Buenos Aires Quotes

Early this morning, 1 January 2021, three minutes after midnight, the last human being to be born on earth was killed in a pub brawl in a suburb of Buenos Aires, aged twenty-five years, two months and twelve days.

Brazil was beastly but Buenos Aires the best. Not Tiffany's, but almost.

Nada es tan desconsolador, para un libro, como morir virgen. A mí, casi me sucedió.

Cuando algo bueno nos pasa, hay que saber vivirlo. Hay que lanzarse de cabeza a esa piscina de felicidad, zambullirse sin miedo, perder el traje de baño, empaparse el pelo, irritarse los ojos, tragar agua, apurar hasta quedarse casi sin aire... Dame todos los daños colaterales de la felicidad, pero dame felicidad.

Then with alcoholic talkativeness You've just told me some high spots in your memories. Want to hear mine? They're all connected with the sea. Here's one. When I was on the Squarehead square rigger, bound for Buenos Aires. Full moon in the Trades. The old hooker driving fourteen knots. I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me. I became drunk with the beauty and signing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself -- actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself! To God, if you want to put it that way. Then another time, on the American Line, when I was lookout on the crow's nest in the dawn watch. A calm sea, that time. Only a lazy ground swell and a slow drowsy roll of the ship. The passengers asleep and none of the crew in sight. No sound of man. Black smoke pouring from the funnels behind and beneath me. Dreaming, not keeping looking, feeling alone, and above, and apart, watching the dawn creep like a painted dream over the sky and sea which slept together. Then the moment of ecstatic freedom came. the peace, the end of the quest, the last harbor, the joy of belonging to a fulfillment beyond men's lousy, pitiful, greedy fears and hopes and dreams! And several other times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I have had the same experience. Became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like a veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see -- and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason! *He grins wryly. It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a sea gull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a a little in love with death! TYRONE *Stares at him -- impressed. Yes, there's the makings of a poet in you all right. *Then protesting uneasily. But that's morbid craziness about not being wanted and loving death. EDMUND *Sardonically The *makings of a poet. No, I'm afraid I'm like the guy who is always panhandling for a smoke. He hasn't even got the makings. He's got only the habit. I couldn't touch what I tried to tell you just now. I just stammered. That's the best I'll ever do, I mean, if I live. Well, it will be faithful realism, at least. Stammering is the native eloquence of us fog people.

[Buenos Aires] No nos une el amor sino el espanto. Será por eso que la quiero tanto

A mí se me hace cuento que empezó Buenos Aires: La juzgo tan eterna como el agua y como el aire.

Edimburgo o York o Santiago de Compostela pueden mentir eternidad; no así Buenos Aires, que hemos visto brotar de un modo esporádico, entre los huecos y los callejones de tierra.

On February 14, I received a telegram from Buenos Aires urging me to return home immediately; my father was "not at all well." God forgive me, but the prestige of being the recipient of an urgent telegram, the desire to communicate to all of Fray Bentos the contradiction between the negative form of the news and the absoluteness of the adverbial phrase, the temptation to dramatize my grief by feigning a virile stoicism-all this perhaps distracted me from any possibility of real pain.

The Stadium Have you ever entered an empty stadium? Try it. Stand in the middle of the field and listen. There is nothing less empty than an empty stadium. There is nothing less mute than stands bereft of spectators. At Wembley, shouts from the 1966 World Cup, which England won, still resound, and if you listen very closely you can hear groans from 1953 when England fell to the Hungarians. Montevideo’s Centenario Stadium sighs with nostalgia for the glory days of Uruguayan soccer. Maracanã is still crying over Brazil’s 1950 World Cup defeat. At Bombonera in Buenos Aires, drums boom from half a century ago. From the depths of Azteca Stadium, you can hear the ceremonial chants of the ancient Mexican ball game. The concrete terraces of Camp Nou in Barcelona speak Catalan, and the stands of San Mamés in Bilbao talk in Basque. In Milan, the ghosts of Giuseppe Meazza scores goals that shake the stadium bearing his name. The final match of the 1974 World Cup, won by Germany, is played day after day and night after night at Munich’s Olympic Stadium. King Fahd Stadium in Saudi Arabia has marble and gold boxes and carpeted stands, but it has no memory or much of anything to say.

If you go to Singapore or Amsterdam or Seoul or Buenos Aires or Islamabad or Johannesburg or Tampa or Istanbul or Kyoto, you'll find that the people differ wildly in the way they dress, in their marriage customs, in the holidays they observe, in their religious rituals, and so on, but they all expect the food to be under lock and key. It's all owned, and if you want some, you'll have to buy it.

His wife, Emilie, still lived, without any financial help from him, in her little house in San Vicente, south of Buenos Aires. She lives there at the time of the writing of this book. As she was in Brinnlitz, she is a figure of quiet dignity. In a documentary made by German television in 1973, she spoke—without any of the abandoned wife’s bitterness or sense of grievance—about Oskar and Brinnlitz, about her own behavior in Brinnlitz. Perceptively, she remarked that Oskar had done nothing astounding before the war and had been unexceptional since. He was fortunate, therefore, that in that short fierce era between 1939 and 1945 he had met people who summoned forth his deeper talents.

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate. I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship. I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things. Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone, and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him. I do not know which of us has written this page.

Buenos Aires te digiere, pero antes tiene que masticarte.

Más que ilustre, me siento ilustrador Dicho al recibir el título de Ciudadano Ilustre de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, el 10 de marzo de 2009.

En París todo le era Buenos Aires y viceversa; en lo más ahincado del amor padecía y acataba la pérdida y el olvido.

Already Buenos Aires was dyeing the horizon with pink fires, soon to flaunt its diadem of jewels, like some fairy hoard.

If I had to do it over again, I would have danced like Buenos Aires. I'd be a helicopter leaf, a snowflake falling. I would have stayed there spinning wild and lonely across the dark, lonely sky.

Somehow Geryon made it to adolescence. Then he met Herakles and the kingdoms of his life all shifted down a few notches. ... Geryon was going into the Bus Depot one Friday night about three a.m. to get change to call home. Herakles stepped oof the bus from New Mexico and Geryon came fast around the corner of the platform and there it was one of those moments that is the opposite of blindness. The world poured back and forth between their eyes once or twice.

Temperee, riante, (comme le sont celles d'automne dans la tres gracieuse ville de Buenos Aires) resplendissait la matinee de ce 28 avril: dix heures venait de sonner aux horloges et, a cet instant, eveillee, gesticulant sous le soleil matinal, la Grande Capitale du Sud etait un epi d'hommes qui se disputaient a grands cris la possession du jour et de la terre.

Cuando amas a alguien, se convierte en una parte de ti. Está en todo lo que haces. Está en el aire que respiras, en el agua que bebes; su voz permanece en tus oídos y sus ideas en tu cabeza. conoces sus sueños porque sus pesadillas se clavan en tu corazón, y sus sueños bueno son también los tuyos. Y no crees que es perfecto, sino que conoces sis defectos, la autentica verdad de sus defectos y la sombra de todos sus secretos, y eso no te hace alejarte; de hecho, lo amas más por eso, porque no quieres que sea perfecto. Tu quieres a ese alguien. Quieres..." Julian Blackthorn

«Si tienes vocación para la pintura, tarde o temprano vas a pintar y es mejor que sea temprano. ¿Por qué tiene que ser en París o Buenos Aires? Sólo necesitas disciplina. Es como el piano, ¿sabes? Rara vez da para vivir, pero hay que intentarlo», argumentó Roser.

When asked about the survey, Buenos Aires's mayor, Mauricio Macri, dismissed it as inaccurate and proceeded to explain why women couldn't possibly have a problem with being shouted at by strangers. "All women like to be told compliments," he said. "Those who say they're offended are lying. Even though you'll say something rude, like 'What a cute ass you have'...it's all good. There is nothing more beautiful than the beauty of women, right? It's almost the reason that men breathe." To be clear, this is the mayor. Upon reading this quote, I investigated, and can confirm that at the time of this interview he was not wearing one of those helmets that holds beers and has straws that go into your mouth.

bueno, primero tienes que imaginar cómo era estar en la arena. Era como ser un insecto atrapado bajo un cuenco lleno de aire hirviendo.

On February 14th, I got a telegraph from Buenos Aires.

Jam në Buenos Aires. Shpresoj t'ju shoh sonte, shpresoj t'ju shoh nesër. E di që ne do t'jemi të lumtur bashkë (të lumtur dhe ndonjëherë memecë dhe madhështisht budallenj).

I had to live my life, and to do that I needed to go to Buenos Aires. I had to live my life, and to do that I needed to go to Buenos Aires.

But get this: you're free. Freedom is the greatest gift to the artist. Don't waste it. Go to Buenos Aires. Eat some steak. Get a fresh perspective on things.

each time I cross one of the streets in South Buenos Aires, I think of you, Helen;

Hard to believe Buenos Aires had any beginning. I feel it to be as eternal as air and water.

Alone and unobserved Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, was at prayer in the way that Grandma Rosa would have been.

It would be to hear resonating within oneself the shouting of the Mothers of the Disappeared in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires in the 1970s, and to turn instead to other things.

Buenos Aires’te çok bilmek yerine her şeyi bilmek daha faydalıdır,” dedi Albay.

aceptó un largo ensayo mío para la revista Les Lettres françaises que él dirigía en Buenos Aires con el apoyo de aquella admirable protectora de las letras que se llamó Victoria Ocampo.

I remember Buenos Aires, people dancing under a volcano, girls with endless legs and older women waiting for the return of their loved ones, the disappeared, a return that will never happen.

Buenos Aires, sophisticated and fascinating, is the Paris of Latin America; with a vibrant cultural scene, the best theater and live music, it is the birthplace of many world-famous writers.

Cambia mucho las cosas, en tal sentido, recorrer la Mancha con el Quijote en las manos, visitar Palermo habiendo leído El Gatopardo, pasear por Buenos Aires con Borges o Bioy Casares en el recuerdo, o caminar por Hisarlik sabiendo que allí hubo una ciudad llamada Troya, y que los zapatos del viajero llevan el mismo polvo por el que Aquiles arrastró el cadáver de Héctor atado a su carro.

Tengo esta idea de que la razón por la que tenemos sueños es que estamos pensando en cosas que no sabemos que las estamos pensando, y esas cosas, bueno, se nos escapan a nuestros sueños. Tal vez somos como las llantas con mucho aire en ellas. El aire tiene que escapar. Eso es lo que son los sueños.

People spoke to foreigners with an averted gaze, and everybody seemed to know somebody who had just vanished. The rumors of what had happened to them were fantastic and bizarre though, as it turned out, they were only an understatement of the real thing. Before going to see General Videla […], I went to […] check in with Los Madres: the black-draped mothers who paraded, every week, with pictures of their missing loved ones in the Plaza Mayo. (‘Todo mi familia!’ as one elderly lady kept telling me imploringly, as she flourished their photographs. ‘Todo mi familia!’) From these and from other relatives and friends I got a line of questioning to put to the general. I would be told by him, they forewarned me, that people ‘disappeared’ all the time, either because of traffic accidents and family quarrels or, in the dire civil-war circumstances of Argentina, because of the wish to drop out of a gang and the need to avoid one’s former associates. But this was a cover story. Most of those who disappeared were openly taken away in the unmarked Ford Falcon cars of the Buenos Aires military police. I should inquire of the general what precisely had happened to Claudia Inez Grumberg, a paraplegic who was unable to move on her own but who had last been seen in the hands of his ever-vigilant armed forces [….] I possess a picture of the encounter that still makes me want to spew: there stands the killer and torturer and rape-profiteer, as if to illustrate some seminar on the banality of evil. Bony-thin and mediocre in appearance, with a scrubby moustache, he looks for all the world like a cretin impersonating a toothbrush. I am gripping his hand in a much too unctuous manner and smiling as if genuinely delighted at the introduction. Aching to expunge this humiliation, I waited while he went almost pedantically through the predicted script, waving away the rumored but doubtless regrettable dematerializations that were said to be afflicting his fellow Argentines. And then I asked him about Senorita Grumberg. He replied that if what I had said was true, then I should remember that ‘terrorism is not just killing with a bomb, but activating ideas. Maybe that’s why she’s detained.’ I expressed astonishment at this reply and, evidently thinking that I hadn’t understood him the first time, Videla enlarged on the theme. ‘We consider it a great crime to work against the Western and Christian style of life: it is not just the bomber but the ideologist who is the danger.’ Behind him, I could see one or two of his brighter staff officers looking at me with stark hostility as they realized that the general—El Presidente—had made a mistake by speaking so candidly. […] In response to a follow-up question, Videla crassly denied—‘rotondamente’: ‘roundly’ denied—holding Jacobo Timerman ‘as either a journalist or a Jew.’ While we were having this surreal exchange, here is what Timerman was being told by his taunting tormentors: Argentina has three main enemies: Karl Marx, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of society; Sigmund Freud, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of the family; and Albert Einstein, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of time and space. […] We later discovered what happened to the majority of those who had been held and tortured in the secret prisons of the regime. According to a Navy captain named Adolfo Scilingo, who published a book of confessions, these broken victims were often destroyed as ‘evidence’ by being flown out way over the wastes of the South Atlantic and flung from airplanes into the freezing water below. Imagine the fun element when there’s the surprise bonus of a Jewish female prisoner in a wheelchair to be disposed of… we slide open the door and get ready to roll her and then it’s one, two, three… go!

In 2001 he surprised the staff of Muñiz Hospital in Buenos Aires by asking for a jar of water and then proceeding to wash the feet of twelve patients hospitalised with AIDS-related complications. He then kissed their feet.

Up there in my little room I was reading revolutionary works and had the feeling that the whole world might explode at any moment; then when I went out, I found life going on as usual, peacefully and calmly: office workers were going off to their jobs, tradesmen were selling their wares in their shops, and one could even see people lazing on benches in the squares, just sitting there watching the hours go by: all of them equally dull and monotonous. Once again, and this would not be the last time, I felt more or less as though I were a stranger in the world, as though I had awakened in it all of a sudden and had no notion of its laws and meaning. I wandered aimlessly about the streets of Buenos Aires, I watched its people, I sat down on a bench in the Plaza Constitucion and meditated. Then I would return to my little room, feeling lonelier than ever. And it was only when I buried myself in books that I seemed to be in touch with reality again, as though that existence out in the streets were, by contrast, a sort of vast dream unfolding in the minds of hypnotized people. It took me many years to realize that in those streets, those public sqaures, and even in those business establishments and offices of Buenos Aires there were thousands who thought or felt more or less as I did at that moment: lonely anguished people, people pondering the sense and nonsense of life, people who had the feeling that they were seeing a world that had gone to sleep round about them, a world made up of men and women who had been hypnotized or turned into robots.

They docked at Buenos Aires. Cunégonde, Captain Candide, and the old woman went to call on the Governor, Don Fernando d'Ibaraa y Figueora y Mascarenes y Lampourdos y Souza. This grandee had a pride to match his many names. He spoke to people with the most noble disdain, sticking his nose so far in the air, speaking in such a mercilessly loud voice, adopting so high and mighty a tone, and affecting so haughty a gait, that all who greeted him were also tempted to hit him.

Aster Spanos: Maybe she has a whole new life, somewhere amazing. Like, Buenos Aires or Monte Carlo. Don’t get me wrong, I’d give her hell for doing this to us if she ever comes home. But consider the alternatives. If she didn’t run away...

