To throw at the Virgin

So part of my job is attending events put on by the organization. These are usually lots of fun and a great way to meet people and even sometimes educational. This past wednesday we took a group from the club to go to a government led walking tour of Barracas, a neighborhood in the south of the city. None of us knew anything about the part of town but the tour said we would being going to various bars and cafes to hear their history and end up at festival for Santa Lucia. So it sounded great.

We, a group of five Americans, one Scot, and an Australian, arrived a bit late but that was ok as they were a bit late getting started. The first stop was Progressivo Bar, an old corner bar that you could tell was a local favorite. I could imagine groups of Argentine men gathering here though out the years to discuss politics and soccer or seeing the tables pushed aside to make room for a tango dance on the balck and white checked floor. The owner was a very friendly old woman who had come here in 1942 from the north of Spain and apparently had been working hte bar ever since. In the back fo the bar covering two walls were old maps, newspaper articles, and magazine covers about both Buenos Aires and the woman´s home town in Spain. There were also glass cabinets that held articfacts from the last 50 years of argentine history showing soccer trophies, Evita relics, and many news papers clippings about the neighborhood.

Our tour guide went around and asked where everyone was from. With the exceptinog of a Peruvian couple, we were the only foreigners inthe group of 50 or so. The tour guide, a middle aged woman with brown hair and dressed like a schhol marm, talked very fast into a large megaphone which she held up high in the air. As we walked to the next stop, she faced it backwards on her shoulder and kept takling as we plowed down the side. And, true to the Buenos Aires way, our whole group crossed the middle of street despite the oncomiong traffic.

The second stop was a large dance hall which seems to have very little to note and I`m still not really sure why we stopped there. After this we headed down the street some more until we reached a block that had been roped off to traffic. This apparently was where the festval of Santa Lucia was the be held. The tour guide told us to buy some flowers to throw at the Virgin and led us through the crowds right to the center of action and disappeared. Not quite sure what was going to happen, we waited with flowers ready as a Priest was declaring something in Spanish and then began to lead the masses in song. Then the Church doors opened and a Chruch processional came out with a statue of the Virgin in a glass box(I`m not actually quite sure which virgin). Behind the virgin was a parade of young girls wearing white dresses.

As the virgin passed by you, you were suppossed to throw the flowers at her. While a lovely idea, it mostly became a pelting of the two boys sitting in the cart holding the statute. But as one of out group said, ¨Well at least we are just throwing jasmine and not roses or birds of paradise.¨The procession went down the street for two blocks and then turned around a went back in the church. Everyone waiting outside then formed a line to go inside and see the Virgin again. People were still in line two hours later when i passed by again.

Our tour guide had apparently been lost to the crowd so our little group wandered a bit in search of a bar where we could catch the end of the final soccer game of the Argentine league. As we were walking by another church and admiring its Greek architecture, a young boy and his mother asked if we wanted to know the history of the church. Of course we did. So translating into english for his mother she told us the story of a girl who had come from a rich family that used to own a home on the site. She was in love with a poor man but her family forced her to marry a much older, rich and well know man. They married and started a family but tragically one of the children and the husband died from yellow fever. A few years passed and the woman, who had become the most desirable widow in Buenos Aires, was planning on marrying her former love. However, another man had fallen in love with her and the night before the wedding this second man broke into her house and killed her. The family had built this church in her memory.

Feeling a bit swept away by the story and the kindness of this boy and his mother, we found a bar full of a sullen group of futbol watchers. Apparently we had found a bar full of supporters of the team who was losing. When we arrived, the game was in a second overtime and anytime something happened all the men would jerk out of their chairs or yell something. When the game ended it was hard to watch the overjoyed reactions of the people on tv compared with the onset of depression around us.

All in all it was one of the best and most Argentine of experinces I have had here and it was in a part of town most tourists never go. So that is what you get when you go off the beaten path.