Category Archives: South America

South America

This Is Not a Submarine

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Back when Argentina ruled as the “it” country for Western travelers seeking as of then “undiscovered” or “neglected” destinations, I nearly could’ve contributed towards the realization of a Rene Magritte moment. Sort of.

The Belgian artist wouldn’t have played a major part in the endeavor. He just would’ve been a reference. The impetus to get the ball rolling as it were.

Magritte was a surrealist artist. And like any surrealist worth his abstractions, Magritte challenged rational notions. Okay. Besieged them. Perhaps the reader has seen his portrait of a gentleman whose face has been obscured by a green apple (The Son of Man) or the artist’s painting of a pipe titled This Is Not a Pipe.

Confusion or introspection should’ve been what transpired while trying to decipher either image.

Before Argentina devolved into a hypochondriac economic basket case, the South American gem lured with a melancholic style and manner. That nation ought to be wealthy today but its indulgent past finally caught up to it the same way a lioness catches the slowest wildebeest.

Between a junta that straitened the country and timorous successive elected governments which sought to quell civil unrest by parceling goodies on the cuff, Argentina would find itself owing much in what seems generational arrears. However, that liquor bottle fell through the bag’s soaked wet bottom later. During my Argentina stays, the hole wasn’t so deep that adults practicing Economics 101 couldn’t have eased the debts.

Unfortunately, the likelihood of another strongman forming another junta proved more worrisome than scaring away investment as well as skipping true efforts to pay down markers owed global bankers. Let’s face it, vain men wearing peaked caps and aviator shades leading military units is a great threat to life and limb. Like the pope, stiffed Swiss or German financial pooh-bahs don’t have armies.

Therefore, better to ignore the money problem one has than possibly create a civil unrest dilemma that’ll invite any martial law.

Happy to say that during my times in Argentina while I saw manifestations against unresponsive policies issued by dithering governments, I never troubled myself worrying some generalissimo might order his troops to prepare his goosestepping entry into La Casa Rosada, the Argentine White House.

How did Argentina appear on travelers’ radars? For me several impulses sufficed getting me on 10-hour flights to Buenos Aires from New York. First, as an Arizona undergraduate I’d been classmates with three Argentines. Second, watching PBS.

Seemingly, some independent producer had gone down there, became enthralled with tango. She probably compared that country against the others on the South American continent. Enough malbec and the melancholy inspired by mandolins driving tango’s exacting steps along with Argentina’s sultry dominant Mediterranean cultural influences likely influenced her belief this just the spot for visitors seeking different – though not too unfamiliar or discomforting or, FFS, strange – exotic immersions.

Naturally the producer’s documentary could not encapsulate the whole country. But by selective filming, cherry picking those Argentines interviewed, she conjured attraction to this part of the antipode Americas. By her program’s end credits, what viewer didn’t want an excursion there? Who didn’t want to guzzle malbec beneath a warm winter sun? Or be a carnivore devouring grilled beef so tender knives apologized to it? Then for the daring, enter a milonga. There, yield to distant or unrequited or unresponsive heart’s longing through tango.

The producer’s lenses were focused on Buenos Aires, Patagonia, and, of course, whale watching.

My South American times occurred when sanity was rampant and Washington led the free world through stable leadership. So, yes, not that long ago.

Either I was fortunate or adventurous enough to meet residents (Porteños), travelers who also heard and obeyed Argentina’s siren to appear, and expatriates. While the first instructed, and the second shared discoveries, the third fascinated. Of all the ex-pats crossed in Argentina, each one of them emitted this same vibe: he or she had best been in Argentina at that moment rather than in North America, Britain, France, or Germany. Indeed, had any ignored self-exile and remained in his or her respective native country, it was likely each might’ve faced empty futures in their homelands.

Curious as I was about what ignited their skedaddle urges, I never baldly asked. Why not? That would’ve been unnecessary. In so many ways they would reveal themselves. Isn’t there something in human nature which motivates us to expose ourselves?

Had I grilled any of them, the tales told would’ve been nowhere near as complete as the occasional pearls voluntarily dropped. Or the tales eventually learned after assembling the pieces.

Of them all, Mick’s wend across the Atlantic proved the most “flavorful.” The French and Germans were the wariest ex-pats of all. Britons like Mick might edit pasts but they generally wouldn’t omit sections. While the French did, seeing them in action among credulous locals and visitors provided observations that allowed one to surmise.

