Petty Crime

 I had my first brush with petty crime last Monday, at a vegetarian takeout place (actually great way to save money and stave off scurvy at the same time!). The way the system works is you take a plastic carton, put what food you want in it, and then bring it to the cashiers. One cashier weighs the food, and tells you the price, and then puts your dish on the counter, in front of a second cashier, who takes your money.

            In Argentina, the shop owners either don’t have change, or try at all costs to not to use theirs up. An exaggeration, of course, but it’s not that uncommon for people to say they can’t break 2 pesos (50 cents, American). Thus was my case. The man demanded exact change, down to the cents. I had to hunt through my money purse for coins, as people continued to slide their dishes on the counter next to mine and buy food. As I routed around for the last 10 cents, having already handed over the rest of the cash, I felt a brush of air, which I assumed was just another person taking their food. When I looked up, several moments later, my lunch was gone.           

            At first, I was merely confused, thinking that the cashier had been guarding my food until I paid him for it. He announced he didn’t have it, and rapidly lost interest, as I had already paid. The other cashier asked what was wrong.

 I told them, “I paid but I don’t know where my lunch is.” The other guy kind of nodded and decided it wasn’t his business.

But I continued bothering the first guy, “I gave you money, and now I don’t have anything.”

I wasn’t quite sure who had been robbed as the food was stolen while I was still paying. Both of us, I guess. (An odd note about this, was that the person could have easily filled a dish and walked out the door, they didn’t need to wait in line to steal anything).

“You should protect your stuff,” the cashier told me, and went on to ignore me and check out other customers. I was rather annoyed. Being an American, I was raised to think that if the customers not always right, they at least deserve some respect. I was annoyed at him for insisting he wouldn’t accept my money unless I could find exact coinage and at him for not paying attention while I was distracted by paying him in the manner he insisted. In the U.S., the restaurant staff would have been apologetic over this situation, they would have offered me a new lunch, or a discount, I assume, but mostly, in the U.S. this wouldn’t have happened. I was annoyed at the cashiers for being part of a country where people didn’t even have the respect to wait until after I’d paid to rob me (and be clear that it was me he/she was robbing). Argentina is a country where strangers will stop to offer you directions without even being asked. It’s also a country where people will seize any opportunity. In the end, I announced to the cashiers that I had paid them for food, and so was going to take food, and I went and got a new plate, and left. Maybe I was a thief now, too?

History note, courtesy of my Service Learning class: since the latest financial crisis, Argentina has become known for petty theft. Violence is rare, but stealing is high. There’s not a lot of job stability, and so the poorer classes tend to move from one type of temporary work to another, and mix in petty crime. Jobs aren’t vocations or identities: no one has a job long enough to associate with it. Instead, it’s just another way of getting money, not different from crime other than having fixed hours. It’s common for people to hold a salaried job to pay for general expenses, and a side “job” of theft, to pay for fun.

That’s not to say everyone does this, but it’s been a noted trend, say the sociologists. I saw a documentary on a group of people called “carteneros” (there’s no exact translation, the best I’d say is “cardboard people”). These incredibly poor people work searching through trash for recyclables, which they can then sell to factories. It’s an awful job, paying only $1-2 a day, but it’s work, and it’s honest. One man said that people on the street derided him as a “tramp” for doing this work, but that he was proud of it: being a cartenero meant he was supporting his family in a legal way. He was proud when kids in his shantytown stopped being thieves and became carteneros.

It’s a weird hypocrisy, but I think society respects thieves more. Because being a thief means that you have more control and dignity. As a thief you don’t work for the man, you make your own rules. You’re proactive. Sure you’re harming someone, but the very fact that you’re harming someone means that you have the ability to harm someone, you has effect. But a cartonero? You’re digging through other people’s trash, and just to scrape by; everyone realizes you’re not paid anything close to how much time you put in, and it’s not just a dirty job, you’re spending all your time searching through the stuff that society has specifically deemed “untouchable”. Sometimes, it seems people would admire you more if you robbed them than if you respected them.

