The Costanera Norte offers river access to the residents of Buenos Aires.
Not far from our Buenos Aires apartment, leading northwest
from the Aeroparque Jorge Newbery
airport, the Costanera
Rafael Obligado provides direct access to the Río de La Plata
shoreline for city residents. It’s a popular spot for walking, fishing and asados (barbecues) and, at its northern
end, the Parque de la Memoria
is an open-air memorial to the tens of thousands who disappeared under the
military dictatorship of 1976-83.
One area “attraction” I’ve always ignored is Tierra Santa, a Disneyland
for the devout that displays a kitschy version of ancient Jerusalem and its
spiritual legacy (as depicted in the video above). About the only thing I can compare it with is Tennessee’s farcically fake Ark
Encounter which, deservedly, appears to be approaching financial collapse.
On one level that’s easy for me to say—I’m not a believer—but why would any
sensible person spend a single peso to watch an hourly mechanical resurrection
when genuine devotional sights are so close at hand?
Carlos Menem renounced Islam for Catholicism in order to become Argentina's president in 1989.
The Catedral Metropolitana is Buenos Aires's most conspicuous religious landmark.
It’s worth noting that, for many Argentines, religion is
fungible. For instance, former President Carlos
Menem—of Syrian descent—converted from Islam to Catholicism to run for
office, since that was a constitutional requirement at the time. Buenos Aires,
of course, has many important Christian sites, starting with the classic Catedral
Metropolitana and even the handsome Iglesia
Ortodoxa Rusa of San Telmo. But the Middle East’s other Abrahamic faiths are
represented by landmarks such as the Templo de la Congregación
Israelita and the Centro Islámico
Rey Fahd—both of which are open for free guided tours.
Palermo's Centro Islámico Rey Fahd is the largest mosque in South America.
None of those, of course, is a theme park—for that, visitors
to Argentina might be better advised to visit the city of La Plata, whose República de los Niños, where
children can explore scale model replicas of diverse structures that even include
a mosque. For my part, though, I prefer more offbeat devotional locations that
fetishize folk saints.
La Plata's República de los Niños has a scale model mosque for kids to explore.
Rather than a biblical theme park, I would urge visitors to
see the syncretic Santuario
del Gauchito Gil, where pilgrims pay homage to a Robin Hood figure from the
northern province of Corrientes. It also has the advantage of proximity to the Esteros del Iberá,
Argentina’s great subtropical wetlands preserve, to view the most diverse
concentrations of wildlife within the country’s borders.
Who needs a mechanical Jesus when you can stand before the altar of Gauchito Gil?
Alternatively, in the western
province of San Juan—also an underappreciated
wine district—the Santuario Difunta Correa memorializes a maternal figure
who, according legend, died in the desert while suckling her newborn (who,
miraculously, survived to be found by passing muleteers). In truth, she
probably never existed, but her story is more plausible—and far more intriguing—than
what supposedly happened in the “Holy Land.”
San Juan's Difunta Correa is a legendary folk saint whose infant son supposedly survived at her breast after she died in the desert.
For those unable to visit either the Gaucho Gil or the
Difunta, do not despair! Spontaneous roadshrine shrines—some of them quite
large—are common on the country’s highways and along some city sidewalks.
Even in sophisticated Palermo, the faithful leave water for the Difunta.
That said, Buenos
Aires still had a vigorous street life and nightlife – unlike Chile’s Pinochet
regime, the Argentine military never imposed a curfew on the public. In Santiago, you couldn’t be on
the street after 11 p.m., so parties would start early and go until daylight, but there were no
such restrictions east of the Andes.
In Buenos Aires,
one of my most memorable experiences was seeing a performance by the musical comedy group Les
Luthiers, which came to mind recently when I read the obituary of founding
member José
Rabinovich (the Creative Commons photo at top advertises a performance in Montevideo). At a time when repression was the norm, Les Luthiers dared to
speak out satirically – when I saw them, they spoofed the introduction of a series
of general and admirals occupying the country’s highest posts, with one
exception: the minister for education was a virtually illiterate corporal. In the clip above, with Rabinovich in the middle, they bemoan Argentina's border problems with Norway - obviously an oblique reference to nationalistic manipulation of the dispute with Britain over the Falkland Islands.
In the
English-speaking world, I might compare Les Luthiers with the Bonzo Dog Band,
who also created their own instruments and satirized British society, though
they were rarely so openly political. In one instance, though, the threat of a
libel suit obliged them to remove a reference to Conservative
politician Quintin Hogg – in “The Intro and the Outro” (see above), a modified version
of Duke Ellington’s “C-Jam
Blues” (see below), they had credited Hogg with contributing a “piggy grunt” to the
song. In cases like this, British defamation laws are far more rigorous than
their North American counterparts, but the Bonzos were never in danger of being
jailed or anything more serious.
I never saw the
Bonzos live and, when I saw Les Luthiers, my Spanish wasn’t good enough to
understand everything that was going on, but their act was visual enough for me
to get the gist. Even without Rabinovich, the surviving members will continue
to perform and, if
you’re in Buenos Aires, elsewhere in Argentina, Uruguay or even Spain with
the opportunity to see them – well, don’t miss it!
myself seated among a group of Swedes whose tour guide was a
Chilean who, exiled after the military coup of 1973, had lived in Sweden ever
since. Given my own Scandinavian origins – I had three Swedish grandparents and
one Norwegian – I was curious how a Latin American had adapted to the
notoriously dour Scandinavian society.
Recently, at home, we’ve been watching the Swedish police
drama Arne Dahl,
in which one of the main characters is Chilean detective Jorge Chávez, who
suspects his Swedish partner Paul Hjelm of racism. Even though Sweden has
welcomed many immigrants, that strain of xenophobia is a recurrent theme in
many Nordic noir novels,
films and TV series, such as Stieg
Larsson’s The Girl
With the Dragon Tattoo and Henning
Mankell’s Wallander,
in recent years.
My Chilean acquaintance, though, said he had found it easy
to adapt to Swedish life. In fact, he said, Swedes were not so different from
Chileans, at least in their stoic public personae – both behave far differently
in private. In public, Swedes’ default behavior is lagom
– roughly translatable as “moderation” – but in private or in unusual
circumstances, they can be more animated, and far more critical of employers and
other authority figures.
In fact, in the aftermath of the 1973 coup, quite a few
Chileans took refuge in Sweden and many have remained. I have been to Sweden
only once, a day trip to Malmö
from Copenhagen some 40 years ago, but I’m planning to go for a couple weeks
next May and June, flying to Oslo and returning from Stockholm, where I’ll be
curious to learn more about the Chilean presence – and perhaps even enjoy a pastel de choclo at Sabor Latino before returning to
California.
