Back in the Saddle

An empty meat display in Palermo (SOURCE: La Nación)

We’ve been away for a week, traipsing about the stark beauty San Juan and La Rioja, and in our brief absence it seems that our adopted home has reached the end of days. Beef shortages in Argentina?! That's a modern sign of the Apocalypse. What’s next: a condescension shortage in Paris? A lack of binge dringing in London? The mind reels at the possibilities…

To whit, here’s a brief roundup of the weird and interesting that's happened in our absense. Just notes. No need to bore anyone with in depth pontificating about what’s already gone down, right?

1) Were it not scary enough that people in Argentina just can’t friggin’ drive, now it turns out that it's an international problem: every year, traffic accidents kill more people worldwide that do AIDS, tuberculosis, or malaria.

2) As if the farm strike and the attendant lack of beef, weren’t bad enough, the Wall Street Journal’s resident right wing Latin America ideologue Mary Anastasia O’Grady has logged in yet again with an inflammatory, simplistic, and downright inaccurate explanation of the problem. The lead of the story, for example, says that Buenos Aires protestors were protesting “food shortages and inflation” when they were, in fact, expressing solidarity with farmers striking over what they felt were confiscatory export taxes. The food shortages came after. But, hey, what’s so important about accuracy when you’re chasing the right partisan goal?

3) As the current wave of court cases related to the Dirty War, desaparecidos, and stolen babies forces Argentina to relive its last military dictatorship, another chicken has come home to roost: Dirty War offer Ricardo Miguel Cavallo was extradited to Buenos Aires today.

4) Brian Winter’s “Long After Midnight at the Niño Bien: A Yanqui's Missteps in Argentina”, reviewed by Cintra here three weeks ago, gets its due in the Los Angeles Times.

5) The Washingon Post had an interesting piece by a scientist who first visited Argentina during the dictatorship. "The country, it seems, has been able to weep -- and now, to smile. I'd come a long way in three decades, too. Like Argentina, I wept and raved, and finally threw out the bastards. No longer crude, quick-drunk concoctions, we've both been aged in oak barrels -- complexified, deepened, clarified -- and earned a unique signature: a particular pattern of lagrimas, with notes of cherry, lemon and thyme . . . and a long finish."

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Democrats Abroad in the Limelight

Democrats Abroad in San Telmo

Friend of GoodAirs (a FOGA, if you will) Yanqui Mike has, along with his better half, 99, been kickin' up some dust for years now with his wondefully cantankerous website; recently he's been doing so with more focused ends by launching, with several other Buenos Aires expats, the Argentina branch of Democrats Abroad (a group for, well, Democrats abroad). We had the fun of exposing some of our confused porteño friends to the Super Tuesday event in Bar Tazz in Palermo, which got some fine coverage in Clarín. Now Clarín has come back for more, with a feature in its Sunday mag, Viva. Vamos FOGAs!

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100 Días

Reina Cristina

In the 100 days since Cristina Fernández de Kirchner succeeded her husband in the December 10 ceremony pictured above, not a lot has gone as she presumably hoped. Despite all the predictions the Cristina would project a kinder, gentle and more internationalist face on the world stage and ease back from her husband's closeness with Hugo Chavez, her first experience as president was to be accused, via a U.S. prosecutor's sting operation in Miami, of receiving $800,000 from the Venezuelan leader for her campaign, something which led her to lash out at the United States' "garbage" intelligence operations against her and pushed her to further embrace Chavez. Things didn't get better. Her daughter took to posting bawdy and revealing fotologs on the web; blackouts--some of multiple day duration--swept through Argentina, reminding everyone of the country's inpending energy crisis; and the nation's agricultural sector, responsible for a huge part of Argentina's wealth (not to mention its food), went on strike.

Argentina without beef. Not good.

For two nice wrapups on the Queen's first 100 days, check out these stories from Newsweek and the FT (both penned by Goodairs friends, natch). And pray that it gets better.

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Remembering Roddy Scott

Tomorrow, March 21, marks the third anniversary of Roddy's death. It will also be the fourth anniversary of my grandmother Mary Wardle's death and Henry Emiliano's completion of 1.5 years of life. Whew. (Rod, below, in the white shoes, cool and composed)

A lot has happened in three years. I'm thinking of the weddings of Kerry+Cristina, Chuck+Holly and Ana+Nate, for example, and the births of, well, Henry Mount, Alessandro Basile, Lily Rose, Asher Testa, Lo Löwenhielm, Mike Guerriero III--and I'm sure I'm forgetting a tot or two. Time marches on for us, Rod's friends and family, and sometimes even the most positive events taste a little bittersweet because time has stopped for him.


