LESSER: Don’t cry for free, Argentina

COMMENTARY:

BUENOS AIRES.

For a (North) American, Argentina resembles fun-house mirrors - like those that make you look taller and skinnier or shorter and fatter - or maybe the way you really look. They show us something about our past, about our present and, one hopes, a future we can somehow avoid.

In the Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires, there are magnificent, turn-of-the-19th-century palaces in the flamboyant French “belle-epoque” style. Some are now sumptuous embassies, private clubs and hotels. Many are still are in private hands. There are glittering modern apartment houses and hotels. Recoleta reminds one of the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

In the center, along impossibly wide avenues march huge neo-classical government office buildings like those in Washington. There is even an obelisk, like the Washington Monument. Fancy neighborhoods like Martinez and San Isidro remind you of upscale U.S. bedroom communities.

It’s a world-class city of something like 18 million, with world-class art, music, nightlife and, of course, food.

If many things in Argentina remind you of the United States, there are striking differences. There are almost no people of color. Very few Asians and, except for some rural areas, there are almost no Native Americans. There are virtually no people descended from Africans.

Argentina is much more homogeneous than the United States. Something like 97 percent of the people are of European extraction. Most are Italian, then Spanish, then English, French, Germans, etc. About 80 percent are Roman Catholic.

They have created a uniquely Argentine society. Throughout South America, a common joke is that an Argentine is an Italian who speaks Spanish - and thinks he’s English. Most live in cities, almost half in Buenos Aires, but they fancy themselves country folk, descended culturally if not physically from the frontier cowboys, the “gauchos” - the way many Americans sport cowboy boots and think themselves cultural offspring of the Wild West.

Nevertheless, Argentina is no melting pot.

Many of the rich think of themselves permanently in hyphenated terms - as “Anglo-Argentines,” for example. Even after families have been here for generations, some live in ethnic neighborhoods, such as the upscale Buenos Aires area called “Hurlingham,” where children attend imitation English schools, such as St. George’s College for boys, and Northlands for girls. Many young people go “home” to England for university. They maintain their British citizenship, and many speak English at home in Buenos Aires. The same is true for many families from France, Germany and elsewhere. It’s an important cultural factor, as seen in Vicente Blasco Ibanez’s novel, “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” about Argentine families from France and Germany who intermarry, but send their sons back to Europe to kill one another in two world wars.

Like the United States, Argentina got rich from its natural resources. When the palaces and boulevards were constructed, Argentina was very rich. In 1900, the U.S. had a per capita GDP of $4,000, and Argentina’s was $2,800. Now the U.S. is at $45,000, while Argentina is at $13,000. Argentina has gone from being the 12th richest country to the 60th.

Decay is everywhere. Buildings aren’t maintained. Roads are so bad that fast-moving cars, trucks and buses lurch wildly to avoid gigantic pot-holes. In fancy Recoleta, sidewalks vanish with no warning. Wherever you walk, you have to stare at your feet to avoid breaking an ankle.

More importantly, people are much poorer. Traditionally, Argentina was a rare exception to the old line about Latin America: Too many poor people; too few rich people; too much army; too much church. Traditionally, Argentina had a large, prosperous, well-educated middle class, a small, rich, landed “oligarchy,” and a few truly poor - mostly Bolivian immigrants.

Now you see many poor people. Shantytowns, “villas miseria,” are all around Buenos Aires - common in Sao Paolo and Caracas, but traditionally not here. At night packs of scavengers, “cartoneros,” search people’s trash for cardboard and other things to sell to recyclers. Disciplined bands of unemployed - “piqueteros” - help make the “villas miseria” more habitable and also systematically block highways and streets in and around the city with huge bonfires to pressure the government to do more to help.

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