Premetro May 26th

13:38 pm Colectivo 15 La Plata station in Boedo.
14:04 pm Subte line E Plaza de los Virreyes.
Premetro Cento Civico in Villa Soldati.
Deep southwest.
Cemeterio de San Jose de Flores.
Car-churchyard.
Emptiness with people.
Decent-looking middle-aged women carrying plank, second hand, like I choose myself, to expand her house.
Massive social construcion from 1971, now lacking protection..window-glass-protection.
I might go back, although intimidated by roumors from tourist guides and Argentinian friends.
The supposed violence frightens me. My daughter is still a minor. And I am not a heroine.
What I saw were women like me, laughing with their children (and unlike me, with their mother). I saw men in nice, staight clothing coming back from work. And I saw grandfathers
meeting their grandchildren.
I saw humiliating living conditions, but decent living.
Violence apart. I know now that mothers give their children paco instead of bread when money are short and food are scarce.

Economics..again

Even well-to-do Argentinians cannot plan for tomorrow.
So my friend A says. "We all live like we live an eternal war:
"Este barrio es "Palermo Todo Flor" (Solér/Gnrl Días), por los psiciatricos jajaj." ?????
And the sensible Martin Lousteau resigend in the middle of the agrarian strike.

EscoBarbara Goes Escobar

I've tried for weeks to get to Escobar. Perhaps Pablo lived there? In any case that's where ny anscestors came from.
Catching busline 60 north up the Delta to Escobar wasn't as easy as I thought. Most 60s don't go that far, although the sign in front says so. Finally finding the semirapido, I was short of the bloody scarce coins.
However, today I had saved for weeks and prepared myself with lots of coins, determined to make it.
At Plaza Italia I realized coins weren't required after all. At the busstand tickets were on sale for bills..
The road passes sump and straw, farmers and mosquitoland, industry, gross Carrefour, ads for "Country" living...Ueahhh..
Finally, an hour and a half later: Escobar!





Solitude at the combined bus and train station. Here is fuckin' nothing to do!!










Bycicle parking. Pampa life requires a bycycle, but who wants to bring it to the city?










A choripan and a sodawater was enough, I couldn't even find a decent coffee house.
I have to get out of here, boards the bus back "home", feel safe. Newspaper pages blows along the road with the wind. A lonely bus stand. A stray dog tries to climb into a conteiner for food.
It's all just gray, dusty, decay, sad, lost. Winter.

Todays news:
The "famous" FARC guerilla soldier Nelly Avila "Karina" turns herself over to Colombian authorities.
A two-year old girl was killed yesterday by neighbourhood kids in a poor villa; 7 and 9 years old. Foul memories of "Baby-James" in England 15 years ago.
ETA blew another bomb in Spain. No-one killed this time.
Xenofobia and racial riots in South Africa. A press picture of a man burned alive.
The agrarian strike in Argentina will end tonight by midnight.

And now: Patti, arrested in Escobar earlier this year.
This is perhaps where the dictatorship bastard and hyene Luis Abelardo Patti should have gotten help..then he would have been treated a bit harsher than he is.
www.desaparecidos.org/arg/tort/policia/patti
(the link says it all..)






...en el tiempo de la cholera...

A Coffee is Not Just a Coffee

16:09 afternoon. Time for an after-lunch coffee to go with the morning papers, and with my freshly accuired bootleg Photoshop program for just 5 pesos, I needed it.
But a coffee is not just a coffee: With my nice cup of cortado (milk apart) came coccies, orange juice and a mug of water...and I just ate..

Who's talking about gruff.

Iglesia de Constituión

Generally not a fan neither of the church nor its temples, suddenly I spotted this beauty seemingly floating on top of the Avenida San Juan and Avenida 9 de Julio traffic machine; Iglesia de Constitución.

Knowing that it faces the Constitución railway station, I find it a perfect samle of the delusion the chuch represents; the place beeing one of the toughest in town after 6 pm and outside the villas.

No Country for Old Men

I new they existed; the Villa Oculto near Mataderos and literally walled in when Argentina prepared for Soccer World Championship in 1978; Villa Bajo Flores or Villa 1.11.14 close to San Lorenzo's soccer field; Villa 31 and 31 b downtown, and a number of other blank spots on the city map. Not identified by streets, but by non-existence.

For a large part, but not only, inhabitated by immigrants, mainly Peruvians, Bolivians and Paraguayans, they are as marginalized as could be, although standards vary. Often lacking running water and electricity, from the outside there appear constructions, while on the inside people reside in provisional shacks of cardbord and tin, if anything at all.



Villa Bajo Flores' (1-11-14) reputation as home of rivalling Peruvian drug gangsters with all that implies of violence and abuse kept my man from going to San Lorenzo's home matches until he realized that everyone else coming from the match has the same problem. The solution was going with the crowd and hope that you went with the right one.. Getting lost and end up walking fifteen blocks alone through rough gangster territory after dark to catch transport is no fun. You are lucky to get back with half a sock..

