It’s a hyper-polluted city in a basket-case country – but I love it

A postcard from enigmatic Buenos Aires, one year into the presidency of self-styled ‘anarcho-capitalist’ Javier Milei

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There are several good reasons for starting a trip to Buenos Aires with a visit to its two great necropolises – Recoleta and Chacarita.
One is that they are magical, mysterious microcosms of the mega-city outside, with grids of narrow streets lined with trees and statues; where posher barrios have mansions and chateaux, the cemeteries have baroque mausoleums – some of which are architectural statements.
The other reason is to remind yourself that every politician, military hero, dreamer and schemer ends up here, usually with their name tarnished.
General Roca, once the lionised “conqueror of Patagonia”, is now seen by some as genocidal. Evita is a demigoddess or false idol, depending on your point of view.
Juan Perón, entombed at Chacarita (supposedly the “people’s cemetery”), hoped to be the father of a modern, industrialised nation that would compete with the United States – and wound up exiled in Spain, a pariah to enemies, a flimsy figurehead to violent guerrilla movements.
For Javier Milei, Eva and, especially, her husband are to be vilified for setting in train 80 years of state-subsidised chaos and corruption. Argentina’s “anarcho-capitalist president”, elected president exactly a year ago, has turned out to be neither as imperiously disruptive nor as doomed to fail disastrously as some forecast.
He has taken a series of measures that have infuriated the left but impressed economists, including some without vested interests.
Public bodies overstuffed with underworked employees have been slimmed down. Inflation has been sharply reduced. The gap between the official and black market dollar has narrowed.
But inequality is extreme and getting worse – though of course it took more than one year to push half of all Argentinians below the poverty line. Some observers say tourism could suffer if prices for food, drink and hotels keep increasing. For now, a tenner still gets you lunch. A glass of wine is £2.
I’ve been coming here at least yearly since 2001, and lived here permanently in the ten years prior to that. I have seen peso-dollar convertibility schemes kick in and collapse. I have seen five presidents play musical chairs over a single fortnight. I have seen the pot-banging protests when bank accounts were sequestered and savings rendered worthless.
But even bigger crises pre-date my 30-odd years visiting Argentina. Coups, dictatorships and disappearances of civilians, as well as devaluations, failed nationalisations and misguided attempts to liberalise the economy punctuate Argentinian history during the 20th century.
Yet Buenos Aires is alluring, beautiful and enigmatic. Walking around those parts of towns where low-slung French-style and Italianate buildings survive, the jacaranda blooms and the gorgeous spring sunshine can trick the eye into falling for the old lie about the “Paris of South America”. In the places where tourists throng, BA – as expats call it – is smart and even flash.
It’s also very hip. Gioia at the Park Hyatt Duhau hotel is a superb vegan restaurant, serving kimchi, gyozas and deconstructed paellas – and this in the world’s foremost carnopolis.
In the café at the Museo Moderno – an edgy and exciting major art gallery in San Telmo – I had a can of kombucha and yerba maté, the trendiest tea on the planet combined with the gaucho’s favourite brew.
Barista-run coffee shops have sprung up to compete with all the old-fashioned bares notables (I will always prefer the latter, even if they don’t offer “flat whites” and faux milks). The Teatro Colón, still offering its full season of ballets and operas, recently hosted a daring contemporary jazz-tango show by a band led by none other than Astor Piazzolla’s son.
The city is arty, foodie, fashion-conscious and hedonistic; its nightlife is world-famous and the bar scene is as strong as ever. It can compete with Berlin and New York. It has swagger and attitude.
The mental conundrum is – and always has been: why is this basket-case country, and its overpopulated city (with 14 to 16 million residents) – which is also traffic-crazy, hyper-polluted and ringed by shanty towns – such an amazing place to visit?
One of the ways local guides – who are often bona fide historians and intellectuals – try to help travellers make sense of BA is by exploring a particular area.
Visitors can undertake Pope Tours, Perón Tours, Jewish Tours, Memory/Dictatorship Tours, Tango Tours, Football Tours, Graffiti and Street Art Tours, Barbecue Tours. All cities are multi-layered to some extent, but BA delivers big on many themes.
How about an Anglo-Argentine Tour? Passing by the impressive Falklands memorial at the foot of the sloping lawn on the Plaza San Martín, I noticed two grenadiers in beautiful vintage uniforms.
For years the cenotaph, which contains the names of the 649 Argentine soldiers who died in the war and the shields of Argentina’s 23 provinces, framed by vegetation that looks Falklands-esque, was shut off behind gates. Milei, whose government was criticised for using the word “Falklands” in a communique rather than “Islas Malvinas”, is nonetheless a patriot and must have sanctioned the round-the-clock guard of honour, introduced in March.
Opposite stands the Torre Monumental or Torre de los Ingleses, a clocktower gifted to the city by the Anglo-Argentinian community as part of the 1910 centenary celebrations of Independence. The “Ingleses” bit of the name was officially dropped in 1982.
Argentinians call British people “piratas”, not always with disrespect. The name partly alludes to Francis Drake, a regular face in these parts in the 16th century. But it harks back to the burgeoning contraband that powered the economy when Spain wanted all its trade to go through Lima.
Buenos Aires turned to British as well as Dutch and French privateers and pirates to ship silver and hides and bring in luxury goods. A less conflicted Anglo-Argentine maritime connection is on display at Puerto Madero: the ARA Sarmiento former training ship, built by Cammell Laird in Birkenhead and launched in 1897 – now a museum.
A walk along the Bajo – or low part of town – and then up one of the sloping streets (which were once the riverbank) leads to the Santo Domingo convent church. It is here that the modern Anglo story began, in 1806 and 1807 when local militia successfully repelled invasions led first by General William Carr Beresford and subsequently by Lieutenant-General John Whitelocke.
During the second invasion, the British took refuge in the church. A tower was damaged by cannon fire and rebuilt afterwards. The original projectiles were removed but commemorative pieces of wood show the sites of impact. Lest we forget.
Soon there will probably be a Milei Tour. It would take in the Hotel Libertador, which he used, according to local media, as a “bunker” when he was president-elect and hatching his masterplan to “take a chainsaw to the state”; the stadium of Chacarita Juniors, where he played as a goalkeeper for a time; a ride on the 111 bus, where his dad was a driver (before building his own transport company); the salon (or butcher’s shop of) Lilia Lemoine, the stylist and cosplay fan responsible for Milei’s horrendous wig-inspired hairdo.
And then the cemetery, where all leaders, great or irrelevant, end up. Chances are Milei won’t get a monument, though former president Nestor Kirchner has streets named after him in Patagonia.
A fabulous arts centre and theatre in BA’s grand old central post office also bore his name for some years, but Milei has that removed and it is now the Domingo Faustino Sarmiento Cultural Centre – honouring a famous educator and 19th-century president. Chances are Milei won’t be entombed in Recoleta or Chacarita. Modern VIPs prefer private cemeteries out of town, with lawns and birdsong – English-style, if you like.
BA is hard to read and easy to enjoy. But the inscrutability is part of its charm. Without going as far as to suggest a “poverty safari” is acceptable or pleasurable, I think Europeans and North Americans are beguiled by the Argentinian capital’s familiarity but also by its rough edges, its messiness, its crumbling edifices and mishmash development.
It is a broken version of some of our great cities, yet all the while more engaging and entertaining. Milei is an arch-capitalist, but his nation’s capital is not completely in thrall to the markets or the modishness of the Old World.
It is not perfect, by any means, but is a sublime place to find, and lose, oneself.
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