SHE WANTS TO MAKE IT TO 100

She wants to live to be 100

By Gaspar Zimerman

Copyright (c) 2009, Clarin. All Rights Reserved

At 97 she still in full swing. A nature’s prodigy, the legendary singer recalls her intense life, talks about her love with Homero Manzi and her friendship with Evita, defends the Kirchners and refers to her relation with death. Shortly before her show at the Luna Park, she confesses a desire to have a boyfriend.

Nelly Omar sings “Desde el alma”

Nelly Omar is happy. It is a day for interviews: it is necessary to promote the Saturday recital at the Luna Park and the series of interviews, far from annoying her, seems to please her. Installed in the office of the recitals producer, she happily receives one journalist after another, proud for showing that time did not rust her mind nor her bones. It is necessary to follow her train of thought as she evokes her friendship with Evita, the 17 years of prohibition she endured after the 1955 military coup, the help offered by Tita Merello; she praises the (President Cristina and ex president Nestor) Kirchners, mentions (radio program) Palmolive on the air.” I do not know how you are not bored” , she lies, and smiles. At 97 years and with her voice intact she is, more than a tango living legend, a sort of a natural phenomenon, a prodigy who is about to step on a stage once again. “It troubles me a little,” she admits. “I am afraid of getting nervous and not remembering the lyrics. But I have faith: God is going to be by my side”.

Is this is a farewell recital?

No, the day I say good bye will be the day I’m dead. I have the support of the people, those who really love me. And not just the common folks: there are intellectuals, professionals who love me.

Where do you draw the strength to continue?

I love life, that’s why I’m alive. I dislike people who waste my time, I like people who are doing something. There are friends to whom I say: “You are boring. Go the hospital, to the square, take a walk: do not talk to me.” If I reached this age, it’s because I have to life to give. I have love which is what’s lacking in people. I want to get to be 100 and celebrate sparing no expense. To celebrate drinking a bottle of whiskey or champagne.

How do you imagine the recital?

Better not think about it, because if I do, I can’t sing. That’s what happened when they paid a tribute Guaminí. I broke down. I sang five songs and I could not continue. I was overcome by tears. I got sick, bah. They had given me, symbolically, the keys to the house where I lived when I was five: entering and seeing the rooms, the plaque they had put in the hall, and not finding relatives and friends once I knew…

Have you felt the loneliness of immortality?

Do you know what is like to get to be my age and not hear anymore from people who had been around? (singer Julio) Martel just left in July, a friend who used to call me almost every day.

How do you overcome the losses?

I believe in God. If He did it, may God have him in His glory. Recently another friend passed away. Tito Alberti had moved to Zárate. He invited me to visit, but I did not have time to go.

You must have a great capacity to make new friends.

Yes, absolutely. I have many friends. More men than women, because the women are very gossipy, and get into tangles and messes. But what I want to have is a partner who thinks like me, to find a partner who would not be embarrassed to be with a person like me. Then my happiness will be complete. But I do not know where are the men. Although first, they should give me a try, because they do not know how I am.

You must be tough.

Don’t believe that. I am a woman who knows how to be a woman. Who did Homero Manzi fall in love with? With Nelly Omar. And how many years he was in love? Since 1937, when I met him until 1951, when he died. But he did not want to follow through on his promise: get a divorce to marry me. And the one who suffered was him, not me. He composed many pieces dedicated to me, starting with Malena. Many people say that this is not true: I give a shit. That a man had fallen in love with me and dedicated tangos to me doesn’t change my way of being. It doesn’t put me in a higher or lower place . I’m the same Nelly.

Do you think about death?

No, not at all. The other day I was telling a friend: the only thing I regret when it’s time to go from this world is not having someone to grab me by the hand and say “you’re leaving, I love you a lot,” something like that. What I would not want to is suffer. I told my doctor: if you determine that I am not curable give me an injection of pentothal and say I had a cardiac arrest. I do not want them to open me, to remove the liver, a kidney, this, that. No, this is a martyrdom.

How would you like to be remembered?

Not as a singer but as a good person. I think I am. It hurts when I can’t help someone. But generally I can or do what is possible. And I do not expect retribution in return: when I give, I do it with my heart. If there is anybody who says I have a debt, let them come and I’ll pay it.

The conversation drifts. Nelly states that recently she was approached to run for a Senate seat but that she rejected the idea “because I do high level politics, not this kind of garbage”. She attacks the dissident Peronism (“It is a shame the scandal they make, they should unite and leave the current administration to finish its mandate”) and she remembers that she met Eva Perón in the Luna Park “during the aftermath of the San Juan’s earthquake. Eva still was an actress… She always helped me: when she found out that I had not worked for over a year she became furious… she said that I was the best Argentine singer”. “I root for Perón and Evita – she adds. What Evita did for the children, by the adolescents, does not have a price”.