My earliest memories of my little brother really come into focus when he was one and a half, the age Henry is now. (I was a big girl of five at the time--as in the bathtub photo above.) Memories of baby R. pop up as my own son happily plays in the bathtub or chases bubbles these days.

I know others are thinking of Rod at various ages this time of year. I hope we stay in touch to remember the past and celebrate those happy events of the present.

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To school!

There's only one time you say, "to school!" when most say "back to school." Yes, earlier today, Henry Emiliano Mount attended his first scholarly session, just around the corner from us. I know, he didn't really need a backpack yet, but it's convenient for spare diapers and such. (Full disclosure: It's an arts-only program for the 18-month old set.)

In preparation for this huge step in his life, we bought many arts supplies, labeled key belongings with his name & I asked, "Cómo te llamas?" The answer came without hesitation: "En-wee!" Well, young master Henry, I think you are ready for a bit of public life now. I tear up as I type this.

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Long After Midnight at the Niño Bien

GoodAirs got a nice note from Brian Winter, a former reporter for Reuters who lived in Buenos Aires from 2000 to 2004 (interesting times). He thought we might be interested in his travelogue/memoir of that four-year period called Long After Midnight at the Niño Bien: A Yanqui's Missteps in Argentina–-just out March 3 (Public Affairs Books).

I like expat memoirs, in general. I enjoyed Miranda France's Bad Times in Buenos Aires and Marina Palmer's Kiss and Tango, so you'd think I be an ideal audience for this book. But, to be frank, I'm not crazy about the tango scene and potential power dynamics of a blond Texan prowling the milongas put me off. I wasn't sure I wanted to keep company with this misstepping yanqui for 245 pages. But once I gave him a chance, I was mostly glad I did. I was only squeamish in the recounting of his private lessons (Winter falls for his teacher who flirts just enough to keep the $20/hour rolling in) and a dance with a "waitress" in a brothel as the city roils in crisis outside. But really, the narrator is almost entirely unsuccessful as a tango predator, to my relief.

Off the dance floor, the book is much more interesting. Buenos Aires before the current tourism boom is instantly recognizable. As a 22-year-old rookie reporter, Winter took the time to learn the history of places, figures, lyrics... and he retells the interesting bits. I didn't know that calle Defensa was once lined with brothels and that then-President De la Rúa tried and failed to re-enact daylight savings time as his grip on the country slipped. Winter's central idea is that "the spirit of Argentina and the tango were really one and the same," (according to his author's note online). He dives into some interesting lyrics and explains the lyricist's relation with the Peronist party, for example, to make the point.

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Coppola's House Has a Parrilla

Francis Ford Coppola made quite a splash when he first took up part time residence in Buenos Aires, dropping $900,000 on a Palermo pad, eating lunch alone outside at Gardelito taking in "La Omisión de la Familia Coleman" at the Timbre 4 theater in Boedo. The months leading up to the filming of his Argentine movie--Tetro--weren't all sweetness and light, however: five thieves broke into his swank pad on Gorriti and stole his computers (including, we were told, the script for the movie).

Now, via a recent AP story, we learn that he's here for the low production costs and onda italiana, he's been to a Boca game, and the original script was never stolen. Most importantly, we learn that he's ready to cook:

"Italian families emigrated to Argentina and the United States, and very often brothers in the same family would go two different directions," Coppola explains, relaxing in the courtyard of his new home and studio, which comes complete with the steel barbecue grill no self-respecting Argentine would do without.

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What's wrong with the city (set to music)

In the opening session of the city legislature, our new right-wing mayor, Mauricio Macri, presented seven and a half minutes of what's wrong with Buenos Aires... set to music. It's a scary video to watch. Sleeping dogs, stray cats, water damage--all set to techno. Not danceable at all. (Actually, about a minute or so in, I thought I heard "gay, gay, gay" repeated to the beat. See if you agree.)
I can't help thinking that this man HATES my beloved Buenos Aires. Can you imagine Bloomberg finding the worst of NYC to scare his constituents into action?

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