Argentina : Dreams & Stories

Blog in construction...

2007-06-18T13:45:00.000-07:00

4 - Aconcagua, un long way of humility

2007-01-30T13:27:00.001-08:00

- Descent by the valley of Los Horcones (normal way)

Lost in their thoughts, they follow the Rio Horcones for several kilometers now. The first passed without glancing to it. The last felt the presence of its mass and stop one last time to contemplate it.
The monster seems to crush them from the immensity of its Southern face and to laugh at their failure. Could they have overcome it without this wind? Were there any other solutions than this precipitated descent? Could have they held on one day, one night more to wait until this storm ceases?
In spite of their bitterness, all know that there was only one decision to take. One of them however, victim of his inexperience and his thoughlessness, the face burned , striated by scabs, lips bursted, the eyes purulent, is perhaps the only one who is living the 36 kilometers of descent like a relief.
At the bottom of himself, in the moments of clearness the attacks of fever leave to him, he can measure the distance separating his pretension to the humility this mountain inspires with.
Then he looks in front of him those guides (*), small points in the middle of this stones vastness. He cannot help admiring them, them who will make 5 times more during the season this effort that appeared to him so inhuman. Them, who already overcame tens of time this mountain. Them, who never complain and who attend to everything, "those conquerors of useless... " (end of the history of an expedition among so much others )

(*) To Adrian, Matias, to the 2 Diegos, to Cedric...
To Catherine, Tony, Kevin and José

3 - Aconcagua, un long way of humility

2007-01-14T13:25:00.000-08:00

- Camp 2 (5600m) and camp 3 (6000m, known as "colera") - alternative of the Poles way .

The days passed: they do not know any more very well since how long they left. They arrived at camp 2 the day before at the evening, in a snowstorm. One of the guides had preceded them to set up in the urgency a tent so that they can take refuge there quickly. This time, they had been afraid. Exhausted, the face pricked by the hail, the tip of the fingers already painful , wiping their mask covered by snow, staggering of tiredness, they had searched for the tent during minutes which had appeared an eternity to them. They already imagined themselves frozen . When the guide had appeared few meters of them, they had known that they could put an end to this nightmare. All huddled ones against the others, it had taken to them several hours before feeling blood again circulating at the tip of their fingers. The mountain had taken another dimension, that none of them with his weak experiment knew. The next morning, the sky is limpid and they can see the Glacier of the Poles upon them. They know that they cannot move back any more. There is not other alternative that to remain in the tent to regain forces or to continue to go up. They choose to take the progression again, without respecting the day of rest, in spite of their tetanized muscles, in spite of their state of tiredness, in spite of the load of 20 kilos they have to carry. Some of them already start to count the days separating them from a bed and a shower.At the camp 3, at 6000m approximately, they wait one day, then a second one that the gusts of frozen wind stop so that they can try the rise of the summit. But the mountain decides differently. The wind come on worse during the night, transforming them into desarticulated puppets in their tents which cannot any more shelter them. Then the guides take the only decision it should be taken: to go down... (to be continued)

2 - Aconcagua, un long way of humility

2006-12-22T13:21:00.000-08:00

- Base camp (4200m Plaza Argentina) and camp 1 (4900m) - East face

At the end of 3 days of walk and 2 nights of sleep, they reach the base camp. The less prepared, the ones accustomed to Alpine greens pastures or the tourists give up. Those which remain, feel in their muscles the 2000 meters already climbed . They think of having achieved the hardest but the days which come will be more. They do not know it yet...
A glacial circus, almost lunar surrounds them. The shade of Aconcagua slips slowly on the camp (*). All return inside the tents but outside the cold of the night is not bearable. Each one takes the rhythm of the camp. They will spend 3 days there to rest and be acclimatized.
Snow falls during the night. The following day is a rest day and each one at the bottom of his tent kills the time which passes, slowly, trying to forget the wind which slams the tarpaulin. One fills frantically the pages of a log book, the other avoids finishing quickly the only book he has carried to not find himself alone with sinister thoughts. In this place where no more wound heals, there is worse than the physical suffering of the days of rise: there is this feeling of oppression, born from the minutes which appear hours, locked up in this prison of which wind and cold are the watchtowers, to smell each day more nauseous odors emanating from his body. Unless they are those of his neighbor.
To avoid the symptoms of "the apunamiento" (headaches, nauseas, giddinesses...), they must drink, drink unceasingly: at least 3 liters per day and piss as much. To piss, they should slip on 2 indeed 3 thicknesses of clothing, to put their shoes on : minutes of effort and as much when they undress themselves.
Then they piss in the tent, in bottle and go outside for the number two, they make in a plastic bag. They will have to transport their excrements. No waste must be abandoned on Aconcagua: even not these. Many is unaware of these scatologic details before leaving. Which become with the passing days, a throbbing concern, more difficult to support by those who have at the beginning a high opinion of themselves...(to be continued)

1 - Aconcagua, un long way of humility

2006-12-19T13:19:00.000-08:00

- approach by the valley of the guanacos

They were five. None arrived at the summit. But this broken dream was perhaps for each one of them, a victory over himself...
Many comes to Aconcagua, proud of their preceding experiments, of their physical condition in spite of the advanced age of some and the non recognized lack of training of others. All are convinced to go at the end of the adventure. They thought of it for many years sometimes. Family meetings or society cocktails during the months which precede, are the occasion for them to evoke this project, the temerity of which win them admiration of those who know at least that Aconcagua is a stone heap of 7000 meters (*), somewhere in the middle of the Cordillera. They repeat to the listeners pretending to impassion themselves, what they read in the reviews or the guides. Seeking to reassure their anxious entourage, as much as reassuring themselves, they repeat that this adventure does not present any technical difficulty and that it is only a succession of quiet excursions, each day a little more high.
When comes the evening, by bedside lamp light, they read again however this article about "the apunamiento", this mountains illness specific to the Andes which can go to the cerebral oedema, fearing in silence to be its future victims. A few days before the departure, they are impatient to test the glowing equipment, "Gore Tex" or "Windstopper"marked, which must multiply by ten their force and in which they absorbed a fortune. They pack, unpack hundred times their 80 liters backbag, sitting down above so that all enters in, contemplating it lovingly during hours, seeing themselves already, proud mountain dwellers, on the "Americas roof". In Mendoza, 2 days before the departure, the meeting with the guides and their future expedition companion suddenly dulls a part of their superb assurance. Measuring their respective experiencesit come home to them that theirs is perhaps a little slight, that the adventure in which they launched out, is perhaps not absolutely safe. Still worse, it looks risky...
After a few hours of walk, there does not remain a lot of each one grandeur dreams : the flag planned for the summit day is forgotten at the bottom of the bag. The front wind, dry and cold, raises whirlwind, depositing the tracheitis germs which will not leave them any more, at the bottom of the throat of those who did not understand the importance of the "bandana" before the mouth...(To be continued)

(*) 6962 m

Inside the Pilar's blue eyes...(the jacaranda legend)

2006-11-19T13:18:00.000-08:00

What there was in the Pilar glance so that Mbareté drowns in, so much so that losing his life ?She had arrived a few weeks earlier in this village which still was named "las siete corrientes". Her father, of Spanish gentry, had brought her with him. They had settled both not far from the Jesuit mission where worked many guaranis. It made a little fresher late in the afternoon. She wanted to go out and asked to her lady's companion to come with her. Indolente, she walked on the alleys of the "reducción". Her sunshade whirled above her head, protecting her skin that her black hair made even whiter. Mbareté should have never to pick himself up to sponge the sweat which ran down his forehead. At 16 years just completed, Pilar could not either mask the feeling which had seized her, when her profound blue glance had crossed that of the young Indian. They ever since made use of everything to met them again, another time, then others. Mbareté learned some words from Spanish : sufficiently so that he can stammer in Pilar's ear those she dreamed to hear. But one night, deciding to love themselves more, they were surprised by the father of Pilar. Determinated to wash in blood the honor of his daughter, he thrusted a musket to Mbareté. When the shot went out, Pilar threw herself to protect her beloved. She died without a cry. Swept by a second shot at the time he was rushing upon the Pilar's father, Mbareté collapsed on the girl.

Much later, those who came back to the scene of the drama, discovered at the place the lovers body had fallen interlaced , a tree with blue flowers, from the profound blue of the pilar's glance. Thus was born the jacaranda legend...

The Victoria's legacy (Villa Ocampo - San Isidro)

2006-11-10T13:14:00.000-08:00

The last sunbeams light the recently roughcasted façade. The fine gravels grate under the steps of the last walkers. In the alleys, under the shade of secular ombus or araucarias, benches offer ultimate moments of confidences to the ones in love, before they plunge in the city's hubbub. Come to contemplate the works of art exposed inside the property or to enjoy the freshness of the park drawn by Don Manuel Ocampo (father of Victoria), the occasional visitor could not imagine that the roof of this beautiful residence was devastated 3 years earlier by a terrible fire, whereas began works of its restoration. The will, the passion of a team (*) placed under the supervision of UNESCO allowed that survive the house of the one who "dedicated her fortune, ... considerable, to the education of her country and of her continent". Borges added besides on a purely personal basis: "…I owe a great deal to Victoria, but as an Argentine, I owe her far more."
Victoria had moved definitively into this house in 1942. Prestigious names of the world of arts had crossed its threshold for a long time already. They had come there to seek the calm favourable to the inspiration. They had found there the fascination this woman exerted, become little by little their muse and their protectress.
Rabindranath Tagore wrote at the end of his life that he "did not know her language but the words spoken by her eyes will endure forever, so eloquent in their anguish.”. Hermann Keyserling acknowledged that he "(had been) enslaved by the most spiritual woman (he) had ever met.”
But the most beautiful homage was that of Borges little after the death of Victoria, in 1979: "She lived with valor and decorum, her own life... She possessed, ...the grace that heaven didn’t deign offer me".

Ramona Victoria Epifanía Rufina Ocampo, called Victoria Ocampo (1890-1979)

Villa Ocampo Project
www.villaocampo.org

(*) Special thanks to Neda Ferrier (Villa Ocampo project- UNESCO) to have allowed me to discover this place.

The dawn of the city of Ushuaia

2006-11-05T16:20:00.000-08:00

The vast desert lands located at the south of Rio Negro and Rio Neuquen worried the authorities of Buenos Aires only because of the quarrelsome Indians (Mapuches) they sheltered, guilty of ceaseless "malones" in the middle of the Pampa's estancieros lands.
Beyond, still coarse maps mentioned the existence of a more or less triangular drawing island , that the sailors of Magellan had baptized in 1520 "Tierra del Fuego", without knowing that fires in question emanated from encampments of Indians established there for thousand years.They were called Onas (or Selkman) and Yamanas. Contrary to their cousins of North, they were peaceful, lived hunting and fishing on a territory to which they had given, for a long time already, the name of "Karukinka".
Other ships followed the passage of the Magellan one's during following centuries, but direct contacts with the white man were rare. It happened that certain generations were aware of his existence only through tales of the oldest.
But during this year 1884, if oldest remembered the passage of the “Beagle", 50 years earlier, youngest had got into habit of keeping close to English missionaires like Pastors Mathews and Bridges and other men overcome by goldfever, settled in the north of the island.Did they understand the consequence of the gesture achieved by Commander Augusto Laserre at the head of the Argentinian Army South Atlantic task force, on this 12th of October : that this flag set up in this bay they used to call Ushuaïa, meant the birth of new city, and by inches their people death ?

