* Makes me want to don again my shiny dancing shoes and ... but then again tango is a team sport so there would be no point on bringing my shiny shoes out of retirement.
** Also, when I listed the passions of the Argentinians I forgot to mention that they are also obsessed with yerba mate, a kind of tisane that they drink through a metal straw out of a small wooden cup several times per day. It is a matter of national pride to invite someone to share the mate with them, and families travel with a hot water thermos, a box of dried yerba mate, the cup, and the straw, which passes from hand to hand as the family relaxes under the shade of a tree.
Resuming my narrative, today I went to visit the Ciudad Universitaria, whose campus extends along the shore of the Río De la Plata. Being Saturday the campus was deserted and I couldn't visit the Geology Department, but I still had a very nice walk along the shore. The Río de la Plata is the estuary formed when the Río Paraná (the one responsible for the gigantic Cataratas de Iguazú at the Brazil-Argentina-Paraguay triple junction) joins with the Río Uruguay (reminds me of the estuary of La Gironde, in France, formed by the junction of La Dordogne and La Garonne). But I digress. The Río de la Plata is immensely wide, so one cannot see the other shore and is not unlike the Amazon. The current is pretty strong so I imagine the base of the channel has all sorts of pools, chutes, and submerged bars. I was surprised to see very few sailboats out there, and no fishermen.
I will teleport here to my visit to the Museum Evita, where I learnt a little about the period between 1943 and 1955, when Juan Domingo Perón became president. He married Eva Duarte in 1945, and as Eva Perón she became the face of the social justice programs of the era. Juan Domingo was a populist president who identified himself with the working class, supported unions, and successfully brought the country out of the post-war recession. In the meantime Eva, the much loved Evita, opened schools, homes for the indigents, hospitals, and spearheaded the efforts to extend the vote to women (succeeding in 1947). Evita died in 1952, at age 33, and is to this day revered as a popular saint.
Teleporting myself back to the shores of Río de la Plata, by the side of the university is the Park of Remembrance, which is a tribute to the many people incarcerated and "lost" during the period of 1955 to 1983, when Argentina was in turmoil and under the joke of several dictators. It is a quiet space that invites to reflection.
Eventually I ambled to the district of Recoleta, which is the quintessential middle class neighborhood of Buenos Aires, with many single homes, small parks, and an old cemetery that has curiously attracted a complex of restaurants and boutiques. I avoided the beautiful people and ended entering a small bookstore, where the elderly proprietor was in a chatting mood and took the time to ask me about my interests, talk a lot about the history of Argentina, and recommended me first this book and then that other, happily telling me what each book was about and why it was the best exponent of its genera. I ended buying three books that described the life of a gaucho (Martin Fierro), the encounter between the revolutionary general Lucio Mansilla and a tribe of Native Southamerican Indians (Una excursión a los Indios Ranqueles), and a set of modern short stories about the uniqueness of the modern Argentinians (ADN - Mapa genético de los defectos argentinos). Yes, he was a master salesman, and I was a sucker, but US$ 40 is a small price to pay for a delightful our of book conversation.
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