PICTURES OF STREET LIFE IN BUENOS AYRES
It is a reasonable proposition that there are at least as many ways of
studying a strange town as Mr. Kipling allows in the writing of tribal
lays—“and every single one of them is right.” I claim no more than that
for my own particular way.
My first concern is to gain a general impression, by wandering the
streets and letting the spirit of the place “soak” into me, almost
unconsciously. Later, I assume an attitude of mind more critical and less
subjective, becoming an active observer, open-eyed for everything that is
strange or unusual; finally I compare all that has especially appealed
to my mind with impressions long since etched thereon by visits to other
cities.
In this way I should probably describe the same town somewhat differently
in the varying stages of my observation, and each would be a true
description so far as I was able to convey any notion at all. But after
passing from the impressionary stage to the critical and eventually to
that of the comparative observer, it is difficult to recover the first
impressions once these have been overlaid, like some palimpsest of the
memory, with later records. In the preceding chapter I have made some
slight attempt at this, simply because it seemed to me worth trying and
the progress of my narrative suggested it. A book of first impressions,
however, would be of small value, no matter how interesting it might
prove, and I deliberately refrained throughout my stay of twelve months
in the cities of the River Plate from keeping a diary, even from making
notes, except on two subjects, to wit: the price of commodities, and
cruelty to animals, which I shall discuss in special chapters. In what
I now proceed to describe, I shall be guided by my last and abiding
impressions of all that I saw or experienced, and for this purpose a
continuous narrative is no longer feasible.
My way, then, in studying a foreign city is first to observe the panorama
of its street-life so closely that I can ever after recall it in minute
detail; then to store away finished pictures of its characteristic
buildings in my memory; next to watch narrowly the ways of the people,
as expressed in all forms of their social life and business activities,
gleaning on every hand from others and exchanging opinions even with
persons with whom I should hate to agree. In such wise, or as nearly as
may be, I shall now continue.
Buenos Ayres in its planning is essentially North American. That is
simplicity itself, but out of simplicity has come confusion. The
buildings are in “blocks,” or _cuadras_ (squares), as they call them in
South America. These squares measure 150 yards each way. Thus a plan of
the city looks like a monstrous checker board, with here and there a
larger square, where two or more cuadras have been thrown into one to
admit a little more air into the congested mass. For the streets are
narrow beyond belief. The average width allows three coaches to stand
abreast, with a clearance of some twelve inches between them. A walking
stick and a half gives you the measure of the pavements. These are the
standards for nearly all the thoroughfares in the older part of the town,
and were the ample ideals of the Spanish colonisers, who required no more
than single-story houses and a track between for their horses or their
bullock wagons. Thus, in great measure, Buenos Ayres is an anachronism,
and such it will long remain, as the abnormal development of the country
and its capital city—the world’s most prodigious mushroom—has made this
central part a veritable Eldorado of the landowner.
What served a century ago is to-day a legacy of evil, and these narrow
colonial streets have made of central Buenos Ayres an inferno of human
strife such as I hope exists nowhere else on our globe. For within these
myriad squares of 150 yards there is no entrance or exit for wheeled
traffic, and it is a pathetic sight to witness the unloading of goods on
the narrow sidewalks in the early morning. Let the North American reader
conceive a great department store, situated in a street no wider than
Wall Street, utterly devoid of any back way for the entrance of a cart,
with a pavement in front that measures a walking-stick and a half; and
let him picture what it means to stock that great building with all sorts
of goods, from massive suites of furniture to tons of shoes and neckties!
If his imagination will stand the strain, let him further imagine what
would happen if a trolley line were laid within two feet of the sidewalk
in front of the door, and an endless stream of cars were passing, the
bodies of them flush with the curbstone! Yet the Wanamakers and the
Marshall Fields of Buenos Ayres have to stock their premises under these
conditions. In this city of miracles, there is none more extraordinary
than the task of moving goods from the street into the shop and it is
small wonder that a large part of what one pays for any article in Buenos
Ayres has been incurred in getting it into the place where it is bought.