At a lunchtime reception for the diplomatic corps in Washington, given the day before the inauguration of Barack Obama as president, I was approached by a good-looking man who extended his hand. 'We once met many years ago,' he said. 'And you knew and befriended my father.' My mind emptied, as so often happens on such occasions. I had to inform him that he had the advantage of me. 'My name is Hector Timerman. I am the ambassador of Argentina.' In my above album of things that seem to make life pointful and worthwhile, and that even occasionally suggest, in Dr. King’s phrase as often cited by President Obama, that there could be a long arc in the moral universe that slowly, eventually bends toward justice, this would constitute an exceptional entry. It was also something more than a nudge to my memory. There was a time when the name of Jacobo Timerman, the kidnapped and tortured editor of the newspaper La Opinion in Buenos Aires, was a talismanic one. The mere mention of it was enough to elicit moans of obscene pleasure from every fascist south of the Rio Grande: finally in Argentina there was a strict ‘New Order’ that would stamp hard upon the international Communist-Jewish collusion. A little later, the mention of Timerman’s case was enough to derail the nomination of Ronald Reagan’s first nominee as undersecretary for human rights; a man who didn’t seem to have grasped the point that neo-Nazism was a problem for American values. And Timerman’s memoir, Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number, was the book above all that clothed in living, hurting flesh the necessarily abstract idea of the desaparecido: the disappeared one or, to invest it with the more sinister and grisly past participle with which it came into the world, the one who has been ‘disappeared.’ In the nuances of that past participle, many, many people vanished into a void that is still unimaginable. It became one of the keywords, along with escuadrone de la muerte or ‘death squads,’ of another arc, this time of radical evil, that spanned a whole subcontinent. Do you know why General Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina was eventually sentenced? Well, do you? Because he sold the children of the tortured rape victims who were held in his private prison. I could italicize every second word in that last sentence without making it any more heart-stopping. And this subhuman character was boasted of, as a personal friend and genial host, even after he had been removed from the office he had defiled, by none other than Henry Kissinger. So there was an almost hygienic effect in meeting, in a new Washington, as an envoy of an elected government, the son of the brave man who had both survived and exposed the Videla tyranny.

The closest most people have ever come to understanding what an investment banker does may have been on October 24, 1995, when they heard the outrageous special interest story of the day. The wire services released the story first. It was quickly picked up and parroted by almost every major media outlet in the country as a classic example of Wall Street excess. A fifty-eight-year-old frustrated managing director from Trust Company of the West, on an airplane trip from Buenos Aires to New York City, downed an excessive number of cocktails, got out of his seat in the first-class cabin of a United Airlines flight, dropped his pants, and took a crap on the service cart. There you have it. That’s what bankers do: consume, process, and disseminate.

Norma Shearer: Mas si por miedo has de buscar en el Amor sólo paz y placer, entonces mejor será que pases de largo por su umbral, rumbo al mundo sin inviernos ni primaveras ni veranos, donde reirás, pero no a carcajadas, y llorarás, pero no todas tus lágrimas.

For all its outwardly easy Latin charm, Buenos Aires was making me feel sick and upset, so I did take that trip to the great plains where the gaucho epics had been written, and I did manage to eat a couple of the famous asados: the Argentine barbecue fiesta (once summarized by Martin Amis's John Self as 'a sort of triple mixed grill swaddled in steaks') with its slavish propitiation of the sizzling gods of cholesterol. Yet even this was spoiled for me: my hosts did their own slaughtering and the smell of drying blood from the abattoir became too much for some reason (I actually went 'off' steak for a good few years after this trip). Then from the intrepid Robert Cox of the Buenos Aires Herald I learned another jaunty fascist colloquialism: before the South Atlantic dumping method was adopted, the secret cremation of maimed and tortured bodies at the Navy School had been called an asado. In my youth I was quite often accused, and perhaps not unfairly, of being too politicized and of trying to import politics into all discussions. I would reply that it wasn’t my fault if politics kept on invading the private sphere and, in the case of Argentina at any rate, I think I was right. The miasma of the dictatorship pervaded absolutely everything, not excluding the aperitifs and the main course.

Queridos jóvenes, buenas tardes. Quiero primero darles las gracias por el testimonio de fe que ustedes están dando al mundo. Siempre oí decir que a los cariocas no les gusta el frío y la lluvia. Pero ustedes están mostrando que la fe de ustedes es más fuerte que el frío y la lluvia. ¡Enhorabuena! Ustedes son verdaderamente grandes héroes. Veo en ustedes la belleza del rostro joven de Cristo, y mi corazón se llena de alegría. Recuerdo la primera Jornada Mundial de la Juventud a nivel internacional. Se celebró en 1987 en Argentina, en mi ciudad de Buenos Aires. Guardo vivas en la memoria estas palabras de Juan Pablo II a los jóvenes: “¡Tengo tanta esperanza en vosotros! Espero sobre todo que renovéis vuestra fidelidad a Jesucristo y a su cruz redentora” (Discurso a los Jóvenes, 11 de abril 1987:

When religious sociologists discovered that a parish had a zone of influence which typically radiated 700 metres around its church, Bergoglio told his priests – knowing that Buenos Aires churches were on average 2,000 metres apart – to set up something in between the churches:

Sybil and Nancy leaned over to catch a glimpse of the sun sparkling on the muddy waters of the River Plate. The skyscrapers stood proudly in clumps and Sybil assumed that the patches of green were parks. In no time the plane was screeching to a halt and they had arrived in Buenos Aires.

I was extremely shy of approaching my hero but he, as I found out, was sorely in need of company. By then almost completely blind, he was claustrated and even a little confused and this may help explain the rather shocking attitude that he took to the blunt trauma that was being inflicted in the streets and squares around him. 'This was my country and it might be yet,' he intoned to me when the topic first came up, as it had to: 'But something came between it and the sun.' This couplet he claimed (I have never been able to locate it) was from Edmund Blunden, whose gnarled hand I had been so excited to shake all those years ago, but it was not the Videla junta that Borges meant by the allusion. It was the pre-existing rule of Juan Perón, which he felt had depraved and corrupted Argentine society. I didn't disagree with this at all—and Perón had victimized Borges's mother and sister as well as having Borges himself fired from his job at the National Library—but it was nonetheless sad to hear the old man saying that he heartily preferred the new uniformed regime, as being one of 'gentlemen' as opposed to 'pimps.' This was a touch like listening to Evelyn Waugh at his most liverish and bufferish. (It was also partly redeemed by a piece of learned philology or etymology concerning the Buenos Aires dockside slang for pimp: canfinflero. 'A canfinfla, you see,' said Borges with perfect composure, 'is a pussy or more exactly a cunt. So a canfinflero is a trafficker in cunt: in Anglo-Saxon we might say a 'cunter."' Had not the very tango itself been evolved in a brothel in 1880? Borges could talk indefinitely about this sort of thing, perhaps in revenge for having had an oversolicitous mother who tyrannized him all his life.)

When fire swept through the Cromañon nightclub in Buenos Aires in 2004 Bergoglio was one of the first on the scene, arriving before many of the fire engines. Some 175 people had died, with the tragedy being compounded by the fact that the club owners had locked the emergency exits to keep freeloaders out.

Fabien, the pilot bringing the Patagonia air mail from the far south to Buenos Aires, could mark night coming on by certain signs that called to mind the waters of a harbor—a calm expanse beneath, faintly rippled by the lazy clouds—and he seemed to be entering a vast anchorage, an immensity of blessedness.

Argentina's like a novel, he said, a lie, or make-believe at best. Buenos Aires is full of crooks and loudmouths, a hellish place, with nothing to recommend it except the women, and some of the writers, but only a few. Ah, but the pampas—the pampas are eternal. A limitless cemetery, that's what they're like.

Claude puede ser amable y bueno, y eso no puedes serlo tú, con toda tu política y tus aires de sabio. Con todo lo que he hecho siempre por ti, lo único que tú haces es tratarme a patadas. Quiero que alguien me trate bien antes de morir. Lo aprendiste todo, Ignatius, todo, salvo cómo debe comportarse un ser humano.

Yeah,” he said. “Hey. Jem asked me to come to Buenos Aires and help him out. Do you want to come with?” Lily lit up. “Do I want to come on a bro road trip with you, rushing to the aid of gorgeous damsel-in-distress Jem I’d-love-to-climb-’em Carstairs?” “So, yes.” Lily’s smile was wide enough to show fangs. “Hell yes.

Aquel chico no iba a traerme nada bueno… pero no podía respirar. Nuestros labios estaban tan cerca que quería aproximarme para que se encontrasen a medio camino. Quería saber si eran tan suaves como parecían… —¡Hola, chicos! —exclamó Dee. Daemon se echó hacia atrás rápidamente, dejando un buen trecho entre nosotros, para que pasara el aire.

Zoe returned her attention to the map of southern Argentina on the computer. “What on earth could possibly be worth using that much nuclear power on? There’s nothing around there but mountains and sea.” “There’s guanacos,” Murray said helpfully. “What the heck’s a guanaco?” Zoe asked. “It’s a relative of the camel,” Murray explained. “It kind of looks like an anorexic llama. From what I understand, the pampas down there are full of them.” “And you think SPYDER wants to nuke them all?” Zoe said. “What good is a whole bunch of vaporized guanacos?” “Suppose they only nuked one,” Murray said ominously. “What if they focused all that nuclear energy on it? If a single irradiated iguana could turn into Godzilla, just imagine what a giant guanaco would look like. It’d be terrifying!” Zoe gave him a withering look. “The only terrifying thing about this plan is that you actually think it’s possible. Godzilla never existed!” “But maybe he could,” Murray countered. “Or worse . . . Guanacazilla!” He gave a roar that was probably supposed to be half llama, half monster, but it sounded more like an angry hamster. We all considered him for a moment. “Moving on,” Erica said. “Does anyone have a suggestion that isn’t completely idiotic?” “Ha ha,” Murray said petulantly. “You mock me now, but we’ll see who’s laughing when there’s a thirty-story guanaco running rampant through Buenos Aires.

The Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires was altogether more robust. He went out of his way to preface his position by insisting that there is no connection between celibacy and paedophilia. ‘There are psychological perversions that existed prior to choosing a life of celibacy,’ he said. ‘If a priest is a paedophile, he is so before he becomes a priest.

Through a spokesman he told Newsweek Argentina of his ‘unhappiness’ with Benedict’s words. ‘Pope Benedict’s statement doesn’t reflect my own opinions,’ the Archbishop of Buenos Aires declared. ‘These statements will serve to destroy in 20 seconds the careful construction of a relationship with Islam that Pope John Paul II built over the last twenty years.

«Oh, inmortales, el grito sagrado…», de lo que concluí que ser argentino era una forma de inmortalidad.

A Mariano Vedia y Mitre, el intendente porteño que decidió abrir la avenida 9 de julio lo llamaban Guillermo Tell por las manzanas que había derribado.

- ¿Por qué suspirar se siente tan delicioso? - Bueno, es básicamente lo mismo que respirar. Y se siente bien respirar. El aire es delicioso.

En la honda noche universal que apenas contradicen los faroles

But in the spring a postcard came: it was scribbled in pencil, and signed with a lipstick kiss: Brazil was beastly but Buenos Aires the best. Not Tiffany’s, but almost. Am joined at the hip with duhvine $enor. Love? Think so. Anyhoo am looking for somewhere to live ($enor has wife, 7 brats) and will let you know address when I know it myself. Mille tendresse.

Ser pobre implica una más inmediata posesión de la realidad, un atropellar el primer gusto áspero de las cosas: conocimiento que parece faltar a los ricos, como si todo les llegara filtrado.

In 2014 a survey conducted by a nonprofit organization called Stop Street Harassment revealed that more than 60 percent of women in Buenos Aires had experienced intimidation from men who catcalled them.18 To a lot of men in Buenos Aires, women’s concern came as a surprise. When asked about the survey, Buenos Aires’s mayor, Mauricio Macri, dismissed it as inaccurate and proceeded to explain why women couldn’t possibly have a problem with being shouted at by strangers. “All women like to be told compliments,” he said. “Those who say they’re offended are lying. Even though you’ll say something rude, like ‘What a cute ass you have’ . . . it’s all good. There is nothing more beautiful than the beauty of women, right? It’s almost the reason that men breathe.

Pienso cuando maduraban los limones. En el viento de febrero que rompía los tallos de los helechos, antes que el abandono los secara; los limones maduros que llenaban con su olor el viejo patio. El viento bajaba de las montañas en las mañanas de febrero. Y las nubes se quedaban allá arriba en espera de que el tiempo bueno las hiciera bajar al valle; mientras tanto dejaban vacío el cielo azul, dejaban que la luz cayera en el juego del viento haciendo círculos sobre la tierra, removiendo el polvo y batiendo las ramas de los naranjos. Y los gorriones reían; picoteaban las hojas que el aire hacía caer, y reían; dejaban sus plumas entre las espinas de las ramas y perseguían a las mariposas y reían. Era esa época. En febrero, cuando las mañanas estaban llenas de viento, de gorriones y de luz azul. Me acuerdo. Mi madre murió entonces. Que yo debía haber gritado: que mis manos tenían que haberse hecho pedazos estrujando su desesperación. Así hubieras tú querido que fuera. ¿Pero acaso no era alegre aquella mañana? Por la puerta abierta entraba el aire, quebrando las guías de la yedra. En mis piernas comenzaba a crecer el vello entre las venas, y mis manos temblaban tibias al tocar mis senos. Los gorriones jugaban. En las lomas se mecían las espigas. Me dio lástima que ella ya no volviera a ver el juego del viento en los jazmines; que cerrara sus ojos a la luz de los días. ¿Pero por qué iba a llorar?

We were going to ride motorbikes from Paris to the Côte d’Azur, or all the way down the Pacific coast of the USA, from Seattle to Los Angeles; we were going to follow in Che Guevara’s tracks from Buenos Aires to Caracas. Maybe if I’d done all that, I wouldn’t have ended up here, not knowing what to do next. Or maybe, if I’d done all that, I’d have ended up exactly where I am and I would be perfectly contented.

In a plane again, Ashley thought sourly, her nose pressed to the window. Down below, glacier fought granite from horizon to horizon. This was the final leg of the two-day journey. Yesterday, they had flown the eight hundred miles from Buenos Aires to Esperanza, the Argentine army base on the tip on an Antarctic Peninsula. There, Ashley had her first taste of Antarctic air - like ice water poured into her lungs.

Yo solía amar el océano. Todo en ella. Sus arrecifes de coral, sus blancas crestas, sus rugientes olas, las rocas que besan, sus leyendas de piratas y las colas de sirena, Tesoros perdidos y tesoros guardados... Y TODO De sus peces En el mar. Sí, solía amar el océano, Todo sobre ella. La forma en que me cantaba al dormir mientras yo estaba en mi cama Luego me despierta con fuerza Que yo pronto llegué a temer. Sus fábulas, sus mentiras, sus engañosos ojos, Me iría de su sequía Si me importara lo suficiente. Yo solía amar el océano. Todo en ella. Sus arrecifes de coral, sus blancas crestas, sus rugientes olas, las rocas que besan, sus leyendas de piratas y las colas de sirena, tesoros perdidos y tesoros guardados... Y TODO De sus peces En el mar. Bueno, si alguna vez has intentado navegar tu velero a través de sus tempestuosos mares, te darás cuenta de que sus blancas crestas son tus enemigos. Si alguna vez has tratado de nadar hacia la orilla cuando con tu pierna acalambrada y acabas de consumir una gran cena de hamburguesas en In-n-Out27 que te está ahogando, y sus rugientes olas están golpeando el aire fuera de ti, llenando tus pulmones con agua como del mayal sus brazos, tratando de conseguir la atención de alguien, pero tus amigos ¿sólo saludan con la mano de nuevo a ti? Y si alguna vez has crecido con sueños en tu cabeza acerca de la vida, y cómo uno de estos días serías pirata de tu propia nave y tendrías tu propio equipo y que todas las sirenas Te amarían sólo ¿a ti? Bueno, te darás cuenta... Como yo eventualmente me di cuenta... ¿Que todas las cosas buenas de ella? ¿Todo lo bello? No es real. Es falso. Así que sigue con tu océano, Yo me quedo con el Lago.

