The Thief, the Saint and the City
Buenos Aires is a city of many contradictions. One of the most obvious, even to a visiting tourist like myself, is that while it looks on the surface to be a genteel European city, you can be robbed blind while walking its streets.
Which is how I found myself in a police station, making that most hopeless of gestures - waiting to fill a police report - while a world-weary policeman watches me pessimistically. I can see the thought bubble above his head: If you guys were just smarter, I’d be doing something more exciting right now, like watching El Simpsons.
El Simpsons happens to be blaring down at us from a TV high up on the wall. The Spanish dubbers have done a pretty close imitation of the US-based characters, from Grandpa’s bluster to Marge’s cracked voice. The main hall of the station is old, peeling paint, and smells of weariness and unsolved crime. The walls are lined with old, faded photographs of the old city. Below them, the victims of petty crimes like myself sit waiting, watching Bart Simpson enact scenes of a criminal nature. No one laughs though.
Argentina’s other emblem, the Virgin Mary, decked out in national colours of pale blue, gold and white, regards us sadly from her high shelf. She’s shaped like a teepee, as if someone built a tent around her leaving only her head exposed. She appears to be extending her hands, reaching out to the sinner. But today she seems, like the policeman, to be making the international shrug of hopelessness: what to do?
So I give my statement to the one officer who speaks English - looking weary but not without compassion - who translates it for his colleague, who in turn hammers out the details on an ancient keyboard. The printer creaks out paper slowly like a Gutenberg press, and they give me the report, all in Spanish. The English-speaking officer guides me through the report patiently. It’s only after I leave the station that I realise - of all the information I had to give, they never once asked for my contact telephone number. They clearly didn’t expect to be calling me directly anytime soon.
It had happened very quickly. While in the city, after taking some pictures, I absentmindedly placed my camera in its customary place in my backpack and slung it on. Walking through the stone corridors of stately bank buildings (all built by 19th century English bankers), I suddenly found myself on Avenida Florida, an extremely crowded thoroughfare. I walked for 5 minutes before I heard the warning in my head - you should put the backpack in front of you. I reached back to do so, only to find it was too late. Someone had come up behind me while I was walking and relieved me of my Nikon D80.
It was a shock at the time, but hardly surprising given my absentmindedness. It was an important lesson, but one I could have learned in a less costly manner. Still, it could have been worse.
Before my trip, I was chatting with a French woman about travel. When I mentioned I was traveling to South America, she became quite excited and asked me where I was going. When I told her, she become less enthusiastic. “Buenos Aires?” she sniffed, “That is not South America. That one wants to be Europe.”
My first impressions confirmed the French lady’s sentiments to be accurate, if disparaging. On the outskirts, it looked like any modern metropolis. Egg-crate concrete apartment blocks, jammed highways, dust in the air. But when you enter Buenos Aires, it all seems to change. Wide boulevards, lined with shady trees; orderly belle epoque buildings; sidewalk cafes; stately green parks. No wonder it was once called Paris in the subtropics.
“All this is not real of course,” said Dario, the manager of the rental apartment I was staying in. “Buenos Aires looks like a European city, but you are still in South America. You must be careful.” Good advice, but I wish I had remembered it earlier. Dario and I spoke about the recent death of the ex-President, Nestor Kirchner. The country was still in mourning. Dario shook his head.
“It’s all the political media,” he said, “Kirchner’s supporters are not a majority of Argentinians, but they are very vocal. We don’t have democratic institutions here. We have personalities. When a personality like Kirchner dies, his politics die with him.” He shrugs hopelessly, like the policeman.
Kirchner’s widow, Cristina is the current president. Images of her and Kirchner locked in an cosy embrace plaster the city with the words “Fuerza, Cristina!” - be strong, Cristina. It’s a clear reference to another famous political embrace - Argentina’s most famous first lady, most famous celebrity, and most famous just about anything - Eva Peron.
General Peron’s personality may have swept him to victory in the war years, but it was his wife Evita who was probably his greatest political asset. In the museum dedicated to her, housed in a pretty townhouse that once served as her social activites HQ, Evita has achieved something between celebrity and sainthood. The exhibits quickly skip over her rather less salubrious life details (such as her upward rise by mistressing herself to increasingly powerful men) and on to her achievements as first lady. The political embrace in question was the occasion of her famous speech from the balcony of the Casa Rosada. You see her face buried deep in Peron’s shoulder, showing her distinctive blonde Frau bun. She was to die of the cancer that had then begun to eat away at her. She was only 33, the same age as me.
Evita was a master of her own image. She championed the poor and oppressed classes which she named the discamisados - shirtless ones. She allowed her image to be manipulated in various ways: mother of the nation, pioneer feminist (Argentinian women received universal suffrage under her tenure), a rags-to-riches princess (her humble past is referred to endlessly like a mantra in the museum), and a saint (there's even a depiction of her in the guise of the Virgin Mary). Not particularly conventionally beautiful, even as an actress she could meld seamlessly from role to role with her indistinct features. She was a chameleon.
Which is why I thought it was completely appropriate that she be played by Madonna in the film musical, one chameleon playing another. Hardcore peronists must have howled and beat their breasts, which was just as well that they filmed the movie in Budapest instead. In Buenos Aires, they would have been lynched in the streets. Although, if the soundbites in the museum from Eva’s life as a radio and TV performer are anything to go by, the historical Evita had a much better singing voice than Madonna.
Evita still inspires devotion today, as evidenced from the crowd that surrounds her family mausoleum in Recoleta cemetery. She’s interred in a rather simple, black granite tomb under her family name Duarte. Most of the people gawking are, like me, tourists looking for a piece of Argentina’s most famous personality. Some however, mostly older women, touch the medallion of her face reverently, as if touching a saintly relic. Judging from her actions in life, Evita probably genuinely loved her discamisados. She would have been happy to know that they loved her right back.