It is infinitely easier and cheaper to carry a piano from London to the
port of Buenos Ayres than to take it from the ship a mile away to the
shop where it will be sold!
Often have I marvelled at the patience and energy of the Italian
_peones_, struggling with enormous cases of merchandise in the middle of
the street, dodging them across the trolley lines, while a dozen drivers
were clanging their bells for them to clear the way. And it is a daily
incident to see wardrobes, suites of furniture, desks, sofas, mingled in
the gutters with the fretting traffic, in front of the warehouse doors.
In almost every street there is a trolley line on one side, and all the
traffic has perforce to move in one direction,—down this street, up the
next,—for which purpose an arrow on the walls indicates the direction.
To walk at ease along any one of these streets in the business hours is
impossible, and progress afoot is only to the strong.
In such streets motor traffic is a folly, yet motor cars abound. It is
a safe assertion that nine out of ten of them are used for no purpose
other than ostentation. And your Argentine _nouveau riche_ will have none
of your modest 15-20 horse-power affairs. His mark is 40 horse-power,
and the biggest, bulkiest, most cumbersome body money can buy. Thus,
at certain hours of the day when the ladies go a-shopping, many of
the streets are stuffed with monstrous cars, which have brought their
owners a good mile or perhaps two, and while the ladies are about their
diversion in the shops, the chauffeurs sit making filthy remarks about
every woman who passes, and ogling the girls. These motor men, uniformed
expensively, are one of the most offensive elements in the life of the
city. Lazy, pampered loafers most of them; they deliberately place
themselves in the near front seat of the car while waiting for their
owners, the better to “amuse” themselves.
With a cautious municipal authority, the motor-car would be prohibited
in the centre of Buenos Ayres. It is a century or so ahead of the
town. In streets so narrow the horse carriage should suffice, and as
a matter of fact the horse-driven traffic can move as quickly as the
motor-driven, owing to the innumerable stops that have to be made in
even the shortest journey. In the whole vast country of the Argentine
there are not more than a hundred miles of really good motoring roads and
automobile owners in Buenos Ayres seldom venture farther afield than the
Tigre, an excursion of some sixteen miles. The road thither is the best
in the country. It would rank as “bad” in the guidebook of any American
or European touring club and it is the ruin of many a car. Yet vulgar
ostentation insists upon the automobile, and almost every notable firm of
motor-car makers in Europe or the United States is catering for the craze
with branch establishments in or around the Calle Florida.
The papers abound in accounts of motor accidents and one seldom passes
a car that does not bear some trace of a collision, many of the drivers
being as reckless as they are unskilled. The motor-car is indeed one of
the city’s problems and no effort is being made to solve it.
If the streets were only narrow, matters might not be so bad. But they
are also villainously paved and continually out of repair. The pavements
chiefly consist of slabs of rough-hewn stone, so badly laid that one is
constantly tripping over their inequalities. Moreover, holes are merely
covered by a piece of sheet iron laid loose over them, and in Florida
alone (it is the universal custom in South America merely to give the
name of a street, without adding the word _calle_) I have noted about a
dozen old gas pipes left protruding some six inches above the pavement,
a menace to all who do not walk with their eyes to the ground. As a New
York lady visitor said to me: “If you don’t watch where you’re putting
your feet, you’ll fall into a hole, or trip yourself, and if you do look
out for your feet, you’ll get run over!”
The streets are laid variously with asphalt, wood, and cobbles. But no
matter what material is used, the result is equally deplorable. Thanks
to the excessively heavy traffic, borne in wagons with immense narrow
wheels, an asphalted street is cut up into ruts in a few days after it
is laid, wooden blocks are destroyed with amazing rapidity, and cobbles
are daily dislodged in hundreds. Thus stones innumerable are lying in
the cobbled streets, to the danger of all sorts of traffic; in the
wood-paved thoroughfares there are ruts several inches deep alongside the
tram lines, and the asphalt roads are cracked and broken as though some
wandering earthquake had passed through them on its way from Chili. A
_paseo_ in a motor-car is an agony—there is no “rule of the road,” it is
merely “devil take the hindmost”—a drive in a coach is little better, as
the motor-cars make the progress of the horse vehicle a hazard of terrors.