The French fabricated beautifully.

Despite being amidst Argentines, people who may live at the end of the world but never behaved as if the end of the world was nigh, this North American perceived the Germans had packed a big bag of moody Northern European reserve.

The aloof slow to warm up attitude was completely absent in Britons. That also went for suit and tie type English in Argentina for legit business purposes such as seeking exploitive deals. If only I had been a rich Yank …

From what I gathered Mick served as sort of a conduit between the various strata of dodgy and respectable figures looking to strip meat off the bones of what they’ve could’ve of Argentina; between the people who could make things happen and those who wanted/needed the same to occur.

A lean man who wore his brown hair neat, Mick’s face and the mien it presented could’ve classified him as cunning. Or labeled him as shifty. Leanness emphasized his longshanks height.

Residents I met on wanders through Buenos Aires neighborhoods. I crossed paths with other visitors at the expected places, the touristy magnets. But ex-pats? Without fail a good portion were encountered deep into night inside bars and clubs. Alongside Porteñosalready starting to feel pinches of the belt tightening now thoroughly strangling Argentina. Partying locals congregated there in order to make themselves available.

Then, somewhat occasionally conscientious North Americans might’ve been surprised at the entries opened by two packs of Virginia leaf cigarettes and a disposable lighter. Probably don’t even need the lighter today.

Mick made my acquaintance while I was attempting to foster improved international relations with a lively, slender, dark-maned woman of Italo-Iberian ancestry. Jammed packed as the crazy loud space was, I’d become one of the bar staff’s best buds through steady evening attendance inside the merry mayhem as well as not stinting on propinas.

Water runs uphill to money. Anywhere, no matter how chockablock the establishment, no matter how other patrons yelled for service, cocktail bearing servers will blaze ways through insolent insistent human moils for sure tips.

Service brought Mick to our table. Or he saw regular deliveries at ours as opposed to the unslaked thirsts in the drinks desert around us. Ambitious and opportunistic as I would eventually find him, Mick snapped up a pair of empty chairs from a couple of tables then sat himself and his date down in them. His Porteña shared similarities with my own. Knowing looks minus any winks had Mick and me simpatico from the jump.

He introduced himself in the broadest terms. Only through the lightest interrogation would I discover him an East Londoner. A man who calculated his best prospects waited for him in South America. He had several ventures churning. All on the face of them legit. Perhaps the way he confirmed his legitimacy must’ve intended it to have been impressive. More importantly, though, all his businesses fattened his margins. All the more so besides money Argentine life afforded him a different girl every night should he feel the twinge.

That gladdened him far more than me. Perhaps even further validated him to himself. And should that evening’s female have heard him, have understood where she sat on his conveyor, it just meant she’d mulct him for more before being replaced by the next one down the line.

Her higher transaction fee wouldn’t have bothered Mick.

Not sorry. No subterfuge about my profession. Being an “educated man” burnished my luster. Like a lot of Britons crossed in South America, I’d initially been mistaken as having been in some military branch. Hopefully an ex-marine. Those Brits then, they admired marines.

On one hand, that mistake flattered. On the other hand, it meant I wasn’t on the make as a possible “body man.” A “body man,” a guy whose very proximity could demonstrate enough visible menace to dissuade any trouble that might ruffle his charge.

It’s funny. Having worked with a former “body man” Stateside – one who claimed to have known the Krays – I readily grasped Mick’s allusion. All part of being an “educated man,” I guess.

Here would’ve been the biggest difference between us: had Mick asked, I would’ve then confessed my reasons for being below the Equator. Unlike him, I had no reason to have been cagey. Nights later, I volunteered a fuller background. Maybe he heard it as sign of evolving trust.

But that night, pleased to have met me, happy to have elevated conversation with “someone who so obviously knew something” in Argentina, his magnanimity let him acquire our tab. He melded it with his. Therefore, the cocktails my Porteña and I had been nipping at became Champagne our quartet swilled.

The rest of the night extended itself into a mild early autumn gray dawn. Or to flip the season, spring above the Equator.

Leaving the club after six o’clock offered a glimpse at Mick’s money. Upon entering, I barely noticed coned off parking spots in front of the club as well as across the parallel curb. By dawn, luxury cars narrowed the street waiting for their owners.

