*photo taken by Josie herself*
I won’t bore you with the usual travel diaries. Yes, the city is amazing, the food is off the hook and the people are really nice, just like in every country you’ve never seen before. In this regard, Buenos Aires holds up to the standards admirably well. I didn’t travel all over the American continent to make ethnocentric remarks and take tacky Facebook pictures. I came to Argentina with the firm intention to challenge my beliefs and clash at full speed with another culture. Today I was served well.
Thanks to Josie, we went to visit El Cemetario de la Recoleta. She has a thing for cemeteries, the sacred, the ritualistic aspects of life and death. So do I. The idea seduced me from our apartment in Montreal. Somehow, it escaped my attention that this was no ordinary cemetery. Let me explain. La Recoleta is the rich/touristic district of Buenos Aires. For a Montreal referent, think of the area from Papineau to Parc and Sherbrooke to Laurier. Nice, touristic and not much misery to witness (as a matter of fact, Buenos Aires is a city that hides its unfortunate very far from the hot places because I can count those I saw on the fingers of my hands).
No everyman is buried at La Recoleta. Only the rich and the important. Politicians, writers (no Borges, Cortazar or Puig), actors, tango dancers, etc. It’s an historical fact, when too much rich and famous people are at the same place together, decadence happens. The cemetery isn`t decadent in itself, but its...its...out of this world!
Picture this. Your typical British hub with tiny streets full of dead people, already put in their coffins. Mausoleums, when they’re not the kick-ass spectacle of the cemetery, become like tiny houses and yearn for respect and quiet as much as they command for awe. Some monuments are bigger than the very house I lived in for the first nineteen years of my life. There are so many angels around this lot belted by brick walls that it’s truly like walking among the dead. Some of the mausoleums are so old and beat up, the doors are wide opened and the coffins are left vulnerable to the ogling tourists. I witnessed this on many tombs and wondered if people ever came to watch over their sleep. Do they have mother, a brother or a sister to watch them? Or did time destroyed that too?
I felt like an intruder, but there’s something in this place, a luxuriant overflow of architectural brilliance that begs to be watched and remembered. The dead of La Recoleta have found their way to battle the one true death and it’s with the sometimes cold and awkward company of tourists. I have seen the last rest of many men and women I never knew before. I have looked through the glass door of their mortuary houses and felt the uneasiness of their presence all around me, like the protagonist of an H.P Lovecraft story. I’m not sure there are any places like this somewhere else. Many cemeteries I heard, are worth visiting, but I’m sure none of them is a city where you have to be dead to move in.