She also it remembers her three husbands – Antonio Molina, the folklorist Aníbal Cufré and journalist Héctor Oviedo, whom she met when she was 82 years old and he 57 – and she regrets not having had children. She mentions that she wanted to be an aviatrix and pauses, reflective: “All this can go on a book”. But immediately she discards the idea. She does want to record two albums: one of folklore and another one of tangos, valses and milongas, with an orchestra. She tells that she exercises every mornings and that, when younger, a professor of lyrical song prophesied: “You, like Gardel, have a voice with a natural resonance. You are going to sing until you’re 90”.

Just when we are having the desire to adopt her as our grandmother, she bids us good bye: “I swear that everything I told you is true. I do not have anything to gain nor anything to lose. Bah: I only hope to gain in the Luna Park. Later, God will say what will be of me”.

Translation by Alberto Paz

THE JUNTA COULDN’T KILL IT

Courtesy Clarin.com

Today March 24 marks the 33rd anniversary of the military coup that overthrew the government of Vice President Estela Martinez de Peron and thus began one of the darkest periods of political, economic, and social unrest in Argentina’s  history.  It was a horrifying time span of state sponsored terrorism with a dictatorship that kidnapped, tortured and killed thousands of Argentines.

“It’s good to know that there is no better political system  than democracy. And there is no democracy separated from human rights,” said yesterday the secretary of Human Rights, Eduardo Luis Duhalde.

“Memory and Justice are the reassurance of our future as a nation,” noted Health Minister Graciela Ocaña.

The tango made an unexpected reappearance in Buenos Aires, around the time democracy was reinstated and a new democratically elected government assumed power in 1983. The significance of the renewed interest in tango is that it confirmed the resiliency and everlasting attributes of a phenomenon that, across many generations, has surged to incredible peaks of popularity followed by crushing chasms in which all  indications pointed to its irremediable death.

With the global popularity of the tango urban legends ran amok including one that is very hurtful and offensive to every Argentine who either lived, survived or saw friends and relatives live, survive or disappear victim of state sponsored terrorism. It comes in a variety of forms but the jest of the insidious tale states that the military junta engaged in a war to eradicate, proscribe, eliminate, etc., the tango in all its manifestations.

There is an corollary to the urban legend in question, and that is the absurd belief that Argentines let the tango die and it was the foreigners who came to the rescue, resuscitated and took ownership of the tango for the world. In other words, the justification for removing the Argentine from Argentine tango.

We hope here that an explanation of the facts will provide food for thought, and actually inspires everyone with good intentions to nip in the bud the cruel, insensitive and offensive tale about the junta going after the tango.

Courtesy Clarin.com

The main reason why the live performances of orchestras and the public milongas ceased to stay open for business for a long period, was because the political climate discouraged people from going out and risk being arrested during the frequent raids of the secret police did to all public places.

All public dances suffered the consequences of a state of siege and an edict that prohibited public gatherings.

People wanting to get married, for example, had to obtain a special permit from the police after providing a list of attendees so their personal backgrounds could be checked.

The excuse of looking for terrorists or extremists gave the repressive regime free rein to detain anybody without cause or habeas corpus. People stayed home, and all public venues shut down. Tango, jazz, rock and roll, etc. Simple as that, not just the tango but every conceivable artistic activity suffered.

The dictatorship in numbers

2818. Days that the dictatorship lasted from 24 March 1976 to 10 December 1983, when Raúl Alfonsín assumed the presidency after being elected earlier on October 30.

30 thousand. The number of persons, who, according to human rights organizations, were kidnapped during the illegal guerrilla repression. The majority remains disappeared.

500. The number of babies stolen from their mothers, or born in captivity in the clandestine detention centers. Almost 100 have been located and their identity reinstated.

500. The number of clandestine detention centers functioning during the dictatorship. The majority belong to  regiments, military installations, police stations or police detachments. The largest CDC was the one at the former Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (Navy’s Mechanical School), where it is estimated that five thousand persons were processed.

46 billions. The amount in dollars of external debt accumulated towards the end of the dictatorship. At the beginning of the self defined National Reorganization Process (El proceso) the external debt amounted to 6.3 billion dollars.

517. Percentage of inflation registered between 1976 and 1983.

14 thousand. Number of soldiers, officers and conscripts sent to the Malvinas Islands after the landing of 1982 and the transient recovery of sovereignty over the archipelago.

694. The dead toll in the South Atlantic war with Great Britain.

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A MYTHICAL CAFE

With the discovery of the brick floor of a building half a meter below the surface on the corner of Figueroa Alcorta and Sarmiento across the Planetarium in Palermo, a group of archeologists have fueled a lot of excitement among the fans of tango tales and those who repeat them and report them.

Under a tent installed by the Ministry of Culture of the city of Buenos Aires, there is a piece of a bottle and a small piece of a brick floor. As the plans call for further excavation, another project is on the works to provide a walking area for people interested in getting an idea of how the city looked in the past. Close by, a fountain will be replaced with an art exposition dedicated to the tango.