Mick gestured at a long dark Benz. He offered my Porteña and me a ride to, oh, wherever. She was upset my abode sat within too drunk to walk but crawl distance. That pet would’ve enjoyed being swaddled inside his car as it coursed through Buenos Airean traffic. Even more than the admiration, but from the speculation such a carriage would’ve surely drawn.

Knowing our togetherness limited, I didn’t even bother with the sop of “next time, baby.” She just needed to have contented herself with medialunas at the breakfast buffet the hotel next to my short-term apartment offered before our ascension upstairs or lunch in same preceding her taxi ride home.

Yeah. There will be numerous mentions of eating throughout these This Is Not a Submarine posts. The one constant between Argentina then and Argentina now is they’re necessary.

-15-

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Quarropas, South America

Antipodes: Aftermath and End

Party people milled throughout Axman’s house. Then, he and an assemblage of housemates rented a structure only a cheery paint job saved from being judged Gothic.

This event occurred on a December 2009 night, in Quarropas. Our host had convened what we’d come to call “a gathering.” He scheduled “gatherings” once or twice a month.

From about the late 90s into the farthest aughts, how many party Friday and Saturday nights slid into late next morning inside his house? Looking back from June 2019? Too few and not damned near enough! Continue reading Antipodes: Aftermath and End →

South America

Antipodes: The Amethyst Twins

Annegreth and Lieslotte weren’t twins. An instant or two dedicated to closer inspection revealed this.

Yet thanks to same shaggy blonde manes, blue eyes, clear, sun-blessed complexions, and manners of smiling that made each tall though not lanky woman appear uncannily similar, clearer observations rescinded the quick judgment. Neither Uruguayan was truly indistinguishable from another. Yet that’s how most undiscerning strangers like MacDiarmid saw them. Continue reading Antipodes: The Amethyst Twins →

South America

Antipodes: The Shamrock

Looking back on the months of March in 2004, 2005, and 2009, didn’t I spend an almost inordinate amount of time in Buenos Aires inside the Shamrock? Why, yes I did.

Spent properly, those hours could’ve been devoted to visiting vineyards west towards the Andes or even venturing south into Patagonia. There, I might’ve investigated cities along the South Atlantic coast and waited to witness whales breaching the ocean’s surface.

But urban creature as I most surely am, and one who traveled alone then, louche comforts lured and guided me.

Perhaps “louche” a harsh judgment for the Shamrock. Let’s direct that upon its clientele. Continue reading Antipodes: The Shamrock →

South America

Antipodes: Dark Places

Dissolute excursions inside the Shamrock or the Shannon did not fill my every waking evening hour in Argentina and Uruguay. The principal cities offered plenty of cosmopolitan attractions, particularly Buenos Aires.

Maybe having grown up in Metropolitan New York made it easy or easier. But setting out to investigate rumored addresses never unnerved me. Most of those places were merry and bright; a precious few turned out being among the darkest recesses imaginable. Continue reading Antipodes: Dark Places →

South America

Antipodes

In March 2009, I stood in the terraces of La Bombonera, a k a “The Chocolate Box,” in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is the home field of the Boca Juniors, one of the country’s most idolized teams. In the nearly vacant stadium, on my 50th birthday I hoisted a retired Copa Libertadores trophy.

The Copa is one of the most prestigious soccer tournaments encompassing Latin America.

Looking at the span which that particular piece of hardware had been bestowed, it had been raised by Pele and Diego Maradona, each a deity in short pants for his respective nation, Brazil and Argentina. Immodest of me as it was, I lifted that thing and preened as if I’d somehow contributed on the pitch towards its acquisition.

I wasn’t the only one there that sunny afternoon fantasizing. Plenty of aficionados, dyed-in-the-wool soccer fans, were in attendance summoning the echoes of past contests be they championship caliber or regularly scheduled Boca tilts.

The indulgent Porteña accompanying me looked on with pity and benevolence. She could’ve mocked me or rolled her eyes at my undeserved and unearned basking. But she understood the importance of futbol. Despite being a norteamericano, I at least displayed an appreciable measure of reverence for pursuits purists often believe holds no less meaning than life and death.

That demonstration hopefully also compensated for much of my lousy Spanish. Continue reading Antipodes →

South America

Dalliances

Matthias believed himself quite fortunate to have been a widower whose children had all entered adulthood. Or else explaining the circumstances which had befallen him to adolescents or teens could’ve been quite mortifying.

He asked himself, ‘Was it an incident? Or a series of misfortunes? Or an exercise in youthful malice?’

