BUENOS AIRES AUTENTICO
By Stephen Metcalf. Photographs by Trujillo Paumer.
In the latest edition of The New York Times' T magazine there is an article written by Stephen Metcalf about the bodegones of Buenos Aires, which seems more like an excuse to make a little sociological analysis of the eternal search -and loss- of the identity of the Argentines.
Here are some parts of the report. Full article in The New York Times.
On a night swaddled in humidity, I made my way down to La Boca, an Italian working-class neighborhood in Buenos Aires. My guide for the evening was the prominent Argentine writer Uki Goñi, and as our cab crawled along, half lost, we peered out at meagerly lit scenes of urban decay. ‘‘I’ve had taxi drivers who wouldn’t take me down here,’’ Goñi said. Shirtless men carried infants in their arms; the elderly shuffled along without looking up; a well-armed group of policemen turned a corner. These last we asked for directions. They were gracious, but unable to help. Person after person could not point our way to El Obrero, the bodegón we were looking for, an ignorance that left Goñi puzzled and slightly dismayed .
El Obrero means ‘‘the worker’’ — it is a parrilla, or traditional barbecue joint. (‘‘Go with time,’’ an Argentine acquaintance told me. ‘‘Three to four hours, to eat to death.’’) It is also, as many parrillas are, a type of bodegón, a simple neighborhood restaurant started by and for immigrants, traditionally of Spanish or Italian descent. Taken together, bodegones form an unofficial institution in Buenos Aires, places where true porteños — as residents of Buenos Aires, a port city, are called — go to enjoy mass quantities of comfort food on the cheap.
Stepping inside after we finally found our bearings, I could see why El Obrero is regarded as a temple of fraternal overeating. The dreariness outside gave way instantly to the clatter of dishes, to bright lights and warm blasts of laughter. Rotating fans, relics from the ’50s, descended from a high ceiling. The floor was a dingy checkerboard, the menu a chalkboard. The waiters, gallant in burgundy shirt jackets, greeted us with radiant smiles. ‘‘There would have been more bodegones here once,’’ said Goni. ‘‘This is probably one of the last surviving ones.’’
Buenos Aires, goes the claim, is a European city located in South America. True, there are stylish clothes, venerable buildings, small cars and gelato. But to better understand his country, Goni insisted, one should read ‘‘The Return of Eva Perón,’’ by V. S. Naipaul. The essay is cruel, Goni said, but as true today as when it was written, in the early 1970s. To Naipaul, Argentina was less a country than a staging ground for absurdist public traumas that never add up to an actual history. From dictatorship to hyperinflation to, more recently, the currency crisis, which plunged the economy into chaos in 2001, cataclysm seems to come naturally to Argentines.
An older gentleman with a guitar started serenading the crowd. ‘‘Tourists don’t know,’’ Goni said. ‘‘They say, ‘Beautiful girls, macho lovers — I’ll rent a cute place in Palermo,’ ’’ referring to the neighborhood of suave byways that defines the city’s renewal. ‘‘They don’t see the underbelly.’’ The Argentina of Goni’s young adulthood was an economically and, its European roots notwithstanding, culturally insular society. ‘‘We were behind our own iron curtain, in a way.’’
Argentina is nearly the size of India, but with less than one-thirtieth India’s population. It possesses vast tracts of mineral wealth and agriculturally fertile pampas. Once, much of what was consumed here was made here, if inefficiently. ‘‘You could wait 10 or 20 years to get a phone,’’ Goni said. ‘‘Then, in the ’90s, we privatized everything. Now you get a phone in two or three days, and maybe 10 million people in the country are much, much better off than ever before. But joining the international community has come at a spectacular price.’’ La Boca, for example, is poorer and more dangerous, while Palermo now gleams with international cachet. But, as Goni said, ‘‘Argentines by and large can’t afford to go there.’’
The old gentleman’s lachrymose folklore ended. The crowd applauded wildly. Goni considered, then said, ‘‘Interesting, isn’t it, how some things completely transcend our idea of ‘good’ and ‘bad?’ ’’