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.

Latin America's Top 50? My Share of the Meal(s)

In the course of researching and writing guidebooks, I often hear that I have the ideal job, staying at the best hotels and eating at the finest restaurants. The reality, though, is that spending several months every year without sleeping in the same bed more than two or three nights in a row can be exhausting, and those are rarely the “best hotels” – more often than not, I’m in a campground, a modest B&B, a friend's spare room, or even sleeping in the car.

I can’t afford to eat gourmet meals every day, either, and even if I could, there’s a limit to how much I can eat in any one day – for reasons of health, comfort and cost. Food critics, of course, will eat at a given restaurant multiple before evaluating it, but I rarely have that luxury and have to rely on local contacts to confirm or supplement my own observations.

All that said, I was amused to learn that, according to a Restaurant magazine survey, I have eaten at quite a few of Latin America’s 50 best restaurants. Most of those are in Peru (home to the continent's finest food but where, unfortunately, I visit only to change planes) and Argentina (mostly in BuenosAires, where I spend a lot of time). Anyway, here’s a brief rundown on the ones of which I have personal experience.

1. Astrid y Gastón, Lima: I’m fudging this a little, because I’ve only been to the Buenos Aires branch of the restaurant, which closed recently, but I hear that Peruvian restaurateur Gastón Acurio has something else planned for the Argentine capital. Meanwhile, there is another branch in Santiago, which I will visit several times over the coming months (the city, not necessarily the restaurant).

9. Tegui, Buenos Aires: In the barrio of Palermo, behind a concrete wall covered with stickers and graffiti, an inconspicuous black door opens onto a luminous dining room that serves the contemporary cuisine for which chef Germán Martitegui has become famous, such merluza negra (“black hake,” or Patagonian toothfish commonly known as “Chilean sea bass”), pictured below.

15. La Mar, Lima: I’m fudging again, because I’ve only been to the San Francisco branch of Acurio’s ceviche specialist, which has a great happy hour with excellent empanadas. It’s worth staying for dinner, as the risotto below suggests.

17. La Cabrera, Buenos Aires: Palermo’s La Cabrera has drawn some scorn for its flagrant tourist appeal, but I greatly enjoyed the side dishes that complement its traditional meats (pictured below).

27. Oviedo, Buenos Aires: This is one of the more traditional Argentine restaurants to appear on the list, with a well-prepared menu of fish, beef, risotto and pasta. Its Barrio Norte location is very central for most visitors to the city.

29. Sucre, Buenos Aires: In the outlying barrio of Belgrano, Sucre (pictured above) is a contemporary version of the Argentine grill restaurant, with a wide selection of wines and tapas as well.

33. Pura Tierra, Buenos Aires: Also in Belgrano, but easily accessible by public transportation, this is a sophisticated but unpretentious restaurant that’s my own personal favorite in the city. The wine selection is truly special.

37. 1884, Mendoza: The only Argentine restaurant outside Buenos Aires to appear on the list, 1884 was the first project of celebrity chef Francis Mallmann. I’ve not been there for several years, but I don’t doubt its continued quality, and its location within the Escorihuela Gascón winery (pictured above) is a plus.

39. El Baqueano, Buenos Aires: In the barrio of San Telmo, El Baqueano is the place to try a tasting menu that may include game dishes such as yacaré (cayman, pictured above) and carpincho (capybara) from the wetlands of subtropical northern Argentina. Pictured below, the latter is the world's largest rodent, roughly the size of a Rottweiler.

Only two Chilean restaurants appear on the list, both of them in Santiago, and I’ve never eaten at either of them. One of them is No. 8 Boragó, which stresses indigenous Chilean ingredients; the other is No. 48 Osaka (pictured below), a Japanese restaurant in the W Hotel. I have actually visited the latter, whose representative barely flinched when I asked facetiously whether their any-pets policy would apply to my theoretical howler monkey (I don't own any pet primates, and would not do so).

On the Rains, Argentine Ants and Other Invaders

Yesterday, even as Argentine president Cristina Fernández launched yet another irredentist diatribe on the British-ruled Falkland Islands from the Patagonian coastal city of Puerto Madryn, some of the heaviest rains in more than a century inundated Buenos Aires and surrounding communities. Residents in neighborhoods like Belgrano were knee-deep or deeper in floodwaters, thanks to an antiquated drainage system whose modernization is decades behind schedule, as the TV footage below shows (skip through the first few minutes to get to the street scenes). It’s not quite Hurricane Katrina, but it’s a relief to know that our Palermo apartment is two stories up from street level, where many dwellings are underwater.

