Is Purgatory Real? SFO to DFW to EZE on American Airlines

I’m not Catholic—in fact, I’m an atheist—but after completing my first flight in two years, I think I finally understand the concept of Purgatory. Early Sunday morning I started the initial leg of an odyssey that took me from San Francisco to Dallas Fort Worth to Buenos Aires and, except at the very beginning and the very end, it was a disagreeable experience that I felt might never end.

First the good—after my wife dropped me off at SFO, the counter attendant who did my check-in was a simpático Uruguayan who did his best to promote his homeland, though it’s unlikely I’ll cross the Río de la Plata to Montevideo or any other port in the Banda Oriental on this trip. After checking my vaccination card and PCR test (no more than 72 hours prior to departure for Argentina), he also snagged me aisle seats for both legs of the journey (In theory I still prefer window seats to enjoy the landscape from 35,000 feet, but my prolonged recovery from last year’s ankle surgery has made ease of access more important than it used to be).

Things quickly deteriorated from there and that, of course, meant security theater from the so-called “Department of Homeland Security.” On my body scan, they saw things they didn’t like—one of which was a money belt that included the US cash I was carrying to Argentina because the official exchange rate is so disadvantageous. That was fairly easy to explain, but they also detected a “suspicious” elastic knee support I was wearing because of recent soreness and, even worse, a support sock apparently set off their metal detectors (I’ve been wearing one ever since my surgery, and it contains trace amounts of copper). In both cases I rolled up my trousers to invite a direct inspection, but the individual who detained me felt obliged to call in a superior who eventually authorized me to continue.

SFO to DFW left on time from Gate B23.

At DFW, prominent signs didn't necessarily mean compliance.

Gathering my belongings and putting my shoes back on, I proceeded to the gate and, surprise of surprises, the flight to DFW (Dallas Fort Worth) left on time and even arrived a few minutes early, with no anti-masker incidents on board. Immediately I noticed, though, that in COVID-friendly Texas many people were disregarding CDC masking regulations despite numerous posted signs. At SFO, mask compliance appeared to be 100 percent, while at DFW I would estimate that some 30 percent were ignoring the regulations in one way or another. The worst case that I observed was a 60-something porteño loudmouth on his phone at a charging station; when I gently suggested he should use his mask, he went ballistic.

The loudest scofflaw was an Argentine shouting into his cell phone.

DFW recently made No. 8 on a list of the country’s ten-worst airports. That’s partly because of frequent delays and, indeed, our departure for Buenos Aires was more than two hours after the scheduled time. It got worse, though, as the gritón mentioned above was just one seat away and, for most of the flight, couldn’t be bothered to wear his mask. He was not the only one, though, and even some of the flight attendants couldn’t be bothered on a plane that was nearly full. There was also one of the worst shrieking toddlers ever to keep me from even attempting to sleep.

AA 997 left more than two hours late from Gate D36.

I passed on both dinner and breakfast—life’s too short to dine on airplane food, and I eaten had a decent prosciutto sandwich while waiting for takeoff. I did sample a glass of a Pinot Grigio on board (American has been one of the last airlines to resume alcoholic beverage service), but it was almost undrinkable. My only regret is that I hadn’t realized that my video screen included a window-seat view camera which, though not so good as an actual window seat, at least provides a rough view of the landscapes below.

Unfortunately, I only discovered the window-seat camera view shortly before we landed in Buenos Aires.

Immigration was fairly quick and efficient at Ezeiza.

Once we deplaned on Monday morning, things got better. Immigration lines weren’t long, and the official who processed me asked only to see my declaración jurada (affidavit) for evidence of vaccination and other info (it’s obligatory to fill out the declaration 48 hours prior to departure for Argentina). I quickly showed him the PDF on my phone, and then he put the first stamp in my brand-new passport. I then went to the office of Transfer Express for a cab, for which I had to pay the official exchange rate via credit card because I fell just short of enough Argentine pesos acquired at the so-called “blue rate” on my last visit.

