That attention-grabbing headline could have been written about several periods of Argentine history in the 20th century but this particular instance is from the March 30, 1962 cover of Time magazine featuring a portrait of Arturo Frondizi, president of Argentina from 1958 - 1962. The cover story is titled Ghost from the Past, a reference to Perón.

In the post-Perón years of the late 1950s there was a lot of economic and political strife with the military closely watching and hampering Frondizi’s function as president. The focus of the Time magazine article is the 1962 congressional and gubernatorial elections that were won by the Peronists in a landslide. The military wanted Frondizi, who had opened the doors for the Peronist party return to politics, to annul the election.

Time Magazine writes about the events with a quality of prose generally missing from today’s mainstream news publications. Too bad the actual writer of the article isn’t credited with a byline:

For hours on end, a solitary figure sat stiffly in an ornate office in Buenos Aires’ presidential Casa Rosada. A few lifelong personal friends kept an uncomfortable vigil in an ivory and green anteroom. Outside the door, a pair of knee-booted grenadiers of the palace guard stood, like life-sized toys, with ceremonial sabers bared. A stream of messengers came and went, bearing bulletins. Arturo Frondizi, 53, President of Argentina and currently his country’s most unpopular man, was waiting to see whether he would be allowed to remain as elected Chief Executive of South America’s second biggest nation.

There are a few editorial interjections that color the article as an artifact from the U.S. perspective such as the constant pairing of the word dictator alongside the name of Juan Perón and the reference to “Che Guevara’s Red mother Celia” showing up at a Peronist rally. Time also couldn’t help but point out that the sixty-six year old Perón (as of 1962) “lives in luxurious exile with his two poodles and 27-year-old Isabel”, foreshadowing another calamitous presidency.

What’s not mentioned in the article, occurring just after the magazine had gone to print, was the arrest of Frondizi by the military.

The article does raise the intriguing question: how did the military, which had not fought a war since 1870, control Argentina for much of the 20th century?

Every visit to Recoleta Cemetery reveals a tomb, a statue, a plaque that I’ve not seen before. Just visiting the cemetery in the morning rather than afternoon creates an entirely different experience, the way the light enhances a stained glass window or throws shadows along the walkways. But every time I talk to Robert I learn even more about the cemetery and see details that I never noticed.

Robert has done a very nice map that provides an excellent tour of Recoleta Cemetery. Now, he’s gone even further and created what I think is the definite guide to Recoleta Cemetery: AfterLife, Documenting Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.

Not only is it the best way to learn about Recoleta Cemetery but, as Robert says, it’s a “new way of looking at Buenos Aires” since so much of the city’s, even the country’s, history is contained within that cemetery.

I spent some time today playing around with a very cool interactive map of Buenos Aires developed by the city government. Warning: you can find yourself wasting a serious amount of time.

By default the site will give you a street map with outlines for each lot. You can zoom around and focus in on detailed sections, just like other mapping tools. One obvious reason for the system’s creation was GIS-based management of property in the city. Select the option labeled datos inmobiliarios, then click on any lot and a pop-up window will display a photo and basic info about the building on that location (size, permitted uses, etc.).

I often use the city’s Patrimonio site, which has its own features but the two geo-based services don’t yet seem to be linked together. There’s a lot of interesting historical data in the Patrimonio database and having these two systems linked would be handy….maybe that’s in the works for the future.

Photographic Overlays

But the feature I really like is when you select the option imagenes y fotografias from the left navigational panel. From here you get several options:

• 2004 color satellite images
• 1978 aerial photographs
• 1965 aerial photographs
• 1940 aerial photographs

I got very excited at the historic aerial photographs of Buenos Aires. This is a great way to see how the city has changed over the decades. (See my city that fades away series for more on that topic).

I’ll have some future postings about specific buildings and places that I’ve observed have changed but for now let’s examine one of the most known (and destructive) changes in the city.

Av 9 de Julio

A swath of the city was demolished for the construction of Av 9 de Julio. In the 1940 aerial photo below we can see that Av 9 de Julio at that time stretched only from the streets Tucuman to Mitre…rather tiny by today’s comparison.

Notice how the 1000 block of Av de Mayo is still intact. But by 1965 Av 9 de Julio stretched as far south as Belgrano. (I’ll leave exploring the northern boundary of Av 9 de Julio for your own exploration in the mapping system).

Av 9 de Julio & Constitución

In 1940 the broad avenue had not yet swept into the southside of Buenos Aires. The area around Constitución station appeared fairly pleasant. Indeed, the house of a former president (Yrigoyen) of Argentina was located on the 1000 block of Av Brasil, the block pictured in this photo. So you have to use your imagination to picture what this part of the city looked like sixty some years ago, a neighborhood very different from today.

But look at the 1978 photo. That very block has been replaced by a huge parking lot.

And now passing over the parking lot is an overpass.

I do have to say that the city is current working on improving this area around Constitución station and under the highway. There is still the parking lot but they are planting trees, bushes, widening the sidewalk and making it all appear nicer or, at least, as nice as you can make an area under a highway.

Technical Note

The site loads very slowly but wait a few seconds and it should appear. Once it’s initially loaded then it operated at normal speeds for a mapping site. There is supposedly a way to link directly to the views within the interactive map of Buenos Aires but I couldn’t figure that out. (Thanks to the All Points Blog for mentioning the mapping site).