When I walk around Buenos Aires I have a hard time imagining that this place underwent such political turmoil in the 1970s and 1980s, and then suffered its latest financial catastrophe just a few years ago. Look off my balcony or walk around my neighborhood and what you will see is streets filled with joggers and roller-bladers, bike riders, fashionable mommies with strollers, tourists and lots of people who look like they don't have day jobs. The weather is spectacular, the restaurants are full, the tourist season is gearing up and everyone is getting their rental houses on the coast or in Bariloche.
But that is all the surface stuff. All you have to do is read the local papers to know we are probably sitting on another economic time-bomb. To control the economy after the last economic crisis, the President imposed price controls on everything from gas to onions. He slapped export taxes on many products, and outright banned exports of some of Argentina's most demanded products - beef and corn. Sure its good for us locals - we pay low prices for steak dinners with two bottles of wine (maybe $50) - but sooner or later we are all going to have to pay for these economic adventures. Already the quality of vegetables and fruits is slipping at the big grocery stores. Big businesses are defaulting on loans. Prices stay the same for the consumer but all those companies producing stuff still have to pay their staff - and salaries are increasing faster than the inflation rate. The oil companies are losing money since the government forces them to sell enough gas to meet demand but at set prices which means they have to import gas at higher prices than they can sell it for locally. Anyway, the companies are starting to complain, and the President's cabinet members literally sneer at them in public forums. Not a good sign.
The papers report that the government is ripe with corruption, and the President has issues of mental stability. Depending on who you talk to, the President is either a communist or a populist. Either way he is chumming up with Latin America's leftist lunch club - Chavez, Morales, Castro, Lula. He and Bush have a healthy dislike for each other, which often translates into cool relations with the U.S. government. He told the IMF to stuff themselves and paid off Argentina's debt by taking on debt from Venezuela at a higher interest rate - equivalent to cutting off his nose to spite his face. But, unlike many of his predecessors following the 2002 crisis, he is still around mostly because of high growth rates and commodity prices, but also because of some spectacular wheeling and dealing.
You know you are living in a country with serious problems when there are dual pricing systems - one for foreigners and another for locals. I thought this was something for truly pathetic countries but it is alive and well in Argentina. It is the case for plane tickets and hotels throughout the country, and more surreptitiously in some restaurants. When the server finds out you are a foreigner, you get the foreigner menu - in English, with higher prices. Many tango shows are almost 1/2 price for residents. The plane tickets are the most outrageous - prices are almost double for foreigners to go anywhere in Argentina from within the country. Maybe we can start charging Argentines in the U.S. and Europe double the price for their meals, hotels and air fare too? Reciprocity byatch!
A benign explanation of this double price system would be that the country wants to promote domestic tourism, but to me it smacks of xenophobia. And, the fact is, Argentines love their country. They know they have a good thing and they want it for themselves - otherwise those Brazilians or Chileans or worse - the Americans - would take over!
Another thing about Argentines - they know how to protest. But none seem to be protesting about the one aspect of their lives here that will screw them all equally - the economy. They protest about everything else though --like the paper factory on the Uruguayan side of the river that delineates the Argentine - Uruguay border. I've been caught in two protests over that issue. Not exactly key in my book, but whatever. The environmentalists have whipped everyone into a frenzy about this World Bank-supported investment, but from what I can gather the Argentines are mostly angry that their ocean view is going to be impeded by a paper factory (of course, you never hear about the much older paper factories on the Argentine side, which, unlike those planned for Uruguay, do not meet world environmental standards and are much uglier). They also protest about people being disappeared in recent months for coming out against powerful judges and threatening to testify about what happened during the dirty war of the 70s and 80s. They protest against increases in crime, and for increases in salaries. These protests I can deal with. But horrifying to me was that thousands were out protesting recently in front of the Israeli Embassy for a court case that the Argentine government has brought against the Iranian government for financing a terrorist bombing of a Jewish community center here over ten years ago. Some say these protestors, or "picoteros" are being paid by political parties to hit the street. Even if that is true, the big picture seems to be lost in the midst of this strange political process.
Given that I speak Spanish pretty decently I thought I would have no problem getting around Buenos Aires and communicating. But they speak a strange Spanish here. They use a verb conjugation - vos - that I just can't bring myself to use. And it is not in any Spanish book I ever studied! Simple things like t-shirts and shoes and fruits and vegetables have different names here - avocados are "paltas", strawberries are "frutillas", croissants are "media lunas", t-shirts are "remeras" and shoes are "zapatillos". I get a blank stare from lots of shop keepers when I use Castillian Spanish to ask for something. They often act as if no other words would exist for what I’m trying to say.