A glass partition separated me from my Venezuelan driver, but didn't inhibit conversation.

Traffic into town wasn’t bad, and my cabbie was an agreeable Venezuelan with whom I could talk baseball—a pleasant coda to perhaps the worst flight I’ve ever endured—despite the glass partition that now minimizes driver-passenger contact in the pandemic world. At home in our Palermo apartment, after a refreshing nap to make up for lost sleep, I enjoyed a plate of spinach gnocchi at Bella Italia Café, just down the block, before retiring for the night.

I ended the day with a plate of spinach gnocchi at Bella Italia.

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Break It All! Rocking Around the Americas

In the current months of semi-quarantined torpor I have, like millions of others, spent an inordinate amount of time in front of the tube. Often my tastes run to Scandi-Noir mysteries but, over the past week, we discovered a worthwhile alternative that takes me back to Buenos Aires and elsewhere in Latin America with Rompan Todo (Break It All), a six-part documentary on rock music south of the border (despite some notable omissions, to be detailed below).

Rompan Todo focuses primarily on Mexico (Mexico City, mostly) and Argentina (primarily Buenos Aires), and evokes nostalgia not just for the distant origins of that scene, but also for the city that I can’t visit for the foreseeable future. I’m of the generation for which rock music is a touchstone, and I touched on the Argentine scene myself in a National Geographic Traveler assignment a decade ago.

 

In the Beginning…

The series, though, starts with the California-born Richard Steven Valenzuela—better known as Richie Valens—who energized aspiring south-of-the-border musicians with his now standard “La Bamba,” adapted from a Mexican folk song. Not so many years later, though, the influence came from across the Atlantic with the Beatles. As the series’ Argentine producer Gustavo Santaolalla notes, the earliest Argentine bands often performed cover versions in English and were often derivative—Sandro, the “Argentine Elvis,” performed Spanish-language versions of songs like Tim Hardin’s “If I Were a Carpenter.”

This tribute album to the late Sandro is a fine introduction to Mexican and South American bands.

From the first, governments and other institutions like the Catholic Church were skeptical and often hostile toward rock. In 1971, for instance, Mexico had its own Woodstock in the unexpectedly politicized Festival de Avándaro, and Mexican officials forced rock to go underground—almost literally—for years. Argentine musicians underwent a similar experience in the approach to and aftermath of the 1976 military coup that resulted in exile for many.

Billy Bond's fans trashed the interior of Luna Park.

One of those was Billy Bond, whose appearance in the film was a revelation–I’d never even heard of the Italian-born rocker (given name Giuliano Canterini) but, from the footage here, he seems a precursor of punk. In 1972, when he and his band La Pesada del Rock and Roll played the iconic Luna Park Stadium—an auditorium where Eva Duarte first charmed Juan Perón en route to becoming Argentina’s most powerful woman ever—Bond urged his cheap-seats fans to descend to the unsold vacancies closer to the stage, resulting in vandalism and a police round-up. Within two years, apprehensive of Argentina’s authoritarian trends, Bond left for Brazil, but continued to produce Argentine bands and, in the course of this series, he proves himself to be admirably articulate (The series, by the way, takes its name from an album by Uruguay’s Los Shakers, but “Break It All” might as well have been Bond’s motto in his youth).

 

Meanwhile, in Chile

Chile's coupmongers executed Víctor Jara in 1973.

Chile underwent a similar trauma with the 1973 coup that overthrew constitutional President Salvador Allende and essentially shut down the music scene—beginning with folksinger Víctor Jara, whom Augusto Pinochet’s forces tortured and killed in an especially gruesome manner. My experience there has been more limited, though I did have the good fortune to meet, in Santiago, Claudio Parra of Los Jaivas, a group that formed in 1963 (the band name, by the way, is an adaptation of their original English “High-bass,” though it can also mean a species of crab found in Chilean waters).

