Argentinian daydreams
Peter Taylor
Buenos Aires Auseful barometer of popular feeling in .Buenos Aires is the string of small blue newspaper kiosks that stretches down Florida Street, the Richmond Tea Salon, and numerous pricey boutiques of dubious quality. Until the British landing at San Carlos Bay two weeks ago they carried their displays of periodicals with peacock flam- boyance, and, draped in Argentinian flags, became the focal points for silent clusters of shoppers _contemplating the latest head- lines. Outside the offices of La Nacion, one of the leading dailies, the crowds used to block the pedestrianised street completely, necessitating an Indian-file struggle that would take several minutes. Now the kiosks have lost their extroverted parade of titles and their pulling power, and you can stroll past La Nacion, even getting close enough to the window to study the photographs of football, racing and tennis that have replac- ed pictures from the war front.
This is not to imply that the business in the Falklands is all over bar the shouting, but it does perhaps indicate that even events as startling as those of the last few weeks cannot monopolise public attention indefi- nitely. To put it bluntly, the war is not only beginning to look tedious from Buenos Aires but also increasingly irrelevant to Argentina's future. 'The basic realities of the country have not changed,' a leading Radical politician, Senor Osvaldo Alvarez Guerrero, said the other day. 'Unemploy- ment continues to rise, the worker's salary continues to decline, and industries con- tinue to close. The only thing that has changed has been the introduction of a great confusion in patriotic feelings, preventing a debate on the important ques- tions of the day. The national problem of Argentina has been postponed because of warlike emotions.'
Manifestations of the 'national problem' are not difficult to come by. Drive through the Buenos Aires suburbs on almost any afternoon, and outside the banks are queues trailing 50 yards down the pave- ment. These people are ordinary wage- earners, who, in order to have some sort of hedge against inflation, regularly pay a pro- portion of their income into high-interest investment accounts over a couple of weeks or so — repeating the process with every new wage packet. In a country as naturally well-endowed as Argentina there is no shor- tage of basic foodstuffs, but the listless faces are reminiscent of the food queues of eastern Europe. What you have in Argen- tina are constant queues — the result of economic mismanagement and graft.
The politicians, now busily scurrying in the undergrowth, naturally believe they can do better. The new political parties statute, which will allow them to emerge into the daylight for the first time since 1976, is ex- pected to be promulgated within the next month — it is clear that the system the junta has in mind is intended to favour larger political groupings. Political party status (i.e. the right to organise formally) will be granted to groups who can muster as members 0.4 per cent of the voting popula- tion in a minimum of five federal districts. In effect, this means that an incipient party would need a minimum membership of about 56,000 — an idea that has already received the warm approval of the Peronists but has been condemned by the smaller political groups as 'proscriptive'.
Whether Argentina's traditionally inept politicians could revive a terminally ill economy remains extremely doubtful. For that matter, it is by no means certain that the junta intends to give them an early op- portunity to try — not, certainly, so long as some semblance of national unity can still be conjured out of the flagging fight for the islands. In darker moments one wonders whether the possibility of orderly democracy here is not just another Argenti- nian daydream: half-conceived, half- believed, and half-discarded. There is in this country a tendency to ignore the unpleasant and the unpalatable, to avert the gaze and hope that it will go away.
This attitude of mind produces some strange contrasts and paradoxes, noticeable in small ways. A couple of days before the Papal visit to Argentina began I visited the Basilica of Our Lady at Lujan, 45 miles, from Buenos Aires, and venue for a Papal Mass. The French architect of the Basilica attempted the hopeless task of imitating Chartres Cathedral, but it is not an unwor- thy building. At the end of the nave, hung withthe Argentinian national colours, pilgrims slowly made their way on bruised sup the steps to the silent chapel wine, !' contained the figure of the Virgin, a relic from the early colonial times. A few yards away small children, with the encourage- ment of their parents, were insistently touting cheap postcard photographs of th,,e Pope at the highly profitable price of , pence each. Neither pilgrim nor profiteer seemed in the slightest embarrassed by the presence of the other. On the road back, the driver was only mildly irritated to discover that the nanto,r• way ran out in a pile of builders' rubble. 50 we bounced down a rutted dirt road het" ween rows of poor housing, through the a,11..- drained flood water of an earlier thunder" storm, and eventually rejoined the motor way without fuss. This happened several times before we reached the city centre;' Without reading too much into such inci- dents, they do suggest that a consistency of behaviour and continuity of purpose are not at a premium. The same theme runs through the junta' attitude to the Argentinian press, on while it has lately been tightening the screws. °Ile of the country's two independent news agencies, Noticias Argentinas, and a lot: paper in Commodoro Rivadavia recently closed down for three days, all' parently for reporting an unguarded renleir of the Defence Minister, Amadeo Fnig to the effect that 'total victory' could not bed guaranteed. More sinisterly, a widely rel confidential newsletter, Fuente Reservaua,; has ceased publication after its editor an
staff were subjected to intimidation. to
And yet, a few days ago, and oblivious i; these harassments, my morning Pape r plopped outside the door bearing specially-printed card which declared py Journalists' Day!' Like mothers and saints, the tribe of weary scribes is allotteouf its own national day in Argentina. A gift A fruit from the hotel management follovveu' together with a blue plastic shoulder bag' together at midday the junta broadcast a sPeel e message to the Argentinian branch of the trade who were apparently 'encouragih.g troops, praising heroic deeds, 8111,c11/0 governors, and fostering national unity ' the Plaza de la Constitution, a wreath vi placed on a bust of Mariano Moreno :cur founded the first Argentinian newsPar La Gaceta de Buenos Aires, in 1810. It Prot bably has nothing at all to do with t, al; Moreno later became Argentinian st bassador in London where he was the Pr,,, over the Factflokrimanalldsy. to British sovereign
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