Day Five—Art on the Run, The National Socialist School of Law, and Its Getting to be Impossible to Communicate with Foreigners These Days

This is going to be incredibly long (“that’s what she said”), but I had quite the full day. Feel free to skim and read the parts of most interest to you.

Its another beautiful day, with a clear sunny sky and highs in the upper 70s, and everyone here is dressed like its sleeting. I saw at least two women wearing fur coats today. In other words, its exactly like Houston. What must the summers be like around here? Do shoes melt if you stand on the pavement for longer than a couple of minutes? To make it worse, I’ve seen a number of stores advertising “aire acondicionado” prominently on the front door, meaning that most places, including my hotel for example, don’t have air conditioning. Bet they’re not wearing fur coats at Christmas.

Today I decide to wear my 1560 The Game t-shirt, hoping to get a good photo I can send them (it’s a Houston locally-owned sports radio station I have linked, which is collecting “1560 in the wild” photos of listeners wearing their station t-shirts in unusual places). But, sadly, no vest. There’s tons of traffic out today, again, and the crowds everywhere I go are thick. Despite its size, this clearly is a walking city; crowds walking the sidewalks, talking on cell phones as they move past hawkers pushing leaflets at pedestrians trying to get them to enter their stores, fill the streets. They gather at crosswalks waiting for the chance to dart cross the street, largely oblivious to whether the light has turned. Question: do any of these people work? Are there actually people in these buildings working, or do people just walk the streets day and night?

Once again, when I open the hotel’s front door, that sickening exhaust fume overtakes me. I walk down the Florida “peatonal” past the magnificent Centro Naval building (as best I can tell, it has some affiliation with the Navy, like an extended officer’s club) to Plaza San Martin. This beautiful plaza with huge trees and great views of the surrounding buildings, is across the street from the Circulo Militar, or the Military Club, with its gold leaf gates and French colonial design resembling the Louvre. The plaza itself has a great prospect of the British Tower, a five story clock tower close to the water. Its about half full with people milling about, kids playing on the playgrounds, and tourists walking about. The Plaza is the site of the Falklands War (here it’s the Malvinas) Memorial, which closely resembles our Vietnam War memorial. As you can see from the photos, it’s a circular design, with half containing a wall inscribed with the names of those who died in the fighting. Two Navy honor guards stand at attention. I have to say, while the memorial itself is nice enough, did they have to copy us? Why not come up with your own design? Hell, we helped out the British in the Falklands, so you’d think the Argentinians would have at least picked some other country’s monument to copy. How about a mini Arc de Triomphe, symbol of defeatists and collaborationists everywhere? It could be like the mini-Stonehenge monument from Spinal Tap (“the problem may have been that there was a Stonehenge replica on the stage that was in danger of being crushed…by a dwarf”). And the guards? Our guys in the US Third Infantry, which guards the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and other important sites, would absolutely have crushed these yayhoos. They were talking to each other, laughing, acknowledging waves from visitors, looking around…our soldiers would never tolerate such behavior at what I would think is supposed to be a place of respect and honor. See photo above. Cranky old man says thumbs down.

Walking around today I again notice the presence of so many federal police, stationed two or three at a time to nearly every block. What I realize that I don’t notice are black people (are they called “African-Americans” here too, because while technically Argentina is in one of the Americas, its not really “America” as I think of the name). I’ve seen maybe one or two per day. That surprises me a bit, as I know there was a lot of slave labor imported to Brazil, the northern coastal countries, and coastal Argentina to work on sugar plantations. Maybe it was more confined, or maybe slavery didn’t take root in Argentina. I’d like to find out. As previously mentioned, however, one does see a great many people of Asian origin. Also I notice that nearly all the street signs are “sponsored” by some company. The sign will contain the street name and block, but on the top is the company name. I’m sure we’re not far from that point in the US.