Which is how I found myself in a police station, making that most hopeless of gestures - waiting to fill a police report - while a world-weary policeman watches me pessimistically. I can see the thought bubble above his head: If you guys were just smarter, I’d be doing something more exciting right now, like watching El Simpsons.
El Simpsons happens to be blaring down at us from a TV high up on the wall. The Spanish dubbers have done a pretty close imitation of the US-based characters, from Grandpa’s bluster to Marge’s cracked voice. The main hall of the station is old, peeling paint, and smells of weariness and unsolved crime. The walls are lined with old, faded photographs of the old city. Below them, the victims of petty crimes like myself sit waiting, watching Bart Simpson enact scenes of a criminal nature. No one laughs though.
Argentina’s other emblem, the Virgin Mary, decked out in national colours of pale blue, gold and white, regards us sadly from her high shelf. She’s shaped like a teepee, as if someone built a tent around her leaving only her head exposed. She appears to be extending her hands, reaching out to the sinner. But today she seems, like the policeman, to be making the international shrug of hopelessness: what to do?
So I give my statement to the one officer who speaks English - looking weary but not without compassion - who translates it for his colleague, who in turn hammers out the details on an ancient keyboard. The printer creaks out paper slowly like a Gutenberg press, and they give me the report, all in Spanish. The English-speaking officer guides me through the report patiently. It’s only after I leave the station that I realise - of all the information I had to give, they never once asked for my contact telephone number. They clearly didn’t expect to be calling me directly anytime soon.
It had happened very quickly. While in the city, after taking some pictures, I absentmindedly placed my camera in its customary place in my backpack and slung it on. Walking through the stone corridors of stately bank buildings (all built by 19th century English bankers), I suddenly found myself on Avenida Florida, an extremely crowded thoroughfare. I walked for 5 minutes before I heard the warning in my head - you should put the backpack in front of you. I reached back to do so, only to find it was too late. Someone had come up behind me while I was walking and relieved me of my Nikon D80.
It was a shock at the time, but hardly surprising given my absentmindedness. It was an important lesson, but one I could have learned in a less costly manner. Still, it could have been worse.
Before my trip, I was chatting with a French woman about travel. When I mentioned I was traveling to South America, she became quite excited and asked me where I was going. When I told her, she become less enthusiastic. “Buenos Aires?” she sniffed, “That is not South America. That one wants to be Europe.”
My first impressions confirmed the French lady’s sentiments to be accurate, if disparaging. On the outskirts, it looked like any modern metropolis. Egg-crate concrete apartment blocks, jammed highways, dust in the air. But when you enter Buenos Aires, it all seems to change. Wide boulevards, lined with shady trees; orderly belle epoque buildings; sidewalk cafes; stately green parks. No wonder it was once called Paris in the subtropics.
“All this is not real of course,” said Dario, the manager of the rental apartment I was staying in. “Buenos Aires looks like a European city, but you are still in South America. You must be careful.” Good advice, but I wish I had remembered it earlier. Dario and I spoke about the recent death of the ex-President, Nestor Kirchner. The country was still in mourning. Dario shook his head.
“It’s all the political media,” he said, “Kirchner’s supporters are not a majority of Argentinians, but they are very vocal. We don’t have democratic institutions here. We have personalities. When a personality like Kirchner dies, his politics die with him.” He shrugs hopelessly, like the policeman.
Kirchner’s widow, Cristina is the current president. Images of her and Kirchner locked in an cosy embrace plaster the city with the words “Fuerza, Cristina!” - be strong, Cristina. It’s a clear reference to another famous political embrace - Argentina’s most famous first lady, most famous celebrity, and most famous just about anything - Eva Peron.
General Peron’s personality may have swept him to victory in the war years, but it was his wife Evita who was probably his greatest political asset. In the museum dedicated to her, housed in a pretty townhouse that once served as her social activites HQ, Evita has achieved something between celebrity and sainthood. The exhibits quickly skip over her rather less salubrious life details (such as her upward rise by mistressing herself to increasingly powerful men) and on to her achievements as first lady. The political embrace in question was the occasion of her famous speech from the balcony of the Casa Rosada. You see her face buried deep in Peron’s shoulder, showing her distinctive blonde Frau bun. She was to die of the cancer that had then begun to eat away at her. She was only 33, the same age as me.
Evita was a master of her own image. She championed the poor and oppressed classes which she named the discamisados - shirtless ones. She allowed her image to be manipulated in various ways: mother of the nation, pioneer feminist (Argentinian women received universal suffrage under her tenure), a rags-to-riches princess (her humble past is referred to endlessly like a mantra in the museum), and a saint (there's even a depiction of her in the guise of the Virgin Mary). Not particularly conventionally beautiful, even as an actress she could meld seamlessly from role to role with her indistinct features. She was a chameleon.
Which is why I thought it was completely appropriate that she be played by Madonna in the film musical, one chameleon playing another. Hardcore peronists must have howled and beat their breasts, which was just as well that they filmed the movie in Budapest instead. In Buenos Aires, they would have been lynched in the streets. Although, if the soundbites in the museum from Eva’s life as a radio and TV performer are anything to go by, the historical Evita had a much better singing voice than Madonna.
Evita still inspires devotion today, as evidenced from the crowd that surrounds her family mausoleum in Recoleta cemetery. She’s interred in a rather simple, black granite tomb under her family name Duarte. Most of the people gawking are, like me, tourists looking for a piece of Argentina’s most famous personality. Some however, mostly older women, touch the medallion of her face reverently, as if touching a saintly relic. Judging from her actions in life, Evita probably genuinely loved her discamisados. She would have been happy to know that they loved her right back.