"Coffee?" I answered, thinking with horror of the present dollar-a-pound prices.
"Yes. We had coffee we couldn't sell or give away and we were short on coal. It gave the whole area quite an aroma."
I was too stunned to comment. It struck me as the most tragic waste of raw material since the time of the Aztec practice of sacrificing virgins.
Later he showed us Avenida Nueve de Julio, the widest street in the world. If you translate the name as "Fourth of July" instead of "Ninth of July," you end up with the proper local meaning: Independence Day Boulevard. It was certainly wide, making even Canal Street in New Orleans look like an alley-about eight taxicabs to a side, not counting broad, gardened parkways.
"How did it get so big?"
"Oh, President Perón decided that we needed a major boulevard through the heart of the city so he told them to tear down all the buildings in one row of blocks and merge the adjoining streets. Look at this."
We drove down a chute and found ourselves in an underground parking and service garage. "This is the biggest underground parking space in the world. This is where the Buenos Aires businessmen leave their cars during the day."
I was not prepared to dispute it; the caverns seemed to run endlessly on back until lost in the gloom. It accounted in part for what seemed to be a total absence of parking lots in downtown Buenos Aires and very few places to park at the curb. This four-hundred-year-old city was not laid out for automobiles. "But suppose they do park here," I objected, "that would still leave most of them a mile or more from their offices."
"Eh? Why, their chauffeurs drive them to their offices, then leave the cars here, then pick them up later."
"But how about those who don't have chauffeurs?"
"Excuse me? Oh . . . here in Argentina any man who can afford to own a private automobile can certainly afford to hire a driver."
I learned that the car he drove was not his own but was an investment on the part of a wealthy man for whom he drove it on shares. We were finding and were still to learn that the Detroit automobile is the most universally coveted piece of wealth in the world. In Argentina and in many other countries import of American cars is strictly controlled and a license to do so is hard to obtain; often it is a cherished piece of political patronage. Under these conditions a car from the U.S.A. is fantastically expensive, not just a mark-up for ocean freightage and tariff, but with the F.O.B. Detroit price tripled, quadrupled, even quintupled.
But even at such monstrous prices they are greatly desired; we were assured that, despite the cost, they were more automobile for the money than were the much cheaper European cars. A Ford or a Chevrolet will be driven "three times around the clock," more than three hundred thousand miles, and will stand up under it; a European car, except the Rolls Royce, will fall to pieces under much less abuse.
I am neither an automotive expert nor a field agent for the Detroit Chamber of Commerce; I report what I heard from drivers on four continents, many of whom were not especially friendly to the United States-in fact in many cases they seemed to blame us for the fact that their own governments had made it so hard to import American cars. The answer to this is tied up with the knotty question of dollar exchange and controlled currencies, but there is a potential market abroad for millions of American automobiles which we are not at present able to use.
Herman took us out to the cattle market, which looked much like the stockyards in Kansas City or Chicago and was comparable in size and in modern methods, Argentina being butcher to the whole world. The cattle were mostly big, beautiful Herefords, large square steaks with ears at one end and tail at the other. Being from cattle country ourselves, they were interesting but not novel. What did interest us were the gauchos and their horses.
Cattlemen are cattlemen, no matter what language they speak. While the gauchos looked odd in their dress to us their costume is as practical as the typical gear of our own cowboys. They wear baggy pants (bombachas) in place of Levi's and chaps, a different style of sun hat, and different styling in their boots; these differences are no more significant than the differences in uniform and insignia between American Marines and French Legionnaires. Poncho and bombachas make a gaucho look fat; our western dress makes a man look leaner than he is-no matter, they are both colorful and dressed for the work they do.
But their horses are not like our dainty, little cow ponies. The gaucho makes little or no use of the lasso; he has instead the boleadoras, three strands of braided rawhide bent together at one end of each and with a metal weight fastened to each of the other ends. He can swing this over his head, let it sail through the air, and bring down an animal by tangling it around the beast's legs from a greater distance than is possible with a lariat.
But the gaucho does not use even this tool very often against cattle, but saves it for ostrich or simply for hunting for sport. They believe in treating cattle gently-no sense in subjecting a cow brute to a spill and a nervous shock when you are trying to fatten it for market. Their horses are bred short, wide in the chest, and heavily muscled; they are trained to manage cattle by breasting against them, nudging them the way they want them to go.
Later we discovered that the cattlemen of Australia do not use any sort of rope. If an Australian cowboy finds it necessary to throw a steer for any purpose-which is not often-he will ride up to it, reach down and twist its tail and trip it. Australians do not use the lariat either. Nor did we see any roping equipment being carried by the cattle hands in South Africa. I begin to wonder whether or not the proud art of the American rodeo might not simply be an obsolete stunt, about as useful as rapier fencing. Maybe we shake a lot of hamburger off our brutes unnecessarily just to show how clever we are with a rope.