Alfajores

Alfajores are one of the most traditional, popular Argentinean foods. These cookie-sandwiches are filled with dulce de leche, jam, or mousse, and often covered in chocolate or rolled in coconut flakes. You can find them in individual aluminum packaging in any of the ubiquitous kioskosos, but to be honest, those aren’t that good.  Besides serving as a quick chocolate-fix, any of kiosko alfajores’ other merits get drowned between the sheer feeling of being awful for you. There is something about the thick, chalky cookie layers that makes me want to apologize to my arterires. And yet, I persevere, and every now and again try a new type, because, damnit, when it comes to being a porteña, liking alfajores is right up there with dancing tango while drinking mate and painting yourself the colors of Boca fútbol. Finally, tonight, it all became worth it.

Some friends and I set to making alfajores. Now, there are many types, and alfajores have come a long way from the almost healthy originals – a Spanish-Arabic treat consisting of honey, almonds, walnuts, and dried fruit wrapped in a dough cylinder and rolled in sugar or more dried fruit. When the Spanish came to the Americas, they thought more about conquering and extracting silver than about where had good alfajor ingredients, and as a result, had to change their recipe. Judging from the modern candy-cookie concoctions, that recipe changed a lot. Each province and country has it’s own alfajor recipe. Nicaragua makes a brownie-like pastry using cocoa, molasses, and corn meal, and slaps on the “alfajor” name, while in la Salta province they fill the cookie-sandwiches with a honey meringue, Santa Fe province employs crunch cookies brimming over with filling, and health food stores are testing out whole-grain and rice-based cookies. Buenos Aires is all about dulce de leche, and usually the cookies you can get in bakeries are spongy or like shortbread.

We choose a recipe for cornstarch alafjores (I know, doesn’t sound appetizing, but bear with me).  Here were our ingredients (we halved this, and came out with about 11 sandwiches):

5 oz (150 g) softened butter

7 oz (200 g) sugar

2 egg yolks

1 egg

3.5 oz (100 g) flour

 10.5 oz (300 g) corn starch

1 tsp baking soda

Shredded coconut

a few spoonfuls of apple puree

cinnamon

a spoon or two of honey

The apple puree and cinnamon were our own additions, trying to make a very bland tasting (but wonderfully creamy-textured) batter more sweet and flavorful.

We stole our recipe from a blog:http://anatravels.org/2011/06/27/alfajores-de-maizena/, but I’ll repost it here, with our changes.

Process:

1. Heat the oven on low, or about 300 degrees.

2. “Beat the softened butter with the sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the egg yolks and the egg and beat well.”

Measuring in grams? Get me out of this crazy country!!

3.”Sift together the flour, corn starch and baking soda and gradually add to the butter and egg mixture.” Stir in apple sauce and honey and sprinkle on cinnamon.

4. The dough was so wet, we found it easiest to dollop it directly on to a tray and smooth into a circle shape, instead of rolling out first, like the recipe recommends. Be careful to space your cookies apart – ours spread into each others. You can easy fix this, though, by cutting out shapes or using a mug to cut out circles.

     
Even in Latin America that's just not enough personal space

5. Cook for about 12 minutes. You’re advised not to let the cookies turn a gold color, although I’d recommend letting your cookies get on the crispy side. The cookies on our bottom rack cooked more than the ones on top, until they had a brown edge, and this made them firmer and more flavorful.

6. Filling: After letting your cookies cool, spread a filling between them, and sandwich two together. (It’s basically s’mores minus the marshmallow). We used dulce de leche, melted chocolate, and/or a mixture of peanut butter, milk, and honey. If you want, pour some chocolate over the top. Whatever you do, don’t forget to roll it in shredded coconut. I accidentally dumped a mound of coconut on top of mine, as thick as one of the cookies, and I almost died of happiness.

An alfajor, cut in half. It may not look fancy, but . . . 

. . . the results speak for themselves.

Un Hueco (Theater)

Often, I feel my theater “class” is the equivalent of an artsy mafia. In 4 weeks of classes, I’ve only seen my teacher once, but tickets in my name appear at various theaters, and e-mails tell me when to make pick up.  According to the syllabus, I am making fantastic advancements on my Drama minor – learning directly from a choreographer, talking with an actor about auditioning, learning how to compose music. In fact, I’ve had one class where we were supposed to read Wikipedia if we’d brought our computers (something we were in fact, told not to do in classes), and one class where a man taught us a little of how to put together basic circuits, and also showed us gadgets constructed from toys that make an approximation of music depending how you touch them. Interesting, but irrelevant.

However, I appreciate the tickets that come at no extra charge to my tuition.