Natural photographs taken without filter at 5h30 a.m. on October 4, 2006

A page of the “HMS Beagle” logbook

2006-10-27T10:13:00.000-07:00

Savages, very dirty, idiots! no understand.” Jemmy Button exclaims. All around him, hundreds of Yamanas try to touch him, to smell the strange flavour emanating from this small fellow they do not recognize. Only wearing filth that protects them from the cold, they upset this dandy and the girl who stands at his sides.Fuegia Basket is still thinking of this day she was presented at the King and the Queen. Nervously, she makes turn a sunshade above her head and mumble to these “savages” who were her brothers, in English she reminds : “I, forgotten speak Yamana”. Beside them, stand three other strange creatures landed from a canot much larger than those used by Yamanas: Robert Fitz Roy, captain of the brig HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin, a young man that Jemmy and Fuegia have immediately hated, and Pastor Mathews who reads these so beautiful stories that they do not all understand.

They all left the port of Devonport in England, on December 27, 1831, nearly one year ago. The Captain Fitz Roy was commissioned to continue the work of chronometric and topographic readings made by the Captain King between 1826 and 1830. He makes cast anchor this afternoon of December 17, 1832, in a bay the English maps of the time mention under the name of “Bay of Good Success” close to the Navarino island.On this island will end an experiment involuntarily started 3 years earlier, during the first Beagle expedition. At that time, a group of Yamanas had seized a small whale-boat they found useful to go to fish. The Captain, to recover this property of “His Majesty”, had not hesitated to take 4 Indians as hostages.The aforementioned hostages found very pleasant the fact of washing and dressing themselves. So that they stayed on board, quickly becoming the mascots of the crew which gave to them ridiculous names. When they arrived in England they became the crowd attraction. Showered with gifts, they were the guests of the London best society salons.Feeling guilty to have transformed them into fair attractions, Robert Fitz Roy thus seizes the opportunity of a second voyage to take them home with Pasteur Mathews in charge to found a mission on the island which faces the current site of the Ushuaïa city. Thus it explains this surrealist episode of Beagle expedition…

Thanks to Jean Raspail for this anecdote drawn from his book "Adios, Tierra del Fuego" Ed.Albin Michel

Back to Tierra del Fuego (Cerro Castor)

2006-10-22T14:42:00.000-07:00

We are at the beginning of October. The ski season is finished everywhere else in the southern hemisphere. Except in Ushuaïa. There, some fans, and a privileged few, come to benefit from the last snows suspended from the glaciar valleys sides of the Tierra del Fuego.At the side of Ruta 3 which leads to Rio Gallegos, a human dimensions ski complex has developed for 6 years, named without originality Cerro Castor, in connection with the hundred thousands of these small awkwardly introduced rodents, and which devastate the surrounding forest of lengas.A few days earlier, snowboard France team passed to prepare the season which will start in the northern hemisphere. Under the expert glance of ten Ushuaïa freestylers, they make fun of “half pipes” and “pro jump” in an all in concavities relief. they left a pure trace in the powdered snow, and figures in the spirits, which it will have to reproduce at any price.Part of the privileged youth of Ushuaïa practises these new feelings with much of virtuosity and unconcern within surroundings they know by heart, challenging themselves to the possible frontier.In the evening, after having removed the “baggy”, they descend the street San Martin showing to the girls faces of those who were there, of those who did it, telling the “1080°” they made and that nobody saw.
Cerro Castor ski center :
www.cerrocastor.com
(00 54) 29 0149-9301

The most famous buildings of Buenos Aires : the Kavanagh.

2006-10-15T04:49:00.000-07:00

Corina Kavanagh is not from those who joke. It is the end of the Twenties: since several generations already, her family opposes the Anchorena's one.The origin of this hate : common stray desire upon the same building lands, the same houses or the same apartments in the district of Retiro. Immensely rich, involved in a frantic race the only objective of which is the acquisition of the maximum of land goods, each of the two families wants to leave the largest print. One and the other are not on speaking except by lawyers. Then when one of the Kavanagh girls has the bad taste to become infatuated with one of its kids, the Anchorena family can only be opposed to this unthinkable union.Beside herself with rage in front of this affront, Corina decides to have a monumental building built in front of the Anchorena's house to deprive them of the sight of the Church of Blessed Sacrament they had build with aim of leaving their bones there. It will be necessary for them to bypass the obstacle or to pass by the appropriate named passage “Corina Kavanagh” to devote themselves to their pious activities.

Edificio Kavanagh : designed by the architects, Sanchez, Lagos and De La Torre, built in 14 month, it was inaugurated on January 15, 1936. Higher skyscraper of South America (120m-30 stages), its style art deco brought to it the Price of Honor of American Institute of Architects . Adress : Florida 1065.

River Plate, the other “temple” of Argentinian football.

2006-10-09T13:45:00.000-07:00

Sunday October 8, took place in the "estadio monumental", the “Superclásico” won by the club “River Plate”, 3 to 1 (*), at the expense of its lifelong rival, the club of “Boca Juniors”.
Once again, as at the time of World cup, the whole city had stopped, families quarreled, lifelong friends insulted the one who did not carry the same shirt : blue and yellow for “Boca”, white and red for “River”. Impassioned comments of the sports correspondents went from TV set to TV set, preventing the indifferent one or the ignoramus, to benefit from the silence which prevails traditionally at the end of the Sunday evening, in “the city which never sleeps”.
Four times, a dull clamour come off all the “barrios”at the same time, succeeding the hysterical and without end “goaaaaalll” from the voice in the cathode ray tube. Only the few spite swearwords from the losers clan answered to it.
The “cancha” of “River” was inaugurated on May 25, 1938. Conceived to receive 70000 people, it could accept some 135000 the day of the finale of the World cup, in 1978, between the Argentinian national selection and Holland. The Atlético Club de River Plate resides in it. It was founded in 1901 and has a trophy list (**) which can make many European clubs envious. .

(*) 2 of the River's goals were marked by the 18 years old Franco-argentinian Gonzalo Higuaín.
(**) The Argentina and the world most titled club is however that of “Boca Juniors”.

The small “ criollo”, companion of the gaucho.

2006-10-05T17:39:00.000-07:00

When in 1537, Mendoza had to put to sea failing in his attempt to found, if not a stable and durable colony, at least a city, he did not suspect, that resigning 47 small Andalusian horses to their fate, they could survive in these unknown lands.
They did better than that: they adapted perfectly to their new environment, evolved towards a complete race, even if natural crossings gave rise to more than three hundred different coat of which, chestnut, bay, or piebald.
Not exceeding one meter 50 withers, endowed with a full breast piece, a round croup and particularly muscular back legs, they became, at the natural crossbreedings mercy, the ideal companions of the Indians and the “gauchos” which named them “Criollos” since the beginning of the XVIIIth century. Nimble and sharp, they allowed to the first to drive lightning raids (malones) on the colonists lands, to the seconds to escape the police force after having achieved unspecified larceny or “crime of honor " (*) .
Their so characteristic short gallop (that Englishes call “canter”) and who gives them this swaying pace, has always however more been used for hard and healthy labours of the fields. They are also nowadays used for the polo and are often the agriculture exhibition stars(Sociedad Rural) which takes place every year in the Palermo district in Buenos Aires.

(*) episode of the first part of “Martin Fierro” by Jose Hernandez.

Infinite Pampa (Canuelas)

2006-09-30T05:56:00.000-07:00

Borges said about Pampa it was "the unique place in the world where God could walk well off...". The author of the imaginary "biography of Taedo Isodoro Cruz" (Companion of the imaginary one too "Martin Fierro" by José Hernàndez), had really never seen the plains of Siberia in spite of his many voyages . But it is true that in this hopelessly smooth vastness, no obstacle stand between the eye and the horizon.
Except perhaps for the lines of eucalypti which border the long straight lines of the roads which traverse this grass ocean. Except for the innumerable wind mills which draw water necessary to the horses criollos (*) or to the herds of “holanda-argentina”, the most widespread species of cows imported from Holland and Switzerland. Except also for the telephone pole on which come to perch one moment the “caranchos” (birds of prey), or the “horneros” which got into the habit of building their mud made nests on wires. No, that are not either the poor “pueblos” without bell-towers, the names of which betraying the origin of their founder, which could stop the blustering “Pampero” or the " Sudestada” above the “llanura”. The air is sharp there in winter, pure in summer in spite of the heat which crushes men and animals when the winds finished blowing. A clear, limpid, and contrasted light floods this place of melancholy where only fellows being content with little, can survive the time which passes, slowly, invariably, identical at each hour, each day, each season : they are called the “gauchos” (*).

Pictures taken on the lands of the estancia La Figura
(*) articles to be published

Estancia Santa Rita (Lobos)

2006-09-24T19:08:00.000-07:00

Such a megalomaniac delirium, the Ezcurra family's ex-house draws up its single tower upon the Pampa. Of an indefinable style, if it is not that of a Cocteau , it seems straight exit from the dreams of grandeur of a nouveau riche family of "estancieros”.It was Juan Ignacio de Ezcurra who ordered its construction around 1790 and in this humble residence, the gentle Encarnación, born on August 24, 1795, passed most of her childhood. Good family girl, she could not have another destiny except one of those who have money and power.He was only 2 years old more than her, almost to the very day, but already he had heard the gun sound. It was in 1806, at the time of the English landing, when he had joined the Company of the Cadets of the Regiment of Migueletes to defend Buenos Aires. 20 years old, he was at the head of the immense land of Laguna del Monte and had a great fortune. The young Encarnación and her parents were certainly not indifferent to that. She, anyway, understood very quickly what would be the destiny of Ortiz de Rozas, become thereafter Juan Manuel de Rosas (*), she married on March 16, 1813.
She knew very quickly too that he could need her if necessary. Thus, when the House of Deputies refused the exceptional powers to Rosas, and while he dashed off in the first expedition of the desert in 1833 to submit Indians of the South, she stayed in Buenos Aires to constantly inform him about the political situation evolution. Encarnación wrote one of the darkest pages of the history of Argentina to allow her husband to reach the supreme function.During his absence, she took the initiative, with Martín Santa Coloma and Ciriaco Cuitiño, chief of the police force, to set up a secret organization in order to fight Rosas opponents, the "Unitarists", by all the means. Known under the name of “Mazorca”, in connection with corn ear (*), this organization survived dead of Encarnación, on October 20, 1838 and continued its sad work to stand the authority of Juan Manuel Rosas self-proclaimed “tyrant” in 1842, and holder of full powers of the new Argentinian Confederation. The great man fell of his pedestal one day of 1852. Settlings of scores succeeded after executions: butchers of yesterday became gallows birds, and Rosas did not have any scruple to require asylum to Englishes he had fought a few years earlier.

(*)Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793-1877) soldier and Argentinian politician (Federalistic). 1st leader of the Argentinian Confederation between 1835 and 1852.

(**)some historians support the thesis that in fact it is the contraction the 2 words “mas” “Horca” what means: more brackets…

"Ferrocarriles Argentinos", searching for times lost.

2006-09-20T15:00:00.000-07:00

Last July, the Argentinian state invited bids to European companies, of which the French Alstom, for the realization of a high speed line between Buenos Aires and Rosario.Does this outburst mean that the politicians of this country take finally conscience of the importance of the train in a country where the plane and the bus supplant it for a long time?Will it be enough to make up for lost time? All had however started very well. On August 30, 1857, 32 years only after the startup of the first railway line of the world in England, Argentina inaugurated the line Buenos Aires- Floresta (10 kms). In 1880, it counted 2500 Kms from ways, 28000 in 1910, 40000 in 1930 and was placed then at the 3rd rank of the American continent behind the United States and Canada, holding 43% of the rail network of South America. Paradoxically, it is this constructor frenzy which precipitated the decline of the train. British, French or American companies to which had been allotted various concessions, engaged in an unrestrained competition thus never acted in concert to set up a homogeneous network as for the width of the ways. Was added to that the disinterest of the politicians after the 2nd world war. The travelling material became increasingly decayed and the network fell in fallow. The nationalization of the Argentinian railroads in 1965, ended with a chronic deficit representing more than 1% of the GDP. At the end of the Eighties, 55% of the ways were almost unusable. In 1991, the contrary decision was made, but privatization neither improved the state of the network nor that of the material. Some portions are today still in such a state (including in the Capital), that they oblige trains to roll in step to prevent that the ballast does not settle or that a bridge break down. Curiously however, the service continues, regular, punctual when it can be, to the last station of the last “pueblo” of the Pampa, for a long time unused…

Pictures of this article were taken at the village “Antonio Carboni”

Estancia El Ombu de Areco (San Antonio de Areco)

2006-09-13T13:56:00.000-07:00

In 1994, President Carlos Saul Menem puts an end to the obligatory military service. His decision follows upon the death of the young recruit , Omar Carasco, in the Zapala quarter.The bill of conscription had been tabled in 1900, in the middle of frontier tension period with Chile, by Colonel Pablo Riccheri, Minister for the War, at the time of the second presidential mandate of Roca (1898-1904).At the end of long and animated debates between its partisans, among whom the veteran of the war of Paraguay, Colonel Jose Dantas, and its opponents, leaded by the General Alberto Capdevila, the law was approved on October 11, 1901 by the House of Deputies. It was promulgated on December 5 by the Senate with the n° 4031 putting an end to the in force National Guard system and thus concretizing article 21 of the Constitution which specified that “any citizen was obliged to take the weapons to defend the Constitution…” Riccheri had been born in 1859. Well graduated from the Military College in 1879 with the rank “Teniente Segundo”, he wished to perfect his knowledge and was sent to Europe to integrate the Superior School of War of Belgium. Immediately on his return, he knew a fulgurating rise within the Army. Before taking political responsibilities, he thus reached the supreme rank of Staff Chief of the Army. If his career was brilliant, Riccheri knew the pain to see his wife sinking into madness, for long years at a time before dying. While his only daughter succumbed to an appendicitis operation at the age of 12. Retired since 1918, he divided then his time between the residence which he had downtown, on Lavalle street, and the estancia “el Ombu de Areco” that he had made build in 1880. Recluse, melancholic, he died in 1936, honoured with the title of “teniente general”. Honoured but unhappy.

Estancia El Ombu de Areco
www.estanciaelombu.com
(00 54) 11 4710 2795

3 - On the way of the Jesuit estancias (Jesus Maria)

2006-09-07T16:14:00.000-07:00

The local Indian tribes called them “Guanusacate”. These lands at the feet of the Sierra Chica Eastern slope , in the north of Cordoba, were conquered by the Spanishes at the beginning of the XVIIe century. In 1618, their owner, Don Gaspar de Quevedo, sell them to the Society of Jesus. Quickly they take the name of “Jesus Maria”. Their fertility, the arrival of many Indian workmen (114 in 1747) allow to the property to garner increasingly prolific harvests. The book of account of the Father Superior Antonio Machoni, take 48000 vine-feet, 65 pear trees and gathering of 6000 ognons in account. He mentions the existence of two mills, a tank and speaks about many cattle heads. Equipped in priority with rooms and storages, the estancia “Jesus Maria” only had very tardily a chapel. The Father Antonio Castillo, in a letter sent to the Father Jose Rodriguez explains to him that he has just sent masons to work on the building site of the church. We are in 1763, a few years before the expulsion of the Jesuits (*).During the XIXe century, the estancia received historical figures of Argentina : San Martin, Belgrano, Lavalle, Sarmiento.

(*) article "The Jesuit missions" (mai 2006)
Reference for the 3 articles "on the way of the Jesuit estancias" : "El camino de las estancias" de Carlos Page

Estancia La Paz (Ascochinga)

2006-09-01T13:30:00.000-07:00

Contrary to San Martin, Julio Argentino Roca (1843-1914) is not what we can call a popular figure of the Argentinian history.
If some dedicated to him a certain admiration (the last owner of Estancia La Paz, the Roca family holiday house, tells that the best society ladies of Buenos Aires, had given an ivory covered book to him, to thank him for having saved colonist women and children from the “malones” of the Indians), others preserve of him the memory of the sanguinary chief of the “Campaign of the desert”.At that time, the colonial thrust, which find expression in the creation of new villages, exacerbates indeed tensions with the indigenous community, in particular with the people Mapuche (Araucans). President Avellaneda, in power since 1874 entrusts Alsina then Roca with the responsibility to subdue the Indian tribes organized in confederation under the authority of Cacique Namuncurà.The zeal with which Roca fulfills his mission (*) allow to obtain very quickly a lasting peace in the most southern areas and to put forward the sovereignty of Argentina in Patagonia.With these successes, Roca reaches the power in 1880. He will stay at the head of the country until 1884. The collective memory remembers his time like that of “generation 80's” marked in the cultural sphere by a certain fascination for France.Many haussmannians architects and landscape designers (**) are invited to give to Buenos Aires a resemblance of Paris. In the high society, established already at the edge of Rio, in the northern districts , in San Isidro, it is of good form to speak French. Town centre large colonial houses were deserted by their occupants in 1871, at the time of the yellow fever epidemic, and most of them became the reception buildings (conventillos) for penniless immigrants.Paradoxically, manners remain very strict. On the Mar del Plata beaches, men do not have the right to be less than 30 meters from the women and the sale of telescopes is prohibited.Roca will recover the power in 1898. His mandate, which will end in 1904, will be marked by frontier tensions with Chile, to which a certain Francisco Pascasio Moreno (*) will try to find solutions.

(*) Article “the glacier Perito Moreno” (février 2006)
(**) Article "Jean-Charles Thays" (août 2006)

Estancia La Paz
www.estancialapaz.com
(00 54) 35 2549-2073

Jean-Charles Thays, a French landscape designer in Argentina

2006-08-24T14:48:00.000-07:00

Filled with wonder by landscapes he sees and people he meets, Jean Charles Thays decides one day of 1889, whereas he is 40 years old, to remain in Argentina.Favorite of Edouard André (politician and French collector of the Second Empire, whose private mansion is today the Museum Jacquemart-Andre in Paris), he is very quickly promoted Director of Parks and Promenades of Buenos Aires by the authorities of the city.His creations then translate the spirit "Belle Epoque" into vogue in Paris. he settles down quickly to what will remain without any doubt, his two major works: the Botanical Garden and the Park of Palermo.The direction of the perspectives, the omnipresence of artificial lakes and islands in the middle of the gardens he composes, the dissymmetry of the plantations, singularly reminds of the Bois de Boulogne, de Vincennes or the Park of Buttes-Chaumont in Paris. Only the species of trees differ.He will leave his impress in most of the large towns of Argentina:
- In Buenos Aires the "parques" Centenario, Patricios, Barrancas de Belgrano, the places Constitución, Congreso et Mayo
- In Cordoba, the "Parque" Sarmiento,
- In San Miguel de Tucuman, the "parque" 9 de Julio,
- In Santa Fé, the "Parque" Juan de Garay,
- In Mendoza, the "Parque" San Martin,...Some Argentinian dignitaries will call upon his talent for the plannings of the gardens of their private residences. It is the case of President Roca for the park of his Estancia "La Paz" in Ascochinga (Pcia de Cordoba).Jean Charles Thays become Carlos Thays dies out in 1934 in his adopted town : Buenos Aires.

Jose de San Martin, knight of the new world.

2006-08-21T14:10:00.000-07:00

Tens of books were written relating to him. His action and his role in the history of Argentina were dissected by the largest historians. His name is in keeping in the Argentinian memory as well as Napoleon's name in French one.His exploits did not put him on a throne, but contrary to his famous contemporary, there is not any village, any city in all Argentina, which does not have a place or an avenue called after his name.

As if a whole people saw in this man the only irreproachable figure of his history.
In a time when chilly middle-class men of Buenos Aires tergiversated , he will lead, in the new world, with some rare adventurers (O' Higgins, Bolivar,…) a noble combat for the independence of his country.

Although accumulating at the end of his epopee the bombastic titles of Generalissime of Peru, Captain General of the Republic of Chile, General of the United Provinces of Río de la Plata, he will not pride himself on his victories.

Humanistic when he released the slaves of the vessels which conveyed them to Spain, respectful of the institutions, he was refused the right to return to Buenos Aires by those he served, to the bedside of his dying wife.

Without hate, but discouraged by the mediocrity of the politicians of his country, he will go into exile to Europe and will breath his last in Boulogne-sur-mer (France).

30 years will be necessary so that his country, which owed him so much, decides to respect his wish "that his heart rests in Buenos Aires".In 1880, will be deposited in the cathedral of the city, the remains of the “Libertador”, José de San Martin (1778-1850) to whom misses perhaps one title: Knight of the new world.

August 21: Day of the Liberator.

2 - On the way of the Jesuit estancias (Santa Catalina)

2006-08-16T18:04:00.000-07:00

60 kilometers north from Cordoba is the most important estancia which had belonged to the Order Jesuit during XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries in this area: that of Santa Catalina. It will sustain the part of head office and noviciate.The Fathers Jesuits acquired it in 1622 to an officer blacksmith, Luis Frasson. This one had given it the name of Santa Catalina in honor of Egypt Saint of IVth century.Very quickly, they completed many works, in particular underground canalisations. Some remaining writings testify to the existence of the church in 1754. In 1763, provincial Andreu counts 406 farm labourers working on the Santa Catalina lands, 12000 cattle heads, 6000 sheep and does not specify the number of mules.Expelled in 1773, the Jesuits leave to the new land lord, Don Francisco Antonio Diaz, many documents which will enable him to continue the project they had. The facade probably created by the famous architect Antonio Harls, takes again the simple and soft baroque lines wanted by the Fathers. 3 cloisters, a noviciate, warehouses are thus added.

1 - On the way of the Jesuit estancias (Alta Gracia)

2006-08-14T16:07:00.000-07:00

Apart from the fact that it is the only mountainous massif for many kilometers round, a little like an island in the middle of the ocean, the Sierras presents the particularity of concentrating a religious inheritance of great interest inside a perimeter of a few tens of kilometers.The geographical situation of Corboda, founded in 1573 by Don Jeronimo Luis de Cabrera (*), explains establishment of religious buildings of this width. Indeed, built on well irrigated and fertile grounds, halfway on the road which binds Upper Peru to the Atlantic Ocean, the new city is not long in attracting the adventurers of any kind: farmers and tradesmen. Becoming owners of immense fields, certain colonists build quite as much immense residences too. If some clash with the Society of Jesus (the Jesuit Order), who wants to emancipate the Indians working on their lands (**), others motivated by pious reasons, hand down their property to it.These donations will allow the Order to live without depending on the charity of the “encomenderos” by allotting to each one of Estancias received a quite precise role: that of Alta Gracia, Jesus Maria, San Antonio and La Candelaria will be thus universities. That of Santa Catalina will accomodate the beginners and will be the seat of provincial administration of the Order. As for “reducciones” of North, in particular the San Ignacio one(**), they will be regarded a long time as places of retreat.The Estancia of Alta Gracia was baptized like this, in the honor of Holy Patrone of the native village of its giver, Don Alonso Nieto de Herrera, who bequeathed it to the Order in 1643. Started at the beginning of the XVIIIth century, the church was finished in 1762, a few years only before the expulsion of the Jesuits of the country (**). Losing its religious character it will be the property of several historical figures, like the Viceroy of Rio de La Plata, Marquis Rafaël de Sobre Montes, and especially the hero of resistance to the English invader (1806), Santiago de Liniers (***).
(*) article “Argentina during the XVIth century” (December 200()
(**) article “the Jesuit missions” (May 2006)
(***) article “the Pueyrredon house” (June 2006)

In the sky of the Sierras (El Mirador)

2006-08-08T11:46:00.000-07:00

10 kilometers west from La Cumbre, in a place called Cuchicorral, you may live a few exceptional minutes. In this place, in the last western buttresses of the Cordoba Sierras, you will admire the sight up to the Rioja's desert vastnesses. Drawn by the Rio Pintos' meanders, the Cuniputo Sierra's sides, overlooked by Cerro Pendales (1300m) is used by the parapentists as an airstrip. Under a blinding sun, the pilots take you along in a ballet of multicoloured sails above virgin landscapes, to forget, during a few magic moments, the terrestrial attraction.

The "Potrerillo" of Larreta (Alta Gracia)

2006-07-31T10:32:00.000-07:00

Everywhere else in the Sierras, the grass is yellow, burned ; sometimes even gray, of the dust raised by the cars while passing on the track. Here, it is green: of this english green that only assiduous work of an “jardineros” army can preserve.The “Potrerillo” is located in the middle of the landscape which surrounds it like an oasis in the middle of the desert. Surrounded by a reputed golf, planted on a rocky spur, it dominates convolutions of the "arroyo" which runs gently its waters.The effect is seizing and almost paradoxical in this universe of peeled hills, few kilometres from great poverty, the last “ cuadras” which precede the arrival in the “Potrerillo” being marked today out modest masonries.On ex lands of the estancia Jesuit of Alta Gracia, rises the house wanted by Enrique de Larreta (1875-1961). Of colonial inspiration, it locks up collections of objects, of furnitures, or paintings come from Upper Peru.
Ambassador of Argentina in France during the 1st world war, Larreta built a house to perhaps alleviate his memories marked by the horrors of the front he had had the occasion to visit.In this place favourable to the reflexion he wrote his major work: “La Gloria de Don Ramiro”.

Hosteria Potrerillo de Larreta
www.potrerillodelarreta.com
(00 54) 35 4742-5987

The quiet man (La Cumbre - Pcia de Cordoba)

2006-07-25T17:31:00.000-07:00

Out of Internet world, he perhaps only knows of the global village and 21st century the poles of the "wire which sings".Slowly at the rhythm of the swaying step of his horses, he goes up and descends this track , only link which connects his lost hut to the nearest village.Af if he cames off one of Sergio Leone's movies, his stouping silhouette is profiled in the dust cloud that its horses hoofs raise. When the traveller, always hurried, meets his eyes protected from the sun by a bowler,he discovers a simple and kind glance and - who knows - perhaps amused by this gringo who never known taking time…After having greeted him of a frank smile, the quiet man carries on his road and leaves at the horizon only the mirage of his shade which merges soon with that of the poles.

The Cordoba's Sierras, an hinterland feeling (Pcia de Cordoba)

2006-07-16T17:57:00.000-07:00

Apart from the usual tourist tours, the region of the central Sierras is addressed more to Argentinian in search of peace and silence.Less desorientating indeed that the provinces which border the Cordillera, that of Cordoba hides real treasures in the middle of its mountains: the Jesuits estancias of Alta Gracia, Jesus Maria or Santa Catalina, the ex-house of President Roca transformed into luxury estancia , strange villages of Bavarian style rested by the survivors of “Graf Spee”, a scuttled German cruiser in the Rio in December 40…From Buenos Aires, several access roads are possible. But it is inevitably necessary to cross the despairing “llanura” (plain) of the Pampa for nearly 800 kilometers and 9 hours of road before seeing the first spurs of Sierras. At the end of the road a landscape polished by time is revealed: soft slopes mountains covered with high yellow grasses giving the impression sometimes to be in the Provence hinterland. however, the length of the sinuous and dusty tracks quickly brings back the traveller to the dimension of great Argentinian spaces. The central part of the massif is covered or strewn with quebrachos and caroubiers forests. In altitude, the thistle prevails. More in the West the vegetation becomes more scattered. With the approach of the Cordillera, it gives way to the desert (these regions will be the subject of other articles) .

Naipu and the Iguazu falls (Pcia de Misiones)

2006-07-04T14:50:00.000-07:00

Far from the madness of the city, to the deep of the subtropical forest, on bank of the large rivers, the history of Naipu is transmitted from generation to generation.
Endowed with a great beauty, this young Indian was loved by a valorous warrior. Although promised to him, she caused in spite of her, the jealousy of a god.
To escape to him, both decided to leave their village. They took a canoe and rowed as much as they could to move away from the danger.
But the god drew up in front of them an insuperable obstacle to prevent them from escaping: a incomparable water wall.
Thus were born the Iguazu falls and the legend of Naipu, the young Guarani.

The Pueyrredon house in San Isidro (Pcia de Bs As)

2006-06-30T15:28:00.000-07:00

1806: Benefitting from the deliquescence of the Spanish Crown (see article on the Argentina national Day), Englishes, who on several occasions expressed their interest for this colony, unload on banks of Rio of Plata.
An army of 5000 men placed under the command of the General Beresford , takes possession of the town of Buenos Aires, deserted by the representative of King of Spain, the viceroy Sobremonte, who fled towards Cordoba with the royal treasure.

Although badly organized, English expedition settles in the city without meeting great resistances. Assured of its forces, it does not suspect that a threat is profiled on the other side of Rio.
Indeed, a French adventurer named Santiago de liniers raises a small army to Montevideo. He crosses the river Uruguay in Colonia and head for Buenos Aires while skirting it.
formed on a 29 year old Creole initiative, inhabitant of the Acassuso district of San Isidro (in the North-West of Buenos Aires). This young man who will play an important part thereafter at the time of the declaration of Independence of Argentina (1815), is named Juan Martin Pueyrredon.
The junction made with the troops of Linen near San Isidro, Pueyrredon, to whom the French has just given the title of “Commandante General de los Voluntarios de Caballeria Ligera ", enters with him in Buenos Aires. Profiting from the population support, they will retake, district by district, house by house, the city until the surrender of Englishes.
In the garden of the Pueyrredon house, stand a tree where few years later, Pueyrredon and San Martin will have a crucial talk for the creation of the Argentinian nation.

The emblematic parakeet monk

2006-06-25T17:19:00.000-07:00

This small bird could be the emblem of Buenos Aires, so much it succeed to cover, by its ceaseless chatters, the noise of cars horns, which certainly, are not less...ceaseless.
Researching buds of the fruit trees in Spring, it attacks on nuts at the beginning of the winter in horde made up, leaving on the ground only a carpet of jagged shells.
Never ceasing cheeping, brawler on the occasion, seducer when comes the season, it belongs to the sound landscape of Buenos Aires as well as the cicadas of Provence.
Parakeet monk or parakeet mouse (Myiopsitta monachus).
Family of psittacids.
Height : 29 cm.
Life : 30 years .

Mundial, completamente locos

2006-06-20T05:57:00.000-07:00

Defying reason, a whole country, a whole people stops living when comes the hour. The hour of the match which opposes the selection to any other stooge.
All becomes folly then: streets which are emptied, shops and restaurants which are closed, employees who do not come to work, companies which stop, meetings of the Parliament which are adjourned, courses in colleges which are not given any more…
From the “Che” softened in his armchair, siping its “Quilmes" feverishly, to the “mujer” resigned behind its ironing board, or the “gato” which does not want any more to be the last one to haunt the streets, no, no one, for nothing in the world, would miss the inevitable event.

For fear - who knows - that only one momentum of the nation, that only one breath miss suddenly when the “albicelestes” play.
If by misfortune the selection comes to win (what rather often arrives to it) the intensity of outburst which occurs has of equivalent only that of the worrying silence which preceded it.
Completamente locos = totally crazy
Che = the guy
Quilmes = mark beer distributed by Nestle (comes from the name of the Kilmes Indians)
Mujer = woman
Gato = cat

Costanera Sur, the winter color lagoon

2006-06-13T11:29:00.000-07:00

There are names that we, Europeans or North Americans, associate to exoticism, heat and sun. It is often the case of Buenos Aires and Argentina. That is to forget that this country of 2750000 km2 which stretches from the 21° of southern latitude to the accesses of the Antarctic, has almost all climates: wet heats of Mesopotamia (see article on the Province of Misiones) to the extreme colds of the Santa Cruz Provincia.
Buenos Aires is at the level of Casablanca or Kabul in the southern hemisphere. But its climate presents many similarities with that of the Mediterranean areas : a sky of color identical to that of Provence cleaned by a dry and strong wind in summer (the Pampero), heavy rains at the autumnfall and temperatures ranging between 0°C and 10°C in winter.
The very dense vegetation for a town of this size dyes with russet-red at the first colds. The leaves of the trees which border the avenues fall very quickly. But the many species of trees with persistent leaves do not give this impression of desolation which one can feel in our cities or our campaigns in winter.