According to city records, on the site of the discovery there existed a building that is believed to have belonged to mid nineteenth century ruler Juan Manuel de Rosas. Juan Hansen (1847-1892) originally from Hamburg, transformed the residence into a restaurant, beer garden and tea house that became known as Cafe Hansen.

The most surprising and totally unverifiable tall tales have been written about Cafe Hansen. That one person was killed there every day;  that several daily squabbles were common occurrence; that the mythical place was the cradle of the tango where “the best tango was danced because it was an elegant place;” that the Roberto Firpo and Francisco Canaro orchestras performed there. When the information is cross referenced to the date of birth of those allegedly having performed at Hansen, it shows how improbable is that that might have happened.

There is no a single reference to such happenings in the archives of publications researched nor in police reports of the times. To the contrary, an abundance of evidence contradicts the fans of tango tales and those who repeat them and report them. When it comes to the history of the origins of the tango it makes no sense to discuss things said, written and repeated by people unable to master the chronology of events. It’s like discussing grammatical rules with an illiterate.

Evidence found in publications and police reports at the General National Archives indicate that the establishment was small, that it employed two waiters. In the case of the investigation of an incident, a police report lists every person being interrogated, with no reference whatsoever to musicians, and without a single mention that there was a dance hall there. The details of the inventory demonstrate that it was a very important and well equipped restaurant, brewery and confectionery. The business continued operating until its auction and liquidation which took place on April 22 and 23, 1893. The municipal draft notice described it as Hansen Hotel, while the public notices called it a restaurant.

Francisco Canaro in his memories never mentions Hansen as a place where he might have performed. And then there is the often quoted Enrique Cadicamo, “It was a dance hall patronized by people of the night of different ranks. It was a tough but very fun place.“

Cadicamo was born on June 15, 1900, so he was 12 years when the building was demolished. Either he is exercising some poetic license or he just repeats like a parrot the same fables without taking care of analyzing the chronology of the facts. How could he know that it had a brave but very funny atmosphere? What kind of amusement must have taken place in a nonexistent “dance hall, attended by people of the night of different ranks?”

It is possible that the confusion and contradictions about what went on in the area in the last quarter of the nineteenth century are a consequence of not knowing the characteristics of Palermo and the area known as the Bosques of Palermo. An orderly account of the place and the times might help people read history knowing how to explain it.

Before it was buried in a tube underground beneath Avenida Juan B. Justo, on both margins of the Arroyo Maldonado there were different military facilities and ammo deposits, next to precarious houses where fishermen, veteran prostitutes who served the military, and the families of soldiers lived. There were numerous cafes along what is today Avenida Santa Fe to the bridge over the stream.

Since the nineteenth century, Palermo was almost exclusively an area of recreation for the inhabitants of the city, a charming and delightful place with changing characteristics according to the time of the day.

Early in the morning, Palermo hosted sports loving and horse riding folks; around noon , those associated with the race track; in the afternoon, the tea time strollers; and at night the romantic dates and rendezvous. Late at night, after the theater, Palermo was the favorite place of licentious night owls accompanied by ladies of the night. Numerous concessions offered refreshments or food to a select segment of the population.

Consider the incongruity of the tales that link the tango with the underground and the lowest classes and simultaneously with places like Palermo, which was frequented by elegant people. Adding to the excitement of the brick floor discovery, the vice president of the Academia Nacional del Tango offered a tall tale of his own, “At Hansen they danced a very well danced tango because in his beginnings it was an elegant place”. He said that without taking in consideration that nobody really knows what or how people danced in those times, or that dancing tango well is not the patrimony of elegant people.

HOW DID THEY DO IT?

by Andy Doubt Raiser
London, November 2008

The claims that the population of African origin in Argentina was exterminated in an act of genocide are absurd and they deserve a place next to extraterrestrial kidnappings and the staging of the moon landing in an Arizona undisclosed location, under the heading of looney tunes hoaxes. Currently 10%, around 1.4 million of the population of Buenos Aires has African heritage. In 1810, black and mulatos totaled 9,615 [42% of the population], therefore, in 200 years, the number of individuals with African ancestry in Buenos Aires has gone up 142 times!!!!! This confirms the claims of those who attribute the “disappearance” of blacks to consensual interracial marriages among other things.

The slave trade was made illegal in 1810 with independence from Spain, Then in 1813, came what was known as the “Ley del Vientre”, declaring free anybody who from that day onwards landed on Argentine soil, whether from abroad or from their mother’s womb. Clearly it made no difference to those who were already slaves at the time, who had to wait another 40 years, until slavery itself was made illegal, in the Constitution of 1853 to acquire their freedom.

The Constitution of Argentina, to this day, has a racist foundation: Article 25. “The Federal Government shall encourage European immigration; and may not restrict, limit or burden with any tax whatsoever, the entrance into Argentine territory of foreigners who arrive for the purpose of tilling the soil, improving industries, and introducing and teaching the arts and sciences.” Imagine the audacity of these people wanting to attract laborers, artisans, artists and scientists. What’s next, restrictions to terrorists, or tango teachers like the US and the UK have done?

