The New York Review Abroad by Robert B. Silvers Page B

not to be South American. It was to be European; and many Argentines became European, of Europe. The land that was the source of their wealth became no more than their base. For these Argentine-Europeans Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata became resort towns, with a seasonal life. Between the wars there was a stable Argentine community of 100,000 in Paris; the peso was the peso then.
    “Many people think,” Borges said, “that quite the best thing that could have happened here would have been an English victory [in 1806–7, when the British twice raided Buenos Aires]. At the same time I wonder whether being a colony does any good—so provincial and dull.”
    But to be European in Argentina was to be colonial in the most damaging way. It was to be parasitic. It was to claim—as the white communities of the Caribbean colonies claimed—the achievements and authority of Europe as one’s own. It was to ask less of oneself (in Trinidad, when I was a child, it was thought that the white and the rich needed no education). It was to accept, out of a false security, a second-rateness for one’s own society.
    And there was the wealth of Argentina: the British railways taking the wheat and the meat from all the corners of the pampa to the port of Buenos Aires, for shipment to England. There was no pioneer or nationmaking myth of hard work and reward. The land was empty and very flat and very rich; it was inexhaustible; and it was infinitely forgiving.
Dios arregla de noche la macana que los Argentinos hacen de día
: God puts right at night the mess the Argentines make by day.
    To be Argentine was to inhabit a magical, debilitating world. Wealth and Europeanness concealed the colonial realities of an agricultural society which had needed little talent and had produced little, which had needed no great men and had produced none. “Nothing
happened
here,” Norman di Giovanni said with irritation one day. And everyone, from Borges down, says, “Buenos Aires is a small town.” Eight million people: a monstrous plebeian sprawl, mean, repetitive, and meaningless: but only a small town, eaten up by colonial doubt and malice. When the real world is felt to be outside, everyone at home is inadequate and fraudulent. A waiter in Mendoza said, “Argentines don’t work. We can’t do anything big. Everything we do is small and petty.” An artist said, “There are very few
professionals
here. By that I mean people who know what to do with themselves. No one knows why he is doing any particular job. For that reason if you are doing what I do, then you are my enemy.”
    Camelero, chanta
: These are everyday Argentine words. A
camelero
is a line-shooter, a man who really has nothing to sell. The man who promised to take me to an
estancia
, and in his private airplane, was only doing
camelo
. The
chanta
is the man who will sell everything, the man without principles, the hollow man. Almost everybody, from the president down, is dismissed by somebody as a
chanta
.
    The other word that recurs is
mediocre
. Argentines detest the mediocre and fear to be thought mediocre. It was one of Eva Perón’s words of abuse. For her the Argentine aristocracy was always mediocre. And she was right. In a few years she shattered the myth of Argentina as an aristocratic colonial land. And no other myth, no other idea of the land, has been found to take its place.
    —August 10, 1972

4

Sad Brazil
    Elizabeth Hardwick
    Ernesto Geisel was by no means the worst military strongman in the history of Brazil. The son of German Lutherans, Geisel—white hair, big glasses, benign smile—looked more like a bank manager in a provincial German town. He promised to restore Brazil to democratic rule and to stop torturing political opponents. Although a staunch enemy of communism, Geisel established relations with China
.
    Geisel came to power in 1974, the year that Elizabeth Hardwick visited. It was not an especially good time. For the oil crisis, sparked by US support of