Fue barbaro, Argentina, gracias, boludo

I arrived in Santa Cruz, Bolivia at 5 AM this morn. Salta offered me a good two days of reflection on two months in Argentina, and then I decided to high-tail it straight to the steamy Bolivian tropics instead of going little by little as I’d planned… impatient to return to Bolivia, tired of Argentine food, prices, tourism. To tell the truth, I’m not really sure what lit a fire under me, but I had to hot-foot it out of there. Before I get too far from South of the border, though, I’d like to ruminate on Argentina with that outsider’s perspective 2 months deep, for whatever it’s worth, and with the aid of some overdrawn visual metaphors.

Argentines seem to be always on the move – though I think that holds most true to Buenos Aires, and let us not generalize too much from there, despite this city making up 13 of the 40 million people in the country. Argentines are very patriotic. Their lines are well-drawn and clear-cut, and their fences well-built. Their gardens and mountains are beautiful and well-maintained. They are building and re-building, still reeling from the crash and still stinging from the dictatorships, yet still determined and resourceful, as resolute in reconstruction as they were in deconstruction a few years back.

Argentina is a beautiful country, and Argentines are a beautiful and proud people… the pride is well-earned (see History book on “Cacerolazo” or see Soccer’s Greatest Moments DVD Box Set), but many off-tune notes from the past still echo and at times even ring loudly – and because of pride, I believe many Argentines refuse to listen. Thus, the graffiti and signs decrying impunity and demanding “Juicio y Castigo,” “Judgment and Punishment,” demanding that people confront the ghosts of the dictatorial past. But who wants to unearth the semi-decomposed cadavers of the dirty wars, bodies left to decay on the outskirts of the imagination?

Once, in downtown Buenos Aires, a fistfight almost occurred in a parrilla-bar where Andrew and I were eating. Both men were declaring how Argentine they were, but one had stated that three blocks away under an overpass hundreds of unmarked bodies were buried.

I was rent-a-biking around Salta
when I came across this plaque.

History gets written, rewritten, then written over, at times for good and at others for bad.

The names of the politicians that had first wrote it are chiseled out, and those neighborhood folks are superimposed. The park that was commemorated by this plaque had been razed.

Only dirt remains.

Three months ago, in a moment of not totally unfounded paranoia as I walked down the street in La Paz, I was struck by the fear that Evo Morales may become a dictator, considering his unprecedented popularity and his irrational political and social moves… then, I came across a graffiti of his name written, crossed out, rewritten, and re-crossed out, each successive edit done in different handwriting… and I breathed anew, knowing how swiftly critical Bolivians are, and how eventually unsustainable all dictatorships are.

I knew that I was back in the Andes not so much by the mountains, which could be most any mountains at the Salta end, but by the spirit houses lining the roads.

The plaque on this grave, also by the road, reads:

Luis Angel Pablo

7-12-1995

Murió asesinado alevamente por quienes creyó eran sus amigos

Descansa en paz y perdona a los que te quitaron la vida

Tus familiares.*

[Died killed (alevamente – ?) by those whom he thought were his friends

Rest in peace and pardon those that took your life

Your family.]

*TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: wow.

Although I end this trip with an entry of sunsets and graves, it's only because I'm as sad and nostalgic as a tango song... and also because I believe in sunrises and rebirth... and because I know I'll be back.

Che, que barbaro este viaje. Hasta pronto, boludo.

On crossing into Bolivia in a day or two…