There is a precedent out there. Domingo Sarmiento, abhorred blacks with their candombe processions because he was painfully aware that white men can’t wave and shimmy. His dream was to populate and civilize like the British Empire and the rising US had done. To that effect he toured extensively both countries to copy their educational system and their immigration policies. Natives and Negroes were systematically eliminated, and Argentina was the success story of genocide, well in front of Custer and the 7th Cavalry, Apartheid and Adolf Hitler. If you think this is absurd wait until I tell you about the yellow fever epidemic.

The yellow fever epidemic of 1871 started in 1871. Biological warfare had already been used against the Indians; indeed, in the first 100 years of their occupation of the Americas, the Spaniards eliminated at least 80% of the native population, with the diseases they brought with them. The authorities encircled the Negro barrios with the army holding hands after releasing a swarm of mosquitoes and mowing down anybody trying to escape with a blunt instrument called the bandoneon, invented by Hitler’s grandfather in a white supremacist region of the Bavarian Empire.

What does this have to do with tango? Probably nothing. The tango doesn’t come from Africa.

With so much persecution, genocide, extermination, chemical warfare, and every known or to be invented methods of extermination used against them, how did the black population find the time to go dancing? With such impossible living conditions how did they manage to develop such a unique and complex choreography? How was it possible to create such a alluring music with their typical drums?

Not only that but how did they manage to impose their cultural preferences to the great majority of Europeans and Creoles who were so busy exterminating them, yet couldn’t help stealing their dance moves and cultural roots instead of using their power and wealth to create something on their own.

How did they do it?

Andy is a fantasy writer specializing in the inclusion of fantastic elements in a self-coherent setting where any location of the fantastical element is possible. In addition, he is the European record holder in Conclusion Jumping and Tall Tales category.

AS THE ORGANITO GRINDS

Those who have written about the tango and its origin, usually have not been interested in the popular aspect, only in the marginal, ‘forbidden” part. That makes all their body of work historically irrelevant for not being representative of the entire porteño society. As a consequence of quoting each other in their perpetuation of tales and misconceptions, the stories of the tango and its origins have been based in myths that have made it into the fertile imagination of those who seek the passion and exoticism of a foreign culture. One is the tale about illiterate musicians who played by ear, whistling into each other’s ears tunes that became the foundation of the tango music. Another is about men dancing with men. Another is that the often mentioned academias were places where dancing was taught.

The Archivo General de la Nacion, Argentina’s National Archives is an amazing place on Avenida Leandro Alem, a few blocks from Casa Rosada, the government mansion. There are records of publications, city council meetings and police reports all the way back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is the right place to spend plenty of time for anybody interested in finding out where people danced, what they danced, who were the dancers and the musicians, and when the tango made its appearance. The first reality that strikes the researcher is the realization that there was a full fledged living society in nineteenth century Buenos Aires.

Organillero

Entering the decade of the 1880 there was still no evidence of anything particularly called tango being danced at the public dances. The most popular source of music for dancing was the organ grinder with a repertoire that included valses, polkas, schottische, mazurkas, habaneras, milonga, gato (a folk music from the interior of Argentina). The organito was not really an instrument but a mechanical reproducer of music previously programmed, sort of player-piano, whose use goes back at least to 1837. It did not need a musician, just somebody who transported it and made it work turning a handle. Programing the organitos required qualified musicians, the kind that graduated from conservatories and who very likely played with the many symphonic orchestras at the opera houses.

Dancing was high among the main sources of entertainment for dwellers of the city and the outskirts. People of all social backgrounds danced at legal and clandestine academias and cafes. The negative consequences of theses activities were public inebriation and rowdy behavior. That upset and annoyed the families who lived in the neighborhood. City ordinances were promulgated to prohibit, fine and tax public dances that served alcoholic beverages. The hardball police  efforts  to enforce the edicts, gave place to the proliferation of clandestine places for dancing.

In the September 27, 1880 issue of La Patria Argentina under the heading of Gresca chistosa or Funny fracas, there is a conclusive police report recommending the closing of one of those clandestine dance places, quoted from El tango en la sociedad porteña by Hugo Lamas and Enrique Binda.

“The prohibitions, fines and taxes with which public dances have been hit by the Municipality, have had the consequences of creating an original method of catering to the merriment of the populace.

Generally, the establishments where the clandestine activities take place are the cafes. On dirty windows, painted white, illuminated from behind by the inside lights, stand out in big black letters the name of the Cafe So and so…

In the first room, closest to the street, there is an actual coffee shop with relatively ugly waitresses. The back door is closed and the noise in the room is the typical sound generated by the voices of the patrons and the nature of the service. Suddenly somebody gets up and disappears through the back door for a considerable amount of time. Sometimes the back door opens and a tired looking character walks in to the counter and orders a refreshing glass of French wine and soda water, that strange concoction that the Italians drink when bowling.