Que un individuo quiera despertar en otro individuo recuerdos que no pertenecieron más que a un tercero es una paradoja evidente. Ejecutar con despreocupación esa paradoja, es la inocente voluntad de toda biografía.

La Santa Sede guio el rescate. Cosa jamás sucedida, el Congreso eucarístico internacional de 1934 se realizó lejos de Europa, bajo la gran cruz izada sobre las avenidas de Buenos Aires, en el corazón del país más rico, joven y potente de América Latina. La Argentina se candidateó así para devenir la capital de la cristiandad de ultramar, para edificar el orden cristiano al reparo de los vientos seculares que soplaban en el viejo continente.

Ciegamente reclama duración el alma arbitraria cuando la tiene asegurada en vidas ajenas, cuando tú mismo eres la continuación realizada de quienes no alcanzaron tu tiempo y otros serán (y son) tu inmortalidad en la tierra.

Muchos han observado que el miedo supremo es el temor a lo desconocido. Me permito disentir. Creo que el peor terror es el que nos infunde el mismo conocimiento, la pura razón, la certeza fáctica de la existencia de ese horror tan temido.

Tú y yo de la mano como dos buenos amigos; como dos buenos compañeros, unidos para caminar sobre el ancho mundo. Y que no bajen las nubes, que nunca bajen sobre nosotros. Tú, aire de las colinas, las espantarás con esa virtud de que estás llena

He couldn’t have known it, but among the original run of The History of Love, at least one copy was destined to change a life. This particular book was one of the last of the two thousand to be printed, and sat for longer than the rest in a warehouse in the outskirts of Santiago, absorbing the humidity. From there it was finally sent to a bookstore in Buenos Aires. The careless owner hardly noticed it, and for some years it languished on the shelves, acquiring a pattern of mildew across the cover. It was a slim volume, and its position on the shelf wasn’t exactly prime: crowded on the left by an overweight biography of a minor actress, and on the right by the once-bestselling novel of an author that everyone had since forgotten, it hardly left its spine visible to even the most rigorous browser. When the store changed owners it fell victim to a massive clearance, and was trucked off to another warehouse, foul, dingy, crawling with daddy longlegs, where it remained in the dark and damp before finally being sent to a small secondhand bookstore not far from the home of the writer Jorge Luis Borges. The owner took her time unpacking the books she’d bought cheaply and in bulk from the warehouse. One morning, going through the boxes, she discovered the mildewed copy of The History of Love. She’d never heard of it, but the title caught her eye. She put it aside, and during a slow hour in the shop she read the opening chapter, called 'The Age of Silence.' The owner of the secondhand bookstore lowered the volume of the radio. She flipped to the back flap of the book to find out more about the author, but all it said was that Zvi Litvinoff had been born in Poland and moved to Chile in 1941, where he still lived today. There was no photograph. That day, in between helping customers, she finished the book. Before locking up the shop that evening, she placed it in the window, a little wistful about having to part with it. The next morning, the first rays of the rising sun fell across the cover of The History of Love. The first of many flies alighted on its jacket. Its mildewed pages began to dry out in the heat as the blue-gray Persian cat who lorded over the shop brushed past it to lay claim to a pool of sunlight. A few hours later, the first of many passersby gave it a cursory glance as they went by the window. The shop owner did not try to push the book on any of her customers. She knew that in the wrong hands such a book could easily be dismissed or, worse, go unread. Instead she let it sit where it was in the hope that the right reader might discover it. And that’s what happened. One afternoon a tall young man saw the book in the window. He came into the shop, picked it up, read a few pages, and brought it to the register. When he spoke to the owner, she couldn’t place his accent. She asked where he was from, curious about the person who was taking the book away. Israel, he told her, explaining that he’d recently finished his time in the army and was traveling around South America for a few months. The owner was about to put the book in a bag, but the young man said he didn’t need one, and slipped it into his backpack. The door chimes were still tinkling as she watched him disappear, his sandals slapping against the hot, bright street. That night, shirtless in his rented room, under a fan lazily pushing around the hot air, the young man opened the book and, in a flourish he had been fine-tuning for years, signed his name: David Singer. Filled with restlessness and longing, he began to read.

Y además, ¿quién podía decir que quien no era normal era él?, ¿eh? ¿Era normal hacer un agujero en una mochila y mandar por los aires a un niño de ocho años sin saber dónde acabaría? Y ya puestos, ¿era normal querer ser… bueno, tan «normal» en todo momento?

He has spent weeks on the pristine, frosty shore of Lake Baikal in Siberia. He has drunk himself stupid in the fairy-tale blood brothels of old Dubrovnik, lounged in red-smoke dens in Laos, enjoyed the New York blackout of 1977, and more recently, feasted on Vegas showgirls in the Dean Martin suite at the Bellagio. He has watched Hindu abstainers wash away their sins in the Ganges, danced a midnight tango on a boulevard in Buenos Aires, and bitten into a faux geisha under the shade of a shogun pavilion in Kyoto.

A living metaphor for God, sexuality and the struggle in the streets of Buenos Aires comes from the images of lemons vendors. A materialist-based theology finds in them a starting point from which ideology, theology and sexuality can be rewritten from the margins of society, the church and systematic theologies. Our point of departure is the understanding that every theology implies a conscious or unconscious sexual and political praxis, based on reflections and actions developed from certain accepted codifications. These

Leggere vuol dire non essere mai isolati. Leggere vuol dire avere amici cari, intimi, che spesso hanno il buon gusto di essere morti e se ne stanno in ogni caso, in silenzio. Leggere vuol dire essere di San Paolo e di Buenos Aires, di Canton e di Tokyo, di Parigi e di Ulan-Bator, di New York e di Samarcanda. Leggere vuol dire non conoscere mai dolore che un'ora di lettura non possa risolvere. Leggere vuol dire essere accompagnati nel dolore e nel lutto, nella sofferenza e nella sventura, come nella gioia e nel sorriso, nella felicità e nell'allegria

[…]Dijo Mary Pickford que las películas deben tener un desenlace alegre para las ciudades, y uno triste para las aldeas. El desenlace de nuestros espectáculos es el que corresponde a la aldea. Lo que la ‘Novia de América’ no vio es el embrutecimiento imperialista de Sudamérica por las comedias musicales norteamericanas. En ellas se nos dan, fundidos, el arte más consumado con la estolidez moral y literaria más insultante. […] El cine debe ser interpretado en calidad de producto internacional, standard, hecho para todos los países del globo, con escenas movibles de quitar o poner, Según los diferentes mercados de consumo. Se trata, como es natural, de productos envasados para el expendio libre. El condimento patético o moral se usa según las distancias al ecuador, y las películas que destinan a nuestras gentes, traen en cierto modo las especies que gustamos. Ignoro qué cantidad de moralina se emplea para Buenos Aires. […] El cine puede servir de experiencia de arte y vida, pero también puede mutilar con traumas incurables los órganos de perfeccionamiento y vigorización del alma. (E.M.E., 1940)

In 2009, Benedict faced a firestorm after he lifted the excommunication of Richard Williamson, a British bishop based in Buenos Aires.61 Bertone, who oversaw Williamson’s vetting, had apparently not even Googled him. If he had, he would have discovered an interview the bishop gave only three days before to Swedish television, in which he said about the Holocaust: “I believe that the historical evidence is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler. I believe there were no gas chambers.

¿Cuándo empezó esto que ahora va a terminar con mi asesinato? Esta feroz lucidez que ahora tengo es como un faro y puedo aprovechar un intensísimo haz hacia vastas regiones de mi memoria: veo caras, ratas en un granero, calles de Buenos Aires o Argel, prostitutas y marineros; muevo el haz y veo cosas más lejanas: una fuente en la estancia, una bochornosa siesta, pájaros y ojos que pincho con un clavo. Tal vez ahí, pero quién sabe: puede ser mucho más atrás, en épocas que ahora no recuerdo, en períodos remotísimos de mi primera infancia. No sé. ¿Qué importa, además?

Thus, being the only begotten son of method and resolve, Op Oloop was the most perfect of human machines, the most notable object of self-discipline that Buenos Aires had ever seen. When everything in life from the important universal phenomena to one's own trivial, individual failures has been recorded and anotated since puberty, it's fair to say that one's system of classification will have been honed, condensed to their most perfect quintessence. Or else deified into a great, overarching, methodological hierarchy. Method's very greatness, of course, is revealed in its sovereignty over the trivial!

No necesito hablar Ni mentir privilegios; Bien me conocen quienes aquí me rodean, Bien saben mis congojas y mi flaqueza. Eso es alcanzar lo más alto, Lo que tal vez nos dará el Cielo: No admiraciones ni victorias Sino sencillamente ser admitidos Como parte de una Realidad innegable, Como las piedras y los árboles.

She did not like bigots or brilliant bores or academicians who wore their honors, or scholars who wore their doctorates, like dogtags. But she had an infinite capacity to love peasants and children and great but simple causes across the board and a grace in giving that was itself gratitude and she had a body like sculpture in the thinnest of wire and a face made of a million mosaics in a gauze-web of cubes lighter than air and a piñata of a heart in the center of a mobile at fiesta time with bits of her soul swirling in the breeze in honor of life and love and Good Morning to you, Bon Jour, Muy Buenos, Muy Buenos! Muy Buenos! On Nancy Cunard

que Dios, que es proveedor de todas las cosas, no nos ha de faltar, y más andando tan en su servicio como andamos, pues no falta a los mosquitos del aire, ni a los gusanillos de la tierra, ni a los renacuajos del agua; y es tan piadoso que hace salir su sol sobre los buenos y los malos, y llueve sobre los injustos y justos. —

Palo's three older brothers had died in the Paraguayan War, conscripted by the Argentinian government, taken off by force along with all the black men of their generation, because, Palo told young Santiago, they needed a way to not only win their war but also rid this country of us in the process, two birds with one stone. Buenos Aires was too black for them, one third of the population, that's enough blackness to swallow you up! to get strong on you! and so they sent our fathers off to war and opened floodgates to European steamships so that white men would pour into the city to replace us, and their plan worked, the bastarda, look at our city now.

Do our possessions mourn us? Do electric sheep dream of Roy Batter? Will my coat, riddled with holes, remember the rich hours of our companionship? Asleep on buses from Vienna to Prague, nights at the opera, walks by the sea, the grave of Swinburne in the Isle of Wight, the arcades of Paris, the caverns of Luray, the cafés of Buenos Aires. Human experience bound in its threats. How many poems bleeding from its ragged sleeves? I averted my eyes just for a moment, drawn by another coat that was warmer and softer, but that I did not love. Why is it that we lose the things we love, and things cavalier cling to us and will be the measure of our worth after we're gone?

The moment American bankers stop lending dollars to Argentina, the country is unable to refinance its mountain of dollar debt. Again, Greece is similar. Even though it has the same currency as Germany, the euro, the chronic Greek trade deficit with Germany translates into a constant flow of loaned euros from Germany to Greece so that the Greeks can keep buying more and more German goods. The slightest interruption in the flow of new loans from the surplus country to the deficit country causes the whole house of cards to collapse. This is when the IMF steps in. Its personnel fly into Buenos Aires or Athens, take black limousines to the finance minister’s office and state their terms: we shall lend you the missing dollars or euros on condition that you impoverish your people and sell the family silver to our mates, the oligarchs of this country and the world. Or words to that effect. That’s when TV screens fill with images of angry, and often hungry, demonstrators in Buenos Aires or Athens. Time and again history has shown that the periodic economic recessions that result from trade imbalances poison the deficit country’s democracy, incite contempt for its people in the surplus country, which then prompts xenophobia in the deficit country. Simply put, sustained trade deficits – and surpluses, their mirror image – never end well.

When you're a kid, the world can be bounded in a nutshell. In geographical terms, a child's universe is a space that comprises home, school and—possibly—the neighbourhood where your cousins or your grandparents live. In my case, the universe sat comfortably within a small area of Flores that ran from the junction of Boyacá and Avellaneda (my house), to the Plaza Flores (my school). My only forays beyond the area were when we went on holiday (to Córdoba or Bariloche or to the beach) or occasional, increasingly rare visits to my grandparents' farm in Dorrego, in the province of Buenos Aires. We get our fist glimpse of the big wide world from those we love unconditionally. If we see our elders suffer because they cannot get a job, or see them demoted, or working for a pittance, our compassion translates these observations and we conclude that the world outside is cruel and brutal. (This is politics.) If we hear our parents bad-mouthing certain politicians and agreeing with their opponents, our compassion translates these observations and we conclude that the former are bad guys and the latter are good guys. (This is politics.) If we observe palpable fear in our parents at the very sight of soldiers and policemen, our compassion translates our observations and we conclude that, though all children have bogeymen, ours wear uniforms. (This is politics.)

Soy sencillamente, o tal vez debo escribir que fui, un hombre solitario. Puedo pasarme la noche entera frente a un pocillo de café, y si a veces condesciendo a pedir una copita de caña de durazno o un cognac es para no despreciar a mis ocasionales compañeros de mesa. Para que no desconfíen de mí; para que me hablen. He conversado en esos bares con los personajes más extraordinarios de Buenos Aires. Actores fracasados, ex presidiarios, viejas putas en decadencia, infantiles putas en ascenso, poetas que se creían, o quizá eran, genios incomprendidos, tristes homosexuales que venían de una paliza descomunal, violeteras que juraban haber cantado con la Galli Curci o haber sido amantes de Perón.

What could lead to war between Germany and France next year? Or between China and Japan? Or between Brazil and Argentina? Some minor border clash might occur, but only a truly apocalyptic scenario could result in an old-fashioned full-scale war between Brazil and Argentina in 2014, with Argentinian armoured divisions sweeping to the gates of Rio, and Brazilian carpet-bombers pulverising the neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires. Such wars might still erupt between several pairs of states, e.g. between Israel and Syria, Ethiopia and Eritrea, or the USA and Iran, but these are only the exceptions that prove the rule. This situation might of course change in the future and, with hindsight, the world of today might seem incredibly naïve. Yet

La vida es mala con todo lo bueno. Los tiburones mortales con las hermosas estrellas de mar. Las olas gigantes con los castillos de arena. La ruidosa letra con el ritmo de la música. La enfermedad hepática con el amor de un padre e hijo. El regaliz con el limón y la lima. Es la vida. Dulce, hermosa, viento en tu cara, aire en tus pulmones, besos en tus labios vida.

sube en tu jumento, Sancho el bueno, y vente tras mí; que Dios, que es proveedor de todas las cosas, no nos ha de faltar, y más andando tan en su servicio como andamos, pues no falta a los mosquitos del aire, ni a los gusanillos de la tierra, ni a los renacuajos del agua; y es tan piadoso que hace salir su sol sobre los buenos y los malos, y llueve sobre los injustos y justos.

Tango dansını kökenine kadar araştırdım, tarihçesini okudum. (...) Buenos Aires’te çıktığını biliyor muydunuz? Ve ilk çıktığında sadece genelevlerde yapıldığını? Gangster dansıymış. (...) Tangoda roller önceden belirlenmiştir. Erkek ve kadın ne yapacağını çok iyi bilir. Erkek her zaman kadını yönetir. Kadını yönlendiren, ona komut veren, kendine çeken, geri iten, döndüren, uzağa fırlatan, atan, tutan hep erkektir... kısacası, erkek maçoluğun alasını yapar. Kadın sadece bunları izler. Adamın ayaklarını, adımlarını, hareketlerini izler. Kendini ona bırakır. Tangoyu kadınlar bu yüzden seviyor zaten. (...) Kadınlar böyle bir şeyi asla itiraf etmek istemezler; özgürlüklerine ve bağımsızlıklarına düşkün gibi görünürler ama içten içe hükmedilmek hoşlarına gider.

