I had wondered from time to time just why the Andes are so much more impressive than other mountains. Ticky and I have our home on the foothills of a mountain more than 14,000 feet high. We are very fond of it and it really is a big mountain, but it is not in the same class with the Andes. A little arithmetic shows why and proves why the Andes may reasonably be considered the highest mountains in the world, despite the Himalayas-thus: heights of mountains are measured above sea level. This is crucial to an alpinist half dead from anoxia on the crags of Mount Everest but it has nothing to do with how tall a mountain looks; its majesty depends on how high it thrusts up above the plateau at its base.
By this rule:
Pikes Peak-14,000 minus 6000 gives 8000 feet apparent height.
Mount Everest-29,000 minus 15,000 gives 14,000 feet.
The Andes-22,000 minus only 2000 gives 20,000 feet, which leaves the Andes the winnuh and new champion by more than a mile in height which you can raise your eyes and see.
There are other criteria. Mauna Loa in Hawaii is 32,000 feet high from summit to base, but 18,000 feet of it is concealed by the Pacific Ocean; you can't see it. Nor can you see barometric pressure or "sea level" height. A barometer states that my home is 6015 high; unfortunately only the last fifteen feet of that shows from our garden; the Chrysler Building, a full mile "shorter" than my home by the sea-level scale, is nevertheless a bit more impressive.
The same common-sense criterion that makes a great skyscraper more impressive than a one-story house states that the Andes are the tallest mountains in the world.
The transition from the Cordillera to the prairies and the plains in Argentina is much like the same transition in the United States, except that the great open spaces are even more so than our own, even though we were flying over the most populous part of the back country. There were hundreds of miles of open range and farm with only an occasional village and very few roads. It was impressive in scope but monotonous.
I stared at it and tried to get my thoughts straight about Chile. What was the spirit of Chile? What characterized it? The guidebooks emphasized the Chilean wines, and the fish both for catching and for eating, and the outdoor sports of all sorts, from skiing to surfing. All those things were true but they did not seem to me to spell Chile; take them away and the spirit of the country would remain.
No, not fish, not wines, not sports-but flowers, and serious pursuit of knowledge and an overwhelming kindliness. These were Chile.
IV
The Land of"Papá"
Once upon a time a big, sleek, fat Argentine dog met a little, skinny, wretched Chilean dog at the border between their two countries. They exchanged sniffs and discovered that each was headed for the other's native land. "But why?" the Chileno mutt wanted to know. "You don't know what you are getting into. I love my native land but I've just got to make a change; I haven't had a square meal in months. But Argentina is already your home and you are well fed, fat, healthy, obviously in the pink-so why don't you stay where you are well off?"
The Argentine dog glanced over his shoulder, then whispered behind his paw: "I want to bark."
I heard the above anecdote in Brazil. It is a fair thumbnail sketch of the difference between the two countries. When Ticky was laying out our itinerary she planned only four days for us in Argentina on the assumption that four days was the longest she could possibly keep her mouth shut. I felt that she was overly optimistic; Ticky makes a vice of telling the truth. I simply hoped that Perón's police would be either too gallant or too cautious to throw a señora from the States into jail.
As it turned out we stayed much more than four days, as our ship, as is customary with ships, was much delayed in sailing. Then much to our surprise we found that we liked Argentina very much. Wait a moment, I do not wish to be mistaken for a crypto-fascist or whatever the communists these days are calling an authoritarian who is not a communist authoritarian. I do not like police states. Like the fat Argentine dog, no matter how good it is some ways I still like to bark. But we did like the country called Argentina and we liked the citizens thereof very much.
However I am going to say some fairly gentle things even about the present government of Argentina. I ask that it be kept in mind that I am simply trying to report what I saw and heard and that there can be qualitative differences between dictatorships, say between Argentina under Perón and Germany under Hitler. The observations made imply no approval of suppression of free assembly, of press, of free speech, of opposition parties, nor of the jailing of opposition leaders. As this is being written, Argentina has just held another election. Perón won it as usual and, also as usual, the opposition party, brought out and dusted off for the campaign, was promptly suppressed once the election was over. This is not our notion of free democratic choice.
But we received a very strong impression that President Perón enjoys a very wide popular support and probably could win an honest election by a good majority. True, he is not taking any chances. There have been several elections since he seized power and he has won all of them, but they have been much of the quality of an election in a social club which is dominated by a clique which controls both the nominating committee and the membership committee; the opposition might as well stay in bed-or over in Montevideo where a lot of them have taken up permanent residence in exile.
Nevertheless I think there are about as many Argentinos who like "Papá" Perón as there are of us who like Ike. As one of them told me, "Practically all of us like him, or at least most of the things he has done, but practically everybody hated her." I was not able to judge the latter half of his statement; Eva Perón had already gone to her reward when we were there and very few people mentioned her name. Not that one could forget her, for her name and her face were everywhere, but she was no longer an issue. But it did seem as if Perón were the prisoner of a myth he had helped to create. I do not see how he could marry again should he wish to do so. He set up his deceased wife as a de facto saint; it would be awkward, to say the least, were he now to marry an "ordinary" woman.
