Buenos Aires - 9. Tangos and Swimming Pools

Calle Corrientes in Buenos Aires is the ‘Broadway’ of Argentina, and there are many, many theatres, shows, “Tangos” going on all the time. 

Even while we were visiting in the Winter months, it was difficult to ignore the sheer amount of entertainment options available all down the avenue and beyond. In fact, the arts are so alive in Buenos Aires, that when a historic theatre closes down, the country’s leading book chain, El Ateneo (Argentina’s Chapters), buys it and restores it for literary lovers. You could spend all day in one of Buenos Aires’ gorgeous book shops just gazing at the murals (or I could anyway.)

    The Tango, a dance originated in Buenos Aires, is actually recognized as a “UN World Heritage Site”, even though it is a dance and not a physical site; it is a sight. Ha H

ha, or we were a sight anyway when we tried a lesson one night with a group before the theatre’s main show. It is amazing how many variations of the Tango there actually are, and any number of shows use this diverse dance form to illustrate the story they are expressing. We only learned the simple 8-step move, but they gave us a little certificate anyway; movement is always worthwhile fun.

Besides dancing and walking to get our exercise, we tried to go swimming, but swimming and working out in a gym is tightly controlled by the ministry of health in Argentina, and unless you are a citizen with a doctor’s note, you cannot visit a public pool. That’s how medically important as a treatment swimming is in Buenos Aires – you need a prescription to go! We laughed at this at first, and thought perhaps it was another language mishap, but no, we had this confirmed by a very competent English-Spanish speaker: “you cannot go swimming or to the gym anywhere; you are not a citizen, and cannot get a note.” Okay, that’s clear. So if you want to swim in Winter in Buenos Aires, stay at the Hilton.

Buenos Aires - 8. The Academic View

Never try to start your day in a second language. This morning, at sun-up (well, 8:30 since it’s Winter), I asked a man for a croissant and coffee in French, then proceeded to say, “thank you for the bathroom Madam” as he handed me a chicken empanada. Not my best example of communication in Spanish, luckily, few things change much in academia and, for the rest of the day, various academic seminars left a comforting impression of how similar educational issues in Argentina are.

     One of the most famous educators to come out of South America this past century was Paulo Freire, and the World Comparative Congress on Education (WCCES) reinforced this. Freire was a Brazilian educator whose “pedagogy of the oppressed” was revolutionary in the 60s in South America, and elsewhere in the 80s after the New York Times wrote a huge series on Freire’s work. He is best known for his ‘Angicos’ project which sought to teach literacy and ground-breaking politics to Brazilians in poverty, the people ‘who didn’t have voice’. Today, he is still cited in almost every educational paper on ethics and equality and politics. His thought was that to change education, to make society better, you have to give voice to those who do not have one – you have to bring education into the public sphere.

     Half a decade later, educators still argue over how to do that. How do you provide a voice? How do you teach literacy?

How do you bring diversity to education? Arguments we hear over and over again in parliaments and board rooms across the continent. At conferences, educators argue how much ground has been gained since the Angicos project. UNESCO, a world organization with a focus on education for the masses, has just been given a new leader – the World Bank, and it is thought that this leader may have a different focus for education – commodity rather than quality.

  Education-as-a-commodity is probably one of the biggest changes in education since Freire. Students are spoken of in ‘units’; at universities as ‘BIUs’ (basic income units); and in terms of ‘transfer per’ amounts. Education always involved finance, but never so much as it does today. European publishing conglomerates write curriculum and content dependent directly upon how much a book can sell. Education, in short, is big business.

   When UNESCO came out with the Jacques Delors report, the four pillars of global learning – learning to know; learning to do; learning to be; and learning to live together – academics world-wide embraced the ‘all encompassing curriculum’, the ‘curriculum for all’, and yet how does a ‘global curriculum’ translate on the government level? As ‘learning to make money’.

   Here, in Argentina, that is their argument too: ‘there is too much economy in education and not enough equality.’

  I guess that is the one thing we all share in our global society: we are all worried about how it is going to be paid for!

Buenos Aires - 7. Empanadas with Yerba Mate

Any city in the World has its food specialties, and Buenos Aires certainly surprised us. After spending a week shopping and eating within this large South American capital, we have found four (4) unusual foods that the locals love: empanadas; mate.de coca; pizza; and vaco.

   Yes, Buenos Aires, and Argentina, in general has always been known for its fine cuts of beef. Peruvians say that when they go out to eat, they always ask if the bistek is ‘Argentinian’ because “everyone knows that Argentinia makes the best steak.” We did have very fine steak in two restaurants while we were visiting the city, but even with each home having its own parilla, or barbeque, it was impossible to find filets in butcher shops or in the supermercados to make on your own. Apparently, there are more and more livestock farmers turning their grazing fields into soy beans because the Chinese export market for soy is so lucrative, and let’s face it: a cow takes quite a few years to fatten up to Argentinian quality. So if you want to sample original, melt-in-your-mouth parilla vaco, then do it quickly. This Buenos Aires food specialty, once found everywhere and still prized, is quickly becoming extinct.

   The same locals who make empanadas also make pizzas, and the two seem to marry well as far as an individual business is concerned.

Every resident suggested a different favourite pizza place, or a favourite empanada maker. “The best pizzeria” was always the source of some heated arguments amongst the locals. We couldn’t tell the difference ourselves, as the fresh empanadas were made right in front of us and slid under the grill. Anything freshly made and warm from the oven is always fabulous. Who doesn’t love freshly made ….well, anything really!

  Pizzas are, without exception, deep dish, and they do not come with all the toppings. They come with: tomatoes, olives, onions, and either ham or sausage. That is a really big order. But anyone with a lactose intolerance beware. If you order pizza in Buenos Aires, it comes with a 

pound of cheese, real cheese. That is why it is deep dish (it has to be to hold all of that melted mozzarella).

   Finally, if you are walking around the city on a weekend, and notice people with hot water thermoses pouring them overtop of a cup full of herbs, then drinking whatever is at the bottom out of a metal straw – that is mate.de coca. Mate is an herbal tea we know as ‘Yerba mate’, and it is so popular in Argentina that even the Pope himself has been photographed drinking it on the subway. People carry their cups and hot water everywhere. Mate is also a very communal drink. Everyone shares the same cup and straw, and the group brings one thermos of hot water for everyone during the day.

It is a bitter tea, a little like a medicinal green tea or raspberry leaf, and shops and markets are filled with all kinds of different cups and straw designs for sale (a lot like our travel coffee mugs in North America).

Of course, if you are at an academic conference in Buenos Aires, just go to the booksellers: there, they offer liquor to you as you browse!

Or, if you have a sweet tooth like the men in my family, one of the many 'petit pastry' shops in Buenos Aires will fill you up for a few pesos. Each bakery is filled with miniature (to us) croissants, cakes, and danishes about a quarter of the size we would normally see them in North America or Europe.

Buenos Aires - 6. The Art Outside of the Museo

Besides boasting the largest collection of Hispanic art in museos across the city, including Kahlo and Rivera, capital Buenos Aires also has, what must be one of the most impressive collections of graffiti artists anywhere. Perhaps this is due to its dual identity as both a Paris and a camp, but walking anywhere can be a real visual eye-treat.

Painted walls, mosaics, spray painting in all the glorious primary colours as well as more muted tones can’t help but catch your eye. You stop to read local street history, and gaze upon small impressions of the centre. Each section of the city has its own unique set of night artists, and so to celebrate art from the ground-up, this installation of Buenos Aires is visual. Today, we celebrated and documented the city’s less known, but equally talented ‘outside’ artists: