Fall of Berlin Wall in Buenos Aires

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The Fall of the Berlin Wall in Buenos Aires

I had imagined that a Sunday afternoon walk through Buenos Aires would be a quiet affair. This proved not to be the case: there were preparations in the Plaza de Majo for an African Argentinian festival later in the evening, and some impromptu street performers with brightly coloured clothing, drums, giant white tubas, and elaborately embroidered banners were dancing at one end of the Avenida de Majo.

As I continued along this street, I realized that the traffic had been blocked off and what looked like dozens of giant pictures had been laid out in the road. As I approached, I realized that these were in fact giant canvases, stretched out over cardboard frames, some 4m high, 2m wide and 0.5m tall. Stamped on the side of each block was the phrase ´La Cultura Derriba Muros´ (Culture Breaks Down Walls).

Looking around me I saw further posters ´Buenos Aires Saluda Berlin´ (Buenos Aires Greets Berlin´, German and Argentinian flags flying together in the lamp posts along the tree-lined boulevard, and also a large stage erected in the street, together with a giant television screen. I realized then that this was a celebration to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989.

I walked along the line of canvases, most of which were loosely on the theme of knocking down walls. Most were brightly coloured in a rather naïve and simple style, and I decided that they had probably been created by school children. There were many pictures of walls breaking, of people climb under, through or over walls. There were multi-coloured hand prints over designs of walls. Some pictures had phrases celebrating freedom, unity, peace, freedom of the press, or human rights - written in both Spanish and German. One slogan declared philosophical that ´A wall is someone who builds a wall´. More abstract designs showed a skull painted to look like Adolf Hitler, and a canvas depicting the newspapers, movie reels, books and cameras of the media. One canvas even showed a massive Argentine football shirt bearing the number 10, made famous by Diego Maradonna.

As a was photographing these canvases an harassed young man with a red shirt, microphone and ginger dreadlocks approached me nervously. He told me to take my photos and then move to the other side of some security fences. He did clearly not see any irony in having an event celebrating the demolition of walls which could only be viewed from behind iron railings. I asked him what was going on - assuming that perhaps some parade would be coming past shortly, or that some dignatories would be passing to view the giant canvases.

I was mistaken in this however. He told me that what I thought were pictures were in fact giant dominoes that were currently lying down on their sides, but which would shortly be stood upwards. The plan was then to topple all these colorful dominoes one in a chain reaction for about 1km down the main thoroughfare of Buenos Aires. I found this a most incredible and inventive idea, so decided I would stay around to see what happened. There were about 200 of the dominoes (since 2009 was also the 200th anniversary of Argentina) and though the sight of them all falling would be worth seing.

An orchestra had by now assembled on the stage and was playing light jazz music. After a few numbers they were replaced by a quartet performing traditional Argentine folk songs. The final performance was by a female singer who finished her repertoire with a patriotic song about Buenos Aires which proved extremely popular. Quite a large crowd had gathered now, and there were several TV crews and reports in evidence.

Following a brief speech by the master of ceremonies, a group of a dozen or so school children assembled to push down the first domino. They posed for the cameras, each with a single finger raised in the air, to emphasise that they would push the wall down with just one finger. On cue, they knocked down the first canvas and the rest follow suit, crashing noisily against one another and then onto the pavement below.

The pictures fell face down, revealing the back of the canvases. Every 10 or so had been painted either blue, white, red, black or yellow. The effect of this was that once several had fallen, there were images of both the Argentine and German flags lying out along the street. Crews of organizers in the red shirts ran urgently alongside the tumbling stack in case the chain was broken - but everything went according to plan, much to the delight of the assembled crowd. Once all the canvases had tumbled, all the children were allowed to play on the fallen remains, symbolizing, as the announcer said, the fact that it was through children that walls would be knocked down in the future. Formal business then ended and the crowd gradually dispersed into the warm and sunny Buenos Aires late afternoon.

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