I asked my informant why Evita was disliked when Juan was liked. "I'll give you a couple of examples. When Eva was a young actress she was beaten out for a part in a play by another and better known actress. She swore that she would get back at her. She did-when she became the President's wife she not only used her influence to keep the other woman from ever being cast for any part, she also drove the other actress right out of the country. That's the sort of senselessly vindictive woman she was and a lot of people knew it. Or take this case- A while back the girls that clerk in the department stores needed a raise, so the heads of their union went around to see Eva about it. She ran everything of that sort.
"She said she would think it over. Things went on for several months while she 'thought it over.' Then suddenly a raise was announced for women clerks, effective at once-but with the pay scale retroactive to the first of the year. A big bonus for the girls? Oh no! The accumulated difference was to be paid over into the Eva Perón Foundation; the clerks are pleased with the raise and they know who got it for them-Evita-and Evita has her hands on several more millions of pesos."
"Then she would spend it on herself?"
"Well, no- Yes and no. She couldn't spend very much of it on herself, no matter how many fur coats she bought. There was too much of it. But there never has been any accounting made of the money that goes through the Foundation, either where it comes from or where it goes. Evita used to give audiences in one room in the Foundation; people would file in and tell their stories. If the stories appealed to her, she would reach in a drawer that was stuffed with money and hand over fistfuls of the stuff-no system, no records.
"Mind you," he added, "I'm not saying the Eva Perón Foundation didn't do any good. It did a great deal of good and it still does. Hospitals, orphanages, all sorts of things."
I do not know how true the above stories are, but they seem to be typical of popular opinions. One of the odd things about Argentina, as a
police state, was that the ordinary citizen seemed quite unafraid to talk about politics and to express criticism of the government. There is no possible doubt that the Peronistas have curtailed civil liberties and suppressed opposition, yet most of the citizens seemed to feel that they were free and well governed.
I do not understand this, nevertheless I will express a few horseback opinions-I can't be much farther off than are most professional pundits. I suspect that the typical South American is such a free soul that he simply will not stand for outright thought policing; if he can't speak his mind, he will rebel. Consequently a South American dictator can't get away with the sort of stuff that the commissars pull; the South American boss must seek real popular support to stay in power. Certainly Perón has sought, and gotten it, from the "shirtless ones." He seems to have much middle-class support as well.
Besides that, Argentina does not have our firm tradition of civil liberty and democratic process; the citizen is more likely to judge results than methods-the "Mussolini-made-the-trains-run-on-time" school of political science. All through Buenos Aires we saw big signs: PERÓN CUMPLE-which freely translated means that Perón keeps his word, Perón finished this or that public work just as he promised he would. This sort of thing makes an impression even in the States. The city I was reared in was dominated by the Pendergast machine; I can testify that my neighbors were more interested in the quality of the paving in their own block (which was good) than they were in the graft in the city hall concerning that pavement (which was scandalous).
In many ways Perón looks good compared with his predecessors. We heard contemptuous remarks about the President he chucked out, to the effect that he spent all his time enjoying the night life of Buenos Aires and never did any work. No one can accuse Perón of being lazy. His working day starts about six a.m. and almost anyone who wants a personal audience with him can get it if they will get up in time to see him at that hour.
His love for children seems to be sincere and it certainly adds to his popularity. He recently gave his country home to the children of Argentina, stating that a bachelor had no need of it. Everywhere in Buenos Aires one runs across this quotation: "En la Nueva Argentina los únicos privilegiados son los niños."-President Juan Perón. ("In the new Argentina the only privileged ones are the children.") This boast is not entirely true by a great deal but he seems to be sincere in making it and it fits beautifully the temperament of the people; children are highly valued there.
In addition to the above he is a skilled spellbinder. We heard him speak once; his style was as effective as Hitler's. The content was a semantic blank; he was boasting that Argentina was a great nation because it had ideals and heart and such like vague abstractions. But at one point he stopped suddenly, changed his manner abruptly and snapped, "Tell those policemen to quit bothering the citizens and to go away!"
The crowd ate it up.
It might have been a spur of the moment inspiration of a talented public speaker, or it might have been a carefully prepared plant. Either way it was smart politics.
Now let's drop the subject of politics. It took us three hours to fly across South America and three more hours from touching down until we reached our hotel, what with entrance formalities and an interminable ride from the airport downtown. Airplanes have done half the job of making travel simple and fast; the other half remains to be done.
As we registered at the Plaza Hotel, we were politely told to surrender our passports; the police wanted them. Ticky firmly said, "No!"
The desk clerk was embarrassed, patient, and equally firm. I finally agreed that we would but insisted on receipts by the serial numbers of the passports, which the clerk gravely provided, as well as police cards for each of us. I have not the slightest idea what Perón's police wanted our passports for, but they kept them for several days, then returned them.