Today humankind has broken the law of the jungle. There is at last real peace, and not just absence of war. For most polities, there is no plausible scenario leading to full-scale conflict within one year. What could lead to war between Germany and France next year? Or between China and Japan? Or between Brazil and Argentina? Some minor border clash might occur, but only a truly apocalyptic scenario could result in an old-fashioned full-scale war between Brazil and Argentina in 2014, with Argentinian armoured divisions sweeping to the gates of Rio, and Brazilian carpet-bombers pulverising the neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires. Such wars might still erupt between several pairs of states, e.g. between Israel and Syria, Ethiopia and Eritrea, or the USA and Iran, but these are only the exceptions that prove the rule.

Ganz sicher aber haben mir die Kästners eine Familieneigenschaft in die Wiege gelegt [...]: die echte und unbelehrbare Abneigung vorm Reisen. Wir Kästners sind auf die weite Welt nicht sonderlich neugierig. Wir leiden nicht am Fernweh, sondern am Heimweh. Warum sollten wir in den Schwarzwald oder auf den Gaurisankar oder zum Trafalgar Square? Die Kastanie vorm Haus, der Dresdner Wolfshügel und der Altmarkt tun es auch. Wenn wir unser Bett und die Fenster in der Wohnstube mitnehmen könnten, dann ließe sich vielleicht darüber reden! Aber in die Fremde ziehen und das Zuhause daheimlassen? Nein, so hoch kann kein Berg und so geheimnisvoll kann keine Oase sein [...], daß wir meinen, wir müßten sie kennenlernen! Es ginge noch, wenn wir daheim einschliefen und in Buenos Aires aufwachten! Das Dortsein wäre vorübergehend zu ertragen, aber das Hinkommen? Niemals!

Mi padre me dijo que leyera mucho ante todo. Sobretodo que viera en la lectura no una oblicación sino un goce. Creo que la frase lectura obligatoria es un contrasentido. La lectura no debe ser obligatoria. Podemos hablar de placer obligatorio. ¿Y por qué? El placer no es algo obligatorio; es algo que buscamos. ¿Felicidad obligatoria? La felicidad la buscamos también. Pues bien, yo he sido profesor de literatura inglesa durante veinte años en la facultad de Filosofía y Letras en la universidad de Buenos Aires y siempre les aconsejé a mis estudiantes: Si un libro les aburre, déjenlo. No lo lean por que es famoso. No lean un libro porque es moderno. No lean un libro porque es antiguo. Si un libro es tedioso para ustedes, déjenlo aunque ese libro sea "El Paraíso Perdido" o "El Quijote". Si un libro es tedioso seguro ese libro no fue escrito para ustedes. La lectura debe ser una forma de felicidad...

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things. Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him. I do not know which of us has written this page.

—Para eso estoy aquí —se dijo. El fuego le respondió con un chasquido—. En las escuelas nos contaban la historia de Johnny Appleseed, que anduvo por toda América plantando semillas de manzanos. Bueno, pues yo hago más. Yo planto robles, olmos, arces y toda clase de árboles; álamos, cedros y castaños. No pienso sólo en alimentar el estómago con fruta, fabrico aire para los pulmones. Cuando estos árboles crezcan algunos de estos años, ¡cuánto oxígeno darán!

An enigmatic lack of curiosity about the future that prevented him from enjoying the present. But what someone else feels always belongs to the world of the imagination. You never know for certain, What we begin with reluctance or even with a sense of repulsion, can end up drawing us in by sheer force of habit or an unexpected taste for repetition. You would need to have lost an awful lot before you’d be willing to renounce what you have, especially if what you have is part of a long-term plan, part of a decision that contained a large dose of obstinacy. The desire to know is a curse and the greatest source of misfortune; The Buenos Aires accent, at least to Spanish ears, does always tend to sound like a caricature of itself. There’s nothing like curiosity and comedy to distract us—if only for an instant—from our sorrows and anxieties. What at first repels can end up attracting, after a swift moment of adjustment or approval, once you’ve made up your mind. The greater your grief or shock, the greater your state of desolation and numbness and abandonment, the lower your defenses and the fewer your qualms; professional seducers know this well and are always on the lookout for misfortunes. Even when things are happening and are present, they, too, require the imagination, because it’s the only thing that highlights certain events and teaches us to distinguish, while they are happening, the memorable from the unmemorable. Going back is the very worst infidelity. When something comes to an end, even the something you most want to end, you suddenly regret that ending and begin to miss it. You never stop feeling intimidated by someone who intimidated you from the outset. Not being able to choose isn’t an affront, it’s standard practice. It is in most countries, as it is in ours, despite the collective illusion.

Elegy Oh destiny of Borges to have sailed across the diverse seas of the world or across that single and solitary sea of diverse names, to have been a part of Edinburgh, of Zurich, of the two Cordobas, of Colombia and of Texas, to have returned at the end of changing generations to the ancient lands of his forebears, to Andalucia, to Portugal and to those counties where the Saxon warred with the Dane and they mixed their blood, to have wandered through the red and tranquil labyrinth of London, to have grown old in so many mirrors, to have sought in vain the marble gaze of the statues, to have questioned lithographs, encyclopedias, atlases, to have seen the things that men see, death, the sluggish dawn, the plains, and the delicate stars, and to have seen nothing, or almost nothing except the face of a girl from Buenos Aires a face that does not want you to remember it. Oh destiny of Borges, perhaps no stranger than your own.

The most heartening response came not from the book pages in the press but from real incidents in the streets. The girl who was quietly reading Open Veins to her companion in a bus in Bogotá, and finally stood up and read it aloud to all the passengers. The woman who fled from Santiago in the days of the Chilean bloodbath with this book wrapped inside her baby's diapers. The student who went from one bookstore to another for a week in Buenos Aires's Calle Corrientes, reading bits of it in each store because he hadn't the money to buy it. And the most favorable reviews came not from any prestigious critic but from the military dictatorships that praised the book by banning it. For example, Open Veins is unobtainable either in my country, Uruguay, or in Chile; in Argentina the authorities denounced it on TV and in the press as a corrupter of youth, As Blas de Otero remarked, "They don't let people see what I write because I write what I see.

The most heartening response came not from the book pages in the press but from real incidents in the streets. The girl who was quietly reading Open Veins to her companion in a bus in Bogotá, and finally stood up and read it aloud to all the passengers. The woman who fled from Santiago in the days of the Chilean bloodbath with this book wrapped inside her baby's diapers. The student who went from one bookstore to another for a week in Buenos Aires's Calle Corrientes, reading bits of it in each store because he hadn't the money to buy it. And the most favorable reviews came not from any prestigious critic but from the military dictatorships that praised the book by banning it. For example, Open Veins is unobtainable either in my country, Uruguay, or in Chile; in Argentina the authorities denounced it on TV and in the press as a corrupter of youth, As Blas de Otero remarked, "They don't let people see what I write because I write what I see.

And all that connectivity makes us more vulnerable to malware and spyware,” I say. “We understand that. But I’m not so concerned, right at the moment, about whether Siri will tell me the weather in Buenos Aires or whether some foreign nation is spying on me through my toaster.” Augie moves about the room, as if lecturing on a large stage to an audience of thousands. “No, no—but I have digressed. More to the point, nearly every sophisticated form of automation, nearly every transaction in the modern world, relies on the Internet. Let me say it like this: we depend on the power grid for electricity, do we not?” “Of course.” “And without electricity? It would be chaos. Why?” He looks at each of us, awaiting an answer. “Because there’s no substitute for electricity,” I say. “Not really.” He points at me. “Correct. Because we are so reliant on something that has no substitute.” “And the same is now true of the Internet,” says Noya, as much to herself as to anyone else.

Tamara Bunke was the only woman to fight alongside “Che” during his Bolivian campaign. She was an East German national, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on November 19, 1937, of Communist activist parents. As a child, her home was frequently used for meetings, hiding weapons and conducting other Communist activities. After World War II, in 1952 she returned to Germany where she attended Humboldt University in Berlin. Tamara met “Che” Guevara when she was an attractive 23-year-old woman in Leipzig, and he was with a Cuban Trade Delegation. The two instantly hit it off as she cozied up to him and, having learned how to fight and use weapons in Pinar del Rio in western Cuba, she joined his expedition to Bolivia. Becoming a spy for the ELN, she adopted the name “Tania” and posed as a right-wing authority of South-American music and folklore. In disguise, she managed to warm up to and entice Bolivian President René Barrientos. She even went on an intimate vacation to Peru with him.

Libre de la memoria y de la esperanza, ilimitado, abstracto, casi futuro, el muerto no es un muerto: es la muerte. Como el Dios de los místicos, de Quien deben negarse todos los predicados, el muerto ubicuamente ajeno no es sino la perdición y ausencia del mundo. Todo se lo robamos, no le dejamos ni un color ni una sílaba: aquí está el patio que ya no comparten sus ojos, allí la acera donde acechó la esperanza. Hasta lo que pensamos podía estarlo pensando él también; nos hemos repartido como ladrones el caudal de las noches y de los días.

A base de estas condiciones fisiológicas se ha producido una depresión: ésta la combate Buda con la higiene. Contra la depresión emplea la vida al aire libre, la vida errante; la sobriedad y la selección en los manjares; la prudencia ante los licores; igualmente, la vigilancia contra todas las emociones que producen bilis y calentamiento de la sangre; ninguna preocupación, ni para si ni para los demás. Reclama ideas que calmen y serenen, encuentra medios para desembarazarse de las ideas contrarías. Imagina la bondad, el ser bueno, como favorable a la salud.

You got to be rich to go mucking around in Africa. For all her chic thinness, she had an almost breakfast-cereal air of health, a soap and lemon cleanness, a rough pink darkening in the cheeks. I want to still be me when I wake up one fine morning and have breakfast at Tiffany's. I don't want to own anything until I know I've found the place where me and my things belong together. It's tacky to wear diamonds before you're forty; and even that's risky. They only look right on the really old girls. Wrinkles and bones, white hair and diamonds. He's been put together with care, his brown hair and bullfighter's figure had an exactness, a perfection, like an apple, an orange, something nature has made just right. Added to this, as decoration, were an English suite and a brisk cologne and what is still more unlatin, a bashful manner. Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot. Never love a wild thing. You can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they are strong enough to run into the woods. Brazil was beastly but Buenos Aires the best. Not Tiffany, but almost.

I am attracted to fantastic writing and fantastic reading, of course. But I think things that we call fantastic may be real, in the sense of being real symbols. If I write a fantastic story, I'm not writing something willful. On the contrary, I'm writing something that stands for my feelings, or for my thoughts. So that, in a sense, a fantastic story is as real and perhaps more real than a mere circumstantial story. Because, after all, circumstances come and go, and symbols remain. Symbols are there all the time. If I write about a certain street corner in Buenos Aires, that street corner may pass away for all I know. But if I write about mazes, or about mirrors, or about the night, or about evil, and fear, these things are everlasting -- I mean they will always be with us. So, in a sense, I suppose a writer of the fantastic is writing of things far more real than, well, what newspapermen write about. Because they're always writing about mere accidents, circumstances. But, of course, we all live in time. I think that when we write about the fantastic, we're trying to get away from time and to write about everlasting things. I mean, we do our best to be in eternity, though we may not quite succeed in our attempt.

Le da la sensación de estar rodeado de libertad, de oxígeno. Tothero es como un remolino de aire, y el edificio en el que se encuentra, las calles del pueblo, no son más que escaleras y pasadizos del espacio. Es tan perfecta y coherente la libertad en que se ha convertido el desorden del mundo gracias al simple estallido de su decisión, que todos los caminos parecen buenos, todos los movimientos serán caricias para su piel, y ni un solo átomo de su felicidad se alteraría si Tothero le dijera que en lugar de ir a una cita con dos chicas iban a reunirse con dos machos cabríos, o que no iban a Brewer sino al Tíbet".

By his early-twenties, John F. Kennedy was living one of the most extraordinary young American lives of the twentieth century. He traveled in an orbit of unprecedented wealth, influence, global mobility, and power. As a student and as diplomatic assistant to his father, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1938 to 1940, Kennedy journeyed to England, Ireland, France, Moscow, Berlin, Beirut, Damascus, Athens, and Turkey, pausing briefly from a vacation on the French Riviera to sleep with the actress Marlene Dietrich. He met with top White House officials and traveled to Cuba, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Peru, and Ecuador. He gambled in a casino in Monte Carlo; visited Naples, Capri, Milan, Florence, Venice, and Rome; rode a camel at the Great Pyramid at Giza; attended the coronation of Pope Pius XII; and witnessed a rally for Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. He recalled of these momentous years, 'It was a great opportunity to see a period of history which was one of the most significant.' In a visit to British-occupied Palestine, Kennedy recalled, 'I saw the rock where our Lord ascended into heaven in a cloud, and [in] the same area, I saw the place where Mohammed was carried up to heaven on a white horse.

You mentioned that Palermo, the part of Buenos Aires where you were brought up, had been a violent place full of bohemians and bandits. There they had two names for the knife, ‘the blade’ and ‘the slicer’. The two names described the same object, but ‘the blade’ was the thing itself, and ‘the slicer’ described its function. ‘The blade’ could fit in the hand even of a sickly child shut up in his father’s library, ‘the blade’ could be any of the superannuated daggers and swords belonging to his warrior grandfather or great-grandfather and displayed on the walls of his house, but ‘the slicer’, the knife in the hand slicing back and forth, in and out, existed only in his imagination, in a fascinating world of rapid settlings of accounts and duels over honor, an insult or a woman, in dark street where you never went, where no writer went, except in the literature he wrote. ‘I’ve always felt that in order to be a great writer, one should have the experience of life at sea, which is why Conrad and Melville and, in a way, Stevenson, who ended his days in the South Seas, were better than all of us, Vogelstein. At sea, a writer flees from the minor demons and faces only the definitive ones. A character in Conrad says that he has a horror of ports because, in port, ships rot and men go to the devil. He meant the devils of domesticity and incoherence, the small devils of terra firma. But I think that having experience of “the slicer” would give a writer the same sensation as going to sea, of spectacularly breaking the bounds of his own passivity and of his remoteness from the fundamental matters of the world.’ ‘You mean that if the writer were to stab someone three times, he could allege that he was merely doing so in order to improve his style.’ ‘Something like that. Soaking up experience and atmosphere.’ ‘It’s said that the artist Turner used to have himself lashed to the ship’s mast during storms at sea so that he could make sure he was getting the colours and details of his painted vortices right.’ ‘And it worked. But neither you nor I will ever experience “the slicer”, Vogelstein. We are condemned to “the blade”, to the knife purely as theory. Even if we used “the slicer” against someone, we would still be ourselves, watching, analyzing the scene, and, therefore, inevitably, holding “the blade” in our hand. I don’t think I could kill anyone, apart from my own characters. And I don’t think I would feel comfortable at sea either. There aren’t any libraries at sea. The sea replaces the library.

Quiero decir, ¿por qué alguien haría esto? ¿Por qué las personas se enamoran si puede que haya una posibilidad que se sientan de esta manera? ¿Qué carajos les ocurre a los seres humanos? ¡LOS SERES HUMANOS SON JODIDAMENTE TAN ENFERMOS Y RETORCIDOS! Quiero decir, lo entiendo, se siente bien, ¿sabes? Estar enamorado, ser feliz. Pero cuando esa alfombra mágica es arrancada de tus pies, toma todos los sentimientos felices y buenos con él. ¿Y tu corazón? Simplemente se rompe. Se rompe sin remordimientos. Se rompe en miles de pedazos, dejándolo insensible, mirando sin comprender las piezas porque todo su libre albedrío, todo el sentido común que una vez tuvo en su vida se ha ido. Diste todo por esa maldita cosa llamada amor, y ahora sólo estás destruido.

