Heat and Lust
”I arrived in a city that seemed fascinated by the possibilities of its own collapse”. This is how the first chapter in Bad times in Buenos Aires starts.
She starts off with describing the city, mostly visual impressions. The graffiti in the city is described with details, as that is what defines Argentine. She also describes the citizens in Buenos Aires, the Porteños. She says that you can’t see at the young people that there had been a diaster, who are the generation from the ones who disappeared. In basic she describes the impressions she gets from Argentine.
She looks for an apartment and a she says in the text it’s almost impossible to get rented accommodation in Buenos Aires if you don’t have a guarantor. That is someone who undertakes to pay all your debts if you abscond. To find an apartment she trawls the newspapers and meets estate agents. They are open to the possibility of bribe.
One night she accompanies a Peruvian to the house of a Cuban who sells forged guarantees for 300 dollars apiece. He is supporter of the Cuban revolution.
She gets an apartment on 5th floor. It is situated on Avenida Córdoba which is a big thoroughfare in Buenos Aires. The building is described as a slim, nineteenth-century building. With a small bathroom and kitchen and a room that had been extended upwards to give the place two more small levels by an iron staircase. The place is leaky so when it rains its splashes in her head.
She lives close by Avenida Nueve de Julio which is the widest avenue in the whole world.
She describes the city as being very loud and full of traffic. She lived close by where the corpse of Evita had been hid before being smuggled in 1957. She could sense her presence all over Buenos Aires.
She describes a magnificent waterworks that looks totally out of place because all the tiles are imported from England and France which makes the waterworks, placed between palms, looking like something from the Victorian colonies.
She has four neighbors; José, Raquel, Maximo and one more person.
José has never been outside Argentina but loves everything British and knows a lot about British history and culture. José lives with his mother who is 95 years.
Raquel is her closest friend. She is a twice divorced psychoanalyst with four grown children. She is very tired of Argentina’s political scandals.
Maximo is a composer and is very angry with the country. He advises to flee from the country and get out while you can. He too lived with his mother.
The last neighbor on fourth floor is described as subdued. He is some of the the last surviving relations of man who was to be the president before the military coup. He returned to Argentina from Italy in 1983 after the fall of the military junta.
All in all she describes the whole building as being permeated with an air of disappointment.
She tells about how the newspaper everyday publishes a couple of pictures of the persons who went missing. Most of them were young, in their twenties. They were called “The Disappeared”, and were abducted, tortured and killed by the government. At the end of the 1960’s there were what seemed to be a generational rebellion – a generation who rejected their parents’ values, and became social activists. They found their inspiration in Evita Peron. In the 70’s the rebellious generation kidnapped an ex-president and demanded a ransom of getting to know where Evitas corpse were. They wanted General Peron back. In 1973 Peron comes back, the violence continues, when he dies nine months after the violence worsens. A few weeks later general Videla made a coup, the people were thankful, they thought of him to be firm but fair. But he had a mission, it was called el proceso, all those who opposed the Argentinians way of live were to be killed. The politics changed, a schoolbook came out where the women were told to be obedient to their husbands.
People started to disappear. They vanished from their homes or from the middle of busy streets. They were taken out of cinemas and shops and hustled into unmarked Ford Falcons in full view of passers-by. But people ignored it. People justified the disappearance of their neighbors with the phrase ”There must be a reason for it”. Many thousands people had died. Nobody knows exactly how many. During the dictatorship it was dangerous to confess that a member of your family had disappeared.
The governor of Buenos Aires warned that is was not enough to stand on the sidelines if you wanted to save your life ”First we shall kill all the subversives, then we shall kill their collaborators; then we shall kill their sympathizers, then we shall kill those who remain indifferent; and finally we shall kill all the timid.” When General Galtieri took charge of junta in 1981 the worst of the terror was over and the dictatorship finally ended.
Even tough it was 10 years ago when the author wisited Buenos Aires, there was a widespread feeling that they had not properly been dealt with by the national conscience.
