The WQ (weirdness quotient) of Buenos Aires is very high. Note what is holding back the stone curtains
Argentina
Freemasonry and French Architecture in Argentina
Buenos Aires prides itself on being the Paris of Latin America. It has wide boulevards and French style-architecture in the older sections. The style is not accidental, but is closely connected with the founding of Argentina.
San Martin the liberator of Argentina from Spanish rule (such as it was) was a Freemason, and spent the last part of his life in France.
Independence from Spain also meant independence from Spanish culture and Spanish religion. Freemasonry was the enlightened religion of enlightened Frenchmen, who were the most enlightened citizens of Europe – or so San Marin thought.
Church and State are closely united in Argentina. Until recently the president had to be a Catholic, and Carlos Menem, a Moslem, had to be sprinkled with water to make him capable of leading the country.
The Argentine state wanted San Martin buried in the National Cathedral, but the Church was unhappy about honoring a Freemason. The compromise was to build a room off the cathedral to house the sepulcher. The room is devoid of religious symbols.
The antique shops of Buenos Aires are also full of French antiques, more than I ever saw in Montreal. Our hotel room at the Alvear Palace Hotel was more French than anything I have experienced in France. I think that housekeeping used Hermes to wash the carpets. It was like living inside a gateau Sainte Honore.
Los Desaparacidos
Every Thursday in front of the Casa Rosada, the main government building in Buenos Aries, march mothers wearing white scarves. By now the mothers are in their 70s and 80s. Some of them are discovering they are grandmothers.
Their children disappeared during the military dictatorship in the 1970s. The military arrested those suspected of leftist sympathies, or whose property they wanted, or high school students protesting bus fare rises, or children of arrestees, and they were never seen again. Thousands disappeared. They were murdered, some by being handcuffed and pushed out of helicopters over the Rio de la Plata.
When an arrestee was a woman and pregnant, the military let her deliver her baby, and then killed her. A military family then adopted the baby.
After they lost the Falkland War in 1982, the military destroyed almost all the records of these murders.
With DNA testing, hundreds of people in their 30s are learning that their parents, who raised them and loved them, were also the murderers of their mothers.
Some of the adoptees do not want to know. Others want to know the truth, no matter what the emotional cost.
No one has been brought to justice for the murders, although prosecutions have begun.
Human rights activists are trying to identify the victims and the criminals. Most documents have been destroyed but some remain. One website has some documents, under the heading Nunca Mas – Never Again- “Learn what happened. Only by knowing what took place, can we prevent it from happening again.”
More Than Two Are Tangoing
Another small pleasure of life (in addition to menu translations) is people who live up to their national stereotype. When we flew to Buenos Aires recently, the gate at the airport was total and cheerful chaos: but everyone got on, and we left on time. It was a foretaste.
To many, Argentina equals tango.<o:p>Argentina is enjoying a boom in tourism, and, according to the article “Argentina sees comeback of tango, for tourists” in The Buenos Aires Herald (February 3, 2008), fully 10 % of tourism income comes from tango. About 85% of tourists go to a tango show..
Tango started in the brothels of the port, and was considered scandalous by proper Argentines. But Europe took it up around 1910, and then it was acceptable in Argentina. 
In the 1930s the tango star was the lounge lizard Carlos Gardel, who was shot by an irate husband. When he died in 1935 several women committed suicide because they could not imagine life without him.
the tango.
English As She Is Spoke
Serving as a world language has its disadvantages. The English translations of Spanish menu items in Buenos Aires were interesting, but in Patagonia the menus were challenging. At a café in a national park, we were presented with the following choices.
Entradas
Minestrone
Soup of Gourd
Caesar Salad: mix of vegetables, cheese chicken, grudges, cream of anchovies and capers.Tibia de Vegetables
Vegetable Tibia: peppers and carrots in Julian, tomatos roasted, asparagus, champignones skipped in soybean sauce on mix of green, with grudges of cheese and Popes bolangere.Plato Principal
Steak of Garlic Sausage to the Cheese, on pure enceballado to the screw, rustic sauce of red wine and Popes.
By careful comparison with the Spanish menu we decided that the Popes were potatoes (papas), but some items (to the screw? grudges?) remained shrouded in darkest gloom.
I ordered minestrone.
Our guide was going to tell the restaurant that it needed to employ the services of an expert translator (his girlfriend) to work on its menu, but we Americans all cried him down, as someone who wanted to ruin one of the simple pleasures of life.
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