At least the English professor could engage the question philosophically. Nora, the other participant exposed, lacked Matthias’ considerable fig leaf. Apart from the pun, fig leaves were exactly what Nora needed. Those and mind wipes, as well as interdicting the bastard who’d swiped the incriminating memory card.

Not solely to cover the naked state she’d shared with Matthias, but to establish distance between the realized gossipy recrimination their private conduct stirred and the preferred mature indifference it should’ve left in its wake. Well, not so private now, though owing to her marital state, certainly illicit.

A university colleague, Nora, had entered a brief passionate romance (romance because affair sounded tawdry) with him occasioned by her husband Fausto. Living up to his name, Fausto was a true macho. Their marriage made Matthias wonder about ardor’s caprice. Continue reading Dalliances →

Agitprop/Propaganda, Pop Culture, South America

Las Sirenas

    
    Marie Anne Erize Tisseau and Marina Ginestà had a connection. Each now would’ve been tagged an insurgent. Or militant. No. Probably terrorist. Language has undergone so much massaging why call a spade a spade when it can be labeled an entrenching tool? Though the conflicts enveloping both and devouring one were dissimilar, they eventually shared the same depth in their respective causes.  

    Separated by eras, the Atlantic Ocean and clashes, similar impulses must’ve pushed them. Each believed she could be part of a beneficial movement. And each understood the prices victory required might’ve demanded their lives.

    Today that height of commitment solely belongs in the province of religious extremists. What cause will encourage modern men and women to sacrifice their lives if necessary for an idea?

    An idea, not duty. A!–more–>

    Do absolute good and evil (the intellectual versions, not spiritual) even exist today? Unquestioningly so in Ginestà’s time. Many years later when Tisseau strode among us, the old polarities were well on the way to becoming our present-day every shade of gray murk.    

    By coincidence, Tisseau and Ginestà each recently returned to awareness. A newspaper article conjured the long vanished Tisseau the next to last day of 2013. Column inches lent Ginestà an appreciation the first week of 2014. At 94, she recently reached the end of her life.

    Reportage by (Spain) El Pais’ Diego Manrique and Jacinto Antón drew these women from the fog. Or in Ginestà’s case revived her through light and shadow, while Tisseau may have been commemorated in song.

    Ginestà is clearly portrayed. Unless she alerts us from the beyond, Tisseau will stay a good twisty mystery. Mist veils her. She is elusive and maybe all that remains of her is allusive. Conjecture shrouds the tasks which led to her vanishing. Did she also serve as muse for an admirer who became even more ardent as his reticence increased across the decades?

    If Tisseau’s presence tricked one of those heartfelt love requiems from him, he’s not confessing. Neither are those behind her disappearance.

    Tisseau was an Argentine model, Ginestà politically acute and French. Both combated the leading repressive regimes of their times and places. The first woman joined intrigues opposed to her nation’s militarist regime; the second defended Spain against the reactionary Falange.

    The women’s respective causes failed. The rebel victory over the duly elected Republican government not only retarded Spain’s progress by decades, but also emboldened the Axis powers intending world plunder. That much talked about line had been trampled. Could there have been a starker example of put up or shut up than The Spanish Civil War? If the high-minded democracies couldn’t and wouldn’t aid one of their own, weren’t black shirts convinced they too could pick off other weak and disjointed republics?

    Munich didn’t green light the Second World War. Letting Spain become a live-fire laboratory for total war did.

    After withdrawing from Spain, Ginestà bracketed Mexican exile between escaping and returning to France. Postwar she eventually settled in Paris. Indeed, mamie had worn combat boots.

    Again, who can say, or who will ever confess, how Tisseau expired? Since 1976 her physical presence has been completely expunged. The 24-year-old was that figure who walks into the jungle and leaves no tracks behind. But rather than being digested by savannah, the Argentine urban jungle consumed her.

    Thanks to the world’s myriad ideological or religious discords, Westerners are familiar with the shadowy villains slinking among us looking to foment this cause or indoctrinate that creed by whatever method of imposition necessary. Their blood-drizzled objectives make no distinction between bystanders and the particular pillars they insist need razing. To ideologues, there are no innocents. People living as unobtrusively as possible merely bolster their contention. If you aren’t with them …

    Marie Tisseau became an Argentine dissatisfied with her nation’s narrow direction. Now she’s nearly a caricature of a limousine revolutionary. She was that bourgeois baby who agitated for bread and justice, but whose upbringing had delivered her material goods and comfort aplenty. Her concept of “without” was just that. Theory. Elevated roundtable chatter made romantic through the chaotic energy of youth, cigarette smoke, though ultimately condescendingly delivered regarding “the people.”  