Los Jaivas backstage at the Teatro Universidad de Chile (Claudio Parra is second from left)

I had assumed the band left because of the coup, but Parra corrected me on that—as the film makes clear, they had already decided to head to Argentina for commercial reasons, and the coup merely delayed their departure. They then spent several years there and in Paris before returning to Chile, where they still tour every year. When I saw them in Santiago around the turn of the century, they struck me as a Pink Floyd comparable and, onscreen here, La Ley’s Beto Cuevas compares their Alturas de Machu Picchu (Heights of Machu Picchu, based on a poem by Pablo Neruda) to Floyd’s Live at Pompeii.

 

Rock Nacional, In the Post-War

My own experience with Argentina's rock nacional dates from the post-Falklands/Malvinas War period, when the dictatorship faltered (in a brief interview, the Dylanesque León Gieco ruefully admits that he and other musicians were complicit in supporting the war and, by extension, a regime they presumably loathed). After the conflict, though, they focused on songs with Spanish rather than English lyrics—Charly García, for instance, has recorded a Spanish-language version of the Byrds’ “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better” and once, in an under-the-railroad-tracks dive in Palermo, I heard him do “Soldado de Lata,” a similar adaptation of the Small Faces’ “Tin Soldier.”

A performance at Palermo's Roxy Live Bar (the bassist, second from right, is Charly García's bandmate Zorrito von Quintiero).

Fito Páez performs in El Calafate.

Other than García, the biggest names I’ve ever come close to are Soda Stereo, the first Argentine band to become a major international touring sensation, and Fito Páez, now a solo artist who also worked with García and others. I know little about Soda’s music, but I happened to be in the provincial capital of Tucumán when their publicists were passing out promotional packs of cigarettes in the central Plaza de la Independencia prior to a concert (I was not impressed). Páez I saw as part of El Calafate’s annual Festival del Lago in 2014, but the outdoor sound system was less than ideal.

 

Oversights and Omissions

One unspoken theme through most of the series is the scene’s overwhelmingly masculinity, but there are several prominent women, most notably Andrea Echeverri of Colombia’s Aterciopelados and Mexico’s California-born Julieta Venegas, who has worked with Santaolalla (who lives in Los Angeles). I’ll note that when I saw Charly García in Palermo, his lead guitarist was María Gabriela Epumer, who died at 39 due in part, apparently, to a medical misdiagnosis. Truly unique is Los Jaivas’ Juanita Parra (in the Chile section photo above), who replaced her father Gabriel as the group’s drummer after a fatal automobile accident. Santaolalla, though, says rock’s future is female—and, as a producer with pedigree, he’s in a position to contribute to that.

In summary, Break It All remains a worthy account of rock music south of the border (and the Equator), but with one other major omission—although it subtitles itself “The History of Rock in Latin America,” Brazil is conspicuous by its absence. I’ll confess to knowing little about its music beyond bossa nova, but a cursory glance at Wikipedia suggests that the region’s largest country has had a flourishing rock music scene ever since the mid-1950s. Perhaps Netflix should retitle the current series to represent its Spanish-language bias, and then underwrite a separate work on the history of rock em português.

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.

The Tango War (a Book Review)

It's been a while since I've posted but, given the pandemic disruption of global travel, especially in my favored region of southernmost South America, I've been distracted with other matters. We're not dead yet, though, and I notice that, in recently commemorating the 75th anniversary of World War II's conclusion, the New York Times Book Review included just one minor item in the Western Hemisphere beyond the Río Grande—a children's book set in Cuba.

In that context I'll note that for every other Western Hemisphere country, the United States is not “America” but, rather, part of the Americas (In the end, we are all Americans). So, here's a book that  addresses the Times's lacuna.

The Tango War covers the conflict from a southerly perspective.

In The Tango War, US journalist Mary Jo McConahay demonstrates that the Allied Forces and Axis powers tangled (pun intended) away from the European and Asian spotlights both before and during the actual conflict. She focuses primarily on the United States and Germany, and their involvement in Mexico, Peru, Brazil and Argentina, though her title misleadingly suggests the centrality of Buenos Aires. There is less coverage of other countries, though Chile and Uruguay also figure into the story.