The effect of the cold on the vegetation which invaded the lagoon, behind Puerto Madero, offers a surrealist vision of this city almost always bathed sun.
Beyond obsolete Balneario Sur, stand indeed the ornithological reserve established on the bed of rubble provided by the building site of the large motorways of the city between 1978 and 1986. Several species of birds are there installed in the middle of blazing trees, of creole willows or alders of river. At this beginning of winter, the graminaceous ones, the vegetable species most widespread stand out against the russet-red grasses and skycrapers, while on the Rio, “buquebus" leave for Uruguay.

Ornithological reserve: Avenida Tristan Achaval Rodriguez 1550

Discovery : San Antonio de Areco (Pcia de Bs As)

2006-06-06T14:50:00.000-07:00

Placed under the protection of Saint Antoine de Padoue, the village of San Antonio de Areco honours his Patron saint, on June 13 of each year, but the most important festivities, those which drain the greatest number of tourists, take place in November at the time of the Week of the Traditions.
In this Sunday of May, first colds are felt. The sun, although low on the horizon, still heats the few passers one can crosse in streets. The others are at church, remain snuggling at home, or haunt “pulpérias” and others “almacenes”. The most visible are finally the dogs which go from one “esquina” to another, in the search of a caress.
Inaugurated in 1730 per Don Jose Ruiz de Arellano, San Antonio de Areco spread on a perfect checkerwork its houses on one level, of style neo-Renaissance, and perpetuates, by its brick frontages for most rustic, decorated planks worked for richest, the heart of the gaucho depicted by the child of the country, the writer Ricardo Güiraldes (Don Segundo Sombra, Cuentos de Muerte y Sangre)
Almacen = grocery.
Esquina = corner of street, angle of house bevelled.
Pulperia = bar where the gauchos met themselves.

Pampa's trees in autumn.

2006-06-04T12:54:00.000-07:00

Estancia la Bamba (San Antonio de A. - Pcia de Bs As)

2006-06-02T14:45:00.000-07:00

120 kms from Buenos Aires to the west, close to the San Antonio de Areco traditional village (article to be published), on the pompously named "national road 31" (in reality a dirt track), at the end of an alley of ancient trees, you will find the estancia la Bamba.
Like an oasis in the middle of the "pampa", the wood which surround the property sustain the relentless law of the winter : few green leaves which remain, fading from yellow to red.
The darkred walls of the house, built in 1832 and outbuildings stands out against the domain's various tree species' colors.
In this season, whatever the hour of the day, and more still at twilight, the horizontal light sharpens the contrasts for the new Argentinian school's painters' greatest joy like Jorge Frasca. And for those who love photo...

Estancia La Bamba
www.la-bamba.com.ar
(00 54) 23 2645-6293

Falls of Iguazu (Pcia de Misiones)

2006-05-27T07:49:00.000-07:00

1541: having left Spain long weeks ago, at the King's request, to replace Mendoza, Don Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca (*) had chosen, after having huged them, to unload on the Brazilian coasts, thus avoiding the hostility of banks of Rio de la Plata. Being fixed for objective to join Asunción, he went deep with his expedition, into the tropical forest. How much dangers these reckless men have they to face? And what could they feel at the time this new devilry of nature drew up in front of them? Which feelings seized them in this moment? Resignation in front of a new obstacle, or amazement in front of such a spectacle. Probably a little of both…
Today the installations made for the tourists make it possible to appreciate without effort this wonder of nature. Thousands, million people saw them since Cabeza de Vaca, and all, like us, were seized by the force which release these falls and the beauty of the surroundings.
(*) Some historians grant the paternity of discovery of falls of Iguazu to Portuguese Alejo Garcia in 1524.

The Jesuit missions (San Ignacio)

2006-05-26T05:21:00.000-07:00

Founded in 1539 per Saint Ignace de Loyola, the Society of Jesus, is established in the Province of Paraguay at the end of 16th century. Vaster than the current state of Paraguay, this province integrated also the area of Brazilian Rio Grande, Uruguay and Argentinian North.
The priesthood of the missionaries Jesuits is expressed as much in the will to bring teaching as in that of evangelize the indigenous populations. With a great sense of courage, they go deepest of the tropical forest (as shows it so well the film “Mission”) to build villages which they organize methodically. In this way they think of being able to release the Indians of the "encomenderos” (landowners) who enslave them. They also believe to be able to give access to them a certain dignity (the training of new trades like the sculpture of the stones, life in organized society). The first of these villages, called “reduccion” is built in 1609.
That of San Ignacio completed in 1724, bombarded in 1817 by the army of Paraguay was rediscovered only in 1897 in the middle of the luxuriant vegetation which had invaded it. Registered the world inheritance of humanity, restored, it makes it possible to appreciate the military organization and harmonious installation by the fathers Jesuits.
Unfortunately the history of the missions Jesuits, throughout 17th and 18th is studded only by the account of constant exactions on behalf of the “encomenderos”, who seek to intimidate, dissuade, and to sometimes even kill the missionaries. The Spanish Crown gives them even reason in 1767, as the King Carlos III orders the demolishing of the misions. The film of Roland Joffé evokes this period.
In 1814, the Pope Pie VII restores the Company of Jesus.
Ref. : "le Guide de l'Argentine"Graciela Cutuli and Pierre Dumas ed. La Manufacture.

May 25, Argentinian national day.

2006-05-25T05:39:00.000-07:00

For several days already, the streets have been rejoiced with “albiceleste” (blue sky and white) colors of the “Bandera”, the Argentinian flag. Taxis and cars dress themselves up small flags distributed by young auxiliaries of the municipality placed at the various crossings of the city. In this country the national pride is not expressed simply at the time of a soccer match.
Today, May 25, Argentina, thus celebrates one of the outstanding events of its history.

Spain under the yoke of the Napoleonean armies carried out its own war of independence. Although the King had abdicated in favour of his son Ferdinand VII, the Crown of Spain had been allocated to the brother of the Emperor, Joseph, since 1808. In all Spain, popular juntas had been created to resist the French invader.

Conscious of this deliquescence of the Spanish authority that they had already perceived a few years earlier, when the viceroy had fled the town of Buenos Aires in front of the threat of an English task force, creole groups freedom fighters decided to pass to the action.

In this end of May 1810, the tension with the viceroy, Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros had reached its paroxysm. Under the glance of a relatively indifferent population, a fight of influence had begun and the independence groups wanted to be sure of the support of the Army.

Worried by the situation of the Colony, they had the idea to create a town council, in which could take part the notable ones of the city, to draw up an assessment of the situation of the country before considering measurements necessary to its development: the first meeting of the “Cabildo " took place on May 19.

Throughout the week, surging debates opposed the partisans of the creation of a junta to those who wanted to conserve of the administration in place. The dismissal of the viceroy was finally voted on May 25 and a popular junta directed by Cornélio Saavedra (chief of the regiment of the Patricians) was named.

It counted in particular in its rows Manuel Belgrano who 2 years later would be the first to raise, in Rosario, the colors of Argentina.

Although the sovereignty of Ferdinand VII was still recognized several years after, this event marked in fact the end of the Spanish domination.

Estancia Las Mercedes (Eldorado)

2006-05-11T06:25:00.000-07:00

The southern autumn touches at its end. In the province of Misiones, with a few tens of kilometers in the south of the Brazilian border, the farmers wonder about the climate and the rain which does not come. This area considered wet has not known any more of large rain for several months.
However in this May early morning, the horizontal light struggle to go through the thick morning fog.
Mist which escapes from noses of animals huddled together announce the winter to come. In the house of white slats, and oranges shutters, the embers of the fire of the day before, do not succeed to persuade the sleeper of the interest to rise.
Snuggled into his bed, the traveller of passage however knows that its hosts prepared one day of dream to him: a walk with horse, sailing up of the arroyo Pirayguazu in the middle of the tropical forest, the softness of a tea at the return, and to finish, reading of a good novel close to the fire. Thus one day passes at the estancia Las Mercedes: simple, calm, serene, alleviating.

Estancia Las Mercedes
(00 54) 37 5143-1512
www.estancialasmercedes.com.ar

The province of Misiones

2006-05-08T10:02:00.000-07:00

Wedged between Paraguay in the West, Brazil in North and Uruguay in the West, the province of Misiones forms part, with the provinces of Corrientes and Entre Rios, of the area called Mesopotamia (see maps of the february archives)
Point extreme of Argentina in North East, close to Tropic of Capricorn, it is covered with an immense forest, very dense, called “selva subtropicana lluviosa”. Its ground is of red blood color stone : the laterite. Very friable, it generates in the passing of the cars a dust which marks clothing, the shoes and enter everywhere in the dwellings.
The habitat, very summary, comparable with that of Paraguay, the provinces of Chaco or Formosa, recalls unfortunately that we are in one of the poorest areas of Argentina: they are mainly wood huts, brightened by paintings sharp.
Except for the owners of the great fields, or beautiful estancias, a great majority of the population saw incomes of agricultural work, culture of its kitchen gardens and small animal breedings.

Omnipresent in all the province, the "yerba mate" is transported, at the season of harvests, on antiques trucks which go up with efforts, succession of long slopes of Ruta 12.

Cemetery of Recoleta, 7O tombs, hundreds of cats (Bs As)

2006-04-28T16:45:00.000-07:00

As with the "Père Lachaise" in Paris, with the cemetery of the recoleta, one can find all that the country can count of great men (and great women): venerated, adulated, adored, forgotten, deposed... Inaugurated in 1822, it gathers 70 tombs: that of the wife of the General San Martin, the unavoidable tomb of the Alvear General and of course the vault of Duarte family where try to rest in peace a certain "Evita".
It is not however pilgrims more assiduous than the hundreds of cats which elected residence there: the come night, the last group of tourist being evaporated, this small stone and marble square becomes again their play-ground.

One morning, in the shade of the ombues (La Recoleta - Bs As)

2006-04-23T07:10:00.000-07:00

It is told that a young Indian, to which her father, gone whith her brothers, had entrusted the responsibility to supervise the plantations, being in despair not to see the rain falling, had started to cry to sprinkle the plants. Moved, the gods made grow an immense tree with the tentacular roots to protect harvests from the sun. Thus had been born, the legend of Ombu, the young Indian...
The secular ombues, offer today a moment of quietude to the "porteño" allowing him one moment to forget the noises of the city and the sun relentless rays.

