When it happens, though, Santiago travel agencies put together bus tours on short notice, and the new road is likely to make the flowering desert more accessible.

The Eternal Campaign

Even for political junkies, the United States' process of choosing presidential nominees and the ensuing campaign seem nearly endless, but usually after the election there's a breather. The same should be true in Argentina, since Cristina Fernández won the presidential election last October and replaced her husband Néstor Kirchner in office on December 10th.

Campaigning continues but, oddly enough, for another country. Spain is holding presidential elections on March 9th, and Spanish citizens resident in Argentina--even those with dual nationality who may never have never been to Spain--are eligible to vote. Thus, both the Socialist party of current Spanish president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and the opposition Partido Popular of Mariano Rajoy are plastering Buenos Aires city buses and utility boxes with campaign posters. Maybe when March 9th passes, electioneering can finally take a holiday.

Or maybe not. Italian elections are set for April 13-14, and according to some estimates there are 400,000 Argentines of Italian extraction who are eligible to vote. In fact, Italians resident in Argentina have their own representation in the Italian parliament.

A Counter-Offensive in the Traffic War?

For 30 years or more, impunity has been an issue in Argentina's dysfunctional justice system. The most notorious examples, of course, were the military dictators and their subordinates who kidnapped and killed thousands of ordinary Argentines in the 1970s and early 1980s, but the phenomenon is far greater than that. On a daily basis, paradoxically, it often means indifferent law enforcement that allows scofflaws to get away with flagrantly dangerous traffic offenses, or corrupt officers who exact bribes instead of enforcing fines. Either way, lack of accountability has contributed to the second highest traffic fatality rate in the western hemisphere.

That's the background for Buenos Aires mayor Mauricio Macri's introduction of a point system for Porteño drivers that could lead to suspension or revocation of licenses for the most reckless of them. The most draconian element of Macri's program would put anyone who runs a red light behind bars for one to five days. Taxi drivers are among the most critical of this provision, but the other night a taxi driver told me he thought "something has to be done" about the epidemic of dangerous driving.

Unfortunately, Macri does not operate in a vacuum. Many drivers reside in surrounding Buenos Aires province, which issues its own licenses, and the point system would not apply to them even though they frequently use city streets. The national government, which claims to support a point system, appears not to want Macri (on the opposite end of the political spectrum) to get credit for it, and the province opposes it actively.

Michael Soltys, a Buenos Aires Herald columnist, analyzes Macri's dilemma in a recent editorial. Soltys, though, seems to think that a point system in lieu of fines would prevent the police from soliciting bribes--but wouldn't a driver faced with losing his license and going to jail be particularly vulnerable to bribery?