South of the Border… 

Being closest to the United States, Mexico was a priority because of Germany’s need for petroleum and President Lázaro Cárdenas‘s nationalization of the oil industry. In the runup to the actual war, there was a domestic turf war between FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Colonel William “Wild Bill” Donovan, head of what became the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and, after the war, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

 

Hoover was a publicity hound who tried to intimidate his opponents, but Donovan preferred to work behind the scenes. While Hoover often sent ill-prepared agents into the field, primarily in Mexico, Donovan employed professionals—one of whom was the late Woodrow Borah, a colonial Mexican history specialist who was also my own outside dissertation adviser at Berkeley. Borah, a fairly conservative man whose job involved working directly under a Soviet informant supervisor, told me that his main Research and Analysis (R&A) task was tracing the movement of German money south of the border.

 

Beyond the Equator

Farther south, the scenario was more complex. On the Pacific Coast, the issue was Japan and, in a regrettable development, legitimate concern took an illegitimate form—with little or no evidence, Peruvian authorities collaborated to expel nearly 2,000 Japanese-Peruvians to so-called “relocation centers” in North America, where US citizens of Japanese descent were already confined. Some of these Nikkei were, in effect, held hostage for prisoner exchanges during the war, though others remained in the United States after the conflict ended.

 

Brazil gave off ambiguous signals, as dictator Getúlio Vargas had strong economic ties with Germany and Italy, and large German and Italian immigrant communities abounded with Nazi and Fascist sympathizers. Brazil also had its own homegrown Fascist movement, the Integralists, but Vargas’s response to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor Policy” tipped the balance. In fact, in support of the famous 10th Mountain Division, Brazilian troops played a key role in the Allied campaign that brought down Italy’s Benito Mussolini.

British agents watched the Graf Spee from atop Montevideo's Palacio Salvo.

Outright combat was rare in the Americas, but the Battle of the River Plate was an exception. In 1939, damaged in battle with three British vessels, the German battleship Graf Spee took refuge in neutral Uruguay—as permitted by international law—where British agents observed it from the upper stories of Montevideo’s Palacio Salvo and the Royal Navy bluffed Captain Hans Langdorff into scuttling it. Langsdorff later committed suicide in the Centro Naval in Buenos Aires; in Argentina, Juan Domingo Perón had sympathized with the Germans, who had suggested they would support his country’s longstanding claim to the British-governed Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas).

The Graf Spee's captain killed himself at Buenos Aires's Centro Naval.

That said, the United States laid the grounds for Argentina’s belated entry into the war, at least partially, through the exercise of “soft power” in the form of–wait for it—Walt Disney! As part of the Good Neighbor Policy, Disney and a crew of assistants known as “El Grupo” produced an animated film that depicted positive stereotypes of Brazil and Argentina, including the legendary “Gaucho Goofy.” Later, Argentine gaucho caricaturist Florencio Molina Campos worked on several Disney projects.

El Gaucho Goofy was part of a longer animated film called Saludos, ¡Amigos!

While Argentina came around opportunistically at war’s end, the country became a prime destination for ex-Nazis who, with Vatican collusion, used so-called “ratlines” to escape Europe and reach South America. Some of the most notorious war criminals, such as Adolf Eichmann and Erich Priebke, became long-term Argentine residents, but others, such as Klaus Barbie,  Joseph Mengele and Walter Rauff, ended up in Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil. A low-level Nazi, Paul Schäfer, headed the cultish Colonia Dignidad  in southern mainland Chile and cooperated with the Pinochet dictatorship before escaping to Argentina to avoid prosecution as a pedophile. Eventually extradited, he died in prison in Santiago.

