A Few Days in December in Buenos Aires....2015

December in Buenos Aires started with the Gran Milonga Nacional, an annual event that takes over Avenida de Mayo for several blocks and turns the avenue into a series of stages and open air dancing spaces. The forecast for the 12 December was for heavy rain, which would have put a damper on this event, but warm temperatures and cloudless skies prevailed.

Live tango music entertained the crowd and people danced on the sticky pavement of the avenue until two in the morning. All cafes (except the iconic Café Tortino) had cleared their tables and chairs from the interior and set up 'camp' in the street.
I had an 'invitation' to the 'dancers' enclosure at the base of the main stage, where some of the best beloved tango orchestras (and traditional taped tango) accompanied the dancers on the stage. Many familiar faces from the regular 'milongas' in the city were present, and I danced the night away without breaking my ankles (or heels) on the plywood dance stage....

Open Air Milonga

Sunday CLub Gricel and Sueno Porteno celebrated the 91st birthday of La Reina de la Milonga Sueno Porteno, the great and ever young Blanquita. She has been dancing since she was eleven years old, and eighty years later she still delivers a tango - or even a fast milonga - with impressive panache. Always elegant, always radiant, groomed impeccably, she attracts the best dancers, who lead her through a tanda with gentleness and care.

Blanquita dancing tango on her 91st birthday

From the tips of her coiffure to the elegant high heels of her tango shoes - always a lady.

Julia and Blanquita at her birthday

And for the Record....Blanquita and some of her friends...

And - regular life goes on as usual - in Buenos Aires. It's hot and humid, and one still stumbles occasionally into ever present pot holes and cracks in the sidewalks, one avoids stepping into doggy poop, one deals with frequent power outages. The Internet cuts out regularly, Subways don't work because of  strikes for any imaginable reason, airports are closed because of demonstrations, streets are closed for the same reasons, traffic is atrocious....one shrugs it off and has a siesta....

Tango greats, in their late nineties, are singing at milongas to enthusiastic and adoring dancers.

El Nuevo Chique attracts 'the regulars' on Tuesdays and Thursdays...

Filete is declared Patrimonio de Humanidad by UNESCO

..and San Telmo still bakes in the heat.

Parroquia San Pedro Gonzales Telmo....just beside an old prison (the even older Jesuit Monastery, which served as homeless shelter, hospital and social support for abandoned women way back when). Ironically the same Jesuits, who lived and worked here, were incarcerated in their very own monastery when their order was declared illegal and Jesuits were extradicted from the country.

Graffiti - or wall art - in SanTelmo

Historic building - awaiting its 'renaissance'

On 17. December 2015 - another historic moment in Argentina! After four years of CEPO (trade restrictions) on the US Dollar. the new government has lifted the Cepo within a week of assuming power. As of today, there will be instead of a dozen exchange rates (only one of them 'official) for dolar ahorro, dolar turistico, dolar tarjeta, dolar blu, dolar arbolitos,dolar bolsa and who knows how many other versions of the same thing, only ONE rate driven by the open market.

Nine minutes to go for the CEPO to become history, the count down on television stations has started. Nine minutes before drop dead time, the question remains: where will the new exchange rate settle...

one second to go until THE ANSWER is available....

...the markets are opening, the exchange houses are holding their breath, the arbolitos (illegal street exchange people waving bank notes like tree leafs hence 'little trees') holding everything else (will they still have their cambio, cambio, cambio jobs in Calle Florida?) and life goes on.

It's official....

The first 'pantalla' (advertising screen) of a Calle Florida Exchange house flashes the first post-CEPO rate

 

And the rest of Buenos Aires - situation normal - Subway stopped since five hours, to protest the lay off of 26 employees.