Shock and Ahhh…

Buenos Aires
14 Dec 2008

Greg Spooner. That is what the hand-written little sign says. Walter, a somewhat pudgy “remise” driver from Buenos Aires is holding it up patiently as I exit the glass doors at Jorge Newbery Airport. Shaking hands, Walter takes one of my roller bags and we head to his remise – basically a hired car – in the airport parking structure. We take an elevator that won’t go to the 2nd floor, though there is nothing to indicate this, and we find out only after riding it for a while. We change elevators and make our way to the auto. This elevator ride is a portent of the Argentine hardware I will encounter, but I don’t know it yet.

Walter speaks little English, and my Spanish is better. But he won’t stay with the Spanish. As we drive to La Matanza, an exurban barrio of Buenos Aires where my friends Pablo and Nicole have rented a house for the holidays, we converse haltingly. Walter ends every sentence, well, every word or phrase with “OK.” Or, “OK?” I learn that if the OK’s end interrogatively, it’s just like the “stop” in a telegram – more words are coming. However, if the OK ends declaratively (“OK.”), that’s the end of the paragraph, and perhaps that’s all there is to say on the subject. A full-stop, as it were.

It takes 10 minutes for me to discover that I’m not riding with the remise company Pablo originally had arranged for me, but rather a relative who has his own remise business. OK? Pablo and Walter are cousins of some kind. Our communication does not allow us to find out exactly how. OK.

We drive and drive. Buenos Aires is huge and sprawling in extent. I hear various things, but it seems to be somewhere between 150 and 200 kilometers wide. La Matanza is far from the center, far from where almost any visitor would range.

Outside, the landscape gets increasingly poor and desperate. Trash everywhere, shacks and huge potholes. At 20 kilometers along Ruta 3, Walter asks me to lock my door. After a while, I see occasional open fires, untended. Rubbish, perhaps? There are hundreds of stray dogs walking everywhere, including on Ruta 3 itself. This part of B.A. looks as poor as the poorest places I’ve been – as poor as Guatamala City, and perhaps as poor as the parts of Istanbul that I was brave enough to visit. The only indications of wealth are the occasional billboards obviously aimed at upper class Porteños who must drive through here.

We have a conversation about how the “lo-jack” satellite device Walter has in his remise would allow him to recover his car should it be car-jacked, OK? But the complexity of discussing why he doesn’t have a warning sign on the car to deter potential car-jackers in the first place proves too much for us, OK.

At 30km, we begin seeing occasional donkey carts. This surprises me, since the guidebooks and tourists I’ve spoken with invariably refer to B.A. as the “Paris of South America.” I don’t remember donkey carts in Paris. My ignorance of just how poor this place is turns out to be profound. At 35 km, we stop seeing km marker signs, and have to ask for directions a couple of times, OK?

I learn that La Matanza is a stronghold of Peronistas (populist supporters of the party of Juan and Eva Peron), and is an important region in national politics, in spite of (because of?) the poverty. Walter doesn’t like Peronistas, OK.

At 39.5km, where the turn-off is supposed to be, we find the gate to “La Quinta de Monserrat”, which is a compound with armed guards and high iron fences. We creep in and find another gate surrounding the house and yard that P & N have rented. We enter the yard and the house, with P, N and their two little semi-naked boys in the kitchen. I’m very happy to see them all, and relieved to see someone I actually know after two weeks on my own. OK.