Eight Argentines have died in Buenos Aires, plus 46 more in the Buenos Aires province capital of La Plata. For the federal government, though, scoring symbolic points against the British appears to be a higher priority than disaster relief or infrastructural improvement in the low-lying cities or the adjacent Pampas. That parallels the disinterested response to a different sort of disaster just over a year ago, when 51 people died in a notorious rail crash at Estación Once.

Even if yesterday was the 31st anniversary of the disastrous Falklands invasion, other unwelcome Argentine invaders, which have infested much of the world, continue to get less attention than they should. Here in California, our winter rains aren’t quite so severe, but we have to keep our kitchen antiseptically spotless to try to avoid the plague of Argentine ants, whose colonies stretch underground for hundreds of miles here and in other parts of the world. With the tiniest opening, thousands of the tiny critters will find the slightest trace of grease or sweets, and we can spend hours trying to clean them up – only to have to do so again the following morning.

Finally, someone appears to be tackling the invaders, but the cure may be worse than the disease. According to the New York Times, an office park in North Carolina has seen a different invasion of Asian needle ants, which are displacing the Argentines. While the Argentine ants may be a pest, the Asian species appears to be a danger – they have a poisonous sting that can make humans ill and, in some cases, can even be fatal. In this case, I guess, I’ll have to resign myself to the relatively innocuous Argentine invaders.

Moon Handbooks Chile Visits Los Altos

Next week – Tuesday April 9 at 7:30 p.m., to be precise – I will offer a digital slide presentation on travel in Chile at the Los Altos Library (13 S. San Antonio Road, Los Altos 94024, tel. 650/948-7683). Coverage will also include the Chilean Pacific Islands of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and Juan Fernández (Robinson Crusoe), as well as southernmost Argentina (Tierra del Fuego and the vicinity of El Calafate) that appear in the book. I will also be available to answer questions about Argentina and Buenos Aires. The presentation is free of charge, but books will be available for purchase.

Enjoying the Empanada

Every Latin American country has its own version of the empanada, the flavorful turnover that makes an ideal snack or a starter for a more elaborate meal. The Argentine default version features flaky phyllo dough that’s usually filled with ground beef, hard-boiled eggs and olive, but the best will come with chopped rather ground beef.

That said, there is a great diversity of fillings, such as ham and cheese, chicken, cheese and onion, and even vegetarian versions – the ones in the photograph above, prepared by my wife, are filled with Swiss chard. The spicier ground beef salteña comes from northwestern Argentina, but is available in Buenos Aires; the tangy empanada árabe (lamb with a touch of lemon juice) is common in the western provinces of San Juan and La Rioja. Empanadas al horno (baked) are lighter than fritas (fried, sometimes with heavy oil).

Sadly, one of my favorite empanaderías, Palermo’s La Cupertina (pictured above), closed earlier this year, but there are still a number of good choices in Buenos Aires. I most often go to Tatú, a takeout chain in my neighborhood that also has a few tables – when I’m on a deadline and pressed for time, I carry half a dozen home (they also deliver, but I need to get out of the house for at least a few minutes). Their salteñas are not so spicy as they warn – even the “very very” picante version I would more simply describe as “flavorful.”

Probably the best all-around choice that remains is Recoleta’s El Sanjuanino, just a couple blocks from the Cementerio de la Recoleta and the iconic Alvear Palace Hotel; it also has a wider menu of regional Argentine food. Whenever I’m walking around town, I won’t hesitate to stop at La Continental, a chain pizzeria that prepares a wide selection of empanadas. If I’m in the right neighborhood, I’ll visit San Telmo’s La Carretería or Belgrano’s 1810 Cocina Regional. All that said, it’s hard to go wrong with Argentine empanadas.

Personally, I prefer the Argentine version to their Chilean counterparts. In general, Chilean empanadas are far larger, the dough is nearly as heavy as bread, and they are more often fried than baked. Chile also offers less variety – the standard empanada de pino consists of ground beef with hard-boiled egg and an olive and, to be fair, its size makes it a meal in itself. That said, there are alternatives – in Santiago’s Barrio Brasil, Peperone serves a greater diversity of fillings, including items such as ostiones (scallops) or even locos (abalone) that are almost impossible to find elsewhere.