In such narrow and congested thoroughfares, building operations are
carried on with great difficulty. To me it was a source of constant
interest and admiration to watch those in progress. And as there is no
street where the builders are not busy, I had ample opportunity. In
Florida, where a huge arcaded building was being constructed through to
the next street, San Martín, the work of digging out the foundations went
on all day, and all night long the dirt was removed when the street was
quiet. The scaffolding fashioned for the purpose was the most ingenious
and complicated I have ever seen. To the narrow street there was a
barricade of corrugated iron (wood is too expensive to use for that
purpose) and above towered a weird framework of timber, with “tips” or
“chutes” projecting into the street. Seen from behind the corrugated
iron, it was a magnificent spectacle of industry. Hundreds of labourers
were digging down into the loamy earth some thirty or forty feet, and the
material taken out was hoisted up by a lift and dumped near the tips, so
that through the night great-wheeled wagons came along in fashionable
Florida and were loaded up, leaving the street strewn with spilled
earth next morning. I recall the night when some of this scaffolding
collapsed and precipitated over thirty labourers into the excavations
fifty or sixty feet below. Such accidents are very common, there being no
intelligent supervision of building operations, and many labourers are
sacrificed every year to the carelessness of their employers and their
own ignorance.
[Illustration: EXTERIOR AND INTERIOR OF THE “CASA ROSADA.”
The upper illustration shows the façade of the Government House towards
the gardens of the Paseo Colón; the lower, the vestibule entering from
the main door in the Plaza de Mayo.]
But, on the whole, it would be impossible to find more inspiring examples
of human energy and ingenuity in the face of extraordinary difficulties
than in the erection of these great buildings. To watch the low colonial
house fall to the pick and shovel in a few days, the crazy scaffolding
quickly reared for mining out the earth, the mighty steel uprights and
girders arriving on huge wagons, each drawn by three or four sweating
horses, the labourers swinging them into position, the frame of the ten-
or twelve-story building presently disengaging itself where so recently
stood the shanty, the bricklayers clothing it with their handiwork, the
plasterers finishing its exterior with graceful decorative touches,—all
this was to me a source of endless interest.
There is no evidence of an elementary regard for human life in the
streaming streets of riotous traffic. Often have I seen buildings
in course of demolition with no better guard against falling bricks
and blocks of cement than some rough pack-sheet stretched in front.
Sometimes not even that dubious courtesy is shown to the passer-by, and
the demolishers stand aloft knocking down the walls inwards without the
slightest protection against the fragments that rebound and land in the
middle of the street. On several occasions I have escaped by half a yard
or so a falling brick that might well have closed my account. Even when
blasting with dynamite old foundation walls of brick and mortar, a few
yards from the pavement, nothing will be done for the safety of the
passer-by. The casualty columns of the daily papers are eloquent evidence
of the risks the ignorant labourers run who are employed in this work of
demolition.
In effecting repairs to the exteriors, painting, and the like, the
workers are confronted with many difficulties, for the simple expedient
of erecting ladders as in our cities is denied to them. A ladder would
block the whole pavement. So they have to reverse the old order, and
instead of placing the ladder firmly on the ground and leaning it against
the wall, they plant the foot of it in the angle of the pavement and
the wall and lean it away from the building, securing the upper and
projecting end by ropes to a window. The worker on the ladder is thus
between the ladder and the wall. And from this coign of vantage he
drops paint or wet plaster on the passers-by with a cheerfulness and
impartiality which must be seen to be duly appreciated.
