SIREN'S CALL

THE BOSOM OF BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA'S CAPITAL, REVEALS A CITY WITH A PRESENT AS SOULFUL AND VIBRANT AS ITS PAST.

- BY TONY PERROTTET. PHOTOGRAPHS BY MAYA VISNYEI

The unofficial anthem of Buenos Aires is the classic 1935 tango “Volver”, the title of which means “to return”. In it, Carlos Gardel describes what it’s like to revisit the city after many years. “To feel... that life is a puff of wind,” he intones, “that 20 years is nothing.” For me, it had been nearly 30 years since my last visit to Buenos Aires, a city to which I'd bought a one-way ticket as a young man with the dream of becoming a foreign correspondent. By some miracle, I established myself as a stringer for international newspapers and rented a cheap apartment in the bohemian barrio (neighbourhood) of San Telmo with an NPR reporter. I became immersed in the area’s half-European, half-Latin world, learning Argentine-accented Spanish and lunfardo, the local slang; living on steak with chimichurri; and rocking up to late-night events at the famed club Parakultural. Argentine democracy was still emerging from the shadow of the military dictatorship of the late 1970s and early 1980s, whose Dirty War caused an estimated 30,000 citizens to be disappeared. Buenos Aires could often feel melancholy, claustrophobic and conformist, with restaurants serving the same meat and pasta staples, but it was rich in character and atmosphere. Much of it evoked the 1930s, with its wood-panelled cafés and dapper citizens.