encounters with the ultra-right, perverse tourism, a criminal inequality

Went to birthday two weeks ago. It was in Barracas, a residential neighborhood, but filled with either older people that probably aren't rich and working class families. It is very close to my house and quite nice. Very comfortable, not too dangerous, but it is close to my neighborhood, which is relatively safe, but five years ago was not, and two neighborhoods that can get quite rough. One is La Boca, with the famous football team, the origin of Diego Maradona, a national hero. La Boca, during the day, is filled with tourists, but not really the part where people actually live, one street that is like a Disney World attraction. La Boca is actually quite poor and not very safe. You go on a tourist bus, are charmed, and the tour guide talks about how lovely it is and quickly throws in, but in a grave voice, that it´s not a place for after 6pm. A recent trend, from the last few years, are the villa tours, which take you to different villas (slums) where you can taste hearty authentic locro (a traditional Argentine stew). How charming! I remember being on safari in Kenya and feeling such a visceral reaction by talking to an English tourist that expressed her complete lack of interest in leaving the hotel to be around people. In other words, her only interaction with Kenyans was to be with those dressed in suits and obligated to call her ma´am. A way to live like a colonist would have, assigning the people roles in which they are servants, or simply part of the background, while running to one side of the bar to see a baby cheetah in the distance. At least a villa tour obligates a the tourist to at least see how many people here live. Then again, there is a perversity to a tourist who is dressed well, will go shopping in Palermo tomorrow, and is having the 'authentic' experience of trying locro in a slum. I wonder how much they realize that it is a luxury for the people that live there, that their experience is really not authentic at all, that it is rare, because they are trying something for the first time and eating probably as much as they want. It is exoticising poverty and turning something quite horrific into a peverse voyeurism that plays on pity and romanticizing. I have admittedly never been on any of these tours, but I can´t imagine ever doing one, except to observe the people taking them more than the probably unreal framed reality that they are depicting.

Interestingly enough, although I thing all Argentines I know would find the villa tours ridiculous and perhaps offensive, the person who brought up the topic, to ask me what I thought of it since I was the only foreigner at the birthday party, was the first self-proclaimed fascist I have ever met. Someone told me it was part of having a ''a more complete latin american experience'' to meet an ultra-right winger from a military background. I have met very conservative people here, some that are from military families, maybe even proud of their family, but very cautious about bringing up their background. In a coutry with such a painful past associated with a military government, especially that only ended in 1983 in which maybe up to 30,000 people were disappeared, it is not a popular side to be on. It was fascinating to meet someone who bragged about being the son of a military father, who definitely served during the dictatorship. It was a parody of ultra-right nationalism, yet cannot be simply reduced to parody, it is a strong reality in this part of the world. There is a dark history which is not condemned by everyone. This was a young guy. I would say between 30 and 34. He had a bracelet that was the color of the Argentine flag that said Malvinas. In my experience, most younger people don't really feel any emotional connection to the Malvinas/Falklands, it is the generation before that actually has very vivid memories of the war. This guy kept getting drunker and drunker and talking about how he was a fascist, how the last military leader of state was a real man. He did so knowing that everyone else in the room strongly disagreed with him. He went on to talk about how the people that live in La Cava, one of the poorest and most dangerous parts of Buenos Aires, a part of provincia not to far outside of the city, choose to live a specific lifestyle. I was there for a party once, but I was with a large group of people.  I was both scared and intrigued.  The province of Buenos Aires, in general, is much poorer and less secure than Capital Federal (mostly the parts bordering the city).  Provincia is a contradiction within itself.  Right next to La Cava you have San Isidro, a very exclusive and posh gated-community like neighborhood.  Since I have arrived in Argentina I have read countless stories of families that are robbed and killed, often by criminals as young as 14.  These young men tend to be from La Cava.  Lack of security is less connected to poverty than to inequality.  People don't necessarily kill because they are poor.  I can never assume to know what it means to kill, but I can only imagine that the desire to be violent, as some sort of cathartic experience;  literally having the ability that is the most godlike--to take life, arises from a frustration that borders on a frenzy madness.  Perhaps it is like some sort of sacrificial ritual in the modernity of socioeconomic inequality.  La Cava is a huge center for narcotics trafficking, specifically paco (a cheaper equivalent of crack consisting of the processing chemicals to cut cocaine, supposedly effectually burning the brain), and there is obviously a huge relationship between taking a drug that increases the likelihood of a "frenzied madness" and erases the ability to understand or care about consequences and the potential to inflict some seemingly pointless harm that hits any human being as atrocious.  It is a catharsis that comes out of fear and inflicts more fear, so that the world of economic insecurity breeds one of social insecurity.  It is not easy to grasp that a young adolescent kills a man for 10 pesos, but there is no truth or insight to be found placing such acts in the discourse of common sense.  After all, common sense fails us so very much of the time.  However, as a human being with some sort of common sense, I could never say that anyone chooses to be from such a place as La Cava. And, if one is from there, growing up there, how many choices do they have to create such a distinct life for their families when they are older?  How can we expect such sector of society to overcome so many countless injustices?  Argentina, in terms of natural resources, is very rich country.  The Pope recently spoke out against the "scandal of poverty" in Argentina.  In a country so rich, there is nothing more criminal than having 40% of the nation's population living under the poverty line, with a government denying this fact.   There are so many people living on the streets in Capital, and we passed for a few weeks of record low temperatures.  How much can people choose?  No one would reasonably choose to live in poverty, which is the greatest crime of all, a true terrorism inflicted by the State.  Is that not the most atrocious crime?  To have a government that uses rhetoric that supposedly supports the workers and the less well off, but that has seen it's poverty rate increase greatly in less than a year? This has all occurred during the two Kirchner presidencies in which their income has increased to almost three times more than that with which they entered office (according to one news agency, though all numbers are politically motivated, so perhaps I'm reading a number an opposition that may not be any better).  For someone to be proud of being connected to such a dark shadow on Argentina's history, to condemn those that have nothing as "horrible" when he comes from one of the most upper-class parts of BA, strikes me as perverse.  How can such atrocities as fascism and classist contempt not exist without living and breathing individuals that you can encounter at a party?