Bottles and pans, just clap your hands*

Some time before 8pm the regular cacophany of car horns began to take on an unusual insistency. Then another voice joined in. It sounded like cowbells, but not the tinkling accompaniment of an Alpine idyll; this was the steady mounting soundtrack of a thousand fervent Friesians. I opened the balcony window onto the five-lane avenue that streaks past our living room. Our eighth floor location provides a handy vantage point for observing the not infrequent demonstrations on the street below. Today was different, though. The whistle-toting pedestrians and horn-happy drivers weren't competing with the blare of a television from across the hall, the drone of a vacuum cleaner in the flat above or the wailing of a baby three floors below. The entire building had its attentions turned to the rapidly advancing army of noise. And then there were those cowbells...

There is a lot I don't know about Argentina. There are famous apellidos I can’t put faces to, streets named after important dates which I can't seem to get in order (the dates nor the streets), and a horrific military dictatorship whose gruesome details I am only vaguely acquainted with. There’s a group of islands which caused a headache for Margaret Thatcher and Argentina’s then leader Leopoldo Galtieri, and an economic crisis which I watched unfold on television in a flat in Madrid which I shared with two Argentines in 2001. News reports broadcast images of their fellow countrymen taking to the streets in a form of demonstration known as a cacerolazo, a communal banging of pots and pans in protest, while my flatmates stared in silence.

What I do know is that it’s hard to relate these events to the image of Argentina which greets the average visitor to Buenos Aires. The streets of the capital ooze youth. The city’s bars and boliches are littered with lithe and impossibly handsome sun-toasted bodies. The shopping malls and gelato halls are thronged with well-heeled folk. Sure, there are broken pavements, power failures, and a chronic shortage of coinage. But at the risk of sounding flippant, for the casual onlooker in the confines of touristic Baires, there’s an air of sexy optimism. This is life in my small corner of the capital, at least. Rose-tinted, undoubtedly. Because, in spite of my time here, I am still a casual onlooker.

Beyond this initial impression there exist grumblings about inflation - estimated to be at least double the official figure quoted -, continual action by piqueteros (organised demonstrators who frequently block major routeways, bridges and streets with their pickets), and criticism of these piquetes. In recent weeks, blockades set up to protest against increased taxation of agricultural exports have led to shortages of meat and dairy products in Argentina’s cities. At the weekend we met a taxi driver keen to share his thoughts on these issues.
"It’s the public who are to blame for all this", he asserted. "Those who vote are saying to the politicians, yes, go ahead, screw us over some more! I gave up voting years ago".
"Argentina is like a whore", he went on, "she’s happy to be slapped around and take the money". Similes exhausted, he went straight for the big impact stuff: ‘This country’s headed for civil war’.

I leaned over the balcony railing and watched hundreds of citizens descending on the Avenida Santa Fe, striking together kitchen utensils, plastic bottles, or in the absence of any other object, their two hands, and forcing traffic into a single lane of the five. From balconies across the street Argentinian flags appeared. An elderly lady had installed herself on a plastic sunlounger with two saucepan lids and was competing with the family two balconies below who had improvised a varied and impressive percussion section. The protests seen on the country’s roadways for the last number of days had made their way to the capital, fuelled by a speech president Cristina Fernandez had made that afternoon. The cowbells were pots and pans and Buenos Aires was once again the scene of a cacerolazo.

Down in the street I overheard a girl say that she'd found out about the demonstration by email. Whether this evening was a truly spontaneous gathering of individuals or not, it reminded me of the 'Pásalo!' phenomenon that occured in Spain after the terrorist attacks in Madrid in March 2004, where thousands were convoked to demonstrations via text messages.

A couple of weeks ago another impromptu gathering took place in Buenos Aires, its motive not political but festive. Inspired by a Doritos ad, a couple of random citizens took it upon themselves to encourage the return of slow sets in discos under the campaign title “Que vuelvan los lentos!” There are evidently more than a handful of nostalgic, amorous, and/or mildly irreverant Bonaerenses out there; according to a newspaper report over 4,000 people turned up at the location indicated in emails and on the campaigners’ blog - in front of the city’s planetarium.

Back on the Avenida Santa Fe the crowds began to move off, heading towards the presidential palace in the Plaza de Mayo where later there would be clashes between rival demonstrators.

I want to believe in the sexy optimism. I want to believe that it's onwards and upwards. The average Argentine is the same age as me, is friendly and welcoming, strikes up conversation with you on the street, appears buoyant despite their country’s turbulent recent history, wants to dance to slow sets and still has time for a flirty glance or a rogueish piropo in between pot-banging.
Who wouldn’t be cheering for Argentina?



* With apologies to Beck

---

---