For Richer, For Poorer

At the language school that I am attending, every couple of days we have an "expedicion cultural" that shows us a different part of the city. On Wednesday, we went to a neighborhood called Recoleta, where Eva Peron is buried in a famous (and beautiful) cemetery. Apparently when the fascists took over Argentina (after her death), her body was stolen and mutilated. When Peron returned to power, it was returned to Argentina, but without either of her hands. One theory is that Peron's second wife, Isabel, took them and gave them to brujas so that she could gain Evita's charisma with the people. Evita is surrounded by other Argentine notables, both good and bad, including a man who led the Argentine army in the slaughter of all the indigenos of Patagonia. All of the tombs in the cemetary are ornate and architecturally spectacular; hopefully I will go back soon and take more pictures.

Then on Thursday morning, I went for the first time to the Hospital de Clinicas, where I will be volunteering. It is a public hospital associated with the University of Buenos Aires, which seems to be a very complicated bureaocracy, and a lot of toes have to be avoided. Despite the fact that the (massive) building looks like it would fall over in a stiff breeze, it is widely recognized as having the best doctors in Argentina. I'll be working in the Rincon de Nin(y)os, or the children's corner, where the children wait to be examined. Hopefully, there will not be a "tomar" while I am there, which the guide explained is like a sit-down strike where they lock the doors and will not let anyone leave.

Today we went to La Boca, the old port-turned-tourist-trap and birthplace of the tango. It was there that I had my first real brush with the poverty of this city, which most of the time it hides reasonably well. There are about four blocks of tourist shops, restaurants, artists' studios, etc. But our guide advised us not to leave the area alone, because La Boca is also where some of the poorest residents of BA still live.

Apart from being the home of La Bombonera, the stadium of Boca Juniors, La Boca was originally a port neighborhood, and it filled in the late 19th century and early 20th century with immigrants from Italy and Spain. The port is no longer there, but the people remain, many of them in abject poverty. I could see groups of houses made with sheets of corrugated metal tied together--the luckiest had cinderblock walls, and looking inside as the bus passed they seemed almost homey, with painted walls and pictures hung. The worst were piles of furniture and mattresses grouped next to bridge pylons with fires in the middle. It was quite a shock going from La Boca back to northern BA, which is filled with the evidence of the economic boom--skyskrapers, high-rise luxury apartments, designer stores, trendy restaurant-- the works. It made me wonder what the true Buenos Aires holds--a nascent middle class, or just well-concealed destitution?