A 90th Birthday in Buenos Aires

My intrepid mother decided to spend her 90th birthday on a cruise from Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro.   We made it a family affair and flew south to a city offering a rich blend of cultures.  Buenos Aires' wide avenues, colonial architecture and numerous outdoor cafes reflect the French, Italian and Spanish heritage of the city. Porteños (locals) regard themselves as more European than South American.  Founded on the shores of the Rio de la Plate in 1570, the city was named in honor of sailors and for hopes of good wind or "buen aire."

La Boca

A colorful area to begin a tour is the neighborhood known as "La Boca."  Now the artistic heart of the city, in the mid-19th century, La Boca was home to Spanish and Italians immigrants who worked in meatpacking plants.  They painted their houses with leftover paint and the kaleidoscope effect endures.  At the end of that century, La Boca featured bordellos servicing sailors returning from the sea.  Here the tango was born.

The dance began as an all-male affair, a machismo display ritual with 3, 4, or 5 men taking the floor to demonstrate their masculinity.  Later, women joined, but because of its brothel beginnings, the dance was condemned as immoral.  In the early decades of the 1900's, only the lowest orders of Argentinean society danced the tango. Not until a charismatic tango singer named Carlos Gardel swept to fame did tango become respectable, largely through the force of his wholesome personality.  Gardel died in a plane crash in 1935 at age 45.  Two women who had never met him committed suicide when they heard the news.   He and his music are yet beloved.

La Boca retains a mixed reputation.  Impoverished areas are close by, and some unwary tourists have been relieved of money and cameras at knifepoint. We toured with a guide and driver and encountered only artisans, tango dancers, and some wonderful leather purses we bought as gifts.  If walking there, be very careful.  Go in daylight, preferably with a group, and stay on the main streets such as the picturesque Caminito.  And, take a tango lesson!

La Recoleta Cemetery

Perhaps an unlikely tourist attraction, La Recoleta Cemetery is enticing for its magnificent monuments and ostentatious tombs of Argentina's rich and famous. Isn't it just so interesting how a society treats its dead?  The cemetery is laid out in sections like city blocks, with wide tree-lined main walkways branching into sidewalks filled with mausoleums.

One of the more modest, but by far the most celebrated, is the tomb of Eva Perón, Argentina's former first lady from 1946 to 1952.  She championed labor rights and women's suffrage, but also salted away charity funds, until her untimely death from cancer at age 33.  Speeches she and her husband gave from the balcony of the pink Presidential Palace and her untimely death from cancer at 33 transformed her into a popular culture icon.  Every day visitors leave flowers at the door of the Duarte family mausoleum.  Fifty years later, Evita remains both the most revered and reviled figure in Argentina.

Exploring La Boca and La Recoleta consumed only one day traveling at the pace of a vital 90-year-old. We spent two more days in this beautiful city before setting out for more adventures along the Atlantic coast of South America.