I saw  “Un Hueco” (“A Hollow”) Sunday, and while I understood fairly little of the dialogue, I think it was brilliant. It was about 3 friends, grieving, presumably over the death of one of their sisters. (In my opinion, a sister is dead; others’ theories range from girl being a chick from a club to the friends having killed someone).  

The genius of the play was that it seemed designed specifically for its location. The play took place in Buenos Aires, and the streets mentioned where ones near us. More than that, though, the play took place in the room where the play was supposed to take place. We, the audience, met in the hallway of a school and walked through a public bathroom to get to the room of the play. The room itself was the size of a classroom with a few backless benches for the audience, a large set of blue lockers, a dirty mirror on one wall, and a long bench with a curved back along the opposite wall. At times one or two of the three actors would exit and we’d hear water running – having crossed through it, we could now envision the bathroom he was washing up in. While waiting for the play to start, we’d taken free coffee from a table with coffee, a plate of ham and cheese sandwiches, a pitcher of orange juice and what looked like a bottle of alcohol. Later, one actors left and came back with the tray and alcohol. (I have no idea what they would have done if an audience member had eaten the sandwiches, because it seemed all had been offered to us). That the items used as props had been taken for ordinary elements of the world around us made play’s illusion of reality all the stronger. This was aided by the use of actual items: real sandwiches, a genuine cigarette, in place of props that were merely imitations. Admittedly, I think the alcohol was just water.

The actors were often only 4 feet away from the audience, sometimes as close as a foot. When they shoved the lockers or pushed each other, they seemed running the risk of tumbling into an audience member. The tension was palpable, and another powerful element. The actors spoke over each other, clamoring, teasing. No one politely waited for a line to be finished. A friend would playfully pinch and push at another, grab his tie, or slap his butt. There was a physical familiarity and energy between the actors that made them believable; it was obvious when the Jewish friend felt his personal space was invaded. For realism, it was fantastic and my only complaint was that one friend, Lucas, seemed oddly mobile for a man on crutches. For a play, while I liked it, I can see that it made a risky choice: the realism of everyone talking at once certainly made it hard for us to understand what was being said and what was going on.

Friday Sept. 9: African Drumming

It turns out that Africans more or less don’t exist in Argentina, but the impact of their music is still clear. In addition to Afrolunes and San Telmo African drumming, today I went to an African drumming class.

            Africans, mostly men, were brought to Argentina as slaves, and at some point in the 1800s, promised their freedom if they fought in wars for their masters. They went to the wars, and essentially all of them died. Those that remained in Argentina fled the racism and escaped to other countries.

Nowadays, black people are exotic. Black girls in my program report men chasing them on the street, and one black guy mentioned that a little girl, seeing him, delightedly cried out, “Un negro!” A while back, a restaurant searched far and wide for anyone with dark skin to use as their waiters – in the end they had to get workers from Uruguay, because they couldn’t find any in Argentina. People go to the restaurant as a tourist attraction, to witness real dark-skinned people. It’s an odd sort of positive racism: Argentineans are fascinated by anyone who looks African.

A love, too, exists for the African culture. At this event, three men drummed traditional songs, each one representing a god or telling a story. A remarkably fit woman danced, wearing black athletic spandex, and a few items related to each character – an animal print skirt for the hunter, a stick as prop for the child god, etc. In the story in particular, she made a dance out of acting it out. Pulling on boots became part of the movement of the dance; somehow she balanced conveying information with maintaining a fluid dance.

                                                  Dancing as the mischevious, but happy child god

We then got to wear our own metal drums (which fell uncomfortably on top of the knee, making it hard to walk) and try out the beats, pounding rhythms and spinning or moving together in a circle. A construction worker on top of the neighboring building loved it – he started clapping his hands above his head and dancing around. The drums came with drumsticks, but the style seemed to also include a lot of slapping the face of the drum with your hand. 

Sept. 10: Rugby

I went to the rugby game expecting  an all out brawl with a referee. In middle school, an assistant teacher who used to play said that had a party after each game they to say, “sorry for sticking my thumb in your eye.”

            “Here, no,” Alexis (Raquel’s boyfriend) told me. Here, they don’t have those parties; no one is sorry.