In Praise of Darkness" Old age (the name that others give it) can be the time of our greatest bliss. The animal has died or almost died. The man and his spirit remain. I live among vague, luminous shapes that are not darkness yet. Buenos Aires, whose edges disintegrated into the endless plain, has gone back to being the Recoleta, the Retiro, the nondescript streets of the Once, and the rickety old houses we still call the South. In my life there were always too many things. Democritus of Abdera plucked out his eyes in order to think: Time has been my Democritus. This penumbra is slow and does not pain me; it flows down a gentle slope, resembling eternity. My friends have no faces, women are what they were so many years ago, these corners could be other corners, there are no letters on the pages of books. All this should frighten me, but it is a sweetness, a return. Of the generations of texts on earth I will have read only a few– the ones that I keep reading in my memory, reading and transforming. From South, East, West, and North the paths converge that have led me to my secret center. Those paths were echoes and footsteps, women, men, death-throes, resurrections, days and nights, dreams and half-wakeful dreams, every inmost moment of yesterday and all the yesterdays of the world, the Dane's staunch sword and the Persian's moon, the acts of the dead, shared love, and words, Emerson and snow, so many things. Now I can forget them. I reach my center, my algebra and my key, my mirror. Soon I will know who I am.

Sabati Là fuori c’è un tramonto, gemma oscura incastonata nel tempo, e una profonda città cieca di uomini che non ti videro. La sera tace o canta. Qualcuno libera gli aneliti crocifissi in un piano. Sempre, la numerosa tua bellezza. Anche quando non ami la tua bellezza prodiga il suo miracolo nel tempo. Sta in te la gioia come la primavera nella foglia tenera. Io non sono più niente, soltanto un desiderio smarrito nella sera. La delizia sta in te come la crudeltà sta nelle spade. La notte opprime l’inferriata. Nell’austero salone come ciechi si cercano le nostre solitudini. Sopravvive glorioso all’imbrunire il candore della tua pelle. Nel nostro amore c’è una pena che assomiglia all’anima. Tu, ieri soltanto tutta la bellezza sei anche tutto l’amore, adesso.

Amalfitano had some rather idiosyncratic ideas about jet lag. They weren’t consistent, so it might be an exaggeration to call them ideas. They were feelings. Make-believe ideas. As if he were looking out the window and forcing himself to see an extraterrestrial landscape. He believed (or liked to think he believed) that when a person was in Barcelona, the people living and present in Buenos Aires and Mexico City didn’t exist. The time difference only masked their nonexistence. And so if you suddenly traveled to cities that, according to this theory, didn’t exist or hadn’t yet had time to put themselves together, the result was the phenomenon known as jet lag, which arose not from your exhaustion but from the exhaustion of the people who would still have been asleep if you hadn’t traveled. This was something he’d probably read in some science fiction novel or story and that he’d forgotten having read. • Anyway, these ideas or feelings or ramblings had their satisfactions. They turned the pain of others into memories of one’s own. They turned pain, which is natural, enduring, and eternally triumphant, into personal memory, which is human, brief, and eternally elusive. They turned a brutal story of injustice and abuse, an incoherent howl with no beginning or end, into a neatly structured story in which suicide was always held out as a possibility. They turned flight into freedom, even if freedom meant no more than the perpetuation of flight. They turned chaos into order, even if it was at the cost of what is commonly known as sanity.

Before he became Pope Francis, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio faced many problems as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina. High poverty rates, massive drug addiction, and powerful gangs all concerned him, but one problem seemed to root all the other issues. He noted in a 2013 interview: “The biggest problem we face is marginalization of the people. Drugs are a symptom, violence is a symptom, but marginalization is the disease. Our people feel marginalized by a social system that’s forgotten about them and isn’t interested in them…. Marginalization is the mother of our problems, and unfortunately she has many children…. Basically, what society is telling these people is, ‘We don’t want you to exist.’ The work we’re doing here is to try to tell them instead, ‘It’s good that you exist.’”21 That response — “It’s good that you exist” — carries great power. To someone struggling with alcohol, who drinks away his loneliness, we say, “It’s good that you exist.” To someone who loathes her body and thinks she’s too fat, too skinny, too short, or not good enough, we say, “It’s good that you exist.” To the addict, the slave, the homeless man, even the murderer, we say, “It’s good that you exist.” This phrase reminds people that they have intrinsic value, regardless of what they produce, or how they look, or if they have it all together. It echoes what God said immediately after creating the first man: “[He] looked at everything he had made, and found it very good” (Gn 1:31). Next time you want to uplift someone’s dignity, remind them of that wonderful truth: “It’s good that you exist.

General Mario Vargas Salinas, now retired from Bolivia’s Eighth Army Division, was one of the young army officers present at Guevara’s burial. It was his duty to accompany an old dump truck carrying the bodies of the six dead rebels, including that of “Che” Guevara, to the airstrip in Vallegrande, Bolivia. Knowing that the facts surrounding the burials were leaking out, he decided that after 28 years the world should know what had happened to “Che” Guevara’s body. At the time, Captain Vargas, who had also led the ambush in which Tamara “Tania” Bunke, Guevara’s lover, was shot dead, said that Guevara was buried early on the morning of October 11th, 1967, at the end of the town’s landing strip. After the gruesome facts became known, the Bolivian government ordered the army to find Guevara's remains for a proper burial. General Gary Prado Salmón, retired, had been the commander of the unit that had captured Guevara. He confirmed General Vargas’ statement and added that the guerrilla fighters had been burned, before dumping their bodies into a mass grave, dug by a bulldozer, at the end of the Vallegrande airstrip. He explained that the body of “Che” Guevara had been buried in a separate gravesite under the runway. The morning after the burials, “Che” Guevara’s brother arrived in Vallegrande, hoping to see his brother’s remains. Upon asking, he was told by the police that it was too late. Talking to some of the army officers, he was told lies or perhaps just differing accounts of the burial, confusing matters even more. The few peasants that were involved and knew what had happened were mysteriously unavailable. Having reached a dead end, he left for Buenos Aires not knowing much more than when he arrived….

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things. Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him. I do not know which of us has written this page.

—Los cazadores de sombras somos lentos para amar —explicó—. Pero cuando amamos, lo hacemos para siempre. Era algo que recordaba haberle oído a Helen una vez, quizá en su boda. Kieran parpadeó y la miró fijamente, como si hubiera dicho algo muy sabio. —Sí —repuso—. Sí, eso es cierto. Debo confiar en el amor de Mark. Pero Cristina... nunca ha dicho que me ame. Y ahora los noto a ambos tan lejos... —Todo el mundo parece estar lejos ahora —dijo Dru, pensando en lo solitarios que habían sido los últimos días—. Pero es porque están preocupados. Cuando se preocupan, se meten dentro de sí mismos y a veces se olvidan de que estás ahí. —Miró sus palomitas—. Pero eso no significa que no les importes. Kieran apoyó un codo en la rodilla. —Entonces ¿qué debo hacer, Drusilla? —Umm —reflexionó Drusilla—. No te calles lo que quieres, o puede que nunca lo consigas. —Eres muy sabia —afirmó Kieran muy serio. —Bueno —repuso Dru—. Lo cierto es que lo vi en una taza. —Las tazas de este mundo son muy sabias.

Lo hice nuevamente. Uno de cada diez años puedo soportarlo… una especie de milagro ambulante, mi piel brilla como una pantalla nazi, mi pie derecho un pisapapeles, mi rostro sin forma, delgado lienzo judío. Retira la compresa, ¡ah, enemigo mío! ¿te doy miedo?… ¿La nariz, la fosa de los ojos, toda la dentadura? El aliento agrio un día se desvanecerá. Pronto, pronto la carne que alimentó la grave sepultura me será familiar y yo seré una mujer sonriente, sólo tengo treinta. Y como el gato tengo nueve vidas que morir. Ésta es la Número Tres. Qué basura para la aniquilación de cada década. Qué millón de filamentos. La multitud como maní prensado se atropella para ver desenvuelven mis manos y pies… el gran strip tease señoras y señores éstas son mis manos mis rodillas. Puede que esté piel y huesos, sin embargo, soy la misma e idéntica mujer. La primera vez que ocurrió, tenía diez. Fue un accidente. La segunda vez quise que fuera definitivo y no regresar jamás. Me mecí doblada sobre mí misma como una concha. Tuvieron que llamar y llamar y quitarme uno a uno los gusanos como perlas viscosas. Morir es un arte, como cualquier otro, yo lo hago de maravillas. Hago que se sienta como un infierno. Hago que se sienta real. Creo que podrían llamarlo un don. Es tan fácil que puedes hacerlo en una celda. Es tan fácil que puedes hacerlo y quedarte ahí, quietita. Es el teatral regreso a pleno día al mismo lugar, a la misma cara, al mismo grito brutal y divertido “¡Milagro!” que me deja fuera de combate. Hay un precio a pagar para mirar las escaras, hay un precio a pagar para auscultar mi corazón… late de veras. Y hay un precio a pagar, un precio mayor por una palabra o un contacto o un poquito de sangre o una muestra de mi cabello o de mi ropa. Bueno, bueno, Herr Doctor. Bueno, Herr Enemigo. Soy vuestra opus, soy vuestra valiosa niña de oro puro que se funde en un chillido. Giro y ardo. No crean que no estimo su enorme preocupación. Cenizas, cenizas… Ustedes atizan y remueven. Carne, hueso, no hay nada allí… Un pan de jabón, un anillo de bodas, un empaste de oro. Herr dios, Herr Lucifer tengan cuidado tengan cuidado. Sobre las cenizas me elevo con mi cabello rojo y devoro hombres como aire.

-Bueno, te lo dije- dijo Carmilla, cuando le describí mi tranquilo sueño-Yo misma he tenido esta noche un sueño delicioso; prendí el amuleto del pecho de mi camisón. La noche anterior estaba demasiado lejos. Estoy absolutamente segura de que todo era fantasía, excepto los sueños. Yo pensaba antes que los malos espíritus hacen soñar, pero nuestro médico me dijo que no es cierto. Es tan solo que pasa una fiebre, o cualquier otra enfermedad, cosa que sucede a menudo, según el dice, y llama a la puerta, y, al no poder entrar, sigue adelante, dejando detrás esa alarma. -¿Y qué piensas que es ese amuleto?- pregunté. -Ha sido ahumado o sumergido en cierta droga, y es un antídoto contra la malaria- respondió ella-. -Entonces, ¿actúa tan solo sobre el cuerpo? -Claro; ¿no supondrás que los malos espíritus se asustan de unos trocitos de cinta, o de los perfumes de la tienda de un droguista? No, esos males que vagan por el aire empiezan por poner a prueba los nervios, y de este modo infectan en el cerebro; pero antes de que se apoderen de una, el antídoto los repele. Estoy segura de que esto es lo que ha hecho por nosotras el amuleto. No es nada mágico, tan solo natural

The birds had multiplied. She'd installed rows upon rows of floating melamine shelves above shoulder height to accommodate the expression of her once humble collection. Though she'd had bird figurines all over the apartment, the bulk of her prized collection was confined to her bedroom because it had given her joy to wake up to them every morning. Before I'd left, I had a tradition of gifting her with bird figurines. It began with a storm petrel, a Wakamba carving of ebony wood from Kenya I had picked up at the museum gift shop from a sixth-grade school field trip. She'd adored the unexpected birthday present, and I had hunted for them since. Clusters of ceramic birds were perched on every shelf. Her obsession had brought her happiness, so I'd fed it. The tiki bird from French Polynesia nested beside a delft bluebird from the Netherlands. One of my favorites was a glass rainbow macaw from an Argentinian artist that mimicked the vibrant barrios of Buenos Aires. Since the sixth grade, I'd given her one every year until I'd left: eight birds in total. As I lifted each member of her extensive bird collection, I imagined Ma-ma was with me, telling a story about each one. There were no signs of dust anywhere; cleanliness had been her religion. I counted eighty-eight birds in total. Ma-ma had been busy collecting while I was gone. I couldn't deny that every time I saw a beautiful feathered creature in figurine form, I thought of my mother. If only I'd sent her one, even a single bird, from my travels, it could have been the precursor to establishing communication once more. Ma-ma had spoken to her birds often, especially when she cleaned them every Saturday morning. I had imagined she was some fairy-tale princess in the Black Forest holding court over an avian kingdom. I was tempted to speak to them now, but I didn't want to be the one to convey the loss of their queen. Suddenly, however, Ma-ma's collection stirred. It began as a single chirp, a mournful cry swelling into a chorus. The figurines burst into song, tiny beaks opening, chests puffed, to release a somber tribute to their departed beloved. The tune was unfamiliar, yet its melancholy was palpable, rising, surging until the final trill when every bird bowed their heads toward the empty bed, frozen as if they hadn't sung seconds before. I thanked them for the happiness they'd bestowed on Ma-ma.

Que seguramente mucha gente no había conocido nunca el amor. Que en el fondo se conformaban con buenos sentimientos, que se enterraban en la comodidad de una vida vulgar y que se perdían sensaciones maravillosas, que son probablemente las únicas que justifican la existencia. Uno de mis sobrinos, que vive en Boston, trabaja en las finanzas: gana una montaña de dólares al mes, está casado, tiene tres hijos, una mujer adorable y un coche estupendo. En resumen, la vida ideal. Un día, vuelve a su casa y le dice a su mujer que se va, que ha encontrado el amor, con una universitaria de Harvard que podría ser su hija, a la que había conocido en una conferencia. Todo el mundo dijo que había perdido un tornillo, que buscaba en aquella chica una segunda juventud, pero yo creo que simplemente había encontrado el amor. La gente cree que se ama, y entonces se casa. Y después, un día, descubren el amor, sin ni siquiera quererlo, sin darse cuenta. Y se dan de bruces con él. En ese momento, es como el hidrógeno que entra en contacto con el aire: produce una explosión fenomenal, que lo arrastra todo. Treinta años de matrimonio frustrado que saltan de un golpe, como si una gigantesca fosa séptica en ebullición explotara, salpicando todo a su alrededor.