Moon Handbooks Buenos Aires in Belmont (San Mateo County)

Next Tuesday, August 30, will mark the third of several digital slide presentations on the fourth edition of Moon Handbooks Buenos Aires, at various branches of the San Mateo County Library. The Tuesday event starts at 7 p.m. at the Belmont Library (1110 Alameda de las Pulgas, Belmont CA 94002, tel. 650/591-8286). There will be ample time for questions and answers, and books (also including Moon Argentina and Moon Chile) will be on sale (at a discount).

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We Have Our Winners! The Buenos Aires Giveaway

When last Friday dawned and I had only one (correct) entry in my contest to give away two copies of the new fourth edition of Moon Handbooks Buenos Aires, I pleaded with readers to enter the contest to give the other copy away. As it happened, I needn’t have worried too much - another six contestants correctly identified Belgrano’s Iglesia de la Inmaculada Concepción, the church that figures prominently in the late Ernesto Sábato’s masterpiece psychological novel, On Heroes and Tombs. It is popularly known as “La Redonda” (The Round Church) because of its circular design and cupola.

Given that so many came up with the right answer in response to my plea, I’ve decided to give away an additional five copies as I close the contest this morning. Four of the respondents came from the United States, one from Mexico, one from Chile, and one from Belgium, and I hope they’ll put them to good use.

Jennifer Rose of Morelia, Michoacán, who previously won a copy of the third edition of Moon Handbooks Argentina last year, was the first to respond correctly here. I also have two overseas winners, including Natalie Usher of Viña del Mar (Chile), who says that “Now I can persuade my husband to take a couple of days off so we can finally make it to BA.” Steve Behaegel of Merelbeke, Belgium, requested a copy of Moon Handbooks Argentina in lieu of Buenos Aires “because most of the time we travel Patagonia and do not linger too much in Buenos Aires.” Steve had entered an earlier contest, but had been too late with the correct answer.

Stateside, I got a correct answer from Butch Cassidy expert Dan Buck of Washington DC, who adds that “I met Sabato at an Argentine Embassy function in the 1980s and had him sign my copy of On Heroes and Tombs.” David J. Leffler of New York City wrote that “I have relatives that originally lived in Buenos Aires and now live in Córdoba. My aunt came to the country in the 1930s from Germany and her daughter, my first cousin, now lives in Córdoba.”

The other winners were Darek Przebieda of Burbank, California, whose wife Analía (an Argentine) operates Eureka Travel, and Robin Page West of Baltimore. For those of you who haven’t yet sent me a mailing address, please do so, and I will have the books in the mail as soon as possible. I will, however, be contacting you individually as well.

That’s all for the time being, but please keep an eye on this blog for future contests. And, while you’re at it, help me pay for my postage costs by clicking on one of those little AdSense ads every so often - always presuming it’s something that stimulates your curiosity, of course.

A Farewell to Sábato, and a Giveaway

The battered paperback in the photograph above is my personal copy of Ernesto Sábato’s On Heroes and Tombs, possibly the definitive Buenos Aires novel but, apparently, no longer in print in English. Far less celebrated for his literary output than his countryman Jorge Luis Borges (who never wrote a novel), Sábato died last Friday at age 99, less than two months short of his 100th birthday. In the immediate aftermath of his death, he was the subject of a tribute at the Feria del Libro, the annual Buenos Aires book fair that will continue through next Monday.

A Communist and a physicist in his youth, a democrat, novelist and painter in his maturity, Sabato was an indefatigable campaigner for human rights. He made his literary reputation with his first novel, The Tunnel (1948), and followed it with On Heroes and Tombs (1961) and The Angel of Darkness (1974, known in Spanish as “Abaddon el Exterminador”). Andrew Graham-Yooll’s obituary of Sábato in the Buenos Aires Herald provides a succinct summary of his career, from both a literary and political perspective.

Not being a literary critic (unlike Graham-Yooll, who is an acquaintance of mine), I can’t do full justice to Sábato’s literary career or personality. Still, I found On Heroes and Tombs absorbing not just because of the tragic tale of an Argentine family in the turmoil of the 1950s. It’s also because the novel is literally grounded in place - many of its scenes occur in and around city landmarks that are still recognizable today, even if they’re not always part of the tourist circuit. A novel within the novel, titled “Report on the Blind,” may be a metaphor for life in the Argentine capital, but it’s equally fascinating if read literally.