I risked my pretty business suit and tried the gaucho saddle. The horse turned out to be neck-reined, but he did not speak English and the gaucho uses both quirt (rebenque) and heavy spurs so I did not stay up long. The gaucho saddle is nothing like a western "rocking chair" stock saddle; instead of sitting down in it you sit up on top of it and it is built like a feather bed, with layer after layer of blanket, sheepskin padding, and leather. There is so much between the rider and the cayuse that it is hard to feel the beast. I like to be more intimately in touch with a horse if he and I are expected to form a close committee, not separated from him by an inner-spring mattress.
The saddle had stirrups, big metal disks with boot-size holes in them, but I could not see that they did much good; they seemed simply to let the gaucho know where his feet were. They are derived from a much simpler stirrup, a rawhide thong tied around a small stick. The gaucho of the early days placed his toes over the stick with the thong between his big toe and the second toe; it served as a stirrup but it did not look as if you could put much weight on it in a pinch.
Herman pointed out this old-style stirrup on a statue titled El Gaucho which stood in a little park in front of the main entrance of the stockyard. It was a beautiful piece of work, comparable in artistic quality and style of execution to "The Scout" or "The End of the Trail." The sculptured horse looked like the same wide-shouldered, chunky little animal that had just patiently let me try him, but the gaucho portrayed was of an earlier century with a strong, hard-bitten Indian face unmodified by European blood.
Herman pointed out his boot, which came all the way up his calf but did not cover his toes at all. "When a horse died the gaucho would make two circular cuts in the hind leg above and below the hock, then he would strip off the hide as an unbroken cylinder the way you would peel off a stocking. Then he would put it on his own leg, with his heel at the hock joint and let it dry and shrink in place; this made him a new pair of boots."
Ticky examined the statue. "But how would he take it off?"
"He didn't, not until he cut it off to replace it with a new one. Those old-timers lived very much the way the animals themselves did. They slept on the ground in all sorts of weather, they never washed, they never took off their boots. They were a tough breed."
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p; Ticky looked at the portrayed boot with the splayed toes sticking out, wrinkled her nose and turned away-Ticky used to bathe fourteen times a week until her doctor made her cut it down to once a day. I myself was wondering just what sort of athlete's foot would be incubated inside a rawhide boot that was never removed, but decided that the tough hombre sitting up there would never have noticed anything short of gangrene.
That afternoon Herman took us to see a very special sort of school, Escuela Pedro de Mendoza. It is the home and studio of Maestro Benito Quinquela Martín, possibly the greatest living Argentino painter; it is also an art museum, a grammar school, and an art school. Señor Quinquela was a very poor boy in the waterfront neighborhood, a wharf rat. From his paintings, now sought by all galleries everywhere, he has become wealthy, but he lives and works in the poor neighborhood where he grew up. The escuela is a beautiful modern six-story building by the water; the Maestro owns it, pays the expenses, pays the salaries of the staff of teachers. The poor children of the neighborhood attend free.
A child who attends is not especially likely to become an artist; it is in most respects simply a well-run grammar school. But a pupil there who happens to display artistic talent has every opportunity to study art under a renowned master. Señor Quinquela named the school for the artist who gave him his chance, Maestro Pedro de Mendoza.
One of the pleasant things about the place is that the museum is loaded with works of other living Argentino artists, purchased by the Maestro. Besides that, he has named each classroom for some earlier artist of the Argentine. We did not get to meet Señor Quinquela (although he is readily at home to casual visitors and tourists) because he was away, but his benign personality was everywhere. His favorite subject is still his own poor waterfront neighborhood and so high is the regard in which he is held by his neighbors that all around us we could see that shopkeepers and warehouse owners and householders had painted their properties in bright colors-because the Maestro likes to paint bright colors in his pictures!
Each classroom has a mural done by the Maestro-a feature that may be more impressive if I add that his pictures bring twenty to thirty thousand dollars in the open market. Each grade is decorated appropriately for the age level, starting with Bugs-Bunny-Mickey-Mouse things in the kindergarten. For these small children each door in the part of the school they use is done in a different color, so that a child too young to obey, "Go to room nineteen," can be told, "Go see Señorita Gomez in the room with the red door." We left the place feeling happy.
I took advantage of where we were to ask to see slums. Buenos Aires turned out to have the cleanest slums we ever saw. They were still slums, substandard dwellings for the very poor, but they were swept and washed and painfully neat, with never an uncovered garbage can, nor a trash heap, nor a bad odor. President Perón decided that all citizens must be clean, so he made each local policeman responsible for the cleanliness of his beat, with his responsibility extending even to compulsory inspections of housewives' kitchens. A housewife can be fined for failing to wash dishes, failing to scrub floors, failing to keep her yard, or passageway, or stoop clean and neat. The results are homes which are clean and healthful and cheerful, though still poor.
I could not help wondering what would happen in tenement neighborhoods in our country if the local cop tried to inspect the kitchens. What would they do to him? Take his club away from him most likely and beat him to death with it-and good riddance, too.
There are other things more important than cleanliness.
In Buenos Aires as in all Latin American cities I have been in there is a nerve-racking din of automobile horns. I had heard that the system was that the first driver to sound his horn had the right of way, which naturally would result in endless horn-blowing and probably endless accidents.