From Plaza San Martin I head to the neighborhood of Recoleta, which formerly was something of an aristocratic area, and which contains the famous Recoleta Cemetery, where so many prominent Argentinian families are buried (upon their deaths, of course). This includes Eva Peron. I won’t recount the whole story, but apparently her body had quite an odyssey after her death, depending upon the political sentiments of the day. She’s now permanently entombed in a mausoleum in Recoleta Cemetery. The Cemetery itself is really something. Its more like a neighborhood than a cemetery, filled with ornate and imposing mausoleums of stone, marble and other materials. Every mausoleum has a glass door, through which you can see the coffins, racked in on top of each other. Many have stairways descending under ground, undoubtedly containing more coffins. With the clouds overhead, it has a kind of Dark Shadows feel to it. Still, its nicer than Galena Park [or insert name of poor section of your hometown here]. None of the glass doors are sealed, and many are cracked open. It undoubtedly rains a lot around here…you do the math. Generations of families are in these tombs. I took an inordinate number of pictures, mainly to show the opulence these people tried to display even in death.

After Recoleta, I briefly visited the Nuestra Senora del Pilar church, built in 1732, stopping inside to say a prayer and enjoy the magnificent architecture. I then walked to the Recoleta Cultural Center. As far as I can tell, its supposed to be like a museum of natural history and folklore, but it cost 12 pesos and looked kind of lame (any enterprise with a Hard Rock Café attached to it should draw your immediate suspicion), so I bypassed it and headed across Avenida La Libertador to the law school, i.e. La Faculdad de Derechos. This is a huge eight story building in the Roman/Nazi style, complete with columns and angular facades, built by the military regime in the 1930s. Put some iron eagles and swastikas on it and it could easily go right next to the Reichstag. Inside, its extremely run-down, spartan, trashy, and years past its prime. Like this girl I once dated…anyway, I took some photos in a couple of extremely narrow, crowded classrooms. Can’t imagine an environment less conducive to learning. Oh, and they allow smoking, so the building reeks of about 70 years' worth of tobacco. On the other hand, they serve alcohol in the student lounge, and the faculty lounge is very nice. There were a great number of students in the building, most of whom looked younger than students did when I was in law school (then again, everyone that age looks younger than they used to). That, and a sign I saw the next day in Belgrano makes me think you can get an undergraduate law degree, sort of like getting a psychology or math degree. If I recall my civil law course, the European civil law tradition has lawyers performing a number of magistrate-type acts they do not perform in the United States, even in Louisiana, so that might account for the need for lawyers.

Strangely situated beside the law school is an enormous polished metal sculpture of a geranium. No kidding. In a reflecting pool. With a huge park full of nothing surrounding it. So in a line you have the School of Law and this giant metal flower, and across the street is the fine arts museum (Museo Bellas Artes). Anyway, I had my picture taken by a lady in front of the sculpture. As I was walking closer, another lady asked me to take a photo of her and her husband (I guess). We had one of those broken English/Spanish conversations I’ve been having around here. Like the Monty Python Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook sketch (“my hovercraft is full of eels” “do you waaaaaant….do you waaaaaant to go back to my place, bouncy bouncy?”). My hovercraft was definitely full of eels. Something about her husband/friend is from Barcelona, near the Pyrenees. My spanish is getting to the point where I understand the basic theme of what someone's saying, but not the particulars. But my hearing is so bad now (or maybe its my listening) that I understand just about as much when people are speaking English, so I guess its nearly even.