French as Pierre Clostermann and Argentinian pilots

2006-04-22T10:29:00.000-07:00

Pierre Clostermann, the greatest ace of French aviation during the Second World war, who died on March 22, left his name to a promotion of Argentinian fighter pilots. He had indeed praised the courage of the Argentinian pilots at the end of the War of Falklands.
Pierre Clostermann: his acts and his titles
• 600 missions of war, 33 victories approved and 5 probable
• Grand Croix of the Légion d'Honneur
• Companion of the Liberation - decree of January 21, 1946
• Military Medal
• Military Cross 39/45 (19 citations)
• Cross of the Military Value (2 citations)
• Medal of Resistance
• Distinguished Service Order (GB)
• Distinguished Flying Cross and Bar (GB)
• Silver Star (USA)
• Air Medal (USA)
• Knight of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem

Author of the “Le grand cirque”, memories of a French fighter pilot in the RAF

contribution of General Bernard Bury to the blog “Argentina : dreams & stories”

Estancia Los Talas (Lujan - Pcia de Bs As)

2006-04-17T08:17:00.000-07:00

A few kilometres from Buenos Aires, in the middle of the Pampa, is an unimaginable place under this latitude: an old masonry of almost 2 centuries, kept by the same family which bought it in 1824. Its walls perspire the moisture of a vegetation which hiding place it covetousness of a world uncultivated and disrespectful of the treasures that it locks up: tables, sculptures without price, of tens of thousands of works dating, for some of XVIe century.
Only some scholars, come by far know the existence of it, and presented like estancia, it opens to some tourists who will have discovered it by chance. It is our case. To preserve its secrecy (and its safety), you will understand that we do not say any more...

Estancia Los Talas
(00 54) 23 2349-4995

"Palermo chico" seen of the roofs (Bs As)

2006-04-15T08:27:00.000-07:00

The foreigner who lives in Buenos Aires or who comes to visit it, as a tourist, sees only a little part of the city : only districts which border the Rio. Admittedly, they are the prettiest ones, But perhaps also the least authentic.

The equivalent of Ve and VIe districts of Paris is in San Telmo by its false airs of Montmartre or Belleville by its chips, its galleries of secondhand trades or its spectacles of streets. Palermo, very "bobo", points out the Marais with its literary coffees and its somewhat similar "fauna".
The district of Recoleta, it is joined together VIIe and VIIIe. The street Alvear shows all the characteristics of the street of the Faubourg Saint Honore. In the street Arroyo, the galleries of antique dealers in the medium of the buildings of style haussmanniens make think of the Swiss village. Very close to Rio, Belgrano and Palermo chico, has nothing to envy XVIe: even tallies of life. The presence of the soccer stadium of River Plate and the many parks which are stretched along the avenues Alcorta and Libertador point out us the Parc des Princes, the Bois de Boulogne. Without forgetting innumerable "canchas" of tennis which finish supplementing a painting to which only Roland Garros would miss.
Puerto Madero finally has something of the Front de Seine or Defense : tall buildings reflecting itself in the water of the wet docks of the port ..
Remain at the end of the streets, as far as the eye can see, with tens, hundreds of "cuadras" of this privileged Buenos Aires, a growing city, a succession of identical districts, a maze of towers, buildings in which come to take refuge, after one working day and several hours of "Subte"(tube) or" Colectivos "(buses), this million" portenos "which by certain sides resembles much Parisians or suburbans. It thus seemed to us interesting to gain altitude to try to imagine this city, this mégalopole of 11 million hearts which is stretched on nearly 200 kms.

April 2, day of the Falklands

2006-04-02T17:07:00.000-07:00

In spite of the defeat which has occurred now 24 years ago, the feeling which the Falkland Islands belong to Argentina remains always also long-lived on all the levels of the society.
The maps which the children study mention officially the membership of these islands in Argentina. The large cities, from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia, raised all of the war memorials of the Falklands. On Plaza San Martin, various regiments take turns to ensure the guard of the wall on which figure the name of the killed soldiers.
On the windshield of certain cars, motorists post proudly "Fueron, Son y Seràn".
Today, April 2, Argentina commemorates the date of the release of the offensive. Occupied by the United Kingdom, the Falkland Islands had been asserted by Argentina for 150 years. For memory, quickly let us reconsider the chronology of the facts:

April 2, 1982 - 4h30: unloading of the Argentinian commandos with Mullet Creek.
April 2 - 6h00: catch of the barracks of Moody Brook
April 2 - 8h00: rendering of the Governor Hunt and the British garnison of Stanley Port.
April 3: End of resistance on the island of South Georgia. Reddition of lieutenant Hills and his 22 men
April 5: the British fleet leaves Portland, Portsmouth, Southampton and Chatam.
April 12: the British fleet makes stopover on the island of Ascension in the middle of the Atlantic. This island will be used as logistic relay to the English.
April 20: Release of the operation of resumption of the South Georgia.
April 23: the climatic conditions complicate the spot of the commandos. 2 helicopters are crushed on the Fortuna glacier.
April 25: attack of the submarine "Santa Fé" by helicopters of Royal Navy
April 28: recovery by the British commandos of the South Georgia in spite of the minefields placed by the Argentinians.

May 1 - 3h45: bombardment of the track of Stanley Port by "Vulcans" and "Sea Harrier"
May 1 - 18h00: counteract Argentinian which attacks the English fleet. "Skyhawk", "Dagger" and "Mirage III" of Fuerza Aerea Argentina run up against" Sea Harrier "of Navy.
May 2: Submarine "SNA Conqueror" launches 2 torpedes MK8 against the cruiser "Belgrano", which sinks, resulting in the death of 358 men.
May 2: 2 "super standard" fire 2 Exocet missiles on the "HMS Sheffield" which must be evacuated at the end of 5 hours of firefighting.
May 4: the DCA Argentina cuts down a "sea harrier" at Goose green.
May 9: the "sea harrier" of "Invincible " run the "Narwal".
May 14: action of the English commandos on the airport of Stanley.They destroy 12 planes.
May 21 - 4h00: unloading of the 2nd para on the beaches of San Carlos. The British fleet rams Fanning Head or concentrates Argentinian artillery.
10h30: waves of "Mirage" and "Skyhawk" break and concentrate their attack on the frigate "Ardent" and its escort ships. The boats of transport of troops are not touched. 5000 British soldiers unload.
May 23: the British "task force" receives a reinforcement of 5 escort ships.
May 24: the Argentinians make 24 exits and lose 4 "daggers" without to have caused major damages.
from the 25 to May 28: the 2nd para, the 4th commando, the 3rd para faces the 12th Argentinian regiment around Darwin and Goose Green. The engagements make rage: the Argentinians go in front of School House.
May 29 : the Argentinian pilots attack the "HMS Antelope", but lose 5 "Mirage" and 1 "Skyhawk".

June 5 : unloading of Scots Guards of the 5th brigade towards Cove Bluff .
8 juin : 350 welsh guards arrivent à Port Peasant. 5 "mirage" larguent 3 bombes sur le "Plymouth" qui sera ravagé par l'incendie.
June 12: the "Glamorgan" is touched by Argentinian Exocet.
June 12 - 2h00: release of the final attack. Combat of 10 hours will oppose the 3rd English para, the 4th commando with the 7th regiment of "the plata" and 1st Argentinian regiment of para. They will finish with the body with body.

England will deplore the death of 255 men, Argentina will cry that of more than 1000 soldiers.

The glacier Perito Moreno (Pcia de Santa Cruz)

2006-03-29T05:29:00.000-08:00

1877: Nicolàs Avellaneda has been in power for 3 years. Like his predecessors since the beginning of the century, he must face the incursions of the Indian tribes on the lands of the colonists located at the North of Rio Negro and its affluent Rio Neuquen.
But the situation worsens: The Indians organized in Confederations of Tribes, led by Cacique Namuncura approach Buenos Aires dangerously: somes certify “malones” (raids) particularly bloody in the towns of Tandil or Azul.
The President can not allow women and children still continue to be kidnapped, that other colonists are killed. He thus decides to raise an army to put an end to these exactions.
Alsina takes the command of it but Roca succeeds to him very quickly, achieving zealously and and with ferocity his job. At the head of 5 columns of 6000 men, he obtains fulgurating results: 1600 Indians are killed, 10000 are taken prisoners, 6 chiefs are executed, the others take refuge in the Andes and more in the South.
1880: glorified by his victories, Roca is elected President of the Republic, and completes between 1881 and 1884 what the history will retain under the name of “Campaign of the desert”.
The pacification of these vast wide opens the way to their exploration. A 22 year old naturalist named Francisco Pascasio Moreno thus discovers for the first time the imposing landscapes of Patagonia in 1874.
One year later, he returns there. His meeting with the Cacique Shaihueque enables him to be the first white man to see the Large Lake, the Nahuel Huapi.
Hardly he wrote the story of his last voyage that he is off to Patagonia again: more in the South this time. He remembers the stories of sailors that he could read. He knows that somewhere in this desert vastness draws up a fabulous mountain. When he sees it a long way away, beyond lacteous blue water of the Lake Viedma, he believes that it is a volcano. He baptizes it instinctively “Fitz Roy”, of the name of the commander of the Beagle which crossed off the Chilean coasts in 1834 and who mentioned its existence in his log book.
Moreno will take many hydrographic and topographic readings of the area, will define the layout of the argentino-Chilean border. The only expanding glacier of the planet declared world inheritance of humanity,is today called after his name.

Lionel Terray and Guido Magnone, conquerors of the impossible.

2006-03-20T15:33:00.000-08:00

Several mountains of legend became accessible to a greater number of people. The access roads to certain summits are even true motorways: it is the case of the Mount Blanc by the way of the Cristalliers, of Kilimandjaro by the Naremoru way, Aconcagua by North, even if some their faces can be climbed only by experienced mountaineers .
It is not the case of the Fitz Roy. Only a few tens of ropes arrived at the summit of this mythical mountain.
Deified by the Indian tribes of the area, “el Chalten” (its original name ), in the opinion of the rare explorers to have seen it, was considered inaccessible, due to its 1600 meters of vertical wall.
1952: since 20 days already, although it chose the period of the southern summer to try the rise of it, a particularly trained mountaineers expedition suffer with the attacks of the cold and the biting wind come from the area of the large Chilean glaciers, on the other side of the mountain. In tents transformed into igloo by the successive snowstorms, they wait the favorable moment. They have time to choose their way and to decipher it. They will choose the south-eastern way.

The last bivouac is installed at the place called “the breach of the Italians”. This morning when 2 men decide to leave, the conditions seem favorable.
Quickly however the rise becomes nightmarish and invites them to surpass themselves. Extreme technical difficulties (of level 6 of free climbing and A3 level of artificial climbing) push them to renounce. At the cost of a will out of the ordinary and of an unimaginable effort, Lionel Terray and Guido Magnone spend 2 days to arrive at the summit. We are the 2nd of February, 1952.

