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

News this month

House hunting

Fed up with an endemic housing shortage and the government’s slow attempt to rectify it, two groups of slum-dwellers took matters into their own hands on July 4th. Some 500 residents of the city’s largest villa miseria, known only as the Villa 1-11-14, entered a public housing complex in a nearby neighbourhood and looted 87 new apartments slated for needy families. The looters took doors, windows and bathroom fixtures back to the villa, presumably with plans to sell them.

Soon after, a different group of villa residents entered the vandalised apartments and declared that they would not budge. City officials arrived the next day to convince them to leave, promising them 1,500 new government-built housing units. But patchwork construction will do little to solve the larger problem: with over 1m people in the Buenos Aires area living in makeshift housing, a more comprehensive strategy for breaking up the villas is necessary.

Crime rears its head

Despite its reputation as one of Latin America’s safest big cities, Buenos Aires has recently seen a string of high-profile crimes. In June a young woman was dragged out of a subway train in the mid-afternoon, then raped by two men on an abandoned platform. She apparently was their second target, as another woman reported an attempted rape at the same station just one hour before. An even more brazen offence took place in the posh Belgrano neighbourhood on July 6th: Martín Ríos, a 27-year-old accused of several shootings earlier this year, opened fire on passers-by, killing a teenager and wounding six others before escaping on a bus. Police caught him on July 14th, and none too soon—he had a loaded gun in another crowded area. The courts must now rule whether he is mentally fit to stand trial.

In response to these incidents and others, some 5,000 people gathered in Belgrano to demand the resignations of various local and national politicians over their inept crime policies. The need for better policing became painfully clear to one shopkeeper, who closed his store early to attend the march, only to return to find his door broken down and cash register empty.

Chinese delivery

Argentina’s broad ethnic homogeneity hardly insulates it from thorny race relations. This summer saw a particularly nasty spat after a Chinese supermarket owner, Mr Zeng (his first name is unknown), shot an Argentine lorry driver on June 4th, puncturing his lung. Although the victim survived, on June 20th the national truckers’ union announced a boycott on delivering goods to Chinese-owned stores, citing over 150 gun-related incidents involving its members. The union’s leadership said the measure would remain in effect until the Chamber of Supermarkets Owned by Chinese Residents (CASPRC) found Mr Zeng, who is now in hiding, and promised to hire native Argentines to receive goods from drivers.

The union’s rhetoric was jarring. One leading union official remarked, “The Italian is a jerk, the Spaniard is a jerk, and the Jew is a jerk, but we never had problems with them like the ones we’ve had for a long time with the Chinese”. A CASPRC spokesman countered that store-owners only arm themselves because they are often targeted by robbers, and he accused the union of racism. The dispute was resolved with the help of government mediators in late June, after the CASPRC agreed to help locate Mr Zeng and to hire Spanish speakers to receive deliveries.

By land or by sea

Argentines are griping about a new exit tax levied on citizens leaving the country, which will be effective from the third week of August. The duty will be set at a modest $1.60 for land and river crossings and a steeper $9.70 for sea departures (flights are already taxed $30), with proceeds slated to improve border controls.

The scheme has met wide opposition, particularly from professional drivers and ship captains. (Only diplomats, the military and border-town residents will be exempt.) Some critics say that the tax will be hard to collect and may negatively affect Mercosur, the regional trade block. But most locals who wrote to La Nación newspaper on the subject were simply sceptical of any new tariffs and restrictions. One writer indulged in typical Argentine melodrama, complaining that the tax implied, “Be happy in Argentina...or face death.”

No cars allowed

If Jorge Telerman, the mayor of Buenos Aires, gets his way, one of the city’s most recognisable landmarks will be transformed. The Plaza de Mayo, the central square at the foot of Argentina’s presidential palace, is now swarmed with traffic. Mr Telerman hopes to cut off the surrounding streets and make the square a pedestrian zone. “Non-polluting electric minibuses”, he suggested, could be installed to help take people across the plaza. Some have pointed out that such contraptions might interfere with the political rallies regularly held in the square, but the mayor is unfazed. He is pushing to complete the project by the time he is up for re-election in October 2007.

Catch if you can

July 2006

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera: Drawings and Photographs

Open run

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Frida Kahlo’s birth, the Centro Cultural Borges has compiled a modest collection of works by both Kahlo and Diego Rivera, her husband. The exhibit’s showpiece is a large pencil study by Rivera for a mural; the other images on display are more modest, consisting mainly of Rivera’s renderings of Aztec rituals. The show’s most notable works by Kahlo are intensely personal: a detailed lithograph of a pregnant female body, created after she suffered a miscarriage, and a jarring depiction of a road accident she survived, but which left her with health problems for the rest of her life. Photographs of the artists, particularly one of a hulking Rivera towering over Kahlo as she paints a self-portrait, are nearly as appealing as the drawings themselves.

Centro Cultural Borges (inside Galerías Pacífico), entrance at the corner of Viamonte and San Martín, Centre. Tel: +54 (0) 11 5555-5359. Open: Mon-Sat 10am-9pm; Sun noon-9pm. See the centre’s website.

More from the Buenos Aires cultural calendar