Last Tango in Buenos Aires

David Marsh

Description

Meet pilgrims and Indians, poets and nuns, teachers, priests, veterans of the war in the South Atlantic, gold diggers, coal miners and ranchers, those bereaved by the Dirty War and apologists for it, and those nostalgic for the time when theirs was one of the world's richest countries or Evita held half the nation spellbound. Everyone has an image of Argentina or its people, be it tango dancers or gauchos riding the pampa, football and the 'hand of God', the snowcapped Andes or the Patagonian vast, 'Don't Cry For Me Argentina', or beef and Malbec. The Argentinians themselves are wont to joke that theirs would be the most wonderful country in the world, were it not for its 42 million inhabitants. David Marsh goes beyond this self-deprecating take and delves into the Argentinian psyche in Last Tango in Buenos Aires, which takes an intimate look into an often-misunderstood country. "Everyone I met seemed to have a tale to tell or a point to make," said David Marsh, when discussing his travels through Argentina. Their voices breathe authentic life into Last Tango in Buenos Aires, a compelling book that will appeal to fans of travel writing. It covers not only Argentina's geographical and cultural diversity, its beauty, history, politics, and paradoxes, but also the Argentinians of diverse backgrounds and walks of life that David met during his travels.

Sujets

• Argentina
• Travel writing
• Argentine

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 30 avril 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785895661
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2018 David Marsh

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 978 1785895 661

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Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

In Memory of My Parents


Contents
Author’s Note
A Map of South America
Pilgrim’s Progress
No Good Will Ever Come From A White Man
The Man Rides And The Woman Walks
Salta The Beautiful
Butterflies And Hailstones
Hora Fatal
A God Of The Living
Silvia
Democracy Or Death!
The Dirty War
The Drowned And The Saved
Dust-Devils And Parrots
The Saintly Drifter
Educar No Es Hispanisar. Hispanisar No Es Integrar
Waterworld
Screwball On The Loose
New Wales
Ashen Wasteland
The Amigo Sincero
The Cold, The Wind, The Solitude
A Dread And Maddened Beast
A Man Of Principle
An Island Of Devils
Uttermost Part Of The Earth
To The End Of The World


Author’s Note
I have changed the names of some people in this book to protect their privacy. The journey described was made over a summer and autumn, but amalgamates two trips at other times. The resulting story is a distillation of experience during wanderings through the diverse lands of Argentina and among its welcoming people, whose voices are the making of these pages.


A Map of South America



A long-dead tango singer brought us together. I watched her place a glowing cigarette between the fingers of his right hand. Carlos Gardel’s that is - his statue in La Chacarita Cemetery in Buenos Aires. A glance, a word or two, a smile, and Veronica had signed me up for her tango class. That was the beginning.

Why, I ask, did you smile
When your heart was another’s?

At the first class Veronica urged me to hold her tighter. Tango is not for the faint of heart. By the fourth she’d agreed to dinner. I wasn’t sure why: bereft of talent, clammy, I wore the wrong shoes to class. Someone took pity and let drop she was on the rebound.

He strayed
You reeled him in with jealousy
His return was my farewell

When the ex resurfaced I got the call. With a fine sense of symmetry Veronica chose Carlos Gardel to bear witness. Goodbyes over, she lit his cigarette and walked out of my life.

Three shots four, another to forget
That with you I danced
A last tango in Buenos Aires 1


