La Cumparsita

Sometimes life has a way of telling you to go home. On my last full day in Buenos Aires, my phone service went out, I was stood up for dinner, and a major milonga put me at a table with a guy who proceeded to hustle me as a tango teacher. (I fled back to Practica X, where partners were less expert but more sincere.)

Even then, it wasn't a terrible day, just bad enough to tell me that, okay, I'm ready for a bit more predictability. As in rain and drear. Or so I try to convince myself. In the middle of the night before I fly out. After an 80-degree sunny day. Uh-huh.

The title of this post is the name of the song traditionally played to close out a milonga, so I thought it appropriate for the finale of this blog. In the course of my five weeks here, I've noted oddities and ironies which didn't quite fit my post topics. So I finish with this collection of Baires miscellany.

***On my way to visit the Goyas in the Museo del Bellas Artes on Sunday, I passed by BA's ritziest hotel and spotted an entrance-maker in its porte-chochere: a 1925 Lagonda, It bore a small plaque indicating that it recently had been in a Peking to Paris rally. Wherever it had come from in this case, it had bugs on the grille and grit in the wheel wells. I had visions of it putt-putting across the Andes.

***Speaking of traveling in style, there is Wifi in the subte. I'm not sure who thought this was a great idea, but there are signs proclaiming that, if you wish to boot up on a grungy subway platform, a signal will await you. Certainly people here carry on lengthy cell conversations during subway rides, so why not web browsing? But I've yet to see it.

***BA's many bookshops in tourist areas carry a small English language selection but no Jorge Luis Borges, the great chronicler of Buenos Aires life and a natural "read" while here. I found Shakespeare, Mark Twain and Danielle Steele. I even found an edition of poetry by Chile's Pablo Neruda. But no Borges. Next time, I'll bring my own.

***There is a shortage of coins in BA. Coins are needed for buses and parking meters, and they're in great demand. If you pay in metal, they practically hug you. If you pay with those measly 2 peso bills, you are not spat upon, but you sense the merchant's indifference...and disappointment.

*** Another currency twist is that, since July, it has been impossible to withdraw more than the equivalent of 100 USD from an ATM in any given transaction. This may be an inflation-control device, but it presents problems for certain transactions which are cash only, such as apartment rentals. And, of course, the fees attached to each withdrawal mount up.

***I love this Argentine term for North American: yankee, which is pronounced "shanky." It sounds irresistibly pejorative. The Argentines insist, of course, that it is not.

***This city smells. I've become aware that it has a fragrance, sweet and succulent, probably due to the many parrillas. This fragrance must be what any Porteno, returning from abroad, recognizes subliminally to know he is home. Every city has an odor, I suspect. Chicago has the scent of the lake, Portland has the odor of Doug Fir and Cedar and loam. With Tokyo I associate a burnt smell -- incense and a gorgeous burnt cedar plus bamboo.

How does your city smell? I want to know! Post a comment.

Ciao y hasta luego!

Madre Power

A few days ago, I went to Plaza de Mayo, the Pennsylvania Avenue of Buenos Aires, fronting the house of the country's president. As it happens, that house is salmon pink, not white, perhaps befitting the recent election of a woman president.

My purpose on this day was to observe, and acknowledge, the weekly march of the Mothers of the Disappeared.

From 1976 to 1983, Argentina shuddered with a horrendous deracination. Young radicals -- perhaps modeling themselves after student protesters in America and Europe -- opposed the military junta then in power. (For more on the ideological convolutions, see Wikipedia on Argentina's "Dirty War.")

The junta's response was to "disappear" them -- into detention centers of torture and murder. Some youngsters were sedated and tossed into the River Plata from planes. Officially, the count of the "disappeared" is just under 9,000. Unofficially, it could be as high as 30,000. Whole families vanished, picked up by the notorious white Ford Falcons of the secret police.

Within a year, some of the mothers of these young people began to organize. Their protests centered on the Plaza de Mayo and their emblem was to wear a white babushka. At least one of the founders was "disappeared" herself. (The intransitive verb has acquired a sinister transitive usage.) Today, there is an avenue in a new part of town named for her, as Argentina struggles to deal with this chapter of its past.

Over the years, the Madres de Plaza de Mayo has split three ways: There are the original, founding mothers, who are devoted to bringing their children's murderers to justice; the Asociacion Madres de Plaza de Mayo, which is working for a leftist political agenda similar to that their children espoused; and the Abuelas (Grandmothers) de Plaza de Mayo, who seek to reunite children who were born to interned mothers with their biological families. Most of these children were adopted by couples loyal to the ruling junta after their mothers were killed. So far, 87 young people have sought out and found their original families.

