Culture On The Parana

The four hour bus journey from Buenos Aires to Rosario is fairly pleasant. There is a lot of countryside that pretty much reminds me of Uruguay – flat wet fields stretching off into the distance punctuated by various tropical looking trees and palms. There are many soya fields here; Argentina’s main economic export these days. And of course cattle. South America has many different types of cattle, and they are in most of the fields that we past on the road between the cities. Passing from the state of Buenos Aires to Santa Fe, and the scenery became even more flat, less populated and really started to take on the feel of the particularly fertile region called las pampas (the plains) that we had enjoyed in Uruguay.

We arrived to a brightly lit city on the 2nd September (happy birthday, Dad!) with wide avenues and clean streets. Many people were out on the streets, relaxing and enjoying the evening. We got off at the bus station and immediately found out that the place that sells the local magnetic bus card, or tarjeta (you have to buy those from a kiosk or newsagents), was closed so we had to go a few blocks to buy one. The bus itself only accepts coins, not notes, and as we did not have enough coins I went and bought the tarjeta (I hate that they make it so difficult to get a bus in these countries just to make more profit).

We hopped on the bus (wrong one) and so ended up being about an hour and a half later than we said to our couchsurfing friend’s house. After regrouping in a café when we found that our hosts were not at home, we were delighted to meet Carolina (and later her boyfriend Eric) when she came and picked us up at the café we were in. We had left a note with her neighbors so she knew where to come.

The first evening we all talked travel and language. Rosario is big on couchsurfing as there is a large young population, particularly students, and a regular event, Carolina told us, was a language exchange meeting. The four of us shared a pizza and talked until late, then Francesca and I went to bed exhausted.

After a nice sleep (much quieter than the loud area of Avellaneda in South Buenos Aires), we woke up refreshed and we left in the morning of the 3rd September to go and see the city. Our first two stops were two cultural spaces – the Plataforma Lavarden and the Centro Cultural Roberto Fontanarrosa. The former was a large building which contained one exhibit with the colorful works of Felipe Gimenez, including some cool bright paintings and small clay model dioramas. The rest of the building seemed to be abandoned or locked up. We had more luck at the cultural center which had some excellent cartoons by Angel Boligan. Exploring a vast raft of themes ranging from women’s lib to the environment and our addiction to social networking online, the cartoons were engaging and well drawn. There was a gallery upstairs too exhibiting some paintings by Marcella Gonella.

Our next stop was Cordoba street; the main pedestrianized part of town. It looked to me exactly like Calle Florida in Buenos Aires, and we stopped to get some croissants and tea for breakfast.

Rosario is a lovely town, with a much softer pace than Buenos Aires, but still thick with pollution. With almost 1.2 million people it is the third largest city in Argentina after Buenos Aires and Cordoba. Charles Darwin visited the area in 1832 and wrote that Rosario was a “large town” with it’s 2000 residents – how times have evolved…

After this, and after buying two comic books (one English, one in Spanish), we headed down to the main public port area where the monumento historico nacional a la Bandera (National Flag Memorial) is located. Built in the shape of a ship to show how Argentines are sailing together to a brighter future, the monument has a large tower with a viewpoint on the top, and a vast courtyard-like area that leads to a covered hallway containing an eternal flame.

The 70 meter tower commemorates the 1810 revolution and independence from Spain, and also contains the mausoleum of General Manuel Belgrano who created the flag, and also flew it for the first time on one of the islands in Rosario’s delta on the Parana river. We tried to get to the viewpoint but the ticket office was closed and things got too confusing with the guard when he eventually appeared so we gave up and wandered off.

The whole site was built using stone mostly from the Andes, and much of the tower’s sculptures look neoclassical and heroic. The courtyard between the tower and the eternal flame was bordered by numerous Argentine flags, and a huge flag flew next to the monument too.

We stopped here and had the rest of some fruit we were carrying and then made our way to a cathedral and museum both of which were closed for siesta! Undaunted, we decided to walk back up Cordoba street towards a famous house in Argentina at 480 Entre Rios. This house was designed by architect Alejandro Bustillo, who also designed the Flag Monument. He was prolific between the 1920s and 40s and his buildings stand all over Argentina, so we expect to get much more familiar with his work. However, the building at Entre Rios is actually famous not for the architect but for a certain el Che who was born there. Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, or Che Guevara, was born here to intellectual leftist parents in a firmly middle class neighborhood. Little remains of the man now in Rosario, no museums and the apartment is still private so we could not visit it, but, like Bustillo we expected to encounter Che Guevara many more times on our trip which will vaguely follow the one made famous in Che’s The Motorcycle Diaries.