1 Author’s translation of the original tango by Osvaldo Arazu


Pilgrim’s Progress
That last tango ringing in my ears, I took the first bus out of Buenos Aires and headed for the hills fifteen-hundred kilometres to the northwest, into the Humahuaca Valley. We drove through six hundred million years of geology that day. Once pelagic or coastal, iron salts painted the slopes magenta, aquamarine and black. Younger ores brought white and ochre to the palette; uranium and vanadium salts added dashes of yellow and amber to the blues of azurite, the greens of malachite, to limonite brown and haematite red.
I stepped off the bus into the narrow streets of Purmamarca and walked before whitewashed houses and pear and peach trees buzzing with hummingbirds. An Indian was setting up her stall on the main plaza. She spread miniature earthenware pots and ocarinas, flutes, panpipes and llama-wool jumpers over a trestle-table. Across the way a woman threw open the shutters and hung ponchos on the wall. A busload of tourists from the provincial capitals San Salvador de Jujuy and Salta to the south was expected. The day-trippers would admire the seventeenth century Jesuit church, buy handicrafts, fail to convince Indian women to pose for photographs, and move on to Humahuaca for a heavy lunch and drowsy ride home.
Throughout the Humahuaca Valley, people were gathering for a pilgrimage into the mountains. To Punta Corral, over 3,000 metres above sea level, to revere the Virgen de Copacabana and carry her image down into the valley on Palm Sunday.
‘The pilgrimage used to be a small affair,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘Just a handful of locals. Now people from all along the valley and beyond come to ask favours of the Virgin.’ He launched into a desultory joke full of inconsequential detail and local allusions that escaped me. The punch line was about a pilgrim who asked for help in tending his land and whose wife gave birth to triplets. The shopkeeper was pleased with his joke and his shoulders shook.
‘If you’re climbing to Punta Corral,’ he said, ‘you’d better take this,’ and handed me a clove of garlic. ‘Smell it,’ he urged. ‘Better still, chew it. For altitude sickness.’
It was midday, but the sun had lost its fire in the advance of autumn. A dozen pilgrims had gathered in the plaza and when they boarded a bus I joined them for the short ride to the north-south highway, the starting point of our pilgrimage. There, my companions lingered at a roadside stall offering snacks and cigarettes, as if delaying the inevitable climb. In the distance a line of figures was advancing into pink and beige uplands.
I set off and soon fell into step with a young Indian from the northern end of the Humahuaca Valley. ‘Is this your first pilgrimage?’ I asked.
‘No, I came last year.’ he replied. ‘I enjoyed myself and decided to return. It made me feel part of something larger, a communion.’
‘How? What does the pilgrimage do for you?’
‘It takes me a little nearer God,’ he said, marrying animistic worship of mountaintops with figurative Catholicism. ‘Self-purification through sweat and effort. Some ask the Virgin for help with health problems or studies. They promise a yearly pilgrimage if aid comes or a desire is fulfilled. I have one or two requests as well. Nothing much, just personal things.’
I speculated idly on his desires, on whether they would be answered. I couldn’t help thinking that a young woman was involved somewhere, and smiled. This, I felt, was the beginning of communion, of empathy and sharing.
‘And you,’ he asked. ‘Why are you here?’
‘To observe local customs,’ I replied, realizing too late that my ill-chosen words distanced me, branded me as an outsider, failed even to do justice to my true intentions. ‘To try and understand why people come. What rewards they seek,’ I said, attempting to remedy the lapse. I wanted to delve into the beliefs of these people. I had warmed to them, had felt a certain fellowship, and wanted to see if I could catch their spirit. Perhaps I too was seeking a sense of belonging.
We twisted up slopes littered with stones. My companion scooped one up and tossed it onto a wayside pile, crossing himself as we passed. This was an offering to the Pachamama, the Earth Mother revered throughout the Andes who stalks the mountains with a viper in her hand and an armadillo at her feet. She bestows fertility and wellbeing on her followers, protects their livestock, and long ago taught them to cultivate the potato, a gift which has since travelled the world.
Two middle-aged men stumbled down the track. ‘There’s a lot of altitude sickness up there,’ one said. Unbidden, my hand searched my pocket for the shopkeeper’s clove of garlic. ‘We just paid homage to the Virgin and attended mass. I wouldn’t stay the night.’ I wondered what these men had drawn from their hasty obeisance, their heedless fulfilment of duty.
Two hours into the climb, we reached a waystation set among bushes of vermilion flowers. Enterprising locals were selling food and drink brought up on horseback: beer, soft drinks, meat and potatoes. Pots of coffee and casseroles of mutton stew steamed in one corner of a shelter of drystone walls and cactus wood draped with tarpaulin. My fellow pilgrim pressed on and I drank coffee beside two young women wearing the latest imported trainers and tracksuits. They had come up from San Salvador de Jujuy. It was their first pilgrimage, and already one seemed to have lost heart. She was flushed and her breast heaved. ‘I hadn’t realized it would be so tiring,’ she said.
‘We’ll just go to mass and then come down again,’ reassured her companion, and then plied me with questions about the prices of all manner of goods in Europe. Frustrated by the vagueness of my answers she dropped the subject and asked instead about pop groups I’d never heard of. Her friend, who had been listening in rising disbelief, repeated the name of one group to make sure I’d caught it, but soon realized I was clueless and sipped her coffee in silence.
I walked on through a cactused wilderness banked in cloud and emerging above the cloudline followed a winding trail onto a plateau. By late afternoon, a straggle of colourful alpine tents and shelters of plastic sheeting came into view. Figures were poking fires; smoke rose into the darkening sky. I advanced to the smells of boiled chicken and mutton. At one improvised food stall a fleece hung fresh and bloody from a hook. An old woman was hacking wool from the sheep’s head with a blunt