After that exciting chance encounter, I shifted into Fraser Crane mode (more like Niles Crane in this instance), and headed to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. Kind of dubious for your average American Guy, but I remind everyone that one of the things Ferris Bueller did on his day off, of which he reminded Cameron when Cameron thought they hadn't seen anything good, was "we went to a museum and saw priceless works of art." Exactly. I’m not really much for art, mainly because I don’t know much about it. Art history was one of the two classes in college I didn’t take but always wished I had (amazingly enough, physics was the other one. Not exactly happy hour conversation, but I do like all those crazy science demonstrations at the Museum of Natural History). But even with my ignorance I could tell this place was pretty special as far as art museums go. It houses (and I saw) paintings by Reubens (not Pee Wee Herman, but Peter Paul), Rembrandt, Corot, Goya (sketches and paintings), Manet, Monet (yes, even I know there’s a difference), an interesting minimalist painting of some flowers by Cezanne, Gaugain, VanGogh, Degas, Lautrec, Renoir, Diego Rivera, Chagall, Picasso (sketches and a couple of extremely large paintings), Pollock (some hideous black thing reminding me of Maud Lebowski’s work), and Rothko. It also has a number of sculptures by Rodin (not the monster that fought Godzilla). I must say, the whole naked fat woman painting thing escapes me. Although it is nice these days to see a woman whose arms aren’t covered in tattoos. Surprisingly, I enjoyed a lot of the non-paint splotch modern works, particularly the Rothko, a large canvas with various deepening shades of red. No I did not see the devil in it. The entire second floor is devoted to Argentine and Latin American artists, including some ancient tablets depicting Cortes’ conquest of Mexico. The museum, as you might not expect, was very full on a Tuesday afternoon, and as you might expect, it was largely women and bored husbands and boyfriends. I’m not sure which is more agonizing to Modern Man-being drug through the art museum or a shoe sale. Unfortunately, time was lacking and I was getting really hungry so I had to speed through. This museum would be worth another visit.

From there it was on to the renowned La Bierla café for a late lunch. It was cooling down considerably, so in my shorts and t-shirt I had to follow the lead of my friend Terry who dresses like that until its about 35 degrees out (at which point he’ll switch to a long-sleeve t-shirt). La Bierla is a sidewalk café that opened in 1850, and with immaculate waiters, bright fixtures, and formal attitude, reminded me a lot of Galatoire’s in New Orleans (except that I would never have been allowed admittance to Galatoire’s without a jacket). Half the wait staff was busy during this off-time watching a soccer match, or game, or whatever the hell they call it. After a lunch of Chilean salmon and one, single, enormous leaf of spinach, I head out to Alvear Avenue. This is richy rich country. At one end is the most ornate hotel in town, the Alvear Palace. The Alvear is nice, but I’ve been in Ritz Carltons that are just as impressive. At the other end of the street are the Brazilian and French embassies, the Jockey Club (very very elite), Pelligrini Square (devoted to the renowned Argentine artist), and the Four Seasons. In between is the Vatican Nunciature, and the Park Hyatt hotel, which I mistook at first for another embassy. France and Brazil have incredible French architecture, as do many of the deluxe stores lining the avenue. After crossing over the incredibly wide and busy Avenida 9 de Julio I walked over to the site of the old Israeli embassy, which was the subject of a terror bombing in 1992. It’s a pretty eerie and moving site; they preserved part of the old slab, and you can see remnants of the old building’s façade on the new building next door (kind of hard to explain, you’ll have to see the photo). From there I walked back down Avenida Santa Fe to San Martin Plaza, to the Galeria for a pretty good mall dinner of spinach, pumpkin and ricotta quiche (I know, I know). While ordering, I had another broken spanglish conversation with a couple from Venezuela, who were eager to assure me that Hugo Chavez doesn’t hate the US, just Bush. That’s reassuring.

I had great plans to end the evening by suiting up and having a glass of wine at the Alvear Palace, but upon arriving found the bar was extremely lame, which means there were more wait staff there than customers, and the place looked more appropriate for high tea than a drink. So I instead went over to the Four Seasons, because, frankly, that’s how I roll baby. Candidly, it was a bit slow as well, but I did enjoy the excellent service; being called sir never gets old, even when you’re paying for it (except by those little bastards at the UT Gregory Gym, who call me sir because they’re afraid if they don’t I might get mad and double over with a stroke, or break a hip lecturing them on how they should respect their elders).

One final thought—EVERYONE here smokes. A lot. Its impossible to walk more than about 20 feet in the city without following someone billowing like a smokestack. What with all the smoking, the bus and truck fumes these people inhale, their lack of exercise, and their eating heavy dinners past 10 p.m., even Keith Richards thinks these people may be making questionable health choices.

Tomorrow-Belgrano and Plaza del Congreso.