 

The Cold War and Its Aftermath

All this constitutes a readable account that fills a notable gap in the World War II saga, but in my opinion McConahay (whom I have met) stretches it a bit to attribute Argentina’s “Dirty War” too directly to World War II. She cites Uki Goñi and Patricia Bernardi, both of whom I know, on the parallels between Nazi tactics and those practiced by their own country’s 1976-83 dictatorship (Patricia’s sister Claudia, who also works with the Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense (Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team) is a frequent houseguest of ours in California).

Intending to dine at the Club del Progreso, in 2002, we were startled to see a dining salon outfitted for an apparent Nazi event.

Certainly the Argentine military had extreme right-wing, often anti-Semitic elements. Anecdotally, I can’t forget the time in Buenos Aires that my wife, her brother, and I were startled to see an entire dining salon at the classic Club del Progreso restaurant outfitted for an apparent private event with swastika flags and other questionable artifacts. Preparing to leave in disgust, we nevertheless asked about the décor, and learned that it was a set for a scene in the 2003 film of Imagining Argentina, with Antonio Banderas and Emma Thompson. That relieved our misgivings for the moment, but the fact that even a period film would depict Nazi nostalgia in Argentina has left a lingering impact—especially since the United States government was not guiltless in the so-called Proceso.

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The Erosion of Lonely Planet

Guidebook writing has been my occupation for three decades, though the digital revolution has put pressure on the print sector for at least two-thirds of that time. In the context of the coronavirus crisis, it drew renewed attention last week when Lonely Planet, my first publisher, announced the closure of its Australian flagship in Melbourne and its London editorial office. It is also shutting down its namesake magazine. This will leave it with a reduced presence in the Nashville suburb of Franklin, Tennessee (!) and Dublin, where it’s presumably cheaper to operate. The Tennessee office replaced its former US headquarters in my hometown of Oakland, California.

The skeletal 1989 edition of LP's Argentina prominently featured the author's name.

I’ve always had misgivings about digital travel content, especially crowd-sourced sites like TripAdvisor. They are vulnerable to anonymous and pseudonymous comments—especially by competitors—but not everything about them is necessarily untrustworthy. I would never even consider a restaurant on the basis of a TripAdvisor recommendation, for example, but if somebody reports claims to have eaten there three days ago, I’ll have reasonable confidence that the business in question still exists (except, perhaps, in times of coronavirus).

While the proliferation of digital content is certainly a factor in the decline of print guidebooks, LP’s corporate culture has also devolved from what it once was. In the beginning, the company gave its authors an autonomy to explore and make decisions on the content of their titles. Developing regional expertise over the years, those authors held copyright to their work, and received generous royalties—enough, in some cases to result in six-figure annual incomes.

Arguably, LP’s decline coincided with the devaluation of the on-the-ground regional expertise that first made them credible. In this context, Paula Hardy’s quasi-obituary in the Guardian (linked above) is a blend of naiveté and misinformation, not to mention gaping lacunae. About the time she came on board, in 1999, LP was morphing from an author-friendly company to one that dispensed with experienced authors, eliminating their copyrights and royalty contracts.Some were told that (I’m paraphrasing here) “You’re getting a reputation as difficult to work with.”

After the company warned that it might start titles from scratch with new writers, longtime authors learned that continuing with LP would involve fixed-fee contracts for a third or less of their previous income, with no certainty of future employment. Several whom I know opted out—choosing to sell their copyrights to the company, which seemed to conclude that destinations and authors were fungible (in fairness, the copyright buyouts could be generous).

Nothing in Santiago de Chile remotely resembles the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, but an LP editor wanted it as a cover shot.

New editions and titles became the product of multiple writers, some with doubtful qualifications—if an author had collaborated on a guide to, say, Sweden, he or she could just as easily draw an assignment for Myanmar, academic preparation and language skills notwithstanding. Many incoming authors and editorial personnel were neophytes whose geographical ignorance was palpable—in one case that I know of, an editor chose a photograph of Spain’s Santiago de Compostela (population about 96,000) to represent the capital of Chile (population five million-plus).