            In fact, despite the fact that apparently two players began to throttle each other when I looked away, rugby is a surprisingly graceful sport. Sure, half the game is grown men throwing themselves on top of each other in smothering  pig piles, and it’s all done without pads, but at some moments the fluidity of handoffs makes you forget this. At throw-ins, when a player jumped for the ball, a teammate would grab him around the waist and boost him up, an act I always associate with ballet.

            As for the scrum, that seems to be have been invented with the sole goal of breaking arms. The teammates line up in a crowd, facing off against the other team, hook their arms around each others backs, and shove. The ball is dropped in the gap between the two teams. The goal of the scrum turns out to be about swiveling the other team out of the way so a player at the back of the mob can pick it up.

            The venue also surprised me. I dreamed of a huge stadium of screaming fans, but instead it was more like an afternoon soccer game. The game took place in a complex of fields; teen girls played hand-ball and field hockey while the game went on, with a restaurant and a playground sitting between us and them. Bleachers were set up around the field, and the die-hard fans could pay for a particular section of bleachers. Throughout the game I kept seeing a small stream of glittering confetti drifting out of the hardcore bleachers. It turns out the fans there were tearing up their programs and tossing their scraps onto the field at no particular moment and not in union with any other fans.  

Sept. 4 and 7 - Shows

I. San Telmo Drumming

Last Sunday, I went to see African drumming in the neighborhood of San Telmo. It was fantastically easy to find; when you get off the bus, just follow the sound. A group of men, dressed comfortably in sweatshirts or T-shirts, played as they walked. Their drums were decorated with large painted lips, grinning. Before the men danced three women dressed in black. They made a decent dance based around small steps, swaying hips, and smooth gestures; I tried to surreptitiously copy them, but there seemed to be a trick to the deceptively simple moves to make it all come together.  People walked along, following the drummers like a very chill recreation of the Pied Piper.  When then drummers reached their end, in front of a Socialist group’s headquarters, to give you some of San Telmo’s personality, they circled around the dancers, and took the drumming up a notch. Then everyone quietly dispersed and went home.

II. Opera

Wednesday, I went to an opera. Unlike operas and ballets in the US, here it’s perfectly acceptable to arrive in jeans (although, admittedly, most people dress better here anyway).  Most of the audience was in their 50’s or 60’s, and the 5:30pm start time must have been an especially early for Argentineans, who eat dinner around 9pm or 10pm.

I’m always surprised that here theater tickets don’t have assigned seating, so lines will stretch down the block as everyone files up waiting to enter. Still, it has it’s perks - we managed to snag seats 4 rows from the stage. (One friend pointed out to me that in the U.S., getting into events depends on money. You have to pay for better seating to the theater, you have to buy the milonga tickets before hand; In Argentina, a lot depends on time and dedication. If you arrive early, you’re golden).

            In the theater, at the top of the curtain, was a digital screen, looking pretty much like a teleprompter, displaying the words to the songs. This is a fantastic invention. Even in English, songs are hard to understand.  Admittedly, there were flaws. Often the singers repeated words, but the digital display didn’t, or the actors used synonyms or slightly different wordings. An odd detail was I think the singers often said “gratsi” (Italian) instead of “gracias” (Spanish). Perhaps I misheard, or perhaps it’s a sign of opera’s Italian heritage or of Argentina’s love of Europe leaking in.

            This first opera was Suor Angelica, which was not great. Because it was an opera, the music was powerful and pretty and the singers have abilities I cannot dream of, but the plot was, well, not really a plot. It was cause and effect at the best, without suspense, uncertainty, or different sides in conflict. In punishment for having an illegitimate child, a woman had been sent to be a nun. She finds out that her son died, so she kills herself. End.

            In the last scene, the woman wore a simple white dress, making her contrast both in formality and color with the somberly colored, more formal clothes of the other characters. The stage lights focused on her, as if she was a ghost or an angel; presumably this indicated that she would not in fact be damned for taking her own life. At the last moment, her dress illuminates brightly with lights hidden in the cloth. I know this should add drama and intensity, but the use of modern technology contrasted too much with the old fashioned setting of the play for me to truly appreciate it. In a more modern atmosphere, it could be great.