As a public intellectual, Sábato opposed human rights abuses under the Peronist governments of the 1940s and 1950s, but also under the military regime that overthrew Perón in 1955. His most visible contribution to public life, though, is his role as president of the Comisión Nacional sobre la Desparición de Personas (CONADEP), created by President Raúl Alfonsín to investigate human rights abuses under the notorious Proceso military dictatorship of 1976-83. The commission’s landmark report, under the title Nunca Más (Never Again) provided concrete evidence of extrajudicial disappearances and executions that led to the successful prosecution of the junta leaders and many of their underlings.

Win This Book!

No, not my precious copy of On Heroes and Tombs, but rather the new fourth edition of Moon Handbooks Buenos Aires. I will award copies of my own guidebook to the city to the first two readers who can identify the church in the photograph below, which plays a key role in On Heroes and Tombs, by either its formal or colloquial name. Since I don’t want to make the contest too difficult, I’ll provide one additional clue: it’s in the northern Buenos Aires barrio of Belgrano. Please send all entries to my personal email, in the header above, not to the comments function of this blog.

The Buenos Aires Guide to Ice Cream

As September approaches, and the southern hemisphere winter turns to spring, Argentines walking the streets of Buenos Aires and other cities stop more often to enjoy an ice cream at their neighborhood heladería. Argentine ice cream dates from 1826 but, surprisingly, from the western city of Mendoza - at that time, Buenos Aires had no source of ice that would allow the production of ice cream, but muleteers could haul it down the western Andes, even if some of it melted en route.

Only later, in the 1840s, did ice cream begin to have an impact on Buenos Aires, as the first shipments of ice began to arrive from, of all places, the United States. Not until 1860 did the city have its own, locally produced ice to make frozen desserts and, with the massive Italian immigration of the late 19th century, it underwent a boom that has never subsided.


This is according to the new, very specialized guide to Heladerías de Buenos Aires (Ice Creameries of Buenos Aires), published by the municipal Ministerio de Cultura, which not only details the history of frozen treats in a city whose hot, humid summers have made it a staple of the diet. In 255 pages, with color photos, it also provides a thorough rundown of 32 landmark ice creameries around the city, plus a several-pages-long list of other deserving shops.

Not so long ago, though, many of those ice creameries were summer-only destinations. In 1984, when I spent my first winter living in the city’s Congreso district, a walk down nearby Avenida Corrientes found most of them shuttered for the season, and the ones that remained open were not the best of the bunch. Today, that’s changed greatly even though some remain open seasonally.

Several of my personal favorites figure in the book, including Belgrano’s Gruta, the Microcentro’s Vía Flaminia (Florida 121), and Congreso’s Sorrento (Avenida Rivadavia 2051) and Cadore. Cadore, in fact, has made a list of the world’s best ice creameries in the Madrid daily El País, which also included Monserrat’s Pastelería Olímpica (Avenida de Mayo 752), which I had never heard of, just a block from the iconic Café Tortoni.

El País’s list, though, is heavily Eurocentric - all the others it mentions are in Spain, France, and Italy. Still, between the Olímpica and the others depicted in the municipal guidebook, I’ll have plenty of pleasurable research to do on my next trip to Buenos Aires. It’s worth adding that the same series includes Pizzerías de Buenos Aires, as well as El Libro de los Libros (covering the city’s bookstores) and Calesitas de Buenos Aires (about merry-go-rounds). All of them are available in the bookstore at the city’s Casa de la Cultura (Avenida de Mayo 575).

A Trip to Tigre

When Porteños want to get out of Buenos Aires, the closest option is the suburb of Tigre, the gateway to the Paraná delta. Barely half an hour from downtown’s Retiro station, Tigre is a riverside greenbelt city that’s the terminus of the Mitre railroad, a commuter line for the Argentine capital’s prosperous northern suburbs. It’s quick and cheap to get there - believe it or not, the fare to Tigre is 1.35 pesos, approximately 35 US cents!

My Thursday excursion, though, started from the barrio of Belgrano, whose station is closer to my own Palermo apartment. I made a stopover at Béccar, five stops south of Tigre, to see Villa Ocampo (pictured here), the country home of writer Victoria Ocampo (1890-1979). Ocampo, born to wealth and privilege, created the literary journal Sur and entertained world-class writers, including Graham Greene, Federico García Lorca, and André Malraux here, not to mention her own countrymen such as Jorge Luis Borges and novelist Adolfo Bioy Casares (married to Ocampo’s sister Silvina, a poet).