I am starting to understand why Argentines have the reputation they have. More than a few times over the past few weeks I've been on the receiving end of a "talking to" by a well-meaning but ultimately condescending person.
Today's rebuff was from a fellow walker at the park near my house. He walked past me while I was pushing my son in the stroller to a playgroup, broke from his conversation with his walking partners, looked at me and said, "Chica. Gorrita." Meaning basically, "Girl, get that kid a hat." I didn't even realize he was talking to me until I was 10 feet away.
Another was from a woman who I hired to do some cooking for us at our apartment. I stood in my kitchen while she very earnestly explained to me in great detail this wonderful invention that they have here in Argentina which is made of a ball of steel and works like a brush and is used on the bottom of pots and pans to clean them really well. She explained how perhaps in my country they don't have these but "Here in Argentina they are very useful to have."
Another experience was at the paint store where I bought paint for our apartment. I made some mistakes on paint choices the first time around and went back to correct them. When I started to read off the new colors, the paint store manager rolled his eyes and said, "You know, if I was your husband or boyfriend or whatever, I would never let you choose these colors. These are going to look awful!" Then I asked him if he was a paint store clerk or an interior decorator. That didn't even shut him up. Then he went on to tell me that my paint choices were going to be the beginning of the end of my marriage.
And then there are the taxi drivers. What is it about taxi drivers that makes them so mean? It is like they have to sign a worldwide pact to be awful to foreigners. Not one in this country will have change for a bill larger than the equivalent of US $5. And if they tell you that change is not a problem, as they say here - "ojo" - you are about to be ripped off. On our way to dinner recently, the taxi driver was overly cool about giving us change for a 20 peso note (approx. $6), even with his sign in the window saying "correct change is appreciated". He gave me two bills in change that were so new and so strange feeling, I was studying them while I was slowly getting out of the cab. Meanwhile my husband was yelling at me to quickly get out of the cab before the traffic behind us hit us. Later that night when I tried to pass one of the 5 peso notes to another taxi driver on the way home, he laughed and said, “Este es una fotocopia” (this is a photocopy!) and then proceeded to school me on how to tell a counterfeit bill from a real one. So lesson #1 for future visitors - always give correct change to taxi drivers, and take a lesson in counterfeit money detection before you hit the street. If it feels too new to be real, it is.
Argentines are basically sex crazed also. I, of course, have lots of scientific data to back up my assertion. One is the number of ads for "Hotel Sex Plenty, 25 pesos for one turn" in my neighborhood. The other is the number of "telos" in Buenos Aires. What is a telo you ask? Well, I belong to a listserve for newcomers in Argentina. Lately there has been a lot of traffic about security and the latest is gossip about an American man who was stabbed in his apartment after bringing a "taxi boy" (male prostitute) home. One of the members of the listserve submitted a hilarious set of "rules" on correct etiquette for how to pick someone up safely which I attach below - free lesson #2 for future visitors:
"1) if you want to pay for your fun, use a respectable service for your taxi boy. If the fun goes bad, you have a number to call. 2) if you like picking up people, use a "love hotel" also known as a Telo. They are everywhere, charge for 3 hour shifts, clean, and lots of security. You can't leave until they verify that your partner is alive! 3) Pick people up from a neighborhood bar that you frequent, so people know you and will look out for you. 4) Ask yourself: if she/he robs my tv, can i get it back? meaning, do you have some way to track down this person? Friends in common? If the answer is no, TELO it! 5) ask for ID before sex and make a photo copy. jajaja, just kidding you. 6) USE A CONDOM (just reminding you). "
So, you think to yourself, "The locals are condescending, the tourist industry overcharges foreigners, taxi drivers are going to rip me off, and I'm going to be accosted by sex crazed freaks. Why would I go visit Argentina?" Because in spite of all of this, Argentina is a GREAT place to live and visit. For every telo, there are 1,000 great restaurants. For every jerk taxi driver, there is a free cultural event - last weekend there were 100,000 people three blocks from our house at an outdoor Mozart concert. For every condescending person, there is a beautiful museum. And forget those anti-semites, there is a kosher McDonald's. People, overall, are really receptive and nice to foreigners. For the kiddies there are tons of parks, children's museums and places you can eat complete with free babysitting service, playgrounds and children's videos so the parents can eat in peace. Even the overpriced hotels are cheaper than what you would pay for an equivalent place in the U.S. or Europe. And even though the Bush girls can't keep their purses from being snatched, Buenos Aires is still one of the safest places to be in all of Latin America. The President can't keep the lid on forever, so what are you waiting for? Plan that visit.
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