There have been trials and convictions of some of the people responsible for the disappeared. Just this week, another was arrested and charged with kidnapping, torture and assassination.

The work of each of these groups is mostly behind the scenes. But every Thursday at 3:30PM they give the world at large a photo op when a few of them march around the statue of General San Martin, founder of modern Argentina. Off to the side, they sell pamphlets, teeshirts, posters and keychains, and talk with the curious about their cause. By now, most of the madres are abuelas themselves, or would be. Their children were young adults when mine were pre-schoolers.

Their march is symbolic, even perfunctory. But I found it immensely moving. I saw a woman overcome by tears speaking to one of the Madres. I wondered if someone close to her was disappeared. Or perhaps, like me, she had lost a child as a young adult and was identifying with mothers fighting for their children. Or maybe she was just overwhelmed by the power of what these women have accomplished. They have kept the issue of the Dirty War front and center for 30 years. Argentina does seem to be confronting this shameful part of its past, however fitfully, and for that I give the country credit. (As a measure of comparison, how long was it before Americans started to come to terms with slavery?)

La milonga, traditional and otherwise

At a traditional milonga, the genders sit separately, the better to execute a "cabaseo," which is the Argentine way of asking a woman to dance. Eye contact is made. If it is held, she is interested, and a series of nods ensues. The gentleman rises. The lady does not, because she wants to be certain the nod was intended for her, and not for someone behind her. When it is clear that she is the intended, she rises, they embrace and dance.

When couples attend milongas and wish to dance with others, each sits separately, because a woman sitting with a man will not be asked to dance unless it is cleared with her partner. A "dance" is actually three or four songs, each about 3 minutes in length, and it is called a tanda. A "gracias" at the end of the tanda means you will return to your seat and wait for another partner.

The stars of the evening are the milongueros and milongueras, some of them quite advanced in years, who grew up in the barrios dancing tango. Each barrio had its own style, and milongueros tend to bear nicknames like Tete, Pupi, El Flaco, La Turca. It's almost as though they belonged to tango gangs. Leonard Bernstein shoulda been there.

A rule of thumb for a foreign woman here is that she always should accept a dance from an old guy. He might not have been a milonguero gang leader, but he usually knows his stuff. His lead is firm and his musicality nuanced. And by "old" I mean 80-plus, with apologies to any octogenarians who might be reading this and feel dissed.

Which brings me to the first of two lovely tango moments I've had lately, one as a participant, one as a voyeur. At a large and popular venue on Saturday night, a tiny man who looked like Jimmy Durante, was about 95 and had palsy, asked me to dance. The years and infirmity limited what he could do, but his lead was strong and musical. And his joy at still being able to get out there was contagious. (It was a special tanda; there is nothing like the realization that you could easily tip over your leader to help you stay on balance and connected!)

Milongas which attract the younger generation seem to be less rigid in their seating schemes and less dependent on the cabaseo. The young like to go to practicas -- dj'd practices -- where they can try out material and hang out. Hottest of these at the moment is Practica X. A large space, it was thronged and full of energy. This is where nuevo tango is practiced, sometimes with ravishing results. Nuevo tango is showier, and the the need for connection, musicality and grace is critical to make it look good. I danced a little, but mostly I just watched.

And, watching, I enjoyed my other lovely tango moment. A young couple was dancing. I didn't know who they were, but they were too skilled not to have been professional teachers and performers. She looked to be almost 9 months pregnant. She wore low-cut harem pants and a skimpy top so that her smooth, olive-skinned belly was fully exposed. Although in some cases professional dancing partners are not lovers, that clearly was not the situation here. This couple danced a sensual, intensely connected, gorgeous tango, at times his arm cradling her belly. It was moving, and so personal that at times I felt I should look away. But I was riveted. I thought about the child to come, the family to be made, and the anticipation so rapturously expressed in dance. Wow.

Tango, Inc.

If you come to Buenos Aires as a tourist, you'll see plenty of tango. Tango shows -- "espectaculos" -- are hawked everywhere, and eager young dancers perform in major tourist areas.

But you can't appreciate the reach of the tango industry unless you come to dance. Then you'll seek out brochures and magazines filled with listings for every aspect of tango. On any given day there will be as many as 30 "milongas" -- tango social dances -- held all over the city. (And that doesn't include a number of more informal neighborhood milongas.) Often these start at 10PM and go until 3, 4 and even 5 in the morning, with the hours trending later as the week progresses. They are sweet affairs, held in big places and small, and mostly quite unpretentious.