Open to the public, now a museum and cultural center, Villa Ocampo is a Belle Epoque house built by her parents on an enormous lot that once stretched all the way to the river. Today, the grounds are much reduced - though most of us would still consider the gardens enormous - and it’s only a seven-block walk through wooded streets from the train station. It’s best, though, to time any visit for a guided tour, as self-guided visitors may only see the ground level - the first floor, where Ocampo herself slept and her distinguished guests had their own spacious rooms, is otherwise off-limits.

In Tigre, meanwhile, my primary goal was to visit the new Museo de Arte Tigre (MAT), occupying the spectacularly restored Tigre Club (pictured here, dating from 1913). Though it once housed a hotel and casino, it now displays figurative works by Argentine artists from the late 19th to the 20th century, stressing but specializing in landscapes, portraits, and still lifes linked to Tigre. The first-floor terrace that extends to the riverside offers great rivers of the river and its parkland.

Artists represented include major figures such as Antonio Berni, Benito Quinquela Martín, and Juan Carlos Castagnino, but it also holds special thematic exhibits. Currently, it’s hosting a series of three dimensional pieces by “Artistas Plásticos Solidarios en el Mes de la Memoria” (Plastic Artists in Solidarity in the Month of Memory), memorializing the victims of Argentina’s 1976 coup and subsequent “Dirty War” in conjunction the March 24th anniversary, now a holiday for reflection - and protest - in the country.

I’ve not even mentioned my favorite Tigre-area destination, the bedrock island of Martín García, a full-day excursion reached by Cacciola catamaran from Tigre. Once a penal colony, Martín García is still a halfway house for prisoners from Buenos Aires province, but it’s also home to lush gallery forests and some unexpected architectural masterpieces - such as its rococo theater (pictured here).

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.

How Expensive is Buenos Aires?

Given the ups and downs of the Argentine economy, and its capital city, this is a question whose answer requires periodic revision. The most recent answer comes from the Mercer consulting group, which last week ranked Buenos Aires as No. 112 of 143 cities worldwide for expat cost-of-living. In comparison with 2008, when Mercer ranked “Baires” 138th of 150 cities, it would seem that the city has gotten more expensive but, nevertheless, it falls in the lowest quartile of the cities surveyed. For purposes of comparison, Tokyo is the most expensive, New York City ranks eighth, San Francisco 34th, Washington DC 66th, and Johannesburg 143rd. Neighboring Chile’s capital city of Santiago ranks 128th but, with the Chilean peso’s recent rebound, I would expect the two cities may have reversed position. What does this mean in practice? In reality, for instance, public transportation in Buenos Aires is preposterously cheap. The basic fare on Metrovías, the underground system popularly known as the Subte, is 1.10 pesos - about 29 US cents (compare that with New York City’s subway fare of US$2). The standard bus fare in Buenos Aires is 1.20 pesos, on a system that operates 24 hours a day. Cab fares cost US$1 for the first 200 meters, and only 10 US cents for each additional 200 meters. Since the economic collapse of 2002, of course, prices have risen considerably. At that time, I thought nothing of inviting my several nephews out to dinner and picking up the tab. In 2009 that’s a lot harder but, nevertheless, today I enjoyed an exceptional three-course lunch, with a glass of wine, at Belgrano's Lotus Neo Thai (the city’s top Thai restaurant, and one of few places where it’s possible to get truly spicy food) for about US$12. Still, for some things, you’ve got to pay. As shopping expert Patricia O’Shea, the Irish-Argentine co-owner of Hotel Home Buenos Aires, told me this morning, visitors who buy cheap goods such as bargain leather jackets may find their purchases will literally unravel. Quality goods, she says, will be not be cheap, but they will be cheaper than their overseas counterparts - and they’ll last a lifetime. One recent development, though, threatens to make the country more expensive. Only a short time ago, when I went to the corner bank, the ATM told me it would charge me 11.46 pesos (about US$3.50) for my withdrawal of 300 pesos (the maximum allowable transaction, less than US$80). I rejected this withdrawal, from the Banelco system, and went to a nearby Link ATM that did not collect the charge. Still, banks tend to ape each other, and it wouldn’t surprise if this becomes universal. According to my contacts in Santiago, ATMs there have recently begun to impose a fee of 2000 Chilean pesos but, at least, ATM users can take out larger amounts of cash than in Argentina.