Naturally the beautiful detail and the imposing appearance of many of
the finest buildings in the city are completely lost for lack of space
to see them. Hundreds of thousands of pounds may be said to be wasted in
this way; for there is widespread effort to render the façades of the
buildings artistic, the cement or plaster with which they are covered
lending itself to all sorts of decorative treatment. But anything over
two stories in height is above the line of sight in the narrow streets,
and there are prodigalities of decoration, in the third and fourth and
higher reaches of the new buildings which have never been noticed by
anybody since the day they were uncovered. A barn-like structure would
have served the purpose equally and given as good an effect—except
in a photograph, taken from one of the upper stories on the opposite
side of the street. Thus one has a curious feeling of disappointment on
beholding many of the more notable buildings which he has first seen
in photographs. The famous Jockey Club, for example. You are conscious
that if you could get a hundred yards away from the front of it, you
might find it a very handsome edifice. But the actual effect is that of
a full-length photograph out of focus, in which the boots and the lower
part of the legs dwarf all the rest.
I recall very vividly the impression of my first walks in those strange
streets. The scarcity of women was very noticeable in the earlier part
of the day. Such streets as Bartolomé Mitre, Cangallo, Sarmiento, Maipú,
and San Martín, where the tide of business flows strongest, were crowded
with men; the odd women who passed seemed out of place. But later in the
day women and children may be seen in considerable numbers in Florida
and the vicinity, though at no time are they ever relatively so numerous
as in the streets of New York. And what never ceased to irritate me was
the rudeness with which the passers-by stared at me and at each other.
I was prepared for them feasting their eyes on the odd women, but man
scrutinising man was new to me. They inspect your necktie, study the
style of your hat, stare at your boots! They gape at you, so that you
wonder if you have forgotten your collar or if your suspenders are
hanging down! You are reassured, however, by their gaping at each other
for no obvious reason. It is merely a vulgar habit, probably acquired by
the gapers when first they arrived from the hill villages of Italy or
the desert towns of Spain, when any person decently clothed was a novelty
to them.
Some of the half-breed policemen at the street corners, trying to
“control” the traffic, are a source of infinite joy. Armed with white
batons, they wave these about in a way so bewildering that it is a puzzle
to know whether they mean to hold up one of the streams of cross traffic
or invite the two opposing processions to mutual destruction. On the
whole, although some of these policemen, shamefully underpaid, indulge in
a little robbery to keep the pot boiling—one, whom I had rather grown to
like, mounted guard one Sunday while a gang of thieves, with carts and
motor cars, plundered the newly-opened branch of Harrods’ London Stores
in Florida!—I came to form a very favourable opinion of them, and many
showed real courtesy and good sense in controlling the traffic, under the
most trying circumstances, as every _cochero_ and chauffeur looks upon
them with contempt and pays a minimum of respect to their authority.
I have been told by old English residents of Buenos Ayres, who are
prepared to perjure their souls on behalf of the city that has given
them the opportunity to grow richer than they were ever likely to become
at home, that “there are no poor and there are no beggars in Buenos
Ayres.” Both statements are untrue. There are lots of poor, and there
are some beggars. (Time was when the beggars went about on horseback, to
the confusion of the old proverb.) It could not be otherwise in a vast
metropolis, abnormally larger than the country behind it will warrant
for many years to come, to which the poor of the poorest countries
in Europe, Spain and Italy, are flocking in daily ship-loads. No poor
in Buenos Ayres, forsooth! Thousands of poor are dumped down at the
docks every month, and poor many of them remain forever—poor _and_
criminal—though many more, with energy and application, escape from the
ranks of poverty, and not a few grow rich.
Poor there are in abundance, and very much in evidence. Take a walk
along the Paseo de Julio and you will see as many of the tattered army
of Poverty as you will encounter in London, and in London you should see
exactly five times as many, to maintain a proportion relative to the size
of the cities. Beggars are less noticeable, chiefly, I fancy, because
there is no room for them in the streets; yet I have often been asked
for alms in Florida, while looking at a shop window—the only chance the
beggar has of practising his (more often her) profession, as to stand in
the gutter for more than a minute would be to invite a violent death. To
Britishers, a saddening sight is presented by the gin-sodden Irishmen and
abandoned Englishmen who pester their fellow-countrymen in Florida and
San Martín, with the old familiar yarn about losing their job as ship’s
carpenter and the certainty of getting a new start if they can only raise
the money for a suit of clothes. Scores of times have I had to turn these
British rascals away, and some of them became as familiar in my daily
walks as old friends. If ever one saw a face that had been made repulsive
by drink, a nose that was reddening with malt, it was invariably the
guilty possession of a Britisher.
