A California Tango?

California has a long and illustrious history of contacts with Chile, about which I’ve regularly written, but its relations with Argentina have been less conspicuous. Perhaps the most infamous episode was an invasion by the Franco-Argentine privateer Hipólito Bouchard, who occupied the Presidio of Monterey for six days in 1818, when the area was still under Spanish rule.

The sheet music for La Reina, Francisca Carrillo Vallejo's tango

Last week, though, I found a new and somewhat enigmatic connection when I accompanied a Buenos Aires visitor to the Oakland Museum of California. There I found, behind a vitrine in the Gallery of California History, the sheet music to “La Reina,” described as a California tango by Francisca Carrillo Vallejo. Published in 1925, when Carlos Gardel was at his peak, the song probably reflects the early 20th-century globalization of this distinctively Argentine music and dance.

General Mariano Vallejo, grandfather of the tango composer

There is scant online information about this piece of music, but the museum's Program Administrator Eileen Hansen informed me that the author was the granddaughter of General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, a Californio who spent his life under Spanish, Mexican, and US governments. Ironically enough, Vallejo (born 1807, d. 1890) would have been a boy in Monterey when Bouchard occupied the Presidio. Unfortunately, Ms. Harris could not access the sheet music from the vitrine on short notice, so I’ve been unable to see the lyrics.

This house on San Francisco's Filbert Street was the home address for the song's publisher.

From the limited genealogical information available, I’ve not been able to determine Francisca’s exact lineage, but there were three Vallejo sons who might have been her father (there were also several Vallejo daughters, but their children would have had different surnames). The señorita depicted on the sheet music would appear more appropriate to a Mexican ranchera than an Argentine tango but, coming from an apparently Anglo publisher—Dudley and Barrett—that stereotype is perhaps unsurprising.

I look forward to reading the lyrics, eventually, and learning more about this topic.

Gardel Barks Better Every Day!

Nostalgic Argentines always claim that Carlos Gardel, who died in a Colombian plane crash in 1935, sings better every day. That’s a way of proclaiming their devotion to, and the timelessness of, the legendary tango singer’s body of work. But if there’s one thing that Argentines, and especially Porteños, adore as much or more than the man who sang Mi Buenos Aires Querido (“My Dear Buenos Aires”), it’s their dogs.

Several years ago, I wrote an article about a dog-oriented entrepreneur in Buenos Aires who, in the aftermath of the 2002 economic meltdown, was making a pretty good living exercising apartment-bound animals for their owners. Paseaperros (dogwalkers) leading eight or more canines on leashes have long been a common sight in the city, but he and his partner earned the bulk of their income shuttling canines to the beach resort of Mar del Plata and back during summer vacation time. Many if not most Porteños do not have room for both the family and the animal in their private cars (or for that matter, may not even have cars). Thus, a mobile kennel was an elegant solution to the problem of keeping the extended family together.

Since then, if anything, Argentines have become even more dog-centric, with numerous dog parks, plus “pet-friendly” restaurants like the Museo Evita (above), around the corner from our own Palermo apartment, that welcome four-footed mascots (at least in their patio). Luxury accommodations, including the Faena Hotel & Universe, Four Season Buenos Aires, and Palacio Duhau Park Hyatt (pictured below) all offer packages that include doggie treats and toys (the Duhau’s goes by the name “Very Important Pet”). There's a plethora of pet boutiques and information sources, including a print and online magazine that goes by the title Oh My Dog. To their credit, the magazine promotes canine rescue services along with its fashion celebrity coverage and their purebreds.

Canine droppings, unfortunately, continue to dapple the city’s sidewalks. Whenever I’m in town, I always carry a few small plastic bags in my daypack so that, when I pass someone whose Doberman is depositing soretes on the sidewalk, I can point out to the owner that “Se te cayó algo…” (Loosely translated, “you dropped something…”) and provide him or her an alternative to leaving it there. Usually they are taken aback, but they get the message and sometimes even thank me for it. It seems a slow process sometimes, but they’re learning.

The photograph at top, by the way, is our late beloved malamute mix Gardel – named for the singer – of whom we always said “Gardel barks better every day.”

Gardel Gets a Stamp; Chile Reprieves Bicycles

Yesterday, when I went to the post office to mail copies of Moon Handbooks Argentina and Moon Handbooks Buenos Aires to the winners of my recent contest, I also asked to purchase some stamps and was pleasantly surprised to find a commemorative sheet of “Latin Music Legends.” It included three US citizens (Tito Puente, Cuban-born Celia Cruz and the Texan Selena Quintanilla), but also two non-citizens: the flamboyant Brazilian samba singer Carmen Miranda and the suave Argentine tango master Carlos Gardel. San Diego artist Rafael López did the illustrations for the series.

Miranda, in fact, was a star in Hollywood, where she made more than a dozen films and became known for her outrageous fruit-covered hats - there’s even a Carmen Miranda Square at Hollywood Boulevard and Orange, across from the landmark Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Gardel’s stateside credentials, though, came more from his singing and his work in Spanish-language cinema in New York - while he went to Hollywood, his poor English-language skills prevented his crossing over in the way that Miranda managed. While he might have managed to improve, his 1936 death, at the age of 44 in a plane crash in Medellín, Colombia, ended any such hopes.

Gardel’s final post-mortem tour took him from Medellín to New York, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, where he now lies interred in the Cementerio de la Chacarita. Every day, hundreds of pilgrims pay tribute to him, leaving flowers at his crypt and even placing lighted cigarettes in the hand of his smiling statue. So devoted are the Gardelianos, his die-hard fans, that they cannot pass a day without listening to his recordings. While nobody believes that he’s still alive - unlike with Elvis, there are no Gardel sightings - everybody says “Gardel sings better every day.”

Whenever I’m traveling through the Southern Cone countries, Gardel is a presence on my iPod. I particularly look forward to “El Carretero,” an oxcart driver’s song that contains the couplet “salí de Montevideo, dirección a mi casa…” (“I left Montevideo, headed home…”). At home in California, for many years, we had our own Gardel, the name of our late Alaskan malamute. As we used to tell our Argentine friends and family, “Gardel barks better every day.”

Chilean Cycling Stays Legal
The preposterous project to limit bicycles to designated trails is dead. According to the online Santiago Times, the 12 UDI legislators who originally introduced the bill backed off in the face of vociferous opposition from cycling groups and others - not to mention the fact, as voiced by La Bicicleta Verde’s Mac Mitchell, that “The police don’t have the inclination or the time to enforce something like that.” In fact, if traffic safety is the issue, it would make more sense to tackle distracted drivers on cell phones than cyclists (unless, of course, those cyclists are also on cell phones).