Only it did not result in endless accidents. I asked Herman about it and was told that I did not quite understand the system; it was not a race to see who could toot his horn first. Each driver, as he approached an intersection, gave a short blast on his horn at about the same distance from the corner, around forty feet. Thus the signal of the driver nearest the corner would be heard first and cars coming at right angles to him would give way.
The system seemed to me to be chancy in the extreme but it worked, although the racket was distressing. However, Buenos Aires was quiet as a chess match at night, whereas Santiago was so noisy at night that we could not have gotten to sleep early even if the schedule had permitted it; I asked Herman about the contrast.
"Oh. See this." He flipped a switch on the dashboard. "Now the horn is disconnected and the horn ring flashes the highway lights. President Perón decided that people ought to be able to sleep at night. So at sundown we all flip this switch, drive with the dim lights in the city, and use the bright lights to signal at each corner just as we use the horn in the daytime. It's a fine if you sound your horn at night."
Herman collected parking tickets just as many American drivers do; his business almost required it. At the moment he was not paying them as there was a Christmas amnesty coming up and he expected that the slate would be wiped clean. The notion seems exotic to us; later we were to run into a much stranger use of amnesty in Brazil. In accounts of automobile accidents in Brazilian newspapers the same sentence frequently ends such news items: "Both drivers fled from the scene."
With us, leaving the scene of an automobile accident is just short of carving up your wife with an axe. Not so in Brazil. The courts are years behind in their work; if a driver is arrested on a charge of causing an accident he may wait in jail almost endlessly before he can be tried; therefore he runs away and tries to avoid arrest.
The wonderful part about it is that if he manages to keep his freedom for twenty-four hours amnesty works; he will never be arrested. I am not sure of the law or lack of it in this custom; it may be just a well-understood convention based on the common knowledge that the courts could not possibly in all eternity handle all the cases if the cops arrested everyone who deserved it. In any case, the drivers do run and hide.
Amnesty in misdemeanors and lesser crimes does not seem so out of place in cultures in which amnesties for revolutionists, political prisoners, and exiles are common and almost a necessity. The spirit of forgive and forget makes some of the fiercer aspects of Latin ways more tolerable.
We heard of one other custom much more wildly exotic. I was not able to check on it as it referred to Paraguay, a country we were not able to visit. But here it is: it is alleged that Paraguay has no law against murder, killing being considered a private matter; either the deceased is a no-good and everyone is glad he is dead, or the friends and relatives of the departed can be depended on to avenge the matter themselves.
My first impression was one of horror, but the idea has a certain wild logic about it that grows on one. Almost anyone can make up a list of people he would like to lure into Paraguay-they never would be missed.
We did not spend all our time driving around with Herman although it would have been cheaper for me. The Plaza Hotel is at one end (the more expensive end) of Calle Florida, one of the finest shopping streets in the world. During the business day it is blocked off from traffic and shoppers can wander back and forth as they please.
Ticky is the sort of girl whose eyes bug out and whose face gets flushed at the sight of bargains in a shop window-somewhat the expression that Marilyn Monroe produces in a man; it may be a related mechanism. The greatest hazard in Calle Florida is the alligators, empty ones made up into women's handbags; they are snapping and yapping at a man's financial standing every step of the way down the street. They will savage you in a tender portion, your wallet, at the drop of a hint.
It is no good to tell me that a handbag is "cheap" at thirty-five dollars simply because the same handbag would be priced at a hundred and fifty dollars in New York; if I were in the States I would not be buying a handbag for any century and a half-nor for thirty-five dollars either if I could avoid it; my cornbelt ancestors would spin in
their modest graves.
Ticky was moderate; she bought only three alligator bags. Of course each bag had to have shoes to match. Besides that they were actually giving away (almost) bags of other sorts. Then there were sweaters and blouses and gloves and other things. I kept reminding her that we had been sixty kilos over the weight limit in flying the Andes and that we were going to have to pay excess air baggage several times more; I don't think she heard me.
Once I had anesthetized myself to the inevitable it was really pleasant to see her have so much fun. For most women, to be in Calle Florida is something like dying and going to heaven. So far as I have seen or ever heard nowhere else in the world are there so many smart shops catering to women jampacked into so small a neighborhood. Add to that the fact that a favorable rate of exchange makes any purchase a bargain (in feminine logic) and that many things really are wonderful bargains by any standard.
I offer this hard-earned advice to others who may follow: give her a flat amount and take her traveler's cheques away from her. Tell her solemnly that when the amount is gone the fun is over. Then stay in your hotel room, quietly quaffing San Martíns and thinking serious thoughts; if you go along you will be tempted to let her have more money.
I went along, of course.
Ticky encountered for the first time the custom of dickering. She was no good at it, as she believed instinctively that it is immoral to attempt to get anything below the asking price, equivalent to taking bread out of the mouths of the shopkeeper's hungry little ones. But she finally got it through her head that, except in the large department stores that advertise "firm prices," each sales transaction in Latin America is a social event, more valued for the ritual than for the regrettable economic aspect. But she never did acquire any skill at it. Fortunately most sales people are not disposed to swindle a señora, even if she is from Estados Unidos and therefore conclusively presumed to be rich.
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