Mention of familiar faces reminds me of one of the most disagreeable
features of the Buenos Ayres streets. In this matter I am a thoroughly
prejudiced witness, so I must explain my attitude. To me, one of the
abiding charms of London is that I can walk its dear familiar streets
with their ever changing throngs, without having momently to raise my
hat, or to stop every few yards to endure the idle chatter of some
acquaintance. I love London for itself and I know where to find my
friends when I want them. To have them bumping up against me at every
corner would come between me and my London. It would destroy completely
that feeling of immensity, that sobering sense of the greatness of
humanity, which London imposes on the reflective mind. But in Buenos
Ayres, if you have noticed a man in a railway train, if you have spoken
to a passenger on the river boat, if you have been introduced to somebody
at a Belgrano dinner-party, you will surely see them all in Florida next
day. This parochial condition is the result of the central part of the
town being confined to a few narrow streets. In all Latin countries there
is also a sheep-like flocking to certain beaten tracks, as in Paris every
_boulevardier_ and almost any visitor is sure to be “spotted” if you but
sit long enough at the Café de la Paix. Although the admirably planned
and imposing Avenida de Mayo was opened some twenty years ago to give
Buenos Ayres a new heart, it is still comparatively unpopular, while the
congested Calle Florida is more congested than ever.
Other faces that grow familiar to one in the streets are those of the
porters or _changadores_. Brawny Italians or Gallegos usually, these
lazy and exigent vendors of unskilled labour stand in braces at the
corners of many of the central streets, a nuisance to passers-by. They
are armed with a rope or with a large piece of packing cloth folded
and laid across their left shoulder. This is at once their instrument
and their insignia. If you want anything removed, you send out for one
of these gentry, and if he is feeling strong enough he may condescend
to oblige you for a fee which would command a visit from a skilled
medical man in New York. They will fuss and blow over a little job which
should be no more than a mere incident in the day’s work. Once I was so
fortunate as to get one to carry a box of books for me up three flights
of stairs, for a trifle—five pesos, or two dollars—which he pocketed
without a word of thanks. They must be prosperous villains these street
porters and the malorganisation of labour gives them their opportunity,
as nobody sending you any moderately heavy article will undertake to do
more than leave it at the foot of the stairs. If you happen to require it
three stairs up that is entirely your affair.
Turning from the people in the streets to the shops, one is struck by the
extraordinary preponderance of chemists and druggists. Almost every other
cornershop is a _farmacia_. And it is pretty certain to be a _farmacia
inglésa_ or _francesa_, or _alemana_, or _italiana_—rarely _española_!
But all the same the “English chemist” may be an enterprising Argentine
who knows no more than “zank you ver’ mooch,” which he will utter with
a self-satisfied smile after you have conducted all your business in
his own language. And he ought to “zank you” in half a dozen languages
at once for what you have to give him in exchange for what you get. The
farmacia is to Buenos Ayres, and indeed to the whole of the Argentine and
Uruguay, what the public-house is to England—the “corner shop.” In the
country towns it actually takes the place of the village inn and is the
rendezvous of the local gossips. Magnificent establishments are these
farmacias. New York has nothing to show in the line of artistic shops
that will excel the best of them. Indeed, in no other great city have I
seen drug-stores to be compared with certain of these in respect to the
grandeur of their carved wood adornments and the completeness of their
equipment. Their numerous assistants usually wear long white linen coats,
after the style of hospital doctors, which give them a pleasant air of
cleanliness they might otherwise lack.