            What was fantastic, however, was Pagliaci, the second show, and a 2-act opera. The plot is interesting, the music of course powerful, the actors skilled, and the workfull of side plots. The main plot is this:  a man finds out his wife is cheating on him. Meanwhile, he and his wife are comedia d’el arte actors, playing husband and wife in a show about a man who finds out his wife is cheating on him. To emphasize the show-within-a-show even more, the opera stars with credits rolling, as if in a movie, projected onto a transparent screen in front of the main stage. (In both operas, they at times used a third screen, in front of the actors like a physical fourth wall, in addition to other setting pieces behind or on level with the actors). Meanwhile, the whole play is full of little plots, so no matter where you look, there’s something interesting. There’s a love triangle with girls fighting over the attention of a soldier (but also trying to play hard to get), and the townspeople react to the comedia d’el arte play (I think some of them were crushing on the wife), and things like that. In summary, if you’re in Buenos Aires and get the chance to see an opera by Buenos Aires Lirica, definitely take it up. Well, you know, depending on price; I got in for free. 

Día: 1 Month+

I.               Famous

Thursday we found the Catedral, a famous cathedral, especially notable for its ability to hide in plain site. The outside of the Catedral looks more like an old bank – a large square building with pillars and a decorative top. Once inside, it transforms into a huge, multiroom church, complete with choir music playing. Mostly, it was pretty, but there was a life sized figure of a saint that I found rather tacky. It was also interesting that the confession section was not at all secretive – whereas in some churches you can’t really see the confessor, here the confessors’ head and torso where completely exposed, making  admitting your guilts a much less private act.

Earlier that day, my program visited Teatro Colon, a large, rather ornate theater, full of marble and gold fanciness. It ha one of the best acoustics in the world, which I got the impression was half do to luck and half to to conscious placement of cloths to absorb sound and metal flowers to reflect and spread sound. The first architect who started on the Teatro died at age 44, and so was replaced by another man, who was killed by his wife at 44. Fearing that all the architects were doomed to die at age 44, and that the theater would never be built, those in charge made sure to hire someone 65ys old to finish the job. 

II.               Fairs

Buenos Aires is also full of fairs, many that happen every week and a few for special occasions. Last week I went to the Ferria de los Matadores, in an area traditionally known for its slaughterhouses. There was folk dancing, which everyone generally voted a lot more reasonable than tango, and lots of stands selling crafts and food. Today I went to a fair in honor of Immigrants. There was more folk dancing, and minor acts, as each country’s booth tried to lure you over.

III. Music

Monday I saw Afrolunes, an event that takes place in a bar every Monday, and features live music. I left at 1am, too early to see the African music, but the band before that was fantastic. The singer was full of presence, and, surprisingly, sang only in English, ranging from “I Shot the Sheriff” to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. American music is popular here, to the extent that at the concert I almost forgot I was in a foreign country. In the background they played clips of animations and what looked like odd B movies, for reasons unknown to me. Probably what I appreciated most was that a good number of people were dancing, and not grinding.

IV. Sports and Death

Earlier today, I went to see two polo matches, one men’s, one women’s. It was a beautiful day for it, but it seems Buenos Aires isn’t as into polo – despite being the semifinals the stands weren’t even a quarter full.

Later we went to a murder mystery dinner,  which was pretty fun, and I appreciated the caricatured characters, but it was hard for all of us to piece together the Spanish and figure out what was going on.

VI. Language

A few decades ago (80’s mostly) there was a lot of government run torture and it’s worked it’s way into the language. Phrases like “stop cutting my face” or “don’t give me to the machine” (“machine” referring to electric prod developed for torture)

are used to mean “stop bothering me” (at least, according to my readings, I’ve never heard anyone say it).

People even have PTSD over language. For instance, in the Dirty War, or the Process, as they call the period of government run kidnapping and torture, hoods were kept over captured people’s heads to make them feel powerless, or to suffocate them. One woman who had been tortured reported that years later, she was trying to tell her kids to remember to put up the hoods of their coats because it was cold. She couldn’t bring herself to say the word “hood”, so substituted a really antiquated term for it, and the kids had no idea what she was trying to say.

VII. Politics

I have more information on the deal with Cristina and the houses.

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo are a civil rights group that formed to protest the government run disappearances  during the Process. In the beginning it was specifically mothers calling for information on what had happened to their children. Now, the group has split into 2, and at least one faction is more involved in general rights work. Cristina Krichner gave a lot of money to the Mothers to sponsor their building houses. However, Sergio Schoklender, (irrelevantly famous for killing his parents), was the financial manager of the Mothers and  embezzled the majority of the money.