Economist.com Cities Guide: Buenos Aires Briefing - March 2006

News this month

Off the hook?

Life seems to be getting better for Aníbal Ibarra, the city’s mayor, who has been suspended from office since January to undergo impeachment hearings. Mr Ibarra has been charged with letting building inspections slip, thus creating the conditions for a fire at the República Cromañón nightclub which killed 193 people in December 2004. But the effort to impeach him may be falling apart: with the hearings already mired in controversy, on February 16th Gerardo Romagnoli, one of the 15 council members responsible for judging the mayor, denounced the trial as “a show” and stormed out of the proceedings.

Mr Ibarra, who has criticised the hearings’ irregularities from the start, was quick to say the trial had “received a critical blow”. The mayor may be right: although it seems the process will limp on until it produces a verdict in mid-March, the mayor's accusers need to win ten of the remaining 14 votes to remove him. This may be impossible, given that both the polls and Argentina’s president, Néstor Kirchner, stand behind Mr Ibarra. Mr Romagnoli may not be so lucky: his opponents, furious at his resignation, declared that they will try to remove him from his job on the council for “gross misconduct”.

Gotcha

Five weeks after one of the most audacious bank raids in Argentine history, the police arrested two suspects, Alberto Torre and Liliana Fernandez. The pair are only part of the group that robbed a bank outside Buenos Aires on January 13th, holding hostages for hours before escaping with up to $50m through a specially built tunnel. The crime, hailed as the “robbery of the century”, has earned admiration for both its technique and its nerve. The gang reportedly used only fake weapons, and some hostages even said that the criminals treated them better than the police who rescued them—one thief allegedly led a chorus of “Happy Birthday” for one hostage.

With the public still cooing over the thieves’ pluck, Buenos Aires authorities are trumpeting the arrests—and subsequent raids that turned up almost $1m in cash and eight kilos of stolen jewellery—as proof of successful investigative methods. But some credit for the arrests should go to the fury of a woman scorned: Mr Torre was reportedly turned in by his wife, whom he had jilted for Ms Fernandez. Just days later the police arrested a man who allegedly built the getaway tunnel. But they may not make much progress with the rest of the gang, who are suspected of fleeing the country.

Land grab

A redevelopment scheme for the centre of Buenos Aires is drawing both interest and censure. Local and national officials are considering selling 18 hectares of unused railway land in the Retiro district to developers to build new housing, hotels and offices. Proceeds from the sale would pay for the electrification and modernisation of the dilapidated General San Martín train line, increasing its capacity from 3m to 10m passengers a day. The proposal has already attracted the attention of Roggio, a local financial holdings group, and Delmo, an Australian developer.

Similar plans have been in circulation since the 1990s: the land is one of the few remaining sites in the city centre suitable for a big development scheme, and is in a prime neighbourhood to boot. But specialists and NGOs have criticised authorities for pandering to developers instead of coming up with a coherent plan for the area, which is a major transport hub. They contend that the latest scheme does nothing to integrate local train, bus and subway terminals, nor does it have a plan to house the thousands of residents of a shanty town alongside the train tracks.

Heavy handed

The murder of a Bolivian man by nightclub bouncers has revived concerns of racism. On February 11th Beimar Mammani, a 24-year-old Bolivian, was drawn into a fight in an Once district nightclub and died after being beaten by bouncers. Mr Mammani’s friends said that his group had been baited because they were Bolivians. Aníbal Fernández, Argentina’s interior minister, agreed, condemning the murder as “markedly xenophobic”. Poor immigrants from the neighbouring countries of Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru face widespread prejudice in Argentina, even to the point of being abused by rogue police officers. But Mr Fernández was keen to insist that in Argentina, “nobody is condemned for their face or their social condition”.

Regardless of its xenophobic undertones, Mr Mammani’s death was only the latest piece of bad press for Buenos Aires’ bouncers. They have made headlines with a string of violent encounters over the past year. The city council has been trying to clamp down, closing over 50 clubs since the beginning of 2005 for flouting rules for hiring security staff.

The mothers head home

One of Argentina’s best-known human rights groups, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo Association, held its last 24-hour “march of resistance” in the main square in January. The group staged its first march in 1977, during the reign of Argentina’s military government, to demand the return of loved ones “disappeared” by the junta and the punishment of those responsible. Thankfully the impetus for the march has all but disappeared: not only did the military government end in 1983, but Néstor Kirchner, Argentina’s president, has made the commemoration and punishment of past human-rights abuses a priority. “We no longer have an enemy in the presidential palace,” Hebe Bonafini, one of the most prominent Mothers, declared. “We are old and the enemy is not there.

Why continue?”

The decision to end the annual march does not mean that the city's main square will be empty. A rival group, La Línea Fundadora, has said it will continue to march once a year. And even Ms Bonafini's group will remain active: the Mothers will rally in the Plaza de Mayo each Thursday, to demand the redistribution of Argentina’s wealth.

Catch if you can

March 2006

Celebrities

Until March 12th 2006

The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes has organised a remarkable photography exhibit for this summer. Spread throughout the museum’s first floor are more than 30 portraits of local and international figures, from famous dancers such as Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky, to politicians such as Raúl Alfonsín, Argentina’s president from 1983-89.

The collection draws on work from a variety of photographers: Henri Cartier Bresson’s classic photograph of Coco Chanel is here, as is a trio of portraits by Annemarie Heinrich, a German-born woman dubbed the grande dame of Argentine photography. Look out, too, for Freddy Alborta’s iconic picture of Che Guevara's corpse after his death at the hands of the Bolivian army. But perhaps the most interesting portraits are the six of Jorge Luís Borges, which capture different sides of one of Argentina's finest authors.

Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Av. Del Libertador 1473, Recoleta. Tel: +54 0 (11) 4803-0802/8814. Open: Tues-Fri, 12.30pm-7.30pm; Sat-Sun, 9.30am-7.30pm. For more information visit the museum’s website.

More from the Buenos Aires cultural calendar