Each time the door opened, it could be heard from the other room the noise of feet shuffling on the floor as if many people walked dragging their feet. Behind that door there was a great salon where people danced some quite original dances.

On the far wall of the salon there was one of those organ pianos, covered with a mattress. The mattress had the purpose of preventing the sounds from reaching the street, or even the room in front. The muffled hits of the instrument’s hammers evenly marked the rate of the piece that was being danced, with a strange noise, something like an instrument of percussion on wet wood.

With that strange music they dance in the salon. And they dance with two, three, or four women who are hired by the owner as dancers. These unfortunate women dance all night long. Every night, without resting, they go from the arms of a Creole dancer who twists them in a milonga, to the arms of a British guy who shakes them dryly in a jumped vals, or the arms of an Italian who dislocates their bones with a peringundin.

The salon is packed with dancers and since the women are few, the rest dance man with man to take advantage of the song that somebody has paid for. At the end of the song, somebody shouts, “Lata!” That means that he gets to pick the next song. He approaches the organillero (organ player) to request his favorite tune, he pays for the song and he gets a tin token for the piece that he requested. And the dance continues in a warm atmosphere because the room is closed, the smoke of the cigarettes clouds the air and the brushing of the feet on the floor is the dominant noise. Everybody is quiet; nobody speaks; because there they dance for the sake of dancing. There are no chairs in the salon to discourage loitering; those who enter, must dance or leave.”

No specific mention of the dance of tango is ever made until 1886 when a newspaper article refers to “the famous masked dances in the theaters where Army officers, violating rules and regulations, their own honor and the dignity of the uniform, swayed exaggeratedly their bodies to the rhythm of a tango milonguero.”

By the end of the nineteen century dancing reached the street corners of busy tenements. Entrepreneurial young men hired a couple of organ players and taught young girls to dance in exchange for the girls paying the organ player for each piece of music. In many neighborhoods, it wasn’t unusual that the lack of gender balance lead to bread with bread practicing, that is people of the same sex, going through the learning process in anticipation of getting ready for the real dances at salons, recreation centers, private clubs, and cafes and restaurants.

It is evident that people then had a notion of the meaning of the word tango as a musical genre, but they didn’t leave any messages buried in capsules to be opened at a future date explaining what it was or how it sounded.AS THE

BLONDES OF BUENOS AIRES

Black Roots: What tango and the Rubias de Buenos Aires are Hiding

by El Yanqui Yeff
Buenos Aires, February 1996

Mary, Peggy, Betty, Julie. We are all familiar with the Rubias de New York, the blondes about whom Gardel sang some sixty years ago. I would like to turn our attention to Susana, Libertad, Claudia, Zulema, Rubias de Buenos Aires. I write “rubias“, but what I want to focus on is that they, and many of their compatriots (and the Rubias de New York), are “rubias teñidas“, that is to say, “dyed blondes”. It is not a secret that Susana Gimenez, Libertad Leblanc, Claudia Maradona, and Zulema Menem, to name just a few, owe their blondness not to nature, but to Roberto Giordano, Miguel Romano, or some other porteño hairdresser. The Buenos Aires newspaper Clarin even observed that one of Madonna’s key qualifications to play Evita was that she, like Evita, was a rubia teñida. There are natural blondes in Buenos Aires, but they are not nearly so numerous as the rubias teñidas. Walk down Calle Cabildo in Belgrano. If you doubt that most of the many rubias you see are teñidas, ask yourself why there are so many more blonde women in Buenos Aires than blond men.

What do these rubias teñidas have to do with tango? The answer, some theories say, is that both try to conceal their black roots. Most of us have heard stories about tango’s uncertain origins that nevertheless involve Afro-Argentines, Afro-Uruguayans, and even Afro-Cubans. Or, we have heard that musicologists recognize a connection between the syncopated rhythms of tango and habanera. Few of us, however, could identify any African elements in the contemporary tango scenes in Buenos Aires or San Francisco, Tokyo or Amsterdam. Some would claim that tango’s black roots, like those of the rubias teñidas, are hidden.

In Buenos Aires, black roots are often hinted at, but they are seldom seen. Go into any milonga in San Telmo, Boedo, or Almagro today and you will hear people call one another “Negrita” or “Negrito“. Similarly, one of tango’s great lyricists was “El Negro” Celedonio Flores. Such references to blackness are common in tango and in Argentine culture in general, but blacks per se are very rare. In several years of attending milongas, practicas, and tango shows in Buenos Aires, I have seen only one black tanguero. He is a professional dancer who goes by the name Pochi and he has been performing for over a year now at Cafe Homero in Palermo Viejo.

Last July I attended a performance at La Trastienda in San Telmo by a group called “Afro-Tango“. Though the instrumentation included several African drums, none of the musicians was black. I am not suggesting that “black music” or “black dance” can only be performed by black people, or that black people necessarily sing or dance differently from white people. For example, Pochi is a very good dancer, but so far as I can discern there is nothing unusually “black” about the way he dances tango. I do not even accept that there are “black people” or “white people” in a genetically significant sense; I understand that there is more variation within so-called racial groups than between them. As a matter of fact, in my (white) opinion, the all-white Afro-Tango group was quite good. Still, even if it is not genetically significant that the group contained no blacks, it is politically significant. Race may not exist in nature, but it does exist in the culture.