There are also dozens of tango shoe vendors, clothing purveyors and guest houses. There is zen tango, gay tango and tango therapy. (The latter is redundant for all but the self-unaware.) From a small number of tango "maestros," the ranks of teachers has ballooned in the last decade, making for much discussion as to "authentic" versus arriviste.


And, as of this week, there is an official Tango Monument, unveiled in Puerto Madero, a new development on the river side of downtown BA, rather like Portland's Pearl District, but on a much grander scale. The product of collaboration between the city and numerous tango and neighborhood organizations, the monument was unveiled with much fanfare, music and dance this week. It takes its shape from a stretched bandoneon, the signature instrument of tango. The fact that, from many angles, it looks also like a giant metal Slinky, shall be but quietly noted.

So Tango, Inc. is building momentum. There are are now tango "competitions," a grotesque idea, since the soul of tango is a communion, or connection, between partners, and with the music and the floor, resulting in an improvised dance. I have no idea how one might fairly score that.

Still, there is an element in the tango world which seems to favor athleticism over connection. (Tango, well-danced, actually is more athletic than it sometimes looks; what I refer to here are very vigorous, acrobatic movements which upstage musicality.) There even has been talk of lobbying to make tango an Olympic event. Puhleeze. Tango as the new ice dancing? it's an abhorrent thought, but one with much more profit potential than the milongas we have now. Full-time dancers no more crave to be starving artists than the rest of us.

Everyone who dances Argentine tango probably has experienced the moment when, having just confessed his obsession, she hears this response: "Oh, yeah, I saw that on 'Dancing With The Stars!.'" Well, no. That would be ballroom tango. A different animal. But the differences, at least in some sectors, may be narrowing.

It's the weekend. The weather has recovered from its record-breaking spring chill and I celebrated by going native.

That is, I went to a mall.

Malls have become the new town square for many of the world's cities, and Baires is no exception. I wanted to finger the goods and check out the vibe. I chose the solidly middle-class Abasto mall, an enormous converted train station. with 4 or 5 levels of shops, a playground, numerous fast-food places, and -- most remarkable -- a ferris wheel and other carnival rides. Disney had a space for little kids to sing karaoke tunes from "High School Musical." Stores rocked with "wanna-buy, wanna-buy" music.

Shopping in Baires pits my relatively conservative taste (probably news to some of you) against the Argentine love for things that are dramatic, revealing and precariously engineered. Grab an inviting garment off the rack and you will likely find that, instead of the simple black top you had thought, it plunges to the waist front and back and all of its parts are held together by tiny chains. Or perhaps it has a large cut-out exposing areas of your body you prefer to leave to the imagination. Or maybe it has a cat's cradle of straps which you must decipher before you even start to put it over your head. As a matter of principle, a piece of clothing that requires me to figure out how to get it on doesn't make the cut.

I lasted about 2 hours before bolting from the glossy surfaces of the mall into the decaying streets of the neighborhood, celebrated as the barrio where the great tango troubadour Carlos Gardel grew up. I came away with a pair of leggings and a tee shirt -- not one of those boxy things we wear in North America, but a tight, black off-the-shoulder affair. It's front is adorned with faintly shiny black stars.

As I say, I went native.

Money, and all that garbage

I have just finished tearing my credit card receipts into hundreds of tiny pieces. I put the pieces in a paper bag and stirred them a bit, like raffle tickets. Then I drew out a handful and put it in the garbage. Each night, as I put out the trash, I will throw another handful in.

I observe this ritual because I know my garbage will be picked through. Not by thieves. Not by government agents, in any but the broadest sense. But by the poor, who are Buenos Aires' quasi-official recycling program.

Few sights are as unsettling to visitors to this city as the "cartoneros," who appear at dusk pulling huge cartloads loaded with plastic, metal, paper ("carton") and glass. Some are adolescent boys; others are mothers trailing young children. (Photo courtesy of Gonzaaaa on Flickr.) Their job is to sort through the city's trash and extract recyclables, which they sell for cash. The scavenging is very orderly. There are assigned routes and "stations" on each block for the picking through process.

Two years ago, according to a story that ran in La Nacion (whose statistics were translated by long-time expat blogger Ian Mount at (http://www.goodairs.com/), there were an estimated 20,000 cartoneros netting 70 million pesos annually. Approximately half of the cartoneros were registered officially with the government, which provides a bare-bones train ("El Tren Blanco") to bring them in from the exurban slums. Rubber gloves appear to be optional. But the public health issues are not.

