Buenos Aires: through good times and bad, Argentina's beautiful capital cruises along to a lively tango beat

Cruise Travel, July-August, 2005 by Glen Petrie

When it's winter in the United States, it's summer in Buenos Aires, so from November to March, the port bustles with a steady parade of cruise ships. The Argentine capital has become a popular embarkation/debarkation point for cruises around the tip of the South America, to the Falkland Islands, and to Antarctica. Cruise lines usually offer pre- or post-cruise hotel packages, which are a good idea, because one day in Buenos Aires is definitely not enough.

If you happen to be here for a cruise departing in February or March, you can take advantage of the Tango Festival, a two-month celebration of the national dance that features performances at venues all over the city. Tango, with its European flair, sultry sensuality, and surprising twists and turns, is an apt symbol for the Argentine capital itself. You can encounter this dance anywhere at anytime--in a coffee shop, a restaurant, or suddenly appearing on a street corner. It's one of ways in which the city surprises. Robert Duvall, who directed and starred in the movie Assassination Tango, said, "I love New York, but I actually think Buenos Aires is the most exciting city in the world."

A quick look around and you'll understand the city's reputation as the Paris of South America. French revival architecture is everywhere. A hundred years ago, when Buenos Aires was rapidly growing, French, Italian, and British architects were in vogue. Yet, while the city may look European, its flavor is distinctly Argentine.

If you see it first from your approaching flight, Buenos Aires will look daunting--a metropolitan sprawl that is home to more than 12 million residents (known as portenos). However--another of those delightful surprises--Buenos Aires is very walkable, for the city proper houses a modest two million in 48 barrios, or neighborhoods, and the best way to tour around is to do one barrio at a time.

You might want to start with one of the most attractive areas, Recoleta, which is also the most touristed part of town, due in large part to one notable (deceased) woman--Evita. Argentina's controversial former first lady is interred in one of the world's most famous graveyards, Cemeterio de la Recoleta. It is ground zero for every guided tour of Buenos Aires.

This vast, walled complex is like a city in itself, a labyrinth of elaborate crypts and mausoleums that are the final resting places of Argentina's elite. Finding Evita's tomb without asking directions is virtually impossible. Evita herself almost didn't make it here, since the populist leader was shunned by the upper classes who guard the cemetery as if it were a private club. Evita, after all, was the illegitimate child of a working-class mother, but she was finally recognized by the family of her natural father, the land-rich Duartes. (You'll be looking for the Duarte crypt, not Peron; Evita's husband, General Juan Peron, is relegated to the lesser Cemeterio de la Chacarita on the other side of town.)

Evita is still a palpable presence here, like a ghost walking the streets. Not far from the cemetery, the Evita Museum occupies a fashionable mansion in which Evita had established a home for single mothers, much to the chagrin of the upscale neighbors. The lady enjoyed slapping the faces of the elite. "Today I have the honor of holding the two highest conditions a common woman can aspire to: love from the humble and hate from the oligarchs," she said. Don't expect to gain any real insight into a woman who was accused of being more interested in her own fate than that of "shirtless ones" she championed; the museum is an unapologetic propaganda piece.

The ghosts of Evita and Juan Peron also hang over the Government House, Casa Rosada, fronting Plaza de Mayo. This public square has long been the focal point of Argentinian political life. Crowds gathered to both cheer and protest the Peron government, to cheer and protest the Falklands War, to welcome new governments and damn old ones throughout the country's tumultuous history.

Casa Rosada, a mix of Italian and French styles, is painted pink to symbolize harmony between two political parties that held the official colors of red and white. Harmony, however, has seldom been seen in Argentinian politics. In the 1970s, a group of brave women began to march to demand the return of their sons who "disappeared" during the brutal military dictatorship then in power, or at least to hear an official acknowledgement of what happened to the victims. It never came, and the women, Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, still march every Thursday at 3 p.m.

During the country's economic meltdown in 2001-02, protests here led to the deaths of seven demonstrators at the hands of police. The economic crisis has made Argentina embarrassingly cheap for visiting Americans, but it has devastated the middle class, putting more than half of Argentinians under the poverty line.

Extending west from Plaza de Mayo, Avenida de Mayo was the capital's first boulevard, reaching all the way to the Plaza de los Dos Congressos. The elaborate Greco-Roman structure there is the Palace of Congress, and the statue and fountain in the plaza commemorate the two meetings (dos congressos) that established Argentina's independence from Spain in the early 1800s.