Lionel Terray (Fr.1921-1965) winner of the Northern face of Grandes Jorasses in 1946, the Northern face of Eiger in 1947, Annapurna in 1950 (with Maurice Herzog), of Makalu in 1955 ,
Author of the “conquerors of the useless" Ed. Guérin
Guido Magnone (It.1917- ) northern face of Eiger in 1952, first of the western face of the Drus, Makalu in 1955

Le Fitz Roy

2006-03-15T16:38:00.000-08:00

89 kilometers separate the Fitz Roy from the Ruta 40. And yet, for a long time already, its silhouette stands out on the horizon beyond lacteous blue water of the Lake Viedma.

As a mirage appearing and disappearing as it pleases to the clouds which surround it, its higher summit draws up such the rise of Chartres cathedral across the Beauce wheatfields.

With this difference that here nothing grows except the stunted grasses, victims as well of the cold as of the burn of a relentless sun.

Nothing lives either, except some nandus, tatus or guanacos which resists to the violent winds came down from the large Chilean glaciers on the other side of the mountain.

Recently macadamized, the Ruta 23, only access road to El Chalten, stretches immense straight lines to the feet of the giant.

The track last kilometers allow to understand the fascination this mountain exerted on the greatest mountaineers, and why it was conquered only very few times since 1952 (*).
.
Indescribable fascination except perhaps by those who left their name to the summits which surround it: Guillaumet, Mermoz and…Saint Exupéry.

(*) article "Lionel Terray et Guido Magnone"

Culture: origin of patagon names

2006-03-12T07:57:00.000-08:00

Patagonia:
During the 16th century everywhere it could be possible to hear in Spain, the history of a giant named Patagon. Posing for the first time the foot on these unknown grounds, the explorers discovered prints of a not very common size. It was not necessary for them to see more to be convinced that they had unloaded on infested grounds of giants. Indeed "Patagon" or " Paton" means in Spanish "that which has large feet". A more thorough exploration thereafter made it possible to understand that they were in fact only the print of the skins than the Indians used as shoes. But the myths and legends around Patagonia had been born...

Tierra del fuego :
Combined with the fogs which encircled peaks of the Large Island, fires which lit the Indians inspired Magellan and the sailors of his expedition whereas they crossed the channel of Todos los Santos (1520). They gave at this place the name of Country of Smoke. It was the Emperor Charles Quint who decided a few years later the name of Tierra del Fuego.

Ushuaia :
Name yamana (Indians who populated banks of the current Beagle channel). "Ushua" means "which is turned towards the West" and "Wuaia" wants to say "bay".

Bahia Lapataia

2006-03-06T15:35:00.000-08:00

Ruta 40 which skirts the Cordillera since the Bolivian border, stopped in Rio Gallegos.
Ruta 3, came from Buenos Aires by the Atlantic coast, continued until the end, thus granting to itself the title of road most in the south of the world.
After having crossed Ushuaia, it uncoils its last bends in the National park of the Tierra del Fuego, comes up against the right layout of the Chilean border and throws, such a river at full stroke, in water of the Lapataia bay in the meddle of the Channel Beagle.
The last kilometers coast along dark water of Lago Roca, cross the wet forests of "lengas", "nires" and "coihues", tries to avoid infested torrents of beavers.

Ushuaia, dream and reality

2006-03-03T15:05:00.000-08:00

The only name of Ushuaia, synonymous with end of the world, makes dream. Unfortunately the dream partly made place with the mercenary attitude.
Exploiting the appelation "fin del mundo" declined on the "mugs", the "tee-shirt" or other memories of a more or less sure taste, the tradesmen of the street San Martin or those of the port, between 2 hotels, try to secure throughout the year an income which enables them to live in this place distant from all. How to be upset with them?
Obliged passage of the croisierists specialized in the voyages in southern seas, Ushuaia sees unloading - almost each day - troops of American, European tourists or Japanese in search of adventure to few expenses (way of speaking).
The few lines which I have just written on the subject under hear - you will have understood it - a certain disappointment. It is true that we had made the error to precede this stopover by unforgettable places (see the article on the Glacier Perito Moreno and Fitz Roy).
The stays which propose the "tour operators", of 2 or 3 days on average, pathetically and are unbearably marked out: the obliged points of passage are the lighthouse of "Eclaireurs" and the visit of the park "Tierra del Fuego", water-bus and circuit in the bus, group made up.
Even if it is undeniable that these sites have a certain pace. If one seeks the strange one and the exceptional one, it is for a long time to have better budgeted for it: a navigation towards Cape Horn, an adventure in the Antarctic of a few days, cost at least 3000 $ per anybody.
Ushuaia lets however show through this indefinable impression of end of the world and legends. The proximity of mythical places like Cape Horn or the Magellan Strait, is maybe the reason. The phantom of grand sailors haunts the carcasses of failed ships.
The memory of forwardings Magellan (1520) or Beagle (1832-1836) is intensely present. History of men at the same time simple and exceptional, like Pasteur Thomas Bridge (1886), which left us in heritage the only trace which remains of the Yamanas Indians, in a dictionary English-Yamanas, the presence of the lighthouse of the Eclaireurs which still testifies to the spirit builder and universal of the French, are as many points which counterbalance the first impression.

Cerro Tronador

2006-02-27T14:16:00.000-08:00

Since a long moment already, asphalt gave place to the stony and dusty track. Green water of the Mascardi lake appears at road turns. The dense forest of coihués gives a little shade and freshness in this basin protected from the western winds.
Suddenly its silhouette appears. Its summit attacks almost eyes, so much is bright the whiteness of the eternal snow and the glaciers which cover it compared with green meadows which spread out at its feet. It is the highest top of this area of the Cordillera, culminating at 3478 meters.
The frightened Spanishes who could hear its entrails roar gave its name to it. They were only the seracs from the glacier fall detached and precipitated in its crater by the rays of the sun. The Cerro Tronador is indeed a volcano.
The first colonists to have seen it are probably the missionaries Jesuits of the colony of the island of Chiloé, Chilean side. One of them, Father Mascardi, relates an Indian legend in his notes.
A very brave young Cacique, named Linco Nahuel, had posted sentinels on the watershed dominating the valley where lived his tribe, to prevent any invasion.
A tribe however, powerfully armed dwarf men, thwarted the traps he had set, and made captive, at the end of a bloody battle, men, women and children of the young chief tribe, which remained in life.
Linco Nahuel had, for his punishment, to assist impotent to survivors of his people massacre, precipitated in the volcano crater. He could not do anything else than pray the mountain Spirit, “el Pillán”.Thus a violent storm covered with snow indifferently vanquishers and defeated ones.

Hotel Llao Llao (Bariloche)

2006-02-25T14:51:00.000-08:00

When Alejandro Bustillo (*) saw his project adopted for the construction of a hotel of luxury on the edges of the lake Nahuel Huapi, perhaps he did not owe it only to his only architect talent. The function his brother occupied then, was undoubtedly useful to him: Exequiel Bustillo was indeed the National parks Director and thus well placed to attribute this public market . Alejandro did not need however his brother pulled string for him. 23 years old in 1912, he had obtained the First Price of the National Exhibition of Painting without ever having exposed before. 2 years later, he was graduate school of architecture.
From 1923 to 1937, he constructed many private mansions of the Argentinian high society. In 1925, he directed his first important building site : that of the Tornquist Bank. The first foundations of Llao Llao were dug in 1936. More than 5000 trees will be cut down for its realization. Only stone and of wood made, surmounted of a tiled roof of alerce, the hotel is inaugurated in great ceremony, on December 31, 1938.Less than one year later, on October 29, 1939, a terrible fire ravage it entirely but the Bustillo brothers finds both morals and financial resources to rebuild it. On December 15, 1940, Llao Llao rises again from his ashes.
The hotel will know a decline during the Seventies until its closing in 1979. The "Club Méditerranée" will acquire it in 1985. Entirely renovated in 1993, after having changed owner, it is today one of the most prestigious establishments of planet.

(*) Alejandro Bustillo (1889-1982) Argentinian architect who built : the Bank of the Nation (Bs As), the hotel Continental (Bs As), the building Martinez de Hoz (head office of the SIDE - Bs As), the National Museum of the Art schools (Bs As), Headquarters of the Otis companies and Volta (Bs As).

Victoria Island (Nahuel Huapi lake)

2006-02-20T14:42:00.000-08:00

The quay is located at the feet of “Llao Llao”. From there the boats leave for various excursions on Nahuel Huapi. One of them, true floating museum, takes you along for the wood of the arayanes and the Victoria island.
On the deck during the crossing, the air is so pure that it dazes the townsman not accustomed to such an amount of nature.
Puerto Anchorena, as in a lagoon protected by a coral barrier, is huddled in a bay called Anchorena too. It is there that moor the boats which pour their floods of tourists,
Few hours are proposed to them to discover the island. Ways go through vertiginous sequoias and allow to discover an astonishing flora, a lost village of loggers, prints of hands left by Indians few centuries earlier.

The Arayanes wood (Villa La Angostura)

2006-02-14T14:26:00.000-08:00

The Quétrihué peninsula is the only place of the world where one can find an arayanes wood. This essence of tree indeed completely disappeared from the surface of the Earth.
Another forest of this type existed in the United States but it was victim of vandalism, after having inspired Walt Disney in the drawing of the wood of the film "Bambi".
The characteristic of the arayan (myrtle) is to have a bark of color grooves, and a hard wood like stone.

Patagonia's trees in summer.

2006-02-13T13:02:00.000-08:00

Patagonia's flowers in summer.

2006-02-11T12:59:00.000-08:00

The road of the 7 lakes, from San Martin de Los Andes to Bariloche

2006-02-07T17:32:00.000-08:00

Comparable so that it is possible to imagine in Europe several centuries earlier, when one approach the large Italian lakes, Côme, Majeur, or Garde, 7 lakes between San Martin de Los the Andes and Bariloche (which are in fact 8) offer a virgin nature of any dwelling. And even in certain places, of any human presence.
Clothed with arracannes, araucaria, coihue, alerce, lenga or sequoia, the slope of the surrounding mountains plunges gently in deep water intensely blue of lakes which the Indians mapuches baptized in strange way, like Nahuel Huapi, largest of all: "Nahuel" meaning tiger and "huapi", island.

Buenos Aires gardens in springtime

2006-01-26T12:50:00.000-08:00

Escapade to Tigre (Pcia de Bs As)

2006-01-18T07:18:00.000-08:00

A few kilometres from Buenos Aires, at the North-West of the city, is the town of Tigre : more exactly at the mouth of the rivers Paraguay and Parana. Place astonishing and completely disorientating for Europeans we are. If the town of Buenos Aires is inspired, by its urban architecture, from the European and North-American megalopoles, Tigre plunges us in the middle of South America: that of large forests, multicoloured huts drawn up on their piles, hardly emerging from a choking and luxuriant vegetation.
In the middle of the tentacular roots, the rivers seek a passage to emerge in Rio, formed by hundreds of arm (streams), in a delta which does not have anything to envy the bayou of Louisiana. During November 2005, we had visited this place under an overpowering heat, a deep blue sky: we had returned dazzled from there. We are gone back there this time whereas the storm threatened. Result: a completely different vision, but always same fascination.

