Dreams and Dust in Buenos Aires

Like almost nowhere else, Buenos Aires hums with utopian melodies. It resembles New York topographically, a city of canyons cast in a grid, but its soul belongs to the Mediterranean. Not only to the nations that birthed it, but the immanentism that the first settlers brought to the unknown shores. These colonists dwelt in the end times. Antichrist and judgement day were perpetually nigh. A Last world emperor, variously appearing in the guise of Catholic kings would take Jerusalem and set the events of the apocalypse into motion. From the beginning, it was entire and transcendental changes that animated the city’s psyche rather than the humdrum pragmatism of ordinary life.

Nowhere better captures this mood than the Palacio Barolo. A lighthouse built to welcome the huddled masses to Argentina. Palati, its architect, crystallises Dante’s Divine Comedy into stone. The journey from hell to paradise and divinity is writ in serene art deco. Unlike its American counterpart then, this monument doesn’t merely promise migrants a better life, but the very redemption of their souls. In his mind, darkness was falling upon wartorn, nihilistic Europe as the sun rose on the new world. This continent and particularly Buenos Aires, was soon to be the last refuge of Western civilisation, a flame, bright and flickering against the oblivion of night. To sustain it, the Palacio doubled as a new sepulchre for Dante’s ashes, preserving the poet’s spirit amid contortions of bloodshed.

That Dante’s ashes remain in Ravenna and that the Palacio was built without consultation or promise from the Italian government lays bare the strand of desolation that is interwoven with the city’s utopianism. The building is a monument to grand ambition and universalism that subsided into failure. When Gabriel Marquez dubbed South America ‘the laboratory of failed illusions’ he may well have pictured the Barolo. It now stands effectively empty, housing tourist agencies, tutors and accountants, a monument to a hollow utopia. The same emptiness at the heart of the tragedy that ultimately engulfed Bolivar, Che Guvera, Pizarro and all the other adventurers and dreamers ensnared by this wonderful and terrible continent haunts this building, not alive but existing. It is also a monument to the false dawn of the economic conditions that underlay it. An agricultural boom made Argentina one of the top ten economies in the world during the 1920s, creating the funds and civilisational confidence for such a bold building. Today though, Argentines live in the shadow of better times and frustrated dreams that the Barolo casts.

Even in this darkness, utopianism burns undimmed. The people’s sense of self stems more from the world cup triumph than any dismal IMF evaluation. On the Avenida 9 Julio, a 10 street monstrosity designed for a world capital that never was, the population celebrated 40 years since the fall of the Junta. Amid billowing contortions of smoke from burning tires, the embers of American flags and marching bands, the people still dreamt. Resplendent in the beauty of being Argentinian and free, Socialists, beret clad and red starred proclaimed worldwide revolution. Indigenistas, invoking the last Inca called for truth, rights and dignity of those displaced by the white influx. In the Congress house, the spirit has been little different. The predominant left wing populism has seemed set on erecting new Palacio Barolos entirely using money printers. Bold dreams of transforming society have amounted to little more than buying an electoral majority with handouts and a bloated public sector, while resultant inflation buries any real future for its people. Even Milei, the candidate most adamant for wholesale reform is too a dreamer in the tradition of Palati. His calls for a wholesale ban on abortion, raised gun ownership and a theatrical style adverse to cooperation seems set to doom his dreams to the dustbin of history. Compromise is not in the playbook of Argentine politicians - it is paradise or inferno, not the dull, prosperous purgatory of pragmatism followed by neighbouring Uruguay.

These fresh Palacio Barolos erected by politicians of all stripes, are not lighthouses welcoming those from Europe, but scarecrows driving the best and brightest of Argentina back to the old country. Young Argentines pay little attention to the news, and instead devote their energies to scouring their family trees for a European ancestor with desire for the vaunted EU passport. They do so though tinged with regret. Leaving behind the lifestyle and culture in Argentina is not a decision taken lightly. Yet, when they remark that they are paid in Pesos in a tone akin to doing voluntary work, unable to save for a house or a car, it is apparent that they are virtually driven from Argentina.

Seeing the greatest resource of this country squandered makes Argentina, for all its grace, beauty and potential to resemble the Palacio Barolo, striving for paradise, while standing hollow and decaying.