Se levanta y hace la cama, luego recoge del suelo unos libros de bolsillo (novelas policíacas) y los pone en la librería. Tiene ropa que lavar antes de irse, ropa que guardar, medias que emparejar y meter en los cajones. Envuelve la basura en papel de periódico y baja tres pisos para dejarla en el cubo de la basura. Saca los calcetines de Cal de detrás de la cama y los sacude, dejándolos sobre la mesa de la cocina. Hay trapos que lavar, hollín en el alféizar de las ventanas, cacerolas en remojo por fregar, hay que poner un plato bajo el radiador por si funciona durante la semana (se sale). Oh. Aj. Que se queden las ventanas como están, aunque a Cal no le gusta verlas sucias. Esa espantosa tarea de restregar el retrete, pasarle el plumero a los muebles. Ropa para planchar. Siempre se caen cosas cuando recoges otras. Se agacha una y otra vez. La harina y el azúcar se derraman sobre los estantes que hay encima de la pila y tiene que pasar un paño; hay manchas y salpicaduras, hojas de rábano podridas, incrustaciones de hielo dentro de la vieja nevera (hay que mantener la puerta abierta con una silla, para que se descongele). Pedazos de papel, caramelos, cigarrillos y ceniza por toda la habitación. Tiene que quitarle el polvo a todo. Decide limpiar las ventanas a pesar de todo, porque quedan más bonitas. Estarán asquerosas después de una semana. Por supuesto, nadie la ayuda. Nada tiene la altura adecuada. Añade los calcetines de Cal a la ropa de ambos que tiene que llevar a la lavandería de autoservicio, hace un montón separado con la ropa de él que tiene que coser, y pone la mesa para sí misma. Raspa los restos de comida del plato del gato, y le pone agua limpia y leche. «Mr. Frosty» no parece andar por allí. Debajo de la pila encuentra un paño de cocina, lo recoge y lo cuelga sobre la pila, se recuerda a sí misma que tiene que limpiar allí abajo más tarde, y se sirve cereales, té, tostadas y zumo de naranja. (El zumo de naranja es un paquete del gobierno de naranja y pomelo en polvo y sabe a demonios.) Se levanta de un salto para buscar la fregona debajo de la pila, y el cubo, que también debe estar por allí. Es hora de fregar el suelo del cuarto de baño y el cuadrado de linóleo que hay delante de la pila y la cocina. Primero termina el té, deja la mitad del zumo de naranja y pomelo (haciendo una mueca) y algo del cereal. La leche vuelve a la nevera —no, espera un momento, tírala—, se sienta un minuto a escribir una lista de comestibles para comprarlos en el camino del autobús a casa, cuando vuelva dentro de una semana. Llena el cubo, encuentra el jabón, lo deja, friega sólo con agua. Lo guarda todo. Lava los platos del desayuno. Coge una novela policíaca y la hojea, sentada en el sofá. Se levanta, limpia la mesa, recoge la sal que ha caído en la alfombra y la barre. ¿Eso es todo? No, hay que arreglar la ropa de Cal y la suya. Oh, déjalo. Tiene que hacer la maleta y preparar la comida de Cal y la suya (aunque él no se marcha con ella). Eso significa volver a sacar las cosas de la nevera y volver a limpiar la mesa, dejar pisadas en el linóleo otra vez. Bueno, no importa. Lava el plato y el cuchillo. Ya está. Decide ir por la caja de costura para arreglar la ropa de él, cambia de opinión. Coge la novela policíaca. Cal dirá: «No has cosido mi ropa.» Va a coger la caja de costura del fondo del armario, pisando maletas, cajas, la tabla de plancha, su abrigo y ropa de invierno. Pequeñas manos salen de la espalda de Jeannine y recogen lo que ella tira. Se sienta en el sofá y arregla el desgarrón de la chaqueta de verano de él, cortando el hilo con los dientes. Vas a estropearte el esmalte. Botones. Zurce tres calcetines. (Los otros están bien.) Se frota los riñones. Cose el forro de una falda que está descosido. Limpia zapatos. Hace una pausa y mira sin ver. Luego reacciona y con aire de extraordinaria energía saca la maleta mediana del armario y empieza a meter su ropa para

A veces nos contábamos mutuamente nuestros sueños. Pistorius sabía interpretarlos. Recuerdo ahora uno de ellos, para el cual halló una explicación singular. Yo había soñado que volaba, pero no por facultad propia, sino lanzado a través de los aires por un violento impulso del que no era dueño. La sensación de este vuelo, deliciosa al principio, no tardaba en trocarse en miedo cuando me veía disparado a alturas vertiginosas. Pero entonces descubría con satisfacción que podía regular la ascensión y el descenso, reteniendo y dejando escapar el aliento. A esto dijo Pistorius: “El impulso que le hace a usted volar es nuestro gran patrimonio humano común a todos. Es el sentimiento de nuestra relación con las raíces de toda fuerza. Pero nos da miedo abandonarnos a él. ¡Es tan peligroso! Por eso casi todos renuncian gustosos a volar y prefieren caminar, como buenos burgueses, por su acera, apoyados en los preceptos legales. Usted no. usted sigue volando valientemente. Y de pronto descubre usted algo maravilloso; advierte que poco a poco va adueñándose del impulso y que junto a la magna fuerza general que le arrastra hay otra fuerza pequeñita y sutil que le es propia: un órgano y un timón. Sin ella vagaría uno al azar por los aires, como les sucede, por ejemplo, a los locos. Estos tienen vislumbres más hondas que los burgueses de la acera; pero no poseen una clave, carecen de un timón que les permita marcar el rumbo, y flotan a la deriva en el espacio.

Imagine el lector un sistema que, en palabras de la famosa canción de Police, vigile cada bocanada de aire que inhale, cada movimiento que haga y cada lazo que rompa. Un sistema que supervise su cuenta bancaria y su ritmo cardíaco, sus niveles de azúcar y sus aventuras sexuales. Es evidente que conocerá al lector mucho mejor de lo que este se conoce a sí mismo. Los autoengaños y las ilusiones que hacen que la gente quede atrapada en malas compañías, carreras equivocadas y hábitos perniciosos no engañarán a Google. A diferencia del yo narrador que nos controla en la actualidad, Google no tomará decisiones a partir de relatos amañados, no caerá en la trampa de atajos cognitivos ni se guiará por la regla de la «arte culminante-parte final». Google recordará en verdad cada paso que demos y cada mano que estrechemos. Muchas personas estarán encantadas de transferir gran parte de sus procesos de toma de decisiones a manos de un sistema de este tipo, o al menos de consultar con él siempre que se enfrenten a decisiones importantes. Google nos aconsejará qué película ver, adónde ir de vacaciones, qué estudiar en la universidad, qué oferta laboral aceptar e incluso con quién salir y casarse. «Oye, Google —le dirá—, tanto John como Paul me cortejan. Los dos me gustan, pero de una manera diferente, y me está costando mucho decidirme. Considerando todo lo que sabes, ¿qué me aconsejas que haga?» Y Google contestará: «Bueno, te conozco desde el día que naciste. He leído todos tus correos electrónicos y registrado todas tus llamadas telefónicas y conozco tus películas favoritas, tu ADN y el historial completo de tu corazón. Tengo datos exactos acerca de cada cita que has tenido y, si quieres, puedo mostrarte gráficos segundo a segundo de tu ritmo cardíaco, tensión arterial y niveles de azúcar de cada vez que quedaste con John o con Paul. Si es necesario, incluso puedo proporcionarte una puntuación matemática precisa de cada encuentro sexual que tuviste con uno u otro. Y, naturalmente, los conozco tan bien como a ti. Sobre la base de toda esta información, de mis magníficos algoritmos y de estadísticas sobre millones de relaciones que hace décadas que reúno…, te aconsejo que te quedes con John, ya que tienes un 87 por ciento de probabilidades de vivir a la larga más satisfecha con él. »De hecho, te conozco tanto que también sé que no te gusta esta respuesta. Paul es mucho más guapo que John, y puesto que concedes tanto peso a la apariencia externa, querías secretamente que yo te dijera ”Paul”. La apariencia es importante, desde luego, pero no tanto como crees. Tus algoritmos bioquímicos (que evolucionaron hace decenas de miles de años en la sabana africana) conceden a la apariencia un 35 por ciento de la puntuación global de parejas potenciales. Mis algoritmos, que se basan en los estudios y las estadísticas más actualizados, dicen que el aspecto solo tiene un 14 por ciento de impacto en el éxito a largo plazo de las relaciones románticas. Así, aunque he tenido en cuenta la apariencia de Paul, continúo diciéndote que estarás mejor con John».[31] A cambio de estos devotos servicios de asesoramiento, solo tendremos que abandonar la idea de que los humanos son individuos, y de que cada humano tiene un libre albedrío que determina qué es bueno, qué es hermoso y cuál es el sentido de la vida. Los humanos ya no serán entidades autónomas dirigidas por los relatos que inventa su yo narrador. En cambio, serán parte integral de una enorme red global.

Sylvia and Adrienne came under Nazi scrutiny. Sylvia was warned of the imminent confiscation of her books. Adrienne was suspect for having written a condemnation of Nazism and anti-Semitism. She helped Gisèle Freund get to Buenos Aires as the guest of Victoria Ocampo, the feminist Argentine writer who founded the literary journal Sur, and in May 1940 she hid Walter Benjamin and Arthur Koestler in her apartment. Koestler, who had been imprisoned in Spain for airing anti-fascist views, was writing Darkness at Noon.

The first time I learned about Bitcoin was in 2013. I was living in Buenos Aires, reporting on the Argentine market for Bloomberg News. But I was more than reporting about it; I was also living it. As I wrote about double-digit inflation, the pesos I earned for those stories quickly depreciated. I started exchanging my salary to dollars as soon as I got it, until one day the president woke up and said, Nope! You can’t do that anymore.

En este borde, entre una Buenos Aires que cree recordar y la ciudad que encuentra en 1921, dibuja un espacio literario que funda su primera gran invención: el criollismo urbano de vanguardia.

Sin embargo, ese fue su programa estético de los años veinte: construir una lengua literaria para Buenos Aires y darle, al mismo tiempo, una dimensión mítica a la ciudad.

Borges mira a Buenos Aires desde un espacio recordado, un espacio mítico que él mismo, más que recibir del pasado, impulsa como su propia novedad en la literatura argentina: la ciudad criolla que persiste en la ciudad moderna, la llanura pampeana que se refleja en el patio, en los cercos vivos del suburbio, en las calles “sin vereda de enfrente”, es decir las calles que tocan la pampa y se pierden en la extensión de un paisaje familiar.

En este mito, el pasado es un espacio donde se reinventa la llanura heroica de las guerras del siglo XIX, la violencia que es la madre del coraje suicida o resignado del gaucho, los códigos de honor de una sociedad rural premoderna. Sin esa dimensión cultural, Buenos Aires moderna sería una ciudad sin raíces, producida por la abundancia económica, la inmigración, las instituciones de las elites letradas. Para Borges, en cambio, es una ciudad

protagonista al intendente Mariano de Vedia y Mitre, quien encontró su oportunidad en la conmemoración del IV centenario de la fundación de Buenos Aires. Fue entonces cuando convocó a los principales referentes de las disciplinas que operaban sobre la ciudad, conformó a los equipos técnicos de su gestión, proyectó y ejecutó obras y monumentos que reflejaron los principales lineamientos estéticos del periodo, y le encomendó a Alberto Prebisch, uno de los precursores del movimiento arquitectónico moderno en Argentina, el proyecto de un monumento para la plaza de la República, en la intersección de las avenidas Corrientes y 9 de Julio. El resultado fue el Obelisco, inaugurado el 23 de mayo de 1936; su ubicación en el cruce de tres avenidas marcaba también el punto de encuentro de las tres líneas de subterráneos inauguradas durante esta misma gestión municipal; los túneles que corrían por el subsuelo fueron el basamento vacío sobre el cual se instaló el Obelisco, resaltando aún más la cantidad de implementaciones técnicas que revistió su construcción.

Certainly, Mr Winter," she said crisply. "TWA flight 401, departing Boston tomorrow from Logan Airport, gate 12, at 8:45 p.m., arriving Buenos Aires, Argentina, at 6:01 a.m. That's with a stopover in Dallas. Four fares at seven hundred and ninety-five dollars one way, let's see" — she punched in some more numbers on the computer — "that comes to a total of three thousand one hundred and eighty dollars plus tax, and you chose to pay for that with your American Express card, am I correct?

Ascensión yo soy la luz de la Ascensión fluye libre la victoria aquí, todo lo Bueno ganado al fin por toda la eternidad. yo soy Luz, desvanecido todo peso en el aire ahora me elevo; con el pleno poder de Dios en el cielo mi canto de alabanza a todos expreso. ¡Salve! yo soy el Cristo Viviente, un ser de amor por siempre. ¡Ascendido ahora con el Poder de Dios yo soy un sol resplandeciente!

¡Nosotros somos un partido conservador, somos el partido burgués; el anarquismo, que es el engendro monstruoso, que es la aberración del socialismo y que pretende atacar en este momento la organización fundamental de la sociedad, desde la familia hasta la propiedad, no debe intimidarnos, nosotros tenemos en nuestras manos el ejército, la fuerza moral, la tradición y el poder, estamos autorizados por todos los artículos de la Constitución, desde la cláusula inicial hasta la última de sus disposiciones, para poner en ejercicio todos los poderes —los explícitos, los implícitos, los virtuales— para defender lo que constituye nuestra vida, nuestro honor, nuestro progreso y nuestra estabilidad futura como nación! Diputado Lucas Ayarragaray, Diario de Sesiones, Buenos Aires, 27 de junio de 1910

María Dolores Béjar ha examinado el caso de la provincia de Buenos Aires, donde una reforma había implantado la enseñanza religiosa en 1936, subrayando la cercanía del gobierno de Fresco con la Fundación Argentina de Educación. La entidad era dirigida por Alberto Baldrich y tenía entre sus integrantes a Jordán Bruno Genta, ambos dirigentes del nacionalismo católico; Octavio S. Pico, cercano a fines de los años veinte al grupo nacionalista de La Nueva República,

Cámaras de la Legislatura de la provincia de Buenos Aires, eran presentadas iniciativas para declarar el 10 de noviembre, fecha de nacimiento de José Hernández, Día de la Tradición; la ley se aprobó en 1939. Entre

Entre 1810 y 1820, Buenos Aires asumió el papel de tesorero de todas las provincias. Para financiar sus déficits, el gobierno buscó fuentes inusuales: retrasar pagos a proveedores; confiscar propiedades y bienes; y, a la larga, tomar préstamos ofrecidos por los comerciantes locales que luego utilizaron esos créditos para pagar sus obligaciones aduaneras.

El banco volvió a la provincia de Buenos Aires luego de la disolución del gobierno nacional en 1827 y en el mismo año se dejó de pagar el crédito a la Baring Brothers.

Recordar es bueno. Si olvidamos, corremos el riesgo de desvanecernos en el aire. Estamos hechos de eso: de recuerdos, de los buenos y los malos.

Más a la inversa aún, y más asombroso: en lo que Frank escribió sobre Buenos Aires y su poder de convertir la mezcla de mestizos y extranjeros en un tipo único, el del porteño, se reconoce con claridad la impronta de las ideas de Scalabrini: “Sin embargo —se lee en América hispana, de 1931—, el espíritu transformador de la ciudad es tan poderoso, que Buenos Aires está habitado hoy exclusivamente por porteños”.

Los subtextos del libro hay que buscarlos menos en Joyce o en Celine que en Platón, Freud, ​[​7​]​ el Werther de Goethe y los franceses de siempre, desde Jules Romains hasta Stendhal. Pero hay uno más, de inusitada trascendencia: El camino a Buenos Aires, de Albert Londres. Filloy ya se había quejado en sus glosas de que la investigación del periodista francés acerca del tráfico de blancas hacia Argentina adolecía de cierto encono contra el país (cf. pag. 72), pero recién logra responderle con elegancia a través del Macrof, el otro gran protagonista del libro, tan polémico que volvió a sufrir el aplauso y la censura de sus lectores. ​[​8​]​ Gastón Marietti, que varias veces alude haber hecho “el camino a Buenos Aires”, es la respuesta cínicamente encomiástica a la caracterización moralmente negativa (y chauvinistamente

para correr tierras. Desembarqué en Buenos Aires, en 1866, a los 18 años, sin dinero, ni oficio, ni carta de recomendación, ni, por fin, el menor conocimiento del idioma. Para no rebajarme a la prosa de la vida, fui al campo, que entonces era de veras la pampa. Me hice hombre entre gauchos, sin perder un ápice de mi orgulloso idealismo. Volví a la ciudad a los 20 años, hablando ya y escribiendo a medias el castellano”.

I spend the day unpacking and reading mail. In the afternoon I go for a long walk in the woods around my rural home, troubled by the many human scenes of grief, embarrassment, and disbelief I witnessed at the main Auschwitz camp and at Birkenau. I wonder why there are no billboards on those grounds, telling us, say, of Stalin and the Gulags in Siberia that were to come later. Of the rise of Marcos, Stroessner, Charles Taylor, Milošević. I recall the Mothers of the Disappeared in Buenos Aires in the 1980s, shouting “¡Nunca más!” And then later those same words in Chile. And after that, in Nicaragua.

