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LESSER: Don't cry for free, Argentina

By George Lesser | Sunday, November 23, 2008

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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.