Discrimination in Argentina

One of the first things an American, at least an awake one, notices on arriving in Argentina is, well, the severe dearth of people of African descent. When Argentines refer to someone as black ("Che, negro, dame la cerveza..."), then, it usually means someone who's dark skinned, dark haired, indigenous--not necessarily someone with African ancestors. Thus, Argentina got me thinking on race, both on the theoretical level (how do we construct race, blah blah blah) but also on the cultural level. What today's (24/2/06) poll in Clarín shows--and what a bunch of Argentine friends have previously told me--is that the principal line of discrimination in Argentina is along class (you're poor, therefore you're bad/dumb/dangerous/etc.), not racie (you're black, therefore...). In the poll, 42.2% of respondents said the leading cause of discrimination in 'Economic condition' while 34.7% said 'Nationality/Race'.

Of course there is class discrimination in the U.S. (where it run on the lines of 'If you're poor, you must be lazy'), but it seems more clear and common here. What I've been told, and also thought myself, is that in a society that offers little class mobility but rather a history of inherited money and inherited poverty--and in one where there are relatively few 'minorities'--inherited class is to be the defining characteristic. Which leads me to wonder on what grounds would members of a relatively homogenous, class-mobile society feel the need descriminate on (because, sadly, it seems it's something humans do)? Any comments, of course, are welcome...

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B.A. Celeb Stalking: Gaston Pauls

Last night we took guests Courtney and Ruslan to local fave Bar 6, where the ojo de bife is decidedly good and different than the usual brilliant parrilla slabs (variety being the spice of life and all) and the martinis are verifiably dry. There we experienced our first unexpected celeb sighting, which was a thrill because we've been here long enough to not only recognize local celebs, but also to be actually excited to see them. There, coming in at 10:30, was Gaston Pauls, protagonist of films faves Nueve Reinas (Nine Queens), El Ušltimo Tren and, most recently, Iluminados por el Fuego. He was dressed down, sported a flavor-saver, accompanied a tall and extraordinarily skinny blond woman (who was, we think--rarities of B.A. rarities--a natural blond) and looked--admit it, party boy--a little puffy. They sat at the bar and awaited a table like normal civilians, and then were escorted to their seats on the mezzaninee.

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Ruining B.A. for Everybody

This weekend, New York media did what it could to ruin any remaining chance Buenos Aires had of being the least bit uninvaded as an expat home. Normally this would piss me off. But, considering that I wrote one of the articles, we (Cintra and I) hosted the writer of the second when he visited, and that we bought a house just like the third one suggested, well, more power to the NYC media. In my New York mag piece, I follow Dominic LoTempio, Steven Blackman and Heather Willens as they trade the NYC grind for "I am the greatest" B.A. big fishdom. In the NYT, Matt Gross profiles the very cool Palermo clothing story Bolivia. And also in the NYT, Stephanie Rosenbloom employs every available B.A. cliche in her quest to point out how cheap real estate is in the Argentine capital:

Latin American cities are among the most exciting and affordable, especially Buenos Aires, the sultry, party-until-the-wee-hours city known as the Paris of South America. In 2002, the Argentine peso was devalued by the government, resulting in a currency crash. But four years later the city is getting back on its tango-dancing feet.

Now there's nothing left to do but await the upcoming expat flood...

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Gay Cruiser Docks in Buenos Aires

In what has been dubbed the first (presumably of many) gay cruise in South America, 684 people boarded the Oceania Insignia in Buenos Aires on Friday to set off on 12-day cruise that ends at Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Organized by the theme travel agency Atlantis, the cruise headed to Montevideo and then goes on to Punta del Este, Río Grande, Porto Belo, Santos, Para Ti and, finally, Rio. Curiously, La Nación breaks down the exact sexual demographics of the approx. $3,000 tour: 679 gay men, a lesbian couple, a bisexual couple, and one young straight man. Hmmm, either someone's not being honest with himself or Cuba Goodings so enjoyed making Boat Trip that he's doing it again.