The leaders now were Tokyo with 35 million, Mexico City with 19 million, New York still in the game with 18 million, São Paulo with 18 million, Mumbai with 17 million, Delhi with 14 million, Calcutta with 13 million, Buenos Aires with 13 million, Shanghai with 13 million, and Jakarta with 12 million.

Yo ignoro quiénes son los culpables de este crimen, cómo podría haberse evitado e, incluso, si se podría haber evitado. Sé que su nombre es genocidio y que sucedió en nuestro país porque era posible. Y sobre todo sé lo que escribí al principio. En Buenos Aires, a cuatro cuadras de mi casa, frente a un patrullero de la policía, alguien puede estacionar un vehículo cargado de explosivos, irse, y hacer volar media manzana con sus chicos y sus mujeres y sus hombres y sus viejos, a las diez de mañana.

Aquel mismo afán de modernización, y la emergencia de otros tantos bloqueos al mismo, presidió la creación del Instituto Di Tella, fundado en 1958 y al cual a partir de 1962 se le sumó el grupo de sociología liderado por Germani. Como ha señalado Beatriz Sarlo, por su ubicación urbana este centro formaba parte de una infraestructura topográfica para la definición de un campo intelectual en esos años de Buenos Aires, que articulaba al mencionado instituto con la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la calle Viamonte, algunos cafés de la bohemia y la estudiantina porteñas, teatros independientes, las librerías Verbum o Galatea, el cine Lorraine, ciertos cineclubes… Refiriéndose al Instituto, Primera Plana dirá alguna vez que a partir de su apertura “desde ayer, en Florida 940, el mundo moderno está al alcance de todos”, con una línea de argumentación similar a la que llevará a Guido Di Tella a confesar años más tarde que el motivo de aquella creación reposaba sobre la ingenuidad de querer transformar a Buenos Aires en una de las capitales de arte del mundo.

For half a century, Pan Am had flown the flag from Capetown to Moscow to Buenos Aires to Oslo.

punto culminante de aquella estrategia estaba reservado para los días previos a la votación, cuando desde Buenos Aires habló para Chile Juanita Castro Ruz, la hermana renegada de los líderes revolucionarios cubanos, que había abandonado su país el 19 de junio y, según reconoce en sus memorias,

Pienso cuando maduran los limones. En el viento de febrero que rompía los tallos de los helechos, antes que el abandono los secara; los limones maduros que llenaban con su olor el viejo patio. El viento bajaba de las montañas en las mañanas de febrero. Y las nubes se quedaban allá arriba en espera de que el tiempo bueno las hiciera bajar al valle; mientras tanto dejaban vacío el cielo azul, dejaban que la luz cayera en el juego del viento haciendo círculos sobre tierra, removiendo el polvo y batiendo las ramas de los naranjos. Y los gorriones reían; picoteaban las hojas que el aire hacía caer, y reían; dejaban sus plumas entre las espinas de las ramas y perseguían a la mariposas y reían. Era esa época.

I persist until you conjure more images that work their way into my dreams, just as the music had seeped through the cracks of sorrow and oppression in the walls of the conventillos, the tenement houses full of people who had left their countries and taken the long journey to Argentina, looking for a dream. El tango – music born of pain, desire, and longing for what had been left behind.

The sophisticated global manager learns how to adapt—to alter his behavior a bit, to practice humility, to test the waters before speaking up, to assume goodwill on the part of others, and to invest time and energy in building good relationships. With a little luck and skill, it’s possible to be perceived as equally polite in Amsterdam, Jakarta, Moscow, Buenos Aires, Paris, or Two Harbors, Minnesota

It was not a petty fact that nearly ninety percent off all door locks, from Buenos Aires to Toronto, from Beijing to Cape Cod, all utilized the ubiquitous and infirmed pin tumbler lock, which, as it turned out, made keys, rather than a necessity, only an easy convenience which served to lull the mind into a false sense of security.

¡Qué miedo, qué miedo atroz de morir para siempre!

Ha sido más recio que la miseria y que la burla.

Me gustan los desafíos y las cosas nuevas que estimulan mi cerebro.

In general, it could be said that we talk about many things. I’ll try to list them in no particular order. 1) The Latin American hell that, especially on weekends, is concentrated around some Kentucky Fried Chickens and McDonald’s. 2) The doings of the Buenos Aires photographer Alfredo Garófano, childhood friend of Rodrigo and now a friend of mine and of anyone with the least bit of discernment. 3) Bad translations. 4) Serial killers and mass murderers. 5) Prospective leisure as the antidote to prospective poetry. 6) The vast number of writers who should retire after writing their first book or their second or their third or their fourth or their fifth. 7) The superiority of the work of Basquiat to that of Haring, or vice versa. 8) The works of Borges and the works of Bioy. 9) The advisablity of retiring to a ranch in Mexico near a volcano to finish writing The Turkey Buzzard Trilogy. 10) Wrinkles in the space-time continuum. 11) The kind of majestic women you’ve never met who come up to you in a bar and whisper in your ear that they have AIDS (or that they don’t). 12) Gombrowicz and his conception of immaturity. 13) Philip K. Dick, whom we both unreservedly admire. 14) The likelihood of a war between Chile and Argentina and its possible and impossible consequences. 15) The life of Proust and the life of Stendhal. 16) The activities of some professors in the United States. 17) The sexual practices of titi monkeys and ants and great cetaceans. 18) Colleagues who must be avoided like limpet mines. 19) Ignacio Echevarría, whom both of us love and admire. 20) Some Mexican writers liked by me and not by him, and some Argentine writers liked by me and not by him. 21) Barcelonan manners. 22) David Lynch and the prolixity of David Foster Wallace. 23) Chabon and Palahniuk, whom he likes and I don’t. 24) Wittgenstein and his plumbing and carpentry skills. 25) Some twilit dinners, which actually, to the surprise of the diner, become theater pieces in five acts. 26) Trashy TV game shows. 27) The end of the world. 28) Kubrick’s films, which Fresán loves so much that I’m beginning to hate them. 29) The incredible war between the planet of the novel-creatures and the planet of the story-beings. 30) The possibility that when the novel awakes from its iron dreams, the story will still be there.

Sosa Escudero, Walter Qué es (y qué no es) la estadística: usos y abusos de una disciplina clave en la vida de los países y las personas.- 1ª ed.- Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 2014.- (Ciencia que ladra) E-Book. ISBN 978-987-629-428-7 1. Estadísticas. 2. Economía. CDD 330.07 © 2014, Siglo Veintiuno Editores Argentina S.A. Ilustraciones de portada: Mariana Nemitz Diseño de portada: Peter Tjebbes

La literatura de Buenos Aires siempre sucede en otra parte, se está escribiendo en otros barrios, quién sabe cuáles, en los piquetes, en las fruterías de los paraguayos, en los apagones, mientras la comida de Navidad se pudre, huele la carne, corren los chinos a comprar bolsas de hielo para no perder la leche y las patys congeladas.

Asombro Enséñame – dices, desde tus veintiún años ávidos, creyendo, todavía, que se puede enseñar alguna cosa y yo, que pasé de los sesenta te miro con amor es decir, con lejanía (todo amor es amor a las diferencias al espacio vacío entre dos cuerpos al espacio vacío entre dos mentes al horrible presentimiento de no morir de a dos) te enseño, mansamente, alguna cita de Goethe («detente, instante, eres tan bello») o de Kafka (una vez hubo, hubo una vez una sirena que no cantó) mientras la noche lentamente se desliza hacia el alba a través de este gran ventanal que amas tanto porque sus luces nocturnas ocultan la ciudad verdadera y en realidad podríamos estar en cualquier parte estas luces podrían ser las de New York, avenida Broadway, las de Berlín, Konstanzerstrasse, las de Buenos Aires, calle Corrientes y te oculto la única cosa que verdaderamente sé: sólo es poeta aquel que siente que la vida no es natural que es asombro descubrimiento revelación que no es normal estar vivo no es natural tener veintiún años ni tampoco más de sesenta no es normal haber caminado a las tres de la mañana por el puente viejo de Córdoba, España, bajo la luz amarilla de las farolas, no es natural el perfume de los naranjos en las plazas –tres de la mañana– ni en Oliva ni en Sevilla lo natural es el asombro lo natural es la sorpresa lo natural es vivir como recién llegada al mundo a los callejones de Córdoba y sus arcos a las plazas de París a la humedad de Barcelona al museo de muñecas en el viejo vagón estacionado en las vías muertas de Berlín. Lo natural es morirse sin haber paseado de la mano por los portales de una ciudad desconocida ni haber sentido el perfume de los blancos jazmines en flor a las tres de la mañana, meridiano de Greenwich lo natural es que quien haya paseado de la mano por los portales de una ciudad desconocida no lo escriba lo hunda en el ataúd del olvido La vida brota por todas partes consaguínea ebria bacante exagerada en noches de pasiones turbias pero había una fuente que cloqueaba lánguidamente y era difícil no sentir que la vida puede ser bella a veces como una pausa como una tregua que la muerte le concede al goce.

acto de disconformidad con lo que estaba ocurriendo, era un modo de certificarnos que la dignidad humana estaba de nuestro lado. No eran necesarias actitudes desmesuradas o heroicas. Cualquier cosa podía ser la libertad. Desde desfilar los jueves con las madres de Plaza de Mayo a negarse a mostrarle los documentos en la calle a un policía, desde mencionar el nombre de Haroldo Conti en una conferencia a salir a caminar de noche, solos, por un barrio apartado de Buenos Aires, desde fundar una revista casi secreta a visitar en la cárcel a un amigo detenido, cualquier transgresión a ese orden perverso que se autodenominó “proceso” podía llegar a ser un gesto donde se ponía en acto una idea total de la vida. Insisto, no se trataba de grandes rebeliones, por otra parte imposibles, ni de conductas espectacularmente nobles o ejemplares; se trataba sencillamente de ir viviendo, cada día, como si el poder ya no pudiera tocarnos, convencidos, un poco paranoicamente tal vez, de que el mal era más transitorio que nosotros.

My aunt and cousins loved Buenos Aires, a glamorous city with its European-style architecture and wide avenues and cafés. My father’s side of the family hailed from Spain originally, and they came to Argentina nearly a hundred years ago, surviving a harrowing journey but ultimately making a success in the railroad industry.

He is considered to be essentially a dangerous type of man.” None of this mattered to Allen Dulles when Malaxa turned up at his office at Sullivan and Cromwell. The pertinent fact was that the Romanian had a huge fortune, and he was willing to spend millions of it where Dulles wanted him to. In return for financing Dulles’s far-flung anti-Communist network—which stretched from Buenos Aires to Bucharest—Malaxa secured Dulles’s influential help in his battle to stay in the United States.

El caballo trota alegremente, el día es bueno, el aire tibio y ligero, la vida aún larga por delante, casi está por empezar. [...] Se vuelve así lentamente una página, se extiende al lado opuesto, agregándose a las otras ya acabadas, por ahora es sólo una capa fina, las que quedan por leer son, en comparación, un montón inagotable. Pero de todos modos es siempre una página gastada, mi teniente, una porción de vida.

The history of Buenos Aires is written in its telephone directory. Pompey Romanov, Emilio Rommel, Crespina D.Z. de Rose, Ladislao Radziwil, and Elizabeta Marta Callman de Rothschild - five names take at random from the R's - told a story of exile, disillusion and anxiety behind lace curtains.

Parque Lezama es para mí todo Buenos Aires

de la provincia de Buenos Aires eran Kohan, Patti y Pierri.

como si fuera pleno verano y no agosto en Buenos Aires.

Creo que el amor tiene que ver con la felicidad y el sacrifico. Comprometerse en lugar de discutir. Tener a alguien que siempre esta ahí para ti, incluso cuando no te lo mereces. Amar a a alguien significa que quieres pasar el resto de tu vida con el, en los días buenos y en los malos y en todo lo que hay en medio.

He looked at us coldly / And his eyes were dead and his hands on the oar / Were black with obols and varicose veins / Marbled his calves and he said to us coldly: / If you want to die you will have to pay for it

My mother always knew how to behave, knew the right thing to say, and was a favorite in the social circles of Buenos Aires. “It’s who she was as a young girl,” he said quietly. “Egypt brought that out of her. Try to remember that she married young, younger than you are now, and to a man much older than her.

It was barely spring in the southern hemisphere, and Buenos Aires was not yet soft, or sumptuous, or purple.* *I wasn't sure what this meant at first, but when I asked this author to explain it, she sent me a picture of a city that resembled a cross between Little Rock and Paris awash in jacaranda blooms

The glare of the green landscape and the air, the air that was everywhere, in us and making way for us, and we rode and were aware only of each other and ourselves for those couple of miles, and for those couple of miles I was myself, back in the neighborhood of Chacarita, where I moved with my mom after we realized my dad was never going to move out first, that we would have to leave him, and I saw on either side of me the big ugly high-rises and squat goldenrod houses and fuchsia and blue and inscrutable notes scrawled on the walls, graffiti intermingling with the shimmering, shadowing little leaves of the tipas, and as I rode I slowed at the oleander at Facultad de Medicina, those delicate pink flowers that rose over the fence in utter opulence and the lush stiff leaves that reached out through the bars that were freshly painted bright green. Then there it was: the Great Mamamushi. I slowed, and Freddie slowed. We parked our bikes. I was out of breath and all the air on Earth was in my blood, and we kissed again, and I turned around, and he put his arms around my waist, and I leaned into him, and we beheld it: a tree that was almost too much to be true, that truly was incredible, with its trunk that was almost eight meters around, a staggering circumference, glittered over by dragonflies, heavy, petite, iridescent incarnations of Irena's genius, when suddenly a flock of impossible parrots exploded out of the alders, and we looked up to see them shattering the sky. "All the oaks on this trail have their own names," I explained to Freddie. "This one is my favorite. Can you believe it's still growing?" He put his face against mine. He didn't say anything. For a while we just stood like that, together, watching the Great Mamamushi grow.

El golpe militar del 24 de marzo de 1976 no interrumpió las relaciones con Cuba y existió una suerte de “silencio cómplice” entre los dos gobiernos. Buenos Aires no criticaba la tiranía castrista y La Habana se hacía la distraída en los foros internacionales cuando se trataba la cuestión de los derechos humanos en la Argentina.

Me atrevo a decir que los desciframientos permanecen in fieri. Porque las razones del profesor para emprender su excursión a La Cumbrecita, convertirse en el detective aficionado que descubre la supervivencia de Van Hutten, llegar a conocer el mensaje contenido en la susodicha epístola, vivir un amor fugaz con la jovencísima Christiane, hija del arqueólogo, y regresar, por fin, a Buenos Aires como un alma perdida, todos aquellos motivos nunca nos quedan claros.

Abelardo leyó y estudió la bibliografía sobre el tema accesible en castellano, que no ha sido poca ni irrelevante. Apreció particularmente el libro de Edmund Wilson, publicado por el Fondo de Cultura Económica en 1956,(5) y el volumen que el arqueólogo Ernest Marie Laperrousaz, uno de los participantes en las expediciones de los años 50 a Qumrán, escribió para la colección Que sais-je? en 1961 y editó Eudeba en 1964.(6) Es muy probable que nuestro autor estuviese al tanto de los ecos que los hallazgos tuvieron en Buenos Aires.

When you travel to fish, this changes the equation. The first thing to do is establish an advance position on the calendar. Wear something three times and it becomes what the fashion rags call a signature look. All white, nautical stripes, a novel hat, whether it’s good or bad people will recognize it. Similarly the angler must stake out his territory. Go to Patagonia in January once and people think it’s indulgent. Ignore them. The second time they come to terms with it. The third time they expect it. They know you fly to Buenos Aires after New Year’s—this is your thing—and they may roll their eyes but they know you’re unavailable for dinner parties and christenings.