A few days ago, I read in one of the local dailies that the city is rolling out a regulation requiring residents to separate recyclables from wet garbage. So far, this requirement applies only to hotels, certain businesses, apartment buildings taller than 19 stories, and one or two neighborhoods.

How this recycling program came to be is the kind of absurdist invention that might feather the imagination of a novelist like Gabriel Garcia Marquez. What follows is an approximate narrative, cobbled together from a number of sources. Its particulars are rough, by journalism standards, but, as Chicago journalists have been heard to say, "Never let the facts stand in the way of a good story."

Before 2001, the city had entrusted recycling to private enterprise, which could offer a market, but apparently couldn't put together a work force to serve it. In late 2001-early 2002, Argentina's jerry-rigged economy collapsed. This period featured a revolving door of 5 presidents, each new leader emerging to present a new rabbit from a new hat, maneuvers that made 3-card monte look transparent by comparison. (For a more complete account, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_economic_crisis_(1999-2002).} When all the sleights of hand had been exhausted, the Argentine peso, which had been pegged one-to-one with the dollar, was allowed to float. At one point, it lost 75% of its value. It is now trading at approximately 3 pesos to 1 dollar.

Many of the poor lost jobs no longer supported by a suddenly strapped middle class. They turned to garbage-picking. There were leaders in the slums who organized the scavengers. Middle-men emerged to process the haul. By mid-2002, the government had provided, free-of-charge, El Tren Blanco. Some people say this was in response to demands by slum leaders. Others say it was in response to outraged cries by regular commuters who protested the huge bags of trash being dragged onto their commuter trains.

Now the cartoneros have volunteer-staffed day-care for infants and toddlers, and public health care. And Buenos Aires has a recycling program.

La lingua no es franca

My brain is ajostle with languages. Spanish has to fight hard to be noticed, let alone used. And Buenos Aires Spanish does not exactly elbow for position. With a big city's indifference to accommodation, it speaks a Spanish just far enough from the norm to keep strangers at a remove.

To the casual ear, the Buenos Aires dialect, with its swoop and lilt, sounds more Italian than Spanish, as befits the population here. It's pleasing to the ear in a way that some pocketa-pocketa Spanish is not.

But it can be confounding. For Americans, Spanish has always been billed as "the accessible foreign language." It's the one where all the letters are supposed to sound out, and, if you can master the trilling "r," you're set.

Not so fast.

Porteno Spanish drops the "s" at the ends of many words, thus eliding them with the next word. And in place of the "y" sound associated with "y" and "ll" in much of the Spanish-speaking world, it uses "szh," kind of a cross between an "sh" and a "j." "Ayuda" becomes "aszhuda." "Calle" becomes "caszhay." "Me llamo Johanna" becomes "me szhamo Johanna."

On one of my first days here, I was told that what I was seeking was on the corner of such-and-such street and "Szhatay," I consulted my map and gradually realized that the letters I was seeking would have to be re-imagined based on Porteno phonetic rules. Eventually, I found the street: Yatay. Of course. How silly of me. I realized then that all the "y" and "ll" words in my small Spanish vocabulary needed to be relearned if I were to hope to understand anything said to me.

In any case, I'm barely scraping the linguistic surface. Here's an interesting overview from infoplease.com:

"A fourth type of Spanish has developed in and around Buenos Aires and in parts of Uruguay. It is characterized by some out-of-date grammar, and a vocabulary and pronunciation heavily influenced by Italians who settled the area in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Generally in the Spanish world "tú" is the singular way of saying "you." In Buenos Aires, however, "vos" is used instead. It is accompanied by a modified old Spanish verb form. It is as if part of the English-speaking world still used "thee" and "thou" in everyday speech. .... The Buenos Aires accent is instantly recognizable throughout the Spanish world. Gaucho poetry and twentieth-century Buenos Aires novelists have preserved this speech as a literary style.

The influence of Italian has even led to the development of a separate language, Lunfardo, which blends Spanish and Italian. Argentine intellectuals have produced Lunfardo dictionaries and books in an effort to keep the language alive."

Lunfardo, as it happens, is the slang most often found in tango lyrics. It's associated with the slums. It draws heavily, sometimes literally, on Neapolitan Italian. A few examples:

To eat in Spanish: comer; in Italian: mangiare; in Lunfardo: manyar.
To speak in Spanish: hablar; in Italian: parlare; in Lunfardo: parlar.

I guess this explains why, when I've slipped a few times, drawing on years of French, and said "parlo" instead of "hablo," people here have looked rather startled. Ah, let them imagine the worst.