Un lujoso "crucero gay" fue atracción en el Puerto (Clarín)
Llegó a Buenos Aires el crucero gay Oceanía Insignia (La Nación)
Ya zarpó el primer crucero gay (La Nación)

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In StudentTraveler Mag this month

Language Special: He Said, Ella Dijo
Ian Mount and Cintra Scott were the perfect couple, independent and romantic. Then they moved to Buenos Aires and fell in love with a third party—the Spanish language.

Dramatic huh? There are even photos of our pale mugs taken by a fellow former Lower East Sider now living la vida porteña

He Said, Ella Dijo
PDF (scroll down to page 6)

PS: I'm kicking myself for not taking the opportunity to plug LoMásTV in that article. Well, in my defense, we wrote the article before I started consuming LoMás video clips compulsively—and writing the occasional newsletter on the Spanish learned from them. So, I'm plugging it now. Incidently, LoMásTV was started by yet another LESer who worked here in BA a few months last year.

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Mar de las Pampas

We offer a thousand apologies for our web absense. We were, well, taking vacation in Mar de las Pampas, a laconic beach town on Argentina's Atlantic coast. It was pretty much like these photos--walking down sand streets, listening to shells (or, in Cintra's case above, a pine cone) for sounds of the sea; ogling cool architecture wedged between tall, skinny, branchless pines; loving a place where the distance to all necessary landmarks is under 200 meters (see signs); and reveling in the white bright sun on the beach (okay, I opened the aperture a little on the photo at bottom, and it was the first and only chilly day, but hey, it's a good picture). Literally a day after we reserved a spot at Cabañas El Ocio, one of the 'oldest' lodgings in the town at seven years of age, one of the local dailies ran a front page travel section piece on MdlP, declaring is 'en voga' (in vogue), which led us to fear that it would be awash with tense tourists looking tensely (and failing) for a place to relax. But our fears were not realized: ten hours of nightly sleep, five hours of reading on the beach, three slow meals a day, and naps spacing everything really do make for perfect relaxation.

Mar de las Pampas is a self-designated 'Slow City' (click here for more info on the Italian trend), which means that the streets aren't paved (i.e. traffic can't move quickly), there are almost no chain stores, the houses and hotels are all blended into the surrounding forest (i.e. the porch on our cabaña was built around the trunks of the already existing trees so they didn't suffer a scratch) and there's terrible cell phone coverage. In other words, a perfect place for a vacation.

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Irony and ESL Do Not Mix

English language slogans slapped on t-shirts and hats in foreign lands serve as a sort of high-hobby for certain aficionadoes, a twisted connoisseurship that leads to sites like Engrish.com (nothing like a 'WAR IS HOMO' shirt to warm the heart). But it gets a little more discomfiting when you're in a country that should know better--i.e. where people speak some English--and you find a t-shirt that slaps irony against ESL and produces something well, gnarly.

Take the Avenida Cordoba clothing store above. Walking by, it looks like it sells your average Williamsburg blue-collar irony: trucker hats, a 'Planet of the Apes' t-shirt, and a Philadelphia 76ers jersey. But look closer then, at the bottom left. To quote a cliche I'd thought I'd never touch, Unh-unh, no they di-int. On-purpose nasty, or intentional irony thwarted by ESL? You make the call.

My favorite such moment, however, passed when I was without camera. Walking down Avenida Libertador--B.A.'s quasi-Riverside Drive--I saw a typical Recoleta woman walking toward me: pretty, wealthy, 30, turned out with a gold-trimmed purse and white pants and clicking on heals with purpose. Her t-shirt? A brown tank top with gold edge-threads emblazoned with a single word--"Mother". How straightforward,I thought, How downright...wholesome.

She then passed me and I saw that the back of her shirt also held a single word, which sent me into peals of laughter.

It said "Fucker."

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