I was prompted to consider these politics when my partner, which I will call La Morocha, and I had the pleasure to show Buenos Aires to an African-American friend. Our friend was staying at the Sheraton, so she had a beautiful view of Retiro and the Costanera from her room. La Morocha, who is something of a historian, explained that African slaves used to be auctioned off just in front of Retiro. Our friend was surprised and she wanted to know what happened to the slaves. Why was hers the only black face she saw in Buenos Aires? La Morocha explained that there is no simple answer to that question, but that some factors have been identified. Throughout the nineteenth century, thousands of Afro-Argentine men died fighting in wars. Some blacks emigrated because they were not welcomed in Argentina’s recessionary labor market. And many blacks stayed in Buenos Aires, where they were more integrated into the general community than elsewhere in the Americas. Thus, their descendants are usually not identifiable as black. Like the hair of rubias teñidas, the Afro-Argentine community has been whitened.

The disappearance of hundreds of thousands Afro-Argentines should not be forgotten, nor should the disappearance of a million or more Native Argentines. Indeed, the Venezuelan anthropologist Fernando Coronil suggests that one of the reasons the 30,000 disappearances of the “Dirty War” were possible is that Argentines were already accustomed to live in the shadow of black and Indian desaparecidos. What I am concerned with here, however, is not the disappearance of the Afro-Argentines per se, but with the absence of blacks in the contemporary tango scene both in Argentina and abroad. The fact that there are far fewer blacks in Argentina now than there were one hundred years ago might explain why there are almost no blacks to be seen in the milongas and tango shows of Buenos Aires. This fact does not, however, explain why there are so few blacks seen in the milongas and tango shows of San Francisco or New York. Despite alleged tango’s black roots, the international tango scene has grown to include just about every one except blacks. Tango is popular in many countries–including, for example, Japan and Turkey–but not, so far as I know, anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa.

Blacks do participate in the tango scene in Uruguay. For example, La Morocha and I recently met Francisco Prieto dancing at IASA, a social club in Montevideo that also goes by the name Salon Sudamerica. Mr. Prieto explained to us that he, too, goes by another name, “El Groncho de la IASA“. “Groncho” is a lunfardo word that means “black” since it sort of reverses the syllables of “negro“, the way that “gotan” reverses the syllables of “tango”. What struck me about El Groncho’s dancing is that it is both very good and very different from the dancing I have seen in Buenos Aires. For example, he moves his upper body more than would be permitted in the tango Argentino or the social dances of Europe, and sometimes he marks an ocho with his right hand gripping his partner’s waist. In Buenos Aires, El Groncho would probably be dismissed as too “canyengue“, a word used to indicate old-fashioned, low- class dancing.

While we were in Montevideo we also had the privilege of attending an asado at the Asociacion Cultural y Social Uruguaya, an Afro-Uruguayan collectivity. There we heard classic tangos such as “La Ultima Curda” sung to the accompaniment of a guitar and three African drums. Once again, it was different from any tango I have witnessed in Buenos Aires (including that of Afro-Tango). The rhythm is what Uruguayans call “candombero“. The word comes from “candombe“, an Afro-Uruguayan music, dance, and religion. Also, the singing was less operatic and more enunciated than is typical in porteño tango. It reminded me more of Goyeneche in his final years than of Gardel, Corsini, or Rivero. I have rarely heard tangos performed more beautifully or to greater effect.

Before our trip, La Morocha and I asked tangueros in Buenos Aires for recommendations on where to dance in Montevideo. We were told that the tango scene in Montevideo is a disaster. Note that many Argentines express admiration for Uruguayan soccer, asado, dulce de leche, and wool, so their lack of respect for Uruguayan tango cannot be attributed to a general anti-Uruguayan attitude. Thus, I was surprised to find that Montevideo is such a wonderful place to hear and dance tango, and I asked myself why the tango scene in Montevideo is so little known and respected in Buenos Aires and the United States.

Could it be that in Montevideo tango’s black roots are too visible, like a rubia teñida who has waited too long between color treatments? I suspect that this is one of the reasons most tango tourists go to Buenos Aires and not to Montevideo, and why so many people are enamored of tango Argentino whereas so few have even heard of tango Uruguayo. Tango in Montevideo is too African for the international Tango market.

When I say that the tango’s black roots are closer to the surface in Montevideo than in Buenos Aires, I do not mean to suggest that Montevidean tango is less developed or more primitive than porteño tango. A century of history has surely left its mark on tango in Montevideo just as much as it has on tango in Buenos Aires. The difference is that for most of this century porteño tango has been systematically whitened, while Montevidean tango has not. In tango Argentino, both in Argentina and abroad, African (and Indigenous) elements have been suppressed in favor of the European elements with which they once coexisted. There are also many fewer rubias teñidas to be seen strolling down 18 de Julio (in Montevideo) than down 9 de Julio (in Buenos Aires).

