Carne, Carne, Carne


Talking to a sociology professor, a migrant from the northern Corrientes to Buenos Aires, I remark that I am from India. Her eyes widen in sympathy. "Hindu! You're vegetarian, then. What a terrible time you must be having."

In 1830 or so, Charles Darwin rode across what is now Buenos Aires province on his way to Patagonia. One of my travel books offers this quote from some time he spent with some gauchos, following, of necessity, their diet:

"I had now been several days without tasting anything besides meat; I did not at all dislike this new regimen; but I felt as if it would only have agreed with me with hard exercise. I have heard that patients in England, when desired to confine themselves exclusively to an animal diet ... have scarcely been able to endure it. Yet the Gaucho in the Pampas, for months together, touches nothing but beef ... It is, perhaps, from their meat regimen that the Gauchos, like other carnivorous animals, can abstain long from food. I was told that at Tandeel, some troops voluntarily pursued a party of Indians for three days, without eating or drinking."

Smack in the middle of Ave. Teniente-General Juan D. Peron is the parilla Pernambuco. On about 30 metres of street frontage, brillantly reflected through picture windows, two spits glow. Huge hunks of meat, dripping fat and tallow, are turned around slowly by absurd mechanical contraptions. Further behind, sausages thick as my arm hiss on a grill, and an energetic muchacho pounds condiments into slabs of beef with the back of a ladle. A smell of pepper and grease  wafts out, loops around the block, and follows me to the bus stop at the Plaza del Congreso.

Most dinner joints offer three choices -- steak, 'milanesa' -- breaded steak, and 'cubanesa' -- breaded steak with a fried banana thrown in. All come with a treacle-like 'chimichurri' sauce. Asking for a salad fetches strange looks.

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So I go up to Jujuy province in the Andean north-west of Argentina, the only part of the country originally colonised from Peru. The one sizable settlement is the town of Huanahuaca on the Pan-American Highway. Quechua is spoken on the streets, not 'castelleno'. I am in search of Spanish adobe churches read of, long ago, on monsoon days in India. The road leads through the long, narrow, canyonesque Quebrada, and below the staggering 5000 metre volcanic peaks the landscape is a palette of colours.

I find my adobe church. Inside, there is a fresco of the Last Supper.  The disciples stare hungrily at the food, and, after looking at this for a while in fading daylight, I feel in the need of a snack myself. The German girl I've been talking to on the bus, photographer from Cologne and the only other non-local around, wants an Andean dinner. We trip down the steep cobbled streets in twilight, till a nameless shack shows candles and trestle tables inside. Conversations falter as we enter and take our places, but after a few moments of scrutinising the folks return to their glasses of Quilemes. Both of us ask for the day's special, determined to be Andean; and a little while later, are staring at two nicely roasted animals placed before us. The four little stumps of legs are in the air, the skin is drawn tight across the body as juices and waxy stuffing ooze out, and the snout is burnt a crisp black.

"What is it?". "I think it is some kind of a rat." " A rat? " " Yes, a*large* rodent, obviously a delicacy."  "Rat? Rat!" there's a low moan as I start cutting mine up gingerly. Even in this flickering light, she looks somewhat green.

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Apart from the gauchos and tango danseuses wearing Tucuman jasmines in their hair, "there is no stronger symbol of 'argentinidad' than mate". The department secretary pokes her head into my office every now and then -- "Mate?"

Yerba mate, sometimes called Paraguayan Tea, isn't, botanically speaking, tea; it happens to be a wild cousin of the North American holly. The leaves contain mild alkaloid stimulants, and their properties were first documented as a panacea by the missionaries proselytising Rio Parana.

Argentines drink it hot and unsweet -- dried leaves are steeped in water close to boiling, and the brew sipped through a bulbous filter-tipped stick. In Paraguay, however, you drink it cold, sweetened, pretty much like ice tea.

I find mate bitter and heavy. The first rounds with fresh leaf are oily, but the brew clears thereafter. Folks here consume many times more mate, per capita, than they do coffee, and smoke like chimneys to make up for the lack of caffeine.

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The Steenking Ingles

The Princess of Wales is in town, a part of Britain's effort to normalize relations. She looks her ambassadorial best  in designer bikinis, Menem's daughter frolicks against the setting sun, and El Presidente capers around both  of them on a black, loamy beach on the Rio Plata. Molino, the cashier  at UBATEC's staff canteen, is perplexed: "Have they kicked her out of  England, finally?"

As the cliche goes, the Argentines are a bunch of Italians who speak Spanish and think they're English. National sentiment for
the Malvinas runs high (the memorial at Land's End in Ushuaia simply says in foot-high letters 'Volveremos', We Shall Return). In the aftermath of the Malvinas war, fury and confusion reigned for some time; the magnificent 18th century Torre del Ingles, long a Buenos Aires landmark, was hurriedly renamed after the Air Force -- it is now the Edificio Fuerza Aerea Argentina. The many Midlands families who had settled the Pampas and Patagonia (read W.H. Hudson's 'Far Away and Long Ago' for an account of growing up quasi-English in Argentina at the turn of the century) quietly hauled down the Union Jacks from their estancias. I met an  expatriate Aussie who remembers having to exaggerate his accent.

But, time heals all wounds but your navel. (Old Yahgan saying.) These days, Hotel Bristol is back in business on the Rivadavia. Bean-counters from Barclay's Bank and Thos. Cook 'old chap' each other on the subte again. There's the triennial Beatles revival, a Queen revival, and the cabbie shows me a picture of Keith Richards holding an infant. 'My daughter, there was a concert the day of her first birthday.' Charly Garcia (ex 'Sui Generis') appears on TV.


Last week, a Bolivian army officer claimed that he knew where Che Guevara had been buried following his 1967 execution. Guevara is, arguably, the most well-known Argentine after Evita. (Maradona? Sabatini? Gardel?) Not that  you'd know, from the interest the press showed here. Princess Diana remained on the  front-pages in Buenos Aires; thousands marched, I'm  told, in Cuba, where this was taken as yet another opportunity to burn Jesse Helms in effigy. Swatch stepped in on the side of World Revolution, and stepped up production of their fatigue coloured Che model, red star and beret-wearing head on the dial.


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Desiderata

The state government of Mendoza has landed itself into trouble by announcing that, due to tardiness of local businesses in paying taxes, it will accept payment in kind. Suddenly, the market in used mattresses, broken lamps and decade-old cars has gone up. From Salta to Santa Cruz, all kinds of junk are being sold to Mendoza businesses, who turn in the stuff as 'inventory' or 'new', in lieu of back taxes.

Amazingly, very few people have bank accounts, a result of the 80s hyper-inflation. Few places will accept cheques. Even the Department Chairman gets paid his salary in cash. On payday, hundred-peso notes hit the streets in a 5 pm deluge, and no change is to be had for hours afterward. I have established my own Banco Bottom of Mattress, and Life is Simple again.