As a man told about the terrible things that had happened: ”We did not want to know; perhaps we still do not want to know”
She starts off with describing the city, mostly visual impressions. The graffiti in the city is described with details, as that is what defines Argentine. She also describes the citizens in Buenos Aires, the Porteños. She says that you can’t see at the young people that there had been a diaster, who are the generation from the ones who disappeared. In basic she describes the impressions she gets from Argentine.
She looks for an apartment and a she says in the text it’s almost impossible to get rented accommodation in Buenos Aires if you don’t have a guarantor. That is someone who undertakes to pay all your debts if you abscond. To find an apartment she trawls the newspapers and meets estate agents. They are open to the possibility of bribe.
One night she accompanies a Peruvian to the house of a Cuban who sells forged guarantees for 300 dollars apiece. He is supporter of the Cuban revolution.
She gets an apartment on 5th floor. It is situated on Avenida Córdoba which is a big thoroughfare in Buenos Aires. The building is described as a slim, nineteenth-century building. With a small bathroom and kitchen and a room that had been extended upwards to give the place two more small levels by an iron staircase. The place is leaky so when it rains its splashes in her head.
She lives close by Avenida Nueve de Julio which is the widest avenue in the whole world.
She describes the city as being very loud and full of traffic. She lived close by where the corpse of Evita had been hid before being smuggled in 1957. She could sense her presence all over Buenos Aires.
She describes a magnificent waterworks that looks totally out of place because all the tiles are imported from England and France which makes the waterworks, placed between palms, looking like something from the Victorian colonies.
She has four neighbors; José, Raquel, Maximo and one more person.
José has never been outside Argentina but loves everything British and knows a lot about British history and culture. José lives with his mother who is 95 years.
Raquel is her closest friend. She is a twice divorced psychoanalyst with four grown children. She is very tired of Argentina’s political scandals.
Maximo is a composer and is very angry with the country. He advises to flee from the country and get out while you can. He too lived with his mother.
The last neighbor on fourth floor is described as subdued. He is some of the the last surviving relations of man who was to be the president before the military coup. He returned to Argentina from Italy in 1983 after the fall of the military junta.
All in all she describes the whole building as being permeated with an air of disappointment.
She tells about how the newspaper everyday publishes a couple of pictures of the persons who went missing. Most of them were young, in their twenties. They were called “The Disappeared”, and were abducted, tortured and killed by the government. At the end of the 1960’s there were what seemed to be a generational rebellion – a generation who rejected their parents’ values, and became social activists. They found their inspiration in Evita Peron. In the 70’s the rebellious generation kidnapped an ex-president and demanded a ransom of getting to know where Evitas corpse were. They wanted General Peron back. In 1973 Peron comes back, the violence continues, when he dies nine months after the violence worsens. A few weeks later general Videla made a coup, the people were thankful, they thought of him to be firm but fair. But he had a mission, it was called el proceso, all those who opposed the Argentinians way of live were to be killed. The politics changed, a schoolbook came out where the women were told to be obedient to their husbands.
People started to disappear. They vanished from their homes or from the middle of busy streets. They were taken out of cinemas and shops and hustled into unmarked Ford Falcons in full view of passers-by. But people ignored it. People justified the disappearance of their neighbors with the phrase ”There must be a reason for it”. Many thousands people had died. Nobody knows exactly how many. During the dictatorship it was dangerous to confess that a member of your family had disappeared.
The governor of Buenos Aires warned that is was not enough to stand on the sidelines if you wanted to save your life ”First we shall kill all the subversives, then we shall kill their collaborators; then we shall kill their sympathizers, then we shall kill those who remain indifferent; and finally we shall kill all the timid.” When General Galtieri took charge of junta in 1981 the worst of the terror was over and the dictatorship finally ended.
Even tough it was 10 years ago when the author wisited Buenos Aires, there was a widespread feeling that they had not properly been dealt with by the national conscience.
As a man told about the terrible things that had happened: ”We did not want to know; perhaps we still do not want to know”