El Yanqui Yeff is an anthropologist dedicated to the study of Argentine popular culture and an enthusiastic but inexperienced tango dancer.

A SENTIMENTAL ABYSS

A thorough search for Spanish literature regarding Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries confirms the fact that such literature is almost non existent. Yet, that lack of reference material at the beginning of the twentieth century has not stopped many from talking about African matters with the erudition of a parrot. It seems that those pursuing transcultural crusades have given ample publicity and used as reference the unverifiable sayings of Vicente Rossi in his book Cosas de negros, paradigmatic among the theoretical defenders of the African influence in the tango.

Completely left out off their discourse is the reasoning of poet and musicologist Carlos Vega (1898-1966).

From a very early age Vega had two vocations: poetry and music. He chose the latter one. During his life Vega traveled numerous times to the interior provinces and to other Latin American countries like Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay in order to thoroughly study the characteristics of native music, its rhythms and instruments. The documentation he obtained formed the basis of an audiovisual archival and a collection of musical instruments.

In 1944 his study group become the Institute of Native Musicology by decree 32456/44 of president Farrel. In 1948 by decree 20,082/48 signed by president Perón the Institute of Musicology became autonomous under the direction of Carlos Vega. He dedicated the rest of his life to the study of the Argentine and American folklore. He is the author of many books such as “Argentine Dances and songs” (1936), “Creole Songs and dances” (1941), “The pop music of Argentina” (1944), “Panorama of the Argentine pop music” (1944), “South American Music” (1946), “The native and Creole musical instruments of Argentina” (1946), “The song of the troubadours in an integral history of music” (1963) and “The Argentine folkloric songs” (1963) among others.

Having been established that after 1820 the black population began to freely integrate into the porteño society to the point that three generations later actual blacks made out less than 2% of the population, the argument that suggests that the African culture in general and its music in particular was so influential and respected as to have had such a major effect on the decision of the remaining 98% of the population to adopt a popular music as their own, can be counterpointed with the argument Carlos Vega made in an article he wrote for La Prensa in 1932,

“ A song book may be influenced by another as long as there is not a sentimental abyss between them. Even though most of the enslaved Africans didn’t belong to the group of the more primitive cultures, even though many came from African regions influenced by the semitic-kamitic cultures, the imported music they brought along was, with very rare exception, of such rudimentary, original and strange nature, that it was inaccessible to the ears of the white man.

That music could not wake up in the Creoles the natural desire needed for adopting it. Far from finding in the black celebrations appropriate elements suitable for the expression of their own feelings, the Creoles found them so colorful and ridiculous that after their extinction they modernized them in grotesque carnival parodies with drumming and European songs.” -La Prensa, Nov 16, 1932 – Carlos Vega, African songs and dances in the River Plate area.

Still, the remaining question is why illustrious members of the intellectual elite porteña insisted in attaching African references to the tango of beginning of the twentieth century.

THE AFRICAN ROOTS CONUNDRUM

Researching for facts and figures takes time and anyone interested in the history of Buenos Aires during the half-century preceding World War I will be richly rewarded by a visit to the Archivo Historico de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Documents recently made available have added tremendously to knowledge of the period when, what a decade later would be identified as the tango, began its genesis and evolution, enabling scholars to recreate the complexity and texture of daily life in historical Buenos Aires in the nineteenth century.

That’s how we know that during the first decade of the 19th century the population rolls of Buenos Aires recorded the largest number of slaves of African origin. Africa then, as now, reflected a multitude of religions, languages, cultures, traditions, beliefs, forms of expression, ethnic groups, and historic backgrounds. Such differences characterized the African slaves brought to the shores of the River Plate. They were as different from one another as they were different from the existing Spanish population.

They did not arrive in Buenos Aires all at once. Nor did they remain bound by political or cultural liaisons that could have preserved and kept their ethnic diversities alive. Their native identities were quickly dispersed upon arrival.

On April 9, 1812 all slave carrying vessels were banned from entering the River Plate. By 1813 everyone born in Argentine territory, including sons and daughters of slaves was deemed to be free. Anyone who set foot on Argentine territory was considered free.

On February, 1813, the ruling Assembly declared that all slaves brought in any way, shape or form from foreign countries were declared free from the moment they set foot on Argentine soil.

So, it is absurd to talk about slaves in Argentina after 1820, and that is probably because the black population cared more about integrating into a society that considered them free people than spending time inventing rituals for future revisionists with an agenda for rewriting history.

So, any discussion regarding whether the tango has African roots or not must take in consideration the fact that there were no slaves in Argentina after 1820. Blacks joined the new society and made contributions the same way other immigrants did. Of course, they had to endure the same discrimination, political persecution and bigotry that immigrants suffer anywhere in the world, depending on the way the political wind blows.

