Back in Buenos Aires

I've not been here for five years. It's like Acetate layered on top of the original image where the lines are blurred and the images don't quite line up. The view from the window doesn't vary its form much in all of this time, but the soft malleable mind and the growth in wisdom and experience have changed the perspective that lie behind the eyes as I gaze out. It's summer and the streets are quiet in the afternoon heat. Making my way down tree lined avenues, it feels softer and cleaner than what I'm used to. I've left behind the vibrancy and rawness of Salvador exchanging the rough hewn face of of Brazilian streets for the soft blanket of a city more developed. Inflation has run wild in Argentina. 1000 pesos used to buy me half a months rent but now I could spend it in one restaurant sitting. They printed new notes so soak up the spill, not figures of history, Sarmiento, San Martin or Evita Perón, but native animals of Argentina, birds, bears, whales, and big cats. A nations monetary identity losing its way, and a nations animals captured on paper looking on weary and wary. I talk with my friend, Porteña born and bred. We sit in a cafe chatting over cortados, hearing how things really are in a country no stranger to disquiet and the feint underlying odour of unrest. Just three weeks ago, she begins, she had received a call from a friend in a rented office in the city centre. His account filled her with alarm. Mass protests and demonstrations are common place in the city but on this occasion there were shots being fired in the adjacent streets. Rubber bullets and teargas maintaining order casting a anxious shadow, stirring memories of the 2001 crisis when 22 protesters were killed by the authorities in the Plaza de Mayo. She relates to me the media slant from the authorities, how they held a small trouble making faction responsible for the disturbance and consequential police response, whereas she felt that the enforced action was staged as a demonstration of government control and power, a symbol of quashing any potential uprising. The fact that there were thousands of demonstrators seemed to go by the by. She tells me about another occasion when she was walking in her neighbourhood, a well established wealthy barrio. On three connecting streets she witnessed a heavy police and military presence. Groups of men in uniform and their black combat vehicles taking up space by the sidewalk. In a gesture of defiance she took a close up photo of the situation and was duly challenged. Whereas in the Uk we may expect a brusque non negotiable response to such an act, this particular policeman was eager to enter a discourse, arguing the toss, prevaricating and becoming antagonistic towards my friend. It smacks of a faction pre conditioned and pumped up to respond to people on the street in a biased and premeditative way. The very same police were recently involved in spurious activities in Patagonia involving the disappearance of an activist and the shooting dead of a local community member by means of a bullet in the back. It would appear that matters extend beyond the city limits. I spoke to a Brazilian guy who told me that he had driven from Brazil to Buenos Aires in the last month, encountering 35 roadside military or police checkpoints and being stopped and searched no less than 15 times in the space of 36 hours. 5 years ago I travelled the length of Argentina, a distance of more than 5000kms, I was only stopped once, in a northern province... Strong arm tactics and increased security presence all point toward a country that could tip one way or the other at any given time. Money seems to be the language that people understand, and when the banks and ATMs no longer issue the pacifying language of currency from their pursed mouths the shit can really hit the fan. Until then the masses will continue to shuffle and murmur the whispers of discontent without actually doing anything bar the occasional demonstration and protest. Perhaps every time the peso loses value, another layer of society falls off the bottom of the prosperity bubble to find itself scrabbling for a hold in the dust, smarting from enforced austerity. La Nación is a right wing daily that adds to the foray by running features that promote the kitsch idea that living "minimalistic" existences in tiny apartments, sharing rooms and recycling clothing is a fashionable way forward, supported by the emerging tendencies. This translates on the bottom line as the struggle to pay rent, bills and to buy clothes. Everything seems cleverly enmeshed and insidiously packaged like a smoke screen. I worry where my friend will be if the fuse is lit and things start to implode. She works in the university here and has already been advised by the faculty to be careful about who she talks to and what she talks about. She is a published writer and member of an independent publishing house. It's suddenly quite easy to reflect on the nature of dictatorships and crisis and how it manifests in abductions and abuses of anyone that dare to put their head above the parapet. Once again I am humbled by my ignorance that has come from being born and bought up in a secure established nation where I am convinced that the same thing goes on but is skilfully buried and hidden under foundations that hold up castles and historical quests and bottomless coffers