One night in Buenos Aires
With a title that is perhaps a tongue in cheek nod to Oliver Chesler’s One night in New York City, Araya’s novella marks a brave departure from the short stories penned as part of his Tales from the Chilean Andes series (2008–2009). Turning his back on the mountains with which he appeared to have developed a spiritual bond, One night in Buenos Aires sees him cross the cordillera and the Argentinean pampa to plunge headfirst into a reluctant embrace of the urban environment in a tale which follows the trajectory of a young expat as he passes through various factions of the Argentinean capital’s nightlife. Marked by an at times caustic humour and a cynicism worthy of Holden Caulfield himself, the novella seeks to challenge notions of identity and above all to deconstruct the mythologies which surround the traveller, the bohemian, and ultimately the much eulogised capital itself.
The novel opens in a bar, a tourist trap in the city’s San Telmo district, on a roof terrace where the protagonist is watching the sun setting over the city and meditating on the growing sense of disillusionment he feels towards the crowd of backpackers by which he is surrounded. The boastful undertone which forms the basis of many of the conversations within earshot is, he observes, based on the one-upmanship of what he curtly describes as “travellers’ trumps”. Yet while the setting of this first episode of the novella may be limited, the protagonist’s ruminations allow us to perceive how the phenomenon of travel, in its most recent guise, has allowed Western cultures to extend the consumerism which powered twentieth century capitalism to encompass entire nations and their peoples, turning their cultures and geographical landscapes into commodities to be bought and sold on a whim:
it occurred to me, sat there with a glass of cheap wine in one hand and a wizened roll-up cigarette in the other, that for many of them, this was just a game, one in which the components of identikit identities based on seemingly unique experiences were snapped up by the privileged bourgeoisie of a new global elite. The end result was less an egalitarian form of promoting cultural understanding and more a sort of neoliberal imperialism which fostered shallow visions of cultures characterised by a distinct lack of integrity and respect.
Moving on, the second part of the novella sees Araya’s protagonist travel across the city to meet a group of friends for an electronic music concert whose headline act will see a pair of Brazilian laptop musicians satirise the sound of reggaeton, in an unlikely mongrel of Latino cumbia, misogynistic US gangster rap and UK acid techno. The group smoke, drink and make conversation with some of the locals; a cut-price, bohemian crowd, which in turn serves as the object of a second meditation, this time on the subcultures which sustain their lifestyle. There is, the protagonist notes, a significant proportion of “hangers-on” present, people whom he characterises as having no genuine interest in the scene itself but who associate themselves with it nonetheless, perhaps for the kudos of being down with those in the know, or perhaps as part of a misguided attempted to shore up a fragile sense identity”. Araya shows us how these fragile subcultures, “for all intents and purposes, lack a clear and strongly grounded sense of social consciousness and for the larger part remain oblivious to the wider context of which they form a part”. He even goes as far as to suggest that the inability of many such subcultures to mature has its roots in this defect, and there is something quite poignant about his evocation of the dancefloors of yesteryear, capturing the intensity of the clubbing experience with fond nostalgia and memories of concerts characterised by “percussion bursting like thunder from black speaker towers on either side of the stage” and people “brought together by the creative energy of the performer”.
Araya’s prose is poised and poetic, such as when the concert comes to an end and the group are hustled outside by the somewhat over-zealous security staff:
for a while, they had hung about outside the club chatting, cadging roll-ups and trying desperately to find an afterparty where they could go to finish the night. But slowly the crowd, that evanescent cohesion of souls, began to disperse, scattering its hundreds of composite pieces out across the darkness of the city.
Then, following a narrow escape with a gang of youths lurking in a backstreet round the corner, and a hair-raising high-speed taxi journey through the heart of the city, the group end up in El cacho, an afterhours café bar downtown and the favoured late night meeting place of prostitutes and their clients who are mostly a mix of corrupt politicians and business men, what Araya calls “the people who wield power, who run the city, giving it direction and making it what it is”. It is this less than salubrious establishment which forms the setting for the third and final part of the novella.
Worse for wear after what has clearly been a long night on the town, here the protagonist’s critique turns particularly acerbic, rounding on the seedy underside of “a mythology which is enthusiastically and unashamedly promoted by the Porteños”. In a moment of despair at the scenes around him, he asks himself: “What is this city? What is the substance which lies behind the romanticised façade of tango? How much of its identity is no more than a nebulous shroud of myth?” As the protagonist observes the ladies of the night in their cheap red lipstick and low-cut dresses, writhing around politicians and business men who are intoxicated by their mastery of the fairer sex, and the desolate eyes of the tramps who from time to time pass by the window, their faces grubby, their clothes tattered, the reader is left with a strong sense of a place pretending to be something it is not.
The reality of what is sometimes referred to as the Paris of South America, Araya seems to suggest, fails to live up to its hype: in spite of its pretentions to the contrary, the protagonist reminds us that Argentina continues to be a developing country in which basic problems such as poor infrastructure and even shortages of coins remain to be solved. In spite of its glossy European façade, there are always hints of another city, one of grimy backstreets and shabby barrios which are carefully concealed from the public eye. He asks:
Where are these poorer barrios? Where are those who are denied the right to participate in this pretence of Europeanness, those consigned to the reality of crushing inequality, a brutal poverty which from time to time reveals itself unannounced, like a rat scuttling across an alleyway? Where are these people while those with the power to change their destiny are out screwing around in late night bars, drinking Scotch, smoking plump Cuban cigars and flirting with cheap whores?
This strength of this book is not its plot, rather its reflections around the theme of identities and how they are constructed, be they of individual travellers, subcultures or even cities themselves. At times the novella seems saturated with the sense of disillusionment felt by Araya towards how we live in this day and age, however, any overindulgences are largely redeemed by his carefully crafted prose, a laconic sense of humour, and a gift for reflective monologues which challenge the doxa of our time. This is a novella which will perhaps appeal more to a younger demographic, to a readership sceptical of the twentieth century gap-year generation and nostalgic for the passing of an era of smoky nightclubs and vibrant subcultures, and finally one which is critical of the acceptability of mild-corruption amongst the political classes. It is only unfortunate that the limitations imposed by the author’s decision to publish this book privately mean that in all likelihood, a large proportion of Araya’s potential audience will remain deprived of his wit, wisdom and prose.
Araya, K. (2010). One night in Buenos Aires. Santiago de Chile: Pelacable Ediciones.