With a drugshop at every corner, buzzing with customers, the unconscious
liar who can speak no ill of Buenos Ayres will blandly tell you it is
“the healthiest city in the world.” As a matter of undiluted fact, it
is a paradise of the doctor and the patent-pill-man, largely due to its
curiously trying climate. One often comments on the abundant evidence
of the patent medicine seller in the United States—in the advertising
columns of the newspapers, on the hoardings in the streets—but nothing
we have amongst us in that respect equals the insistence with which you
are reminded of your aching stomach at every turn in Buenos Ayres—if, by
lucky chance, your stomach itself has forgotten for a moment to remind
you of its troubles.
[Illustration: STATUTE OF SAN MARTÍN IN THE PLAZA NAMED AFTER THAT HERO
OF THE REPUBLIC.
On the left, the domes of the Art Gallery are to be seen, and on the
right a portion of the Plaza Hotel.]
Next in proportion to those offering the _Argentino_ a myriad cures
for his _estómago_, come the shops that are dedicated to cleaning his
boots. Indeed, one might reasonably suppose this to be the national
industry. The abundant energy devoted to this lowly calling if turned to
other channels might go far to fortify the republic. Even in the Calle
Florida, where land values and shop-rents rival the highest known on
Fifth Avenue, one finds certain enviable positions occupied by nothing
better than _salones de lustrar_, and in all the central streets such
establishments—often employing upwards of a dozen men—abound. Nay, go
where you will, even to the outer suburbs, you will never fail to find a
druggist’s or a bootblack’s shop.
A real Argentine citizen must have his boots polished several times a
day, else these multitudinous slaves of the blacking brush could not be
kept so busy. The saloons are sometimes fitted up in quite a luxurious
manner, with long platforms on which are raised padded chairs with high
foot rests in front, and while you sit in this elevated position the
polisher performs the most elaborate operation on your shoes, using a
bewildering variety of pastes, brushes, and cloths. When you think he has
done, he begins all over again and not until he has completed what must
be the tenth or eleventh stage of the operation, which consists in taking
a piece of silk from his trouser pocket, where it has been lodged to
absorb the warmth of his body, and working it with furious friction over
your shoes, are you free to step down. Meanwhile you have been listening
to Caruso and Tetrazzini on the gramophone,—I have even heard a customer
insist on a tune being stopped and his favourite substituted!—so that
when you step out with shining feet you feel the threepence or fourpence
you have paid has been well-earned. But you won’t have gone twenty paces
along the street until a bawling door-man, shouting “_Se lustra! se
lustra!_” will point to your feet and invite you into his shop, with
“Shine, sir?”
Many of these boot-blacks run their prosperous business in conjunction
with an agency for lottery tickets and most of them sell cigars and
cigarettes as “sidelines.” The shops dedicated to the sale of lottery
tickets present at first a very unusual sight to the visitor. Their name
is legion. All the numerous money-changers deal in these tickets, which
are spread out in their windows so that the passer-by may scrutinise
the numbers and see if his lucky combination is among them. Many
tobacconists also sell them, and there are numerous street-hawkers to
offer you the chance of scores of thousands of dollars for fifty cents
or so—a thirty-thousand-to-one chance. It is a study in Hope to watch a
poor workman outside the window of one of these lottery-ticket vendor’s
pointing out the particular ticket which he trusts may bring him a sudden
fortune and take him home to Italy or Spain by the next steamer—the
ultimate hope that flickers in all their breasts.
There is much parade of luxury in the barbers’ shops, which form a good
third, in point of number, to the druggists and boot-blacks. Mirrors
gleam along the walls and the basins and pipes for performing the
mysteries of an Argentine’s “shave and haircut” are many and glittering.
The assistants seem almost as numerous as the customers at any hour of
the day and all wear the white jackets that cover a multitude of sins.
A simple haircut in an establishment of just middling style—_regular,
no mas_—costs you eighty _centavos_, leaving twenty out of the peso for
the artist who has treated you. Forty-two cents for a mere haircut is
moderately “stiff”; but have a shampoo, a singe and a shave at the same
time, and you will find that, like Sampson, your strength has oozed away
with your hair, when the barber names his price!