Indians of Argentina

2005-12-23T14:42:00.000-08:00

When one circulates with foot, in the subway (subte), or buses (colectivo), in Buenos Aires it is impossible not to see these faces with the features mongoloid, with the long hair, which recalls that a long ago, before the arrival of the conquistadores, lived in these regions Indian tribes whose history goes up at the origin of times.

To speak about it, it can be preferable to distinguish them according to the environment in which they were established.

Indians of the Pampa (center) :
Without originality, the name given by the "conquistadores" to the tribes living in the" large meadow" was that of "Pampas". Until 18th century, it was however possible to distinguish several tribes: Caquanes, Guazunambis or Querandis. It was the latter which massacred probably the expedition of Juan Diaz de Solis. Araucans (or Mapuches) come from Patagonia gradually invaded the grounds of these tribes, thus marking the beginning of their extinction.

Indians of Mesopotamia (Northern):
Several ethnical groups had been installed on the edges of the Parana river. Excellent oarsmen and sinners, they left only few traces, in spite of the tales of Sebastien Cabot. In the current province of Misiones, lived Guayanas, with blue eyes and white skin. Farmers, they belonged with the guaranis to the linguistic group Tupi-Guarani. Described like cruel in the tales of the conquistadores, the guaranis were composed of various levels of civilization: Carios farmers, Agaces, pirates of the rivers. Made famous for film "Mission" of Roland Joffé, they constitute today the majority of the population of the Paraguay.

Indians of Cuyo (East -Mendoza):
At the feet of the Andes arround Mendoza and until the west of Cordoba, had settled the Huarpes Indians, divided into several ethnical groups of which Allientiacs and Millcayacs. Living hunting of Guanacos and Vicunas, they were described by Alonso de Ovalle (Theologist and Chilean scientist, 1603-1651) like peaceful.

Indians of the Sierras (Center-Cordoba):
In this area had been established Comechingones. Their own language disappeared today. They were for the majority bearded and lived in troglodytic dwellings. They were neighbours of an another group, Sanarivonas, farmers. The Sierras of Rioja and Catamarca were inhabited by Capayanes and Cacanos.

Indians of Chaco (North-Paraguay):
According to writings' of a German Jesuit, Florian Paucke (1719-1780), these areas were occupied by Mocobis, considered aggressive. Such point that one needed refonder the town of Santa Fe in another place. They spoke Pilaga and Toba, still used nowadays in the area of Resistencia. In the west of this province, lived Tonocotes, skilful potters and weavers and Matacos, installed nowadays still along Pilcomayo, in the forest between Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina. Of course this area was also the stronghold of the Indians guaranis, whose language became the official language of Paraguay.

Indians of Noroeste (Salta):
At the time of Conquista, lived in this area the Omaguacas tribes, whose language was Aymara. Vassal of Incas, warriors, they had taken the ascending one on many people which were submitted to them. They knew the technics of ceramics, basket making, weaving, the irrigation (acequias), and builded forts of which there remain still traces. More in the south, one could find Diaguitas, divided into several tribes, who were of frightening adversaries of the conquistadores. Prohibited by the Spanish ones during several centuries, the languages practised by these tribes reappear: in particular Quechua and Aymara.

Indians of Patagonia (Southern):
The various ethnical groups which lived Patagonia belonged all to the civilization Mapuche (to which the Spaniards gave the name of Araucan). Dislodged of their habitat by the colonists, they migrated gradually towards North provocant in 19th century the disappearance of other groups established in particular in the Pampa. Estimated at 500000 people on arrival of Conquistadores, Mapuche civilization counts nothing any more but 50000 hearts nowadays, primarily in the South of Chile.

Indians of Tierra del Fuego:
Already populated 10000 years before JC, the Tierra del Fuego were inhabited by 4 groups: Onas in North, Haush in the East of the large island, Alakalufs in the Chilean part and Yamanas along the channel Beagle. Living fishing primarily, Onas and Yamanas completely disappeared today. Remain of the last only the memory of their language, thanks to the work of Pasteur Thomas Bridge.

Argentina at the 17th century

2005-12-18T16:25:00.000-08:00

This century is characterized by the consolidation of the various embryonic cities and the installation of organizations intended to structure the social life of the colonists.

If it is common today of saying that there are 2 Argentinas, Buenos Aires and the remainder of the country, this difference appears in fact as per the 17th century.

The small port develops with the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese colonists. The breeding allows those which settled in the countryside (the Pampa) to grow rich quickly. For those which further ventured, the daily needs force the rise of a vital craft industry for them.

Until 1617, Asunción is the capital of Gobernacion of Paraguay and Rio of Plata. The governors have the role up to that point of governing the social and economic practices somewhat anarchistic. Diego Marin de Negron promulgates thus in 1609 an ordinance intended to fight against the abuses whose the Indian workmen with the service of certain colonists are victims.

Hernanderias de Saavedra, under the threat of French corsairs entered in the Rio de la Plata, realizing of his impossibility of controlling and of making safe the entirety of the grounds of which it has the responsability, requires of King of Spain, Philippe III to divide Gobernacion, emancipating Buenos Aires of the supervision of Asunción.

In 1624, Francisco de Cespédes reinforces the system of defense of the city. His successor Pedro Estaban Davila must face the Dutchmen and the Portuguese who want to sit their sovereignty on this area. Organized bands (bandeiras) capture the Indians like slaves and terrible confrontations oppose them to the Jesuits between 1628 and 1632.

In 1658 of new boats of French corsairs come to threaten Buenos Aires, and the governor Baigoni does not manage to break the blockade which they set up only at the end of several months with the support of Spanish ships.

His successor Don Allonso de Mercado owes, during his mandate, to fight against the Indians Diaguitas and Cachaquis, raised by a megalomaniac adventurer, Pedro Bohorques, Andalusian who was made pass for the descendant of the INCA. One period of "denaturalization" and exile of the Indian populations follow.

In 1663, the governor, José Martinez de Salazar, make build the fort of Buenos Aires and install in the city the Royal Audience. His mandate is marked by the rise of the maritime trade. In 1678, José de Garro must once again face inclinations of expansion of the Portuguese, whom he demolishes in Colonia de Sacramento (current Uruguay).

The century finishes under the jurisdiction of Augustin de Robles, whose principal concerns remain the fight against sporadic risings of Indian tribes, the safeguarding of the Spanish authority on the grounds asserted by the Portuguese (in Uruguay in particular), and smuggling.

Ref : "Le guide de l'Argentine" of Graciela Cutuli and Pierre Dumas

Argentina in 16th century

2005-12-17T17:44:00.000-08:00

This article is the first one of a serie devoted to the history of Argentina, beginning with the 16th century, starting point of the modern history this country. The Indian question will be the subject of another article.

To be located:

January 1492: In Spain the catch of Grenade puts an end to Reconquista.

October 1492: Colomb expedition touches the island of San Salvador

The beginning of the Argentinian adventure:

October 1515: Juan Diaz de Solis leaves with the intention to find a passage which can make it possible to pass from the Atlantic to the South Sea (name given then to the Pacific Ocean)

March 1516: The fleet of Solis enters Rio of Plata. This one is baptized Mar Dulce. As soon unloaded the expedition is massacred by the Indians who populate the area.

January 1520: Entry of the fleet of Magellan in the Mare Dulce .

November 1520: Discovery of the Channel of Todos los Santos, future Magellan Strait, and entry of the fleet into the Pacific Ocean where it continues its mission.

1527: Arrival of Sebastien Cabot, Italian sailor with the service of the Spanish Crown, in Mare Dulce. The expedition of Cabot finds a survivor of expedition Solis, Francisco del Puerto. By its tells, this one given birth to the legend from the gold and money which would be in the mountains beyond Parana, thus poking the covetousness of many adventurers of Spain and Portugal.

Cabot expedition then goes up Parana to its confluence with Carcarana. In this place, it builds the Fort of Sancti Spiritus.

It goes on to current Paraguay at level of the Pilcomayo river. The myth of the Sierra of Plata (silver mountains) and of the City of Cesars becomes phenomenal extensive in Europe. The fort of Sancti Spiritus is attacked. After having folded up itself, the expedition returns to Spain.

A small group led by one of the members of the expedition Cabot, Francisco Cesar continues exploration until the current sites of Cordoba and of San Luis

1536: Arrival of the fleet of Pedro de Mendoza in Mare Dulce, sent by the Emperor Charles Quint. Unloading at level of the mouth of Riachuelo, the expedition builds Santa Maria de Los Buenos Aires.

In prey with the famine, Mendoza expedition is supplied by the fleet of Don Juan de Ayolas which carries on its road by going up Parana with the research of the Silver Mountains.

1537: Mendoza, ill, turn over to Spain and die during the voyage. During this time, the expedition of Ayolas disappears in the current area from Chaco.

1542: Don Diego de Rojas explores the mountainous zone of the North-West of Argentina. Started from Cuzco (Peru), it skirts the lake Titicaca, enters Calchaquies to current Santiago del Estero. It dies struck by a poisoned arrow.

1543: Sent by the King of Spain to replace Mendoza, Cabeza de Vaca chooses not to enter Rio of Plata, but to prefer an unloading on the coasts of current Brasil. Having for final objective to join Asuncion, he discovers during his tour the falls of Iguazu.

1544: Arrived at destination, Cabeza de Vaca wants to make free workers Indians employed by the colonists.He runs up against the local conquistadores. Imprisoned, it is replaced by Martinez de Irala.

1553: Francisco de Aguirre enters the borough of El Barco, decides to move it close to current Tucuman and to rename it Santiago del Estero.

1562: Pedro del Castillo establishes in Cuyo, the town of Mendoza. In this area, Indians and colonists will live in good agreement.

1565: Aguirre charges its nephew, Diego de Villarroel of the foundation of another city: San Miguel de Tucuman.

1573: Luis de Cabrera makes raise the first houses of Cordoba, stage city between Tucuman and the ocean.

1573: Juan de Garay, on the request of the Governor Martin Suarez de Tolede, builds the first bases of the town of Santa Fe on the edges of Parana.

1580: Garay decides to found another city at the place or Mendoza had established the harbour of Buenos Aires. It calls it Trinidad, and its port, Puerto de Santa Maria of Buenos Aires. This event marks the refondation of Buenos Aires.

Ref. : "Le Guide de l'Argentine" de Graciela Cutuli and Pierre Dumas, ed. La Manufacture

Maps of Argentina

2005-12-10T18:24:00.000-08:00

Articles of this “blog” referring to the many ones places, cities or provinces, which it is sometimes difficult to locate, it is perhaps useful to publish maps of Argentina to which it is possible to refer, if necessary.
Physical map :

Political map :