Berkley Center

Navigating the city of Buenos Aires is an adventure not only through its beautiful streets but (if you pay attention) also through history. The city is organized in blocks, each 100 meters long, that run either north-south or east-west. The Buenos Aires north-south or east-west directions are actually different from the actual compass directions of north, wouth, east, and west, and they are thus marked not by a compass but by the Plaza de Mayo, where the Casa Rosada or the Argentine version of the White House is, or Avenida Rivadavia, an avenue that splits the city and runs for 23 miles. The 100 meter blocks start at zero on the east-west axis on either side of Rivadavia, and zero on the north-south axis from Plaza de Mayo. Since I live perpendicular to Rivadavia at number 2534 that means my building is exactly 2534 meters away from the Plaza de Mayo. Confused yet? To make matters more complicated the city is not a perfect grid. Streets curve, start, and stop at random and riding the city buses, which is a main way of getting around, involves requesting a stop when you want to get off. So you always need to know what streets come just before and after your stop and be paying attention out the window.

In short, I have spent quality time in these first two months familiarizing myself with the streets of this city. Like many places, Buenos Aires names its streets after historical figures and geographical features, and I, a curious foreigner who knew little about Argentine history before coming to this country, started wondering exactly whose or what names I was reading so attentively on street signs every day. Avenida Rivadavia is named after Bernardino Rivadavia, the first president of the Republic of Argentina in 1826. At the time, Argentina was politically divided and ruled by caudillos, and Rivadavia faced strong opposition to his efforts to centralize the federal government. Rivadavia resigned from his presidency in 1827 (he never completed a full mandate) and was exiled when he returned to Buenos Aires from Europe in 1834. Rivadavia actually requested that his body never be brought back to Buenos Aires, but today his remains are in a mausoleum in Plaza Once, just a few blocks from my host family’s apartment.

The neighborhood around Plaza Once is called “Balvanera” but because of the Plaza, everyone refers to the area as “Once.” “Once” stands for the eleventh of September, which commemorates a rebellion against the government of General Urquiza (another street name in the city) on September 11, 1852. Moreover, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, the seventh president of Argentina and the namesake of my street here, died on September 11, 1888. In honor of Sarmiento’s work in public education, in Argentina, September 11 is the “national day of the teacher.” As I study the history of what I see on the streets, the more I learn and the more contradictions and nuanced layers I discover. Plaza Once has significance in its relation to Rivadavia, the uprising, and Sarmiento. General Urquiza has a street named after him in the city, but there is also a plaza in the city named after the uprising against his government.

Something I was particularly struck by is the existence of plaques on city sidewalks usually reading something like: “Here X was assassinated by the military government on October 12, 1980” or “In this spot X studied until she disappeared in 1979.” These plaques are usually a little bigger than the normal sidewalk rectangle and surrounded by small colorful tiles. However, they do not stand out. Once I recognized one, I began seeing them in more places, but still they surprise me, popping up right outside subway stops and on major street corners. What perplexes me even more is people pass by them every day without realizing it.

It is impossible to put into words or for me to fully understand the impact the military dictatorship had on this country. However, I have gathered that like these plaques in the middle of the city, the time period is there but simultaneously not there. It’s an invisible part of recent history that weighs on the city and country. Life goes on, the city bustles as people walk over these tiles on their way to work or to a friend’s house, and yet the tiles exist, representing (I think) an effort to reconcile the time and preserve its memory. Nevertheless history is inherent and alive in these streets and in the months I have left I will attempt to understand it more fully.