The Retiro villas downtown are the second largest next to Bajo Flores, tucked under Autopista Illia, between Retiro railway station and the central bus station. Villas 31 and 31b stubbornly refuse to be reallocated by Mauricio Macri led city authorities.

First established in the 30s, the settlement today are estimated to house around 25 000 people on a 25 hectares area. The mayority of the inhabitants are immigrants, with an average income of 700 Argentinian pesos a month, around US dollars 220, not a lot, even here.
Paved with earth and mud, the only asphalted area is the entrance. No sewer, the refuse go into wells emptied by cistern trucks. Villa 31 has low pressure running water, 31b get water distributed by water trucks.
Light is dangerously and provisionally distributed over dangerous and unauthorized electricity lines. The government now agree to project proper electricity and running water, maybe even telephone lines. We'll see..

Sunset over Villa 31. Soft light blurs reality's harshness.











Buenos Aires is defined by corners. This one of Calle 5 and 6 in Retiro..

Run!

Porteño traffic is certainly a matter of survival for the fittest and the right of the strongest.






This is how we pedestrians manage..if we do..four to seven lanes are a long disance.

Run!

Saturday Afternoon Asado in Constitución

I adore Argentinian asado. It includes all the elements which define the good life, except sex. Food, wines, friends, music - and time. But then I read in the paper last weekend that a survey showed that for the average Argentinian asado is more important than sex!

Come by noon! Meat and sausages sizzles on the terrace grill. The sun is high. We have some salad and wine. Late-night or early-morning guests are still asleep inside. Nothing can feed a hungover soul like a 12-hour asado.

Soon meat filled with herbs (the neighbours..?), bacon and olives is left to rest a few minutes. Lunch..










Chorizo, mustard, salad, bread, olives - and wine.
We forgot the salsa! But then French mustard is a nice substitute.






The meat is ready, time to consentrate.











After-lunch relax.











As time runs away like wild horses over the hill, afternoon falls on Constitución.










Colours turn yellow, traffic temporarily slowing down, sighing in expectation of Saturday night.






Second round. More coal, more sausages, more meat, more people. Night has fallen.






Matambre sizzeling, pibes watching the coal.







Just fire..







Watching whom?







Happy host.











Guests of honour; leaving for Europe in two weeks..







Music equipment alternating Nick Cave, Devendra Banhart, Massive Attack...we float into the night..






The everpresent Parisiennes sigarettes...







...and a touch of Argentinian 50s and 60s porn star Coca Sarli, double vision..

34th Feria Internacional del Libro de Buenos Aires April 24th - May 12th

Perhaps Latin-America's most important book-fair closes in two days. More than 1, 25 million peple have visited so far. Porteños are reading people.

Naomi Klein (No Logo) came opening day Thursday 24th of April to present her new book "The Shock Doctrine", about people of power cashing in on the chaos. Not only shocking, suggestive as well.

Friday I opted for Nordic Night. Oscar Hemer (S), Michael Ib (DK), Jo Nesbø (N) and Kjell Vesto (F) presented their new translations to Spanish and talked of Latin experiences in and outside Buenos Aires.




Jo Nesbø's hardcore, political crime novel "Petirojo" (original Rødstrupe) was litterary robbed in transport from the publisher.
A marketing scoop, or..? Now available on the black book market of Buenos Aires.




Saturday May 3rd Tom Wolfe came and lectured. The novel is still dead.. I missed it. Asado with friends a lovely Saturday afternoon was by far more attractive...

Tonight, however, the Spanish lawyer Baltazar Garzón spoke of his book "El alma de los Verdugos" (The victims' soul), a story of kidnapping and torture during Argentina's last dictatorship. For my part, the interesting reasoning was the connection between lawers and journalists, both revealers of truth. And the admittance that truth were hidden on behalf of both due to dread of running the same destiny as the disappeared, tortured and murdered.

After the lecture, I picked up a protest leaflet at his publisher's stand. The ETA mocks him for not engaging in Spanish', national concerns and the tortureded ETA-soldiers. And there the cycle closes. We are all afraid to cut off the arm which feeds us.

Good thing Branca Mente had a stand with free drinks after that..

Matambre and the Road

Last night there was another delicious asado on a lovely rooftop in San Telmo. Salchichas short and thick, salchichas long and thin, the classic asado-piece and, and..and the matambre, perhaps the juciest and best part of the cow; the outer fat flesh which protect the ribs before the slaugterhouse.
So I thought: These people know how to cook their meat. Why is it then that it is so hard to make it crispy on the grill, like the delicious ribs my mother tought me to cook.
And then another thing struck me. The roads have been a death trap lately with smoke blurring the view and consequently chain-crashes. Not daily, but often enough to stop and think.
Are there other solutions than closing the road? I thought. The obvious answer to me will be cars driving in columns like they do during snowstorms in the mountains in Europe. With some kind of pilot leading the way. Why has noone thougth of that?
Brilliant, this idea must make me minister of transport!
Ha-ha!