My first LP guide (left) omitted our names from the cover, but the licensed Spanish-language version  acknowledged us.

In that context, it’s noteworthy that LP stopped putting authors’ names on the covers of their books in the late 1980s, as best I can figure. After signing my first LP contract in 1990, I never had my name on the cover with a single exception—when Barcelona’s Editorial Kairós licensed my Argentina, Uruguay & Paraguay title, it featured both my wife’s and mine (María Laura was also the translator).

I spent ten years with LP, producing titles on Argentina, Chile, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Baja California and The Rocky Mountain States, but was never so fortunate as to have a royalty contract. That said, the flat fees seemed reasonable at the time and, in one instance, LP provided me a supplement when Argentina dollarized its economy, which made it a very expensive destination for several years.

Meanwhile, Hardy’s assertion that LP is the only guidebook publisher to send authors into the field is laughable. I  can contradict that on the basis of my own experience, in part after returning, earlier than I had hoped, from fieldwork in Argentina and Chile to update my Patagonia title. Because of the public health crisis, I have no idea when (or even if) Imay be able to resume the work, but I still hope to do so. A friend, also an ex-LP author, recently informed me that a different publisher has commissioned him to update two of his titles, and I am confident that other publishers will do the same.

The Independent’s Simon Calder seems to share Hardy’s romanticism about the publisher’s struggles: “When this wretched crisis is over, we may begin a new era where travellers will be hungry for resources they can trust, in particular guides researched and written by professionals, which don’t require batteries or an internet connection, and which feed our sense of adventure.”

I too would like to think so, but LP seems unlikely to carry that torch forward. After two ownership changes since my time, it is wearing down; the current contraction is part of a process that began decades ago when it jettisoned its most credible and dedicated authors. In both the physical and the publishing world, erosion is a slow but inexorable process.

Carnaval sem Cachaça?

I visit Brazil only infrequently these days but, when I've done so it’s usually the border town of Foz do Iguaçu because it’s been part of my beat when writing guidebooks about Argentina. After foreigners see the Argentine side of the famous falls, they almost always cross the Tancredo Neves bridge to see them from the Brazilian side.

The Brazilian side of the Cataratas do Iguaçu (Iguazú Falls)

I once took an intensive summer course in Portuguese—the equivalent of a full year at university level—but it’s only my fourth-best language after English, Spanish and German. Brazilians have been remarkably patient when I lapse into Spanish cognates, though I don’t always understand their responses.

In Buenos Aires, Carnaval is a decentralized neighborhood phenomenon.

Montevideo's Museo del Carnaval depicts the origins of Uruguay's tradition.

I’ve traveled a bit in northern Brazil—Porto Velho, Manaus, Salvador (Bahia) and Belém—but know the megacities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro only through their airports. That means I’ve missed the signature event of Brazilian Carnaval, though I’ve seen its counterpart in Argentina (where it’s experienced a neighborhood-oriented revival) and Uruguay (where it’s seriously under-appreciated by foreigners).

Moqueca de peixe is a flavorful fish dish.

I enjoy Brazilian food—particularly moqueca de peixe—and really appreciate the refreshing cachaça-based cocktail known as the caipirinha, made of cane liquor, lime and sugar. Brazilians themselves, though, probably consume far larger amounts of beer, especially during Carnaval.

Care for a caipirinha, Mr Mayor?

That is, unless Rio mayor Marcelo Crivella has his way. Somehow, Brazil’s liveliest party town elected this evangelical bishop to its highest office in 2017, and he has just asked that cariocas (Rio residents) refrain from drinking alcohol during Carnaval celebrations. He also embraces creationism, and objects to homosexuality and abortion rights.

If Mayor Crivella truly trusts in what he preaches, though, perhaps he could just pray that his constituents refrain from drinking during the festivities. Then again, his for-profit Universal Church of the Kingdom of God may well take a cut from alcohol sales.

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