Street Speak

Her father was left alive because of a boxing match. He had been abducted during the “dirty war” which they now prefer to call “terrorism of the state” because there was no war. He was taken from his home for no reason and beat repeatedly for information he didn’t have. But there was a boxing fight that night and before they’d finished him off they left to watch. And so he survived and she was born, in the villa of Las Bocas, which she’d left when she was two and returned to with us today.

Don’t wander away from the main tourist plaza because it becomes a shanty town, warns the ex-pat who directs us to the right camioneta. I turn to my friends and tell them that I like slums. Me too, they chime in unison. So we walk a bit farther than others might and watch the streets transform from façade to reality.

A guy strums a guitar on the balcony, switching it for a mate gourd between each song, belly hanging comfortably over belt.

Two little girls share one pair of roller blades, several sizes too big. Each wears one on the inside foot and they skate together holding hands and tumbling onto the sidewalk. We hold our breaths a block away until they popped up laughing.

On old man peers out of crooked shutters at his grandchildren splashing in a plastic pool below. 

Sheet metal walls two stories high covered in cracked and peeling paint left over from boats that sailed many decades ago. Burned out cars. Laundry drying the warm river air.

White walls say nothing. So now the city is covered with images of love and loss and violence and fantasy. Identity affirmed and preserved in a slanted signature, even when bodies are never found. 

Mas amor por favor. 

Sos parte del cambio. 

Pensar es un hecho revolucionairo.

Hospital de la Matanza

There were dogs in the hospital. I counted three. There seemed to be more but the same ones simply moved from one floor to another as they pleased. No one there really noticed. But someone in our group did and asked the social worker giving us a tour about them. She was embarrassed.

One belonged to a man who lived at the hospital, in the waiting room just outside the maternity ward. He had nowhere else to go so they let him stay there and keep his dog with him. Our guide was very proud of the room. It had been built recently so that people would be comfortable while they waited for their babies to be born. Looking in, I could not tell which person was the resident, and to me it did not seem like such a bad place to stay. You would see so much joy from this glass walled room… one of the most beautiful experiences of life happening over and over again.

The patients and visitors seemed to like the dogs as well. The dogs had a calming presence, sleeping in corners and strolling casually, unaffected by suffering of such a place. They made it feel more like home and less like an institution. The floor and walls were a bit dirty, but so too where the homes and skins and clothes and of the people of the campo who came here for help and for solace. Perhaps there is something to learn from this… that the little things that make strange situations more normal can bring great comfort to those in pain.  Some broken rules do more good than harm. 

Death and Sunlight

The stench of rotting flesh unearthed and caskets cast aside. Spiderwebcracked glass doors and rusted padlocks let eternity rest. Who comes to care for the remains of loves long lost? Some. Not all.

How many children went hungry so that mausoleums could be built and strangers could admire the colored light of stained glass ceilings reflected upon floors out of reach? Salvation and adoration. What legacy is left in the corners of Cemetario de la Recoleta? What secrets buried.

Look into the life lines of your palm and see ancestors. Strength and sacrifice.

Cats sprawled across certain stones seem to be missing parts of their stomachs and their souls. The vacancy is more frightening than anything else here. Broken drawers reveal open coffins and steps leading to depth. Let them wander.

In circles las Madres de Plaza de Mayo search for their ninos desaparacidos. Many in silence. Simply walking, with white scarves to show resistance to the evil that exists and never can be undone. Tourists gather and flash cameras at their weathered faces and at those of their children, their grandchildren-- at the black and white pictures that the women string from their necks with names and dates written below and the men hold up on picket signs. The prints are old and scarred by the sun and their hands shake under the strain of the banner but still they walk. With respect, with resilience, with reason that we cannot begin to understand only looking on.

Across the busy street lies the body of one man who fought for the freedom of Argentina and carried its flag across the Andes. Two soldiers guard his coffin and four marble maidens. Outside the cathedral a flame burns for his bravery y that of the soldado desconocido de la independencia. Saludalos! the wall tells us.

And thus some lives are revered by all who pass and others by only those with great strength and greater sorrow... but still so many go unnoticed and are truly lost.