Not long after Che was killed by the CIA trained Bolivian army, the dictatorship in Argentina took the reins of power and starting killing all of the intellectual leftist people (people just like Che Guevara’s parents) from all the classes in the country. Anyone with a record of political activism or who even spoke out about social inequality was ‘disappeared’. We visited the Museo de la Memoria (Memorial Museum), which is dedicated to those who were imprisoned, tortured and killed (forced disappearances) between 1976 and 1983. This period of state terrorism is called The Dirty War, a phrase coined by a member of the military junta, without shame, as an explanation for the atrocities that they carried out.

The modernist building was the headquarters of the Command II Army Corps who were contributors to the military terror and torture perpetuated throughout the dictatorship, and the building was where they planned many of the awful policies of this era. Located only 200 meters away from an illegal detention center (which was being renovated as it was in danger of collapse – although they used to do tours of the place), it is now perhaps better known for the pretty plaza (San Martin Plaza) in front of it with many different types of palms and kids hanging out smoking marijuana.

A huge rack-like contraption made of wood with a crank that you could turn, instead of turning screws to stretch someone, turned a long parchment of paper on which was written stories from survivors of The Dirty War.

There was a library of books and various other media in an anteroom which was made all the more impactful by the ID cards of los desaparecidos (the disappeared) hanging from the ceiling at eye level. A very sad reality that the museum teaches people about (there was a bunch of school kids on a field trip as we were there), perhaps ensuring it never happens again – much like Auschwitz now being a memorial and museum.

We got a little lost after this – there is an ancient lift (elevator, American readers!) that scared the hell out of us as we ascended to some floors which were just office space. We finally found out where we should be going and wandered around another permanent exhibit of photographs of items found in the detention centers, and even a video taken of a detention center by a victim a few years later after being held there (journalists were targeted alongside students, lecturers and professors).

A visit to the museums library was useful as we got a full list of relevant books and films to download about the era, Argentina and some other stuff. After this, we headed back out into the sunshine and made our way to the café around the corner from our couchsurf and ordered pizza.

We picked our laundry which we had handed in, confirmed a boat trip with a tour company we had contacted, and made our way back to the apartment.

The next day and Francesca, Carolina and I went for breakfast together and I discovered orange jelly croissants which were delicious. After this we jumped on a bus and made our way to Parque de la Independencia (Independency Park). It was a breezy, chilly but sunny day, and we enjoyed walking through the park spotting various strange trees such as the silk floss with it’s strange spines, green veins and silky seeds.

We arrived at the Museo Histórico Provincial Dr. Julio Marc named for the first director of the museum (weird). Mostly comprising archeological items, we stumbled upon a whole closed section (with lights turned off) that we cheekily decided to explore. My favorite pieces here were a colorful Peruvian poncho and a modern day indigenous ceremonial shirt which was not just made from feathers, but about 10 actual toucans! Horrible really, poor animals, but it did look really cool and colorful.

The rest of the museum is in Spanish and has no guides or materials in English so we probably did not get as much out of it as we could have – especially when what I can only assume was one of the curators came over and had an epileptic fit when we took a picture with a flash on the camera. Calm down, it was an accident you douche.

Back in the park and we meandered over to the artificial lake and took in some geese, ducks and also a huge bird of prey. We decided to buy a hotdog which was made with lovely fresh French bread and fried onions, and after we took some nice snaps we found a bus into the centro and went to the port for our boat trip, but that is another post!

We visited the Basílica Catedral de Nuestra Señora del Rosario (Cathedral Basilica Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary) next, first built in 1731. The altar is made of Carrara marble and there are numerous anterooms which all had people sitting and praying in them. I liked the room under the front of the church which we went down into. It held the organ – I tried to give it a blast but it was locked away, luckily!

We tried the museum we had missed the day before again (Museu Municipal de Arte Decorativo) but don’t believe the websites opening hours – they are wrong. It is anyone’s guess what the opening hours of any museum are in this part of the world, and sometimes you are just lucky if the museum still exists, or ever existed.

It was a long day, so we headed back to the same café near our couchsurf and then headed back for some more sleep. Our next stop tomorrow on the 5th is Santa Fe, the capital and namesake of the state. It is the next stop on the Rio Parana, and if Rosario is anything to go by, travelling through this region will be an excellent part of our journey.