    Fighter, militant, insurgent, “terrorist” even, Marina Ginestà is best seen as a recruiting pitch. More pointed than posters featuring Uncle Sam or Lord Kitchener, Ginestà’s pose atop a Barcelona roof in 1936 made an appeal stronger than ¡Sangre y Patria! The Catalan capital as her backdrop, the 17-year-old’s glance summoned without hectoring. Uncle Sam and Kitchener beseeched ambivalent patriots into serving. Ginestà’s easy on the eyes coaxing flatly stated “Boys, this is what you’re fighting for!”

   

Marina Ginestà, Barcelona, Spain, June 1936.

    One must wonder whether Ernest Hemingway ever glimpsed her portrait. With all occurring around him, had her image imprinted itself in Hemingway’s mind? Could Ginestà’s inviting steel have been the basis behind the fictional Maria in his For Whom the Bell Tolls?

    Here’s a backstory: the militiawoman’s come-hither defiance was a setup. Hers seems a contrivance Joseph Goebbels should’ve staged. Hans Gutman, a German pro-Republican photographer had his Edward Bernays’ moment. One he hoped advanced Republican sympathies. In Ginestà, Gutman found the requisite pretty girl. He and his subject climbed to the roof.

    Mediterranean sunlight emphasized Ginestà’s peasant loveliness. A mild breeze ruffled the short black crop atop her head. Barcelonan cityscape provided effective contrast. Yet the scene was incomplete. She lacked an accessory. Clever Gutman appropriated a nearby militiaman’s rifle and slung it over Ginestà’s shoulder. Perhaps the weapon enhanced her allure, and with it the Republican cause. Wouldn’t be the first time an armed woman has been regarded deferentially.
 
    Nothing so martially clear for Tisseau. She and her Montoneros, the leftist assemblage opposing the right-wing junta then ruling Argentina, engaged in asymmetrical shadow warfare. No great battles. No stirring proclamations. No sterling literature. No bombastic sloganeering or music. Given the conflict’s nature, also little valor. Nothing romantic about it at all.

    Unlike the Spanish insurrection, Argentina’s aptly named Dirty War lacked fixed lines and readily admirable leading personages. It was an ideological struggle that dissolved into state sanctioned torture and murder. In reflection, the Argentine government assumed the worst vestiges of what we widely recognize as an organized criminal structure. Due process for a lost number of political captives ran along that dictated by Alice’s Queen of Hearts: “Punishment first, then the trial!”

    Is anyone still alive who can attest what deeds Tisseau performed on behalf ogf the Montoneros? Was she a go-between? Active in a cadre? Or just a peripheral traveler whose prominent profile fit into Argentine domestic intelligence’s crosshairs?    

    Unlike Ginestà’s unwavering fealty to Spanish Republicanism, Tisseau drifted into the Montonero movement. Casually politicized at best, she’d led an idealized youthquake life. Lovely, languorous, and fearless, the cover girl gadded-about throughout early 1970’s Europe.

 


Marie Anne Erize Tisseau, unknown.

    Glamorous, say, an Uschi Obermaier who didn’t reach the next shore, Tisseau exemplified that era’s free-spirited vibe. On occasions – oh, the usual no cash ones – she dipped into larceny. But exquisite larceny! No grubby bank heists for her. More than a flighty personality behind a pretty face, the mannequin nurtured an interest in anthropology. A concentration the least-likeliest thief turned into lucre by smuggling art.

    Doubtlessly the sort of daring-do which further aroused an already besotted tunesmith. Verses, well known ones in specific circles, resound about a thoroughly captivating woman. Do these refer to Tisseau?

    Throughout decades the lyricist has preferred obscuring his muse’s identity. Doesn’t lovelorn cloaking attract our curiosity all the more? On the surface his reticence may appear selfish. Is his one of those manufactured mysteries meant to keep embers alive, the artist’s name in speculation? Or does the songwriter’s silence derive from an instance of a draw so powerful, a loss so raw, that revelation would wrench soul debilitating pain?

    There are some nuggets our human hearts never wish to yield.