The Plaza Hotel is not as new as the Carrera but it is equally luxurious. Our room, a semi-suite twice the size of most hotel rooms, could be split into living room and bedroom by big drapes. The furnishings and decorations reminded me of the Mauve Decade but the beds were modern. The most startling item was the bath towels which were much too much of a muchness. They were enormous Turkish bath sheets, five feet by six feet, large enough to wear as a toga. I would wear myself out trying to get dry with one; I needed a flunky to hold the other end. A chunk cut off one end would have been much more practical. But after the modest scraps of water-resistant rag issued as towels in some United States motor courts I was not disposed to complain.
The next day was Sunday. The shops were closed and the streets deserted; we strolled and tried to get the feel of the city. Buenos Aires is a really big city, big as Los Angeles or Chicago and much handsomer than either. It is so large indeed that it is too large for its back country, from a standpoint of healthy economic balance. If New York City were proportionately large, New York would have forty million people.
But it is not surprising that most Argentinos want to live in the capital, if possible; it is a charming, beautiful metropolis, not an overgrown village in search of a soul like some of our own that I won't mention for fear of being lynched. It has more than two hundred parks and plazas, some of them of great size, all of them of great beauty, abounding in flowers and trees and statuary. I happen to be very fond of statuary and I have searched the United States from border to border and coast to coast, looking at statues wherever I could find them. It is a very poor crop. Why the richest people in the world who will willingly dig down in their pockets for anything from flood relief for Siam to a 21" TV screen won't pitch in together and buy statues I do not know-but there it is. Any city in South America is loaded with statues, some of them run-of-the-mill equestrian, some of them excellent, quite a few superb.
Buenos Aires being a big city has many statues, possibly more than its proportionate share. Most of them were academic in concept but in a large park near the President's city residence we saw something that looked vaguely like a ship, or equally like a giant prospector's hammer balanced on its head. It was heroic in size and conception and the shape was pleasing but I could not figure out what it was intended to be; I asked the guide who was with us at the time.
He smiled gently. "Uruguay gave that to us as a mark of friendship between our two countries, so we set it up here. But we never have been able to find out what it is."
On Monday it seemed time to get down to serious sightseeing. In any country for most travelers, such as ourselves, it is an always frustrating choice whether to see things haphazardly, enjoying oneself and trying to soak up the flavor of the country, or to set about it with grim determination to get the maximum use out of limited time and money. The first method is by far the best-provided you are wealthy in time and money and can afford to spend several months in each country and a lifetime in traveling. The second method is almost Hobson's choice for most of us, but it is hard work.
Ticky and I usually tried to do a little of both, which meant that we necessarily missed a lot of things. ("What? You were in Ruritania and you didn't see the labyrinth? My dear, you wasted your whole trip!") The world is a giant smorgasbord; you can sample a bit here and there with pleasure, but if you try to gulp down everything, you will simply become ill. It may be more important to visit with a cat and her kittens in an open-air book market than to try to see all the labyrinths in all the Ruritanias.
Ticky and I went down to the head porter's desk at the Plaza and asked if there was a taxi driver around who spoke English. We knew that Buenos Aires had a subway system that would get us anywhere faster and cheaper than would a taxi, but sightseeing from a subway is something like kissing over a telephone. The porter found us such a driver, a licensed guide named Herman Freudenberger, who was to become our closest friend in Argentina. He was a handsome, well setup young man and was a college graduate in ranch management, but he had given up agriculture to become a tourist guide. As he explained it, an assistant to the manager of a large agricultural estate has nothing to l
ook forward to but the death of the manager; he wanted to get married and the guide business was quicker.
Herman spoke Spanish, Portuguese, English, German, and French; it was a rare tourist who could stump him. He had something else of equal importance: he loved his country, was proud of it, and knew its history. His parents were German Jewish; Herman was as Argentino as San Martín the Liberator.
He did not have his hand out. If we added a gift for special service he accepted it courteously, but if we paid the exact fare by mileage or time he was equally gracious, being at all times a Latin American gentleman and our host in his country, rather than a hired employee.
Herman took us first for a quick tour of the major points of the city. Let's take it for granted that we saw such things as Casa Rosada, the statue of San Martín, the monument to Columbus, embassies, ministries, Plaza Congreso, the Obelisk commemorating four centuries of Buenos Aires, the national art gallery; of course we saw such things and so will you when you go there. But you can learn more about such from five minutes of looking at pictures in the National Geographic than you can from ten thousand words of description. Describing a public building is as futile as describing a beautiful woman; the proper medium is a picture.
All of the above took more than one trip on more than one day; Buenos Aires is big. But we saw other things. Herman drove us down to the estuary to let us see the Dutch ship we were to sail in the following week. The waterfront in Buenos Aires is prettier than most, although docks and warehouses of a big and busy port cannot compete with other sights in beauty. But while we were there he gestured toward a big municipal steam-electric plant. "There is where we burned coffee during the War."
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