En Buenos Aires su vida cambió completamente. Su retraimiento y su afición al estudio desaparecieron ante el desborde de los sentidos que, después de tantos años de relativa inacción, reclamaban ahora su desquite. Durante los primeros meses de Buenos Aires se aburrió. Sus conocidos eran todos maestros y profesores normales, gente laboriosa y ordenada. Él deseaba divertirse, tener aventuras.

The meaning of Heather’s words lands on Monday at the Field and Oar Club. Sharon has just finished a tennis lesson with the new instructor, Mateo, who came to the Field and Oar from Buenos Aires. Mateo has the cheekbones and eyebrows of a luxury-brand model and he thought nothing of wrapping his strong arms around Sharon in an attempt to fix her backhand. A stranger comes to town, part three? she thinks. However, even Sharon knows that lusting after her hot tennis instructor isn’t exactly “unexpected.” In

El libre comercio El libre comercio que en su momento impulsaron los complotados de Mayo y más tarde el triunviro Rivadavia y el Director Alvear, y que había resultado de indudable beneficio para las arcas de Buenos Aires y de sus mercaderes, era severamente cuestionado por los caudillos provincianos que habían visto desmantelar las incipientes industrias de sus territorios, incapaces de competir con los productos industrializados que eran importados desde Europa. En julio de 1830 se reunieron en Santa Fe los delegados de Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos

A sky full of possibilities, sealed by nightfall, encased the wonder of the city’s eternal soul. Like a mirror to the stars, the city’s glow accented the brilliance of this human masterpiece. The carriage travelers fell victim to the splendor and elegance of Buenos Aires, entranced by its singular beauty.

One of those days we were in Maria Vostra getting weed; while we were sitting at the bar during some festive day—I think it was Three Kings' arrival in January—Marco, the 30 some years old Argentine founding member of that club and probably the kindest of the three, received a phone call from Buenos Aires. I didn't understand it much, nor did I pay too much attention, but the tall Marco, who was usually in a great mood, suddenly ran out of the bar crying after one or two minutes. Martina told me she heard him speaking in Rioplatense on the phone. Marco's best friend had been shot dead in broad daylight in Buenos Aires at the same time; in front of her seven-year-old daughter. He had been shot five times in the chest because a thief had tried to steal his scooter and he had tried to stop them; they then shot him dead and took off with his scooter. We were shocked, at least Marco and I while I tried to hide it - but Martina, who was only 20, wasn't. “That's how poor people are in Argentina, Tomas,” she said, pointing to her lips with her pinky as if it was a known secret. She wasn't fazed by death. I failed to realize what that meant. She must have seen people die before we met. Perhaps I was blindfolded because I had been with Sabrina, whom I knew had something to do with Timothy's death and had gotten away with it, leaving Canada - I was unsure as to when she left exactly, and why - and why she was really unable to visit little Joel in Canada. I was also aware that Adam had not been to Israel for over 10 years, probably because he had murdered someone or done something similar when he was younger. Perhaps I had become too accustomed to the presence of bad people; perhaps they had all become too familiar to me after all, two years after I had first met Sabrina, one year after I had first met Adam, and living in Barcelona for one and a half years at that time. “A scooter worth 200-300 Euros is such a great value there, imagine Tomas. It's so dangerous and poor country” she said. A few times in Urgell, Martina made a joyful noise of 'Oyyy', but she stopped because I laughed and she never said it again, no matter how much I asked her to. Perhaps the presence of the Polish workers at the other end of the place had something to do with it. Gucho and Damian spent time with us in the kitchen-living room area every night. We ate, we smoked, and we had a great time together. They were skilled at smoking out of a bowl to get the most from the least weed. I registered Martina at Club Marley, so if she was in the center and needed weed, she wouldn't have to go all the way up to Maria Vostra, a block from Urgell. Club Marley was mostly run by Argentine people, so I thought she would like them too. One of those nights I was sitting in Club Marley at a table with Martina. When she went to the bathroom, an elder dispensary budtender I knew, who I met daily, told me that he didn't want to be rude, but: “Be very, very careful with this girl, Tomas. With Latinas, there is love sweeter than honey and all you ever dreamed of, but it only lasts as long as you are successful as you are right now, as long as you’re the manager.” I said “thank you” and I meant it, but I had no time to reflect on it because he had to go. Martina was suddenly in my mind and by my side again: in love. I thought, “Yes, the guy may be right, but I trust Martina and have no reason not to.” I knew I was broke and I knew that Martina knew that too. Even though I was a manager and seemed successful to my customers, it did not make me rich yet nor was it the reason to make Martina want to be with me. I believe he must have caught sight of her looking at me or at another man when I wasn't paying attention. To me, she was one of a kind. I trusted her deeply and even told her about the guy's warning regarding Latinas. She showed no reaction. I didn't notice or pay attention to the fact that Martina never set foot in Club Marley again.

I took a black and white photograph, which I also posted on Instagram. Her New Balance shoes and her feet crossed, hanging as she sat atop the pile of aluminum chairs, against the backdrop of the many legs of the chairs shining in the street lights in contrast to her dark shoes and leggings, were so captivating. There was a lightness in the way she sat there with her crossed legs dangling, as if she was perched on a cloud and it was the most natural thing as she was my angel. I was still unsure if she really existed or if I had only made her up with Pinto cat one night. It was all like a lucid dream. I was so glad for us and for us becoming rich soon too. I was so glad I could provide her with a future in Europe. I was so glad we would be rich and happy and we would be able to make all our dreams come true and travel the world freely together. I can show her Italy and Hungary and Europe. We can pick where do we want to live or make family. I knew all my life, all my work had led to this girl, this moment, and this future. Ours. She started to rap in Spanish in the Rioplatense dialect as I started to record her. „Loco, loco…” - she was so cute, it sounded like she had learned it on the streets of Buenos Aires, skipping school. She was amazing - so young, so true, so natural and pure and cute. I couldn't get enough of her. I wanted to make kids with her. With only her. Nobody else. By the wall of the church and the bar tables, there were a bunch of metal mobile railings with the Ajuntamiento de Barcelona logo in the middle of each of them. I told Martina to squat down to the level of the Ajuntamiento sign, and before I could finish my sentence, she was already doing it. She posed with the mobile railings, making a funny, cool and happy face while squeezing the Ajuntamiento logo between two of her fingers and pointing at it with her other hand, as if we were mocking the authorities of the Ajuntamiento. She was reading my mind. Like she knew magic. She was such a good girl. She was so pretty, smart and sexy. She was smiling, biting her lower lip, excited, turned on, and in love, I thought, looking like a bunny, or like Whitney Houston on the Brazilian live concert video, so I began to call her “Bunny”. I showed her how Whitney was smiling the same way. I was so blind to see the connection. (“The Cocaine Queen”) I was so much in love with her, so under her spell, I just really wanted her to be the One, I guess. I explained to her that the Camorra was one of my costumers and they had a club close by too and they were taking away other people's coffeeshops, menacing their lives and their families'. I explained to her that we were going to do all demolition and remodeling without any permit, without telling a word to anyone. I told her that we would lie to the residents of the building above us about what we were going to do there for months and months. I told her that she must keep it as our secret. She was nodding happily and she seemed happy that I trusted her. I explained everything to her, I told her about Rachel and Tom and I signing the founding document at Amina's office at the beginning of the same year, 2013. She seemed to understand the weight of all I told her and the reasons why I told her about it all, so she would know, so she wouldn't make a mistake saying the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time. I asked her to pay attention to her surroundings in Barcelona from then on, as there were a lot of criminals, and she was a very pretty girl - not only my girlfriend. She seemed to take it as a privilege to be my girlfriend, and she seemed eternally happy, as was I. I told her that she was the only person I fully trusted. I wanted to send the video of Martina rapping on WhatsApp to Adam, but Martina told me I shouldn't because it was late and, at the end, Adam was my boss. “Yeah but he is not really my boss, in Spain, I am the boss.

HACIA 1935 conocí en Buenos Aires a Henri Michaux. Lo recuerdo como un hombre sereno y sonriente, muy lúcido, de buena y no efusiva conversación y fácilmente irónico.

El hombre de Buenos Aires tiene la pretensión de ser el primero de América en elegancia. Se enardece y se aplaca con la misma facilidad y tiene más imaginación que su rival. Los primeros poetas que conoció América nacieron en Buenos Aires: Varela, Lafinur, Domínguez y Mármol son poetas porteños. El hombre de Montevideo es menos poético, más calmo; más firme en sus resoluciones, en sus proyectos. Si su rival pretende ser el primero en elegancia, él cree ser el primero en valentía. Entre sus poetas se encuentran los nombres de Hidalgo, de Berro, de Figueroa, de Juan Carlos Gómez. Por su parte, las mujeres de Buenos Aires tienen la pretensión de ser las más bellas mujeres de la América meridional, desde el estrecho de Lemaire[5] hasta las riberas del Amazonas. ¿Queréis saber los nombres de las que reclaman el cetro de la belleza del otro lado del Atlántico, oh despreocupadas parisienses que creéis que no puede haber mujer más hermosa más allá de la barrera de Versailles o de Fontainebleau? Pues bien, ellas son, para Buenos Aires, las señoras Agustina Rosas, Pepa Lavalle y Martina Linche[6] . Puede ser, en efecto, que el rostro de las mujeres de Montevideo sea menos deslumbrante que el de sus vecinas, pero sus formas son maravillosas, y sus pies, sus manos, sus torneadas figuras parecen haber sido pedidas en préstamo directamente a Sevilla o a Granada, pues hay allí una variedad que, en muchos casos, llega a la perfección. Y Montevideo, la ciudad europea, os mostrará con orgullo a Matilde Stewart, a Nazarea Rucker y a Clementina Batlle, es decir, tres tipos, o más bien dicho tres modelos de raza: raza escocesa, raza alemana, raza catalana. Así pues, hay entre ambos países: Rivalidad de coraje y de elegancia para los hombres. Rivalidad de belleza, de gracia y de formas para las mujeres. Rivalidad de talentos para los poetas, esos hermafroditas de la sociedad, irritables como los hombres, caprichosos como las mujeres, y, con todo eso, inocentes casi siempre, como los niños. Había, pues, como se ve, por todo lo que venimos diciendo, causas suficientes de ruptura entre Artigas y Alvear, entre los hombres de Montevideo y los de Buenos Aires.

(Fragmentos de Montevideo o la Nueva Troya, de Alejandro Dumas. París, 1850) Tanto resistió esa tribu [los charrúas] a los españoles, que éstos se vieron obligados a construir Montevideo en medio de combates todos los días y, sobre todo, de ataques todas las noches. De tal manera, y gracias a esa resistencia, Montevideo, que cuenta apenas cien años de fundada, es una de las ciudades más modernas del continente americano. La población de Montevideo, por el contrario [a Buenos Aires], ocupa una hermosa región, regada por arroyos que cortan los valles. No hay allí grandes bosques : no tiene vastas florestas como la America del Norte, pero en el fondo de los valles a que acabamos de referirnos corren arroyuelos sombreados por el quebracho de corteza de hierro; por el ubajaé de frutos de oro; por el sauce de rico ramaje. Por otra parte, esa población vive en buenas casas, está bien alimentada, sus quintas, sus granjas o alquerías están próximas unas a otras y su carácter abierto y hospitalario se inclina a la civilización en que la vecindad de la mar le aporta incesantemente sobre las alas del viento el perfume que viene de Europa.

(Fragmentos de Montevideo o la Nueva Troya, de Alejandro Dumas. París, 1850.) Por su parte, las mujeres de Buenos Aires tienen la pretensión de ser las más bellas mujeres de la América meridional, desde el estrecho de Lemaire hasta las riberas del Amazonas. ¿Queréis saber los nombres de las que reclaman el cetro de la belleza del otro lado del Atlántico, oh despreocupadas parisienses que creéis que no puede haber mujer más hermosa más allá de la barrera de Versailles o de Fontainebleau? Pues bien, ellas son, para Buenos Aires, las señoras Agustina Rosas, Pepa Lavalle y Martina Lynch. Puede ser, en efecto, que el rostro de las mujeres de Montevideo sea menos deslumbrante que el de sus vecinas, pero sus formas son maravillosas, y sus pies, sus manos, sus torneadas figuras parecen haber sido pedidas en préstamo directamente a Sevilla o a Granada, pues hay allí una variedad que, en muchos casos, llega a la perfección. Y Montevideo, la ciudad europea, os mostrará con orgullo a Matilde Stewart, a Nazarea Rucker y a Clementina Batlle, es decir, tres tipos, o más bien dicho tres modelos de raza: raza escocesa, raza alemana, raza catalana.

A partir de la muerte del general Perón la violencia política aumentó considerablemente en la Argentina. Las crónicas de los diarios trascurrían entre muertes, asesinatos, asaltos a cuarteles y amenazas159. Buenos Aires se hundió en el terror,

–como lo había hecho la expedición del Gral. Pacheco al Neuquén– el espacio que pisaban los cascos de los caballos del ejército y el círculo donde alcanzaban las balas de sus fusiles. Era necesario conquistar real y eficazmente esas 15.000 leguas, limpiarlas de indios de un modo tan absoluto, tan incuestionable, que la más asustadiza de las asustadizas cosas del mundo, el capital destinado a vivificar las empresas de ganadería y agricultura, tuviera él mismo que tributar homenaje a la evidencia, que no experimentase recelo en lanzarse sobre las huellas del ejército expedicionario y sellar la toma de posesión por el hombre civilizado de tan dilatadas comarcas” (Buenos Aires, 1881).

THEY KIDNAP AND MURDER MY HUSBAND ON OUR HONEYMOON My new husband and I are vacationing in Buenos Aires.

El grupo de chilenos dijo adiós a Isidro con francos ofrecimientos. Su tierra no era Buenos Aires; había menos dinero, menos lujo, pero la vida era tal vez más alegre.

El general Roca, al mando del Ejército argentino, exterminó a más de mil indígenas y unos diez mil nativos fueron tomados prisioneros, de los cuales tres mil fueron enviados a Buenos Aires y separados por sexo. A las mujeres se les repartió en distintos barrios de la ciudad como sirvientas, y los hombres, en su gran mayoría, fueron recluidos en la isla de Martín García, donde murieron. Millones de hectáreas de la Patagonia se sumaron así a la República Argentina.

llamadas aún no las paga el aire. Hablamos mañana. Sé bueno. –Sé

Tanto es así que en febrero de 1950 el Coronel Fox (jefe de la guarnición militar de Bariloche) se apersonó formalmente en la isla para observar las instalaciones, pero al poner pie en ella, fue literalmente repelido a punta de pistola por el propio Richter, quien lo obligó a retroceder y arrojarse al agua. Esto generó un escándalo de proporciones, dentro del cual cabían todo tipo de repudios y desconfianzas hacia Richter, excepto para Perón, quien intervino en favor de su protegido y le escribió una muy afectuosa carta de respaldo, anexando una insólita orden en la cual Perón invistió de los poderes de Presidente al propio Richter dentro de la jurisdicción de la Isla Huemul, algo ilegal pero además descabellado: “Por la presente queda Ud. designado mi único representante en la Isla Huemul, donde ejercerá por delegación, mi misma autoridad. Buenos aires, 1 de marzo 1951”[477]. Como

Aborrezco profundamente los grandes ámbitos. Sentarme en esas confiterías inmensas que todavía persisten en Buenos Aires me produce una sensación de vértigo sumamente desagradable; un asco certero en la boca del estómago. En lugares como ésos uno se encuentra permanentemente expuesto, fatalmente a la vista de todos. Y eso es algo que sencillamente no tolero. Ocho años de análisis no han logrado quitarme esa inquietud y ese desasosiego.