Más Poesía Menos Policía

This is a graffiti message I saw scrawled on a wall opposite of a club I went to Wednesday night, as I was leaving. It basically means ¨More Poetry, Less Policing¨, which I think is an image that really represents the vibe Buenos Aires gives me.

For those of you who don´t know, Argentina is in many ways still reeling from the period of 1976-83 when, under the military government, 30,000 people disappeared (not including the people who were openly wrongfully imprisoned, tortured, and murdered). The walls of Buenos Aires are covered in graffiti, both political and romantic. You might find a ¨JP + MS¨ scrawled next to ¨Peron Lives!¨, a statement that may be in jubilation or in despair. There is a passionate romantic tale underlying the stories of the porteños (people from Buenos Aires); people walk arm-in-arm while making out in the middle of the day, just cuz, instead of walking hand-in-hand and giving pecks just when they say hello or goodbye.

Earlier in the night, when we showed up in our cabs to the club Museum (which was okay but I wasn´t a big fan), there were little kids, probably around the ages of 8 or 9, opening our doors for us saying ¨One dollar. One dollar please.¨ Some people gave them money (e.g. my Swiss friend Claude), some people told them to fuck off (my Dutch friend Leanna), and one person, my British friend Paul, tried to teach them that ¨dollar es americano; es peso en inglés, tambien¨. Since this moment, I´ve noticed I´ve had a quite a few people coming up to me on the street at night, asking for money. One guy kept trying to haggle me for more and I couldn´t remember enough Spanish to comfortably communicate with me and then my Swedish friend Sadaf said if I didn´t wanna pay him any more I didn´t have to and I ended up just going inside, leaving him with a 4-peso donation.

I find this city is a beautiful wonderful place, but it is in a sort of limbo, being torn back and forth between romance and disillusionment. I had a great little conversation with a cab driver who I told I was Canadian. He asked me, ¨Canadá, es mejor de Estados Unidos, sí?¨ to which I replied ¨Errr, ummm, well... sí.¨ He and I then had a fun conversation about fútbol and where he was from and what he thought of Córdoba (cuz I´m going there for a month in three weeks from now). It was really nice conversation, a great connection, and he warned me, in a very friendly manner, about the craziness of the Boca Juniors soccer stadium La Bombonera (which I´m going to this Sunday with some folks). It was one of those instances that I had come to Buenos Aires for, to really see the people for who they are. To see the wonderful warmth that people extend to each other and strangers, especially those who have come to their land to learn their language. But at the same time, if you want to see the real Buenos Aires, you can´t ignore the kids opening your cab door asking for money. You can´t ignore the guy hassling you for pizza money outside your door. You can´t ignore the people in Plaza de Mayo (the city center where the country´s headquarters La Casa Rosada) who sleep on a bed of garbage bags that spill their contents onto their clothes and the street.

I really am loving it here. And I guess I do get a bit of a thrill, in a sociologist sort of way, from seeing these situations firsthand. It´s sad. But there´s also a lot of beauty and excitement coming from people in the same situations as the guy who was hassling me for pizza money. And there´s so much here. It´s a city chock full of experiences and sites and cultures and neighbourhoods.

I look forward to seeing the fútbol match in La Bombonera... apparently my British friends Tom and James got spit on (not on purpose, just that there´s a lot of spitting). It, too, is supposed to capture the passion (certainly) and the disillusionment (perhaps) of the porteños.