Buenos Aires: Stylish city, dark past

For tourists, Buenos Aires, the Paris of the South, is a welcoming city with much to explore. But PETER CALDER learns that its people will never forget or forgive the crimes of the "dirty war."

His name was Max and, perhaps because it is the same as my son's, talking to him both eased and sharpened my sense of homesickness. He was sitting in the sun on a park bench in the Plaza De Mayo, swaying slightly to the music pounding from his Walkman through tattered headphones held together with insulating tape.

The plaza, one of many starting points of Buenos Aires' wide avenues, is a favourite stop for tourists. At one end squats the Casa Rosada. This city's presidential palace is not the White House but the Pink House and the colour, they say, was originally made from mixing pigs' blood into the plaster. It was from the balcony of the Casa Rosada that Eva Peron delivered her impassioned addresses to crowds of a quarter-million.

On the day I arrive, the building is in the throes of a year-long renovation. The President is living elsewhere and the scaffolding which snakes across its facade is coyly concealed behind a 100m-wide screen of scrim on which its perfect likeness has been laboriously painted.

It's an unconsciously apt emblem of the Argentine obsession with appearance. Dozens of police patrol the palace's street frontage even though, as two of the more bored-looking concede to me, there is no one inside to guard. Yet in a country where unemployment never seems to drop below 20 per cent and civilian state servants are occasionally told there won't be a payday this month because the coffers are bare, police and soldiers abound. History tells any South American leader that it's sensible to keep the military happy.

So even though the palace is empty, a horse guards' parade stops traffic for half an hour and a small squad of braided soldiers, with unsheathed swords at ramrod attention, march slowly and ceremoniously through the plaza precisely at 11 am.

Their spit-shined, knee-length boots, with faux spurs jingling, stamp on the dozen ghostly figures on the plaza's small cobblestones. The symbolism is obvious: these are the painted outlines of corpses that we have seen in old black-and-white murder mysteries. But the dates, presumably of death, catch my eye. The earliest is 1993, and all come well within the decade of the civilian presidency of the democratically elected Carlos Saul Menem who was constitutionally required to stand down at the country's last elections. At intervals on the ground, painted words underline the point: "Ni olvido, ni perdon!" they demand: "Neither forget nor forgive."

What had happened here? Like most, I was familiar with Argentina's "dirty war" of the 70s when at least 30,000 "dissidents" were hustled into matt-black Ford Falcons and never seen again. Even now each Thursday, the so-called "Mothers of the Plaza De Mayo" maintain their quarter-century silent vigil in front of the palace, holding aloft pictures of the "desaparecidos" - their children who disappeared.

I had spent a week in Buenos Aires in the mid-70s, only months after the grandly named Process of National Reorganisation had begun. In name it was an effort to modernise the country's political culture and economy, but in practice it was a sustained and bloody exercise in state terrorism which was brought to an end only when a desperate junta, in a foolhardy attempt to revive its flagging fortunes, undertook the 1982 invasion of the Falklands.

Yet memories of that time are engraved on my mind: truckloads of heavily armed soldiers tearing along almost empty streets and swaggering, pot-bellied macho types in plain clothes demanding tourists' passports and enjoying their owners' discomfort as they slowly, painstakingly examined every stamp.

Inflation was rampant: it extrapolated to 26,000 per cent a year in the week I was there and it was easy to get 10 times the official exchange rate on the black market - as often as not out of the wallet or handbag of a bank teller. Five American dollars bought 24 hours of luxury.

These days the visitor to Buenos Aires is intimidated by none of these things. The restaurants are crowded till late and shop-windows are full, even if prices are Paris-high. But still those ghostly outlines in chalk.

"I'm too young to remember, but too old to forget," said 21-year-old Max. He was happy to answer my question within earshot of two armed police but he declined my request to take a photograph of him. Even for those too young to remember, photographs taken by strangers can have a chilling connotation.

He pointed to a figure at our feet, the memorial of a man who led a student demonstration, was arrested and died in police custody.

"Nobody knows what happened," he said. "We have never been told. But we will not stop asking."

For the tourist, Buenos Aires holds none of the uncertainties that its inhabitants endure. The police - once my peers, they now seem young enough to be my children - are courteous and helpful and the city is upbeat and sophisticated.

In Avenida Corrientes, the city's Broadway, three-storey theatrefront billboards advertise Latin versions of big hits: Art, The Odd Couple, The Merry Wives of Windsor all in Spanish, and an arts festival has imported foreign productions including a piece based on Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, directed by Peter Brooks.

The crowded cafes on the streetfronts of 19th-century buildings offer ample proof of why Buenos Aires is called the Paris of the South. Literally a city of immigrants - the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges once famously proclaimed that "everyone here is really from somewhere else" - Buenos Aires is the continent's most European city, struggling to live down its violent past.

Nowhere is the city's history more brightly depicted than in La Boca. Its riot of corrugated iron walls make it literally the most colourful of the capital's many barrios.

Once a squalid jumble of riverside shanties filled with poor Italian immigrants who worked in the meat-packing plants and fish warehouses of the neighbourhood, it is now a must-see tourist stop, as popular with locals as foreigners and crowded with buskers and street painters.

And when a New Zealander of Anglo-Saxon blood tires of the taste of salsa, the city's strong English influence offers an escape. At Conquista 1040, only 10 blocks from the Plaza De Mayo, the Druid Inn beckons: in booths of dark wood, I enjoyed a creamy and tepid pint of Guinness.

The waiter asked me if I wanted to eat. I liked the look of the steak and kidney pie, I said. He smiled. "Claro. Of course you do," he replied, and went to fetch one.

CASENOTES

PAPERWORK: Most foreigners do not need visas. In theory, you'll be issued a free, renewable 90-day tourist card on arrival.

WHEN TO GO: In winter (June-August) or spring the heat and humidity are usually less than in summer (December-February). The city can be very crowded during the first two weeks of July, the Argentine winter holiday.

MONEY: US dollars are legal tender almost everywhere and are preferred if you need to exchange money. Visa and MasterCard are the most widely accepted credit cards. Tipping 10 per cent is customary in restaurants. Bargaining is not common.

WHAT YOU'LL PAY: Argentina is expensive - so expensive that Argentines often take their holidays in "cheap" countries like the United States. But food, lodging and transport can be cheaper than both the US and Europe if you look around. Budget travellers should expect to spend at least $90 to $100 a day; those staying in more comfortable hotels and eating at restaurants, $240 a day. Budget room, $50 to $70; moderate hotel, $70 to $100; top-end, $100+. Budget meal, $10 to $25; moderate, $35 to $50; top-end, $50+.