The census of 1887 of the 429,558 inhabitants of Buenos Aires listed 8,005 blacks, of which only 905 were foreigners, mostly from Brazil and the United States. In other words, by the last decade of the nineteenth century, the black population was about 1.8 % of the city population.

Samuel Gache (1859-1907), famous for his work with the Red Cross, wrote in 1913 in La Nacion that towards the end of the nineteenth-century, the black population had basically disappeared, not just in Buenos Aires but also in the provinces. For example, the province of Santa Fe had 20 registered blacks. And in the province of Corrientes, where a large black town named CambaCua had existed, the black population was zero. Causes for the disappearance seem to have been wars, illness and interracial marriages.

The census of 1905 listed no blacks at all.

It is important then to look at the time line. During the period of gestation of the tango (1880’s) the citizens of African heritage made up less than 2% of the total population of Buenos Aires.

The argument that the tango has strong African roots seems to suggest that the African culture in general and its music in particular was so influential and respected as to have had such a major effect on the decision of the remaining 98% of the population to adopt a popular music as their own. Or that the mythological personage (unverified and unsubstantiated), of Negro Casimiro with his scrawny violin, left such a major imprint all by himself.

Those who have cited the works of Zenon Rolon or Carlos Posadas to support claims of an African root of the tango, need be reminded that both Rolon and Posadas had very solid European academic musical formation. They didn’t fit the stereotypically destitute “negros candomberos” figure used to represent the distressing socio-cultural conditions of a minority that was supposed to have had such a major influence on the music of Buenos Aires.

THE MILONGAS PORTEÑAS OF THE 1970′S

Individuals with levels of ignorance that range from innocent to malicious, have attempted to create the idea that the people of Argentina couldn’t care less for the tango, except in times of bonanza when they can make a few bucks by becoming tangueros. The fact is that there is so much about the social and cultural aspects of the tango that begs explaining. Thus, we pay homage and give due respect and consideration to the humble milongas of Buenos Aires, where the preservation of the authentic, traditional and purest form of Argentine tango dancing has been taking place without interruption during both times of bonanza and misery.

The decade of the seventies was a horrendous experience for the Argentine Republic, as members of a repressive elite supported a military war that has become to be known by the infamous name of “dirty” because it was waged against citizens of the nation. Citizens who happened to have dissenting viewpoints, or were singled out by enemies or competitors as “dangerous” to their own selfish interests or the “welfare of the country.”

As a result of that, there are still thousands of Argentine citizens unaccounted for. They have disappeared (some having been dumped from military cargo planes in the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean; others buried in unmarked graves, some after their unborn children were ripped from their guts, and rats were used to fill the void) under the excuse of cleansing the country of dissidents who rubbed somebody the wrong way.

In this climate of terror and persecution, the business side of dancing suffered because the secret police regularly raided dance halls under the excuse of looking for terrorists, communists, and other enemies of the state. People began to stay away from the most prominent clubs where dancing (all sorts of dancing, not just tango) took place.

The conclusion drawn by many, and supported by outright lies told by prominent touring professional teachers, was that tango died in the seventies as a consequence of being proscribed and banned by the government. The reasoning followed that if the tango had “died,” it was because the Argentines “killed” it, and Americans and Europeans with hard currency on hand performed some sort of exorcism, and voila, here is the tango again but now it belongs to the world.

Not so, writes Adela Zulema Cardozo, a surgical nurse and a founding member of the Institute of Tango Research. The ignorance of such claims is partially a consequence of the minimum cost of admission charged by the organizers of the numerous milongas porteñas during the seventies, that allowed access to their salons to a very large number of people of limited or non existent resources. These were indeed modest places, owned by regular people who could not afford the prohibitive costs of radio, TV and printed advertising, which is what gives massive promotion to an activity proposed to all sectors of society.
But maybe, these promoters were not interested in advertising since their facilities never lacked attendance because of the high interest shown by the public in dancing tango.

These milongas porteñas were the authentic seeding grounds for some of the greatest dancers who a decade later began to showcase the Argentine tango on stages around the world. Among them were Juan Carlos Copes, Virulazo, Antonio Todaro, Eduardo Arquimbau and many others. That’s the reason for their designation as milongas porteñas in contrast with other well publicized places “where they also danced Tango.” These other places were exclusively frequented by tourists, or by a public that had nothing to do with the authentic milongueros, who would only attend these “visible” venues, when as professionals, they were invited to do an exhibition.

Of all the milongas porteñas of the seventies, salon Italia Unita is perhaps the eldest of them all, with over a half a century of illustrious existence promoting the dance of tango. Others had a more ephemeral existence lasting part or all of the decade of the seventies. Some have been recently reopened for the benefit of the new tourist crowd that participates in locally organized international Tango encounters.

The common characteristic of all these milongas porteñas was the alternating use of both Tipica and Tropical/Moderna music in contrast to the decade of the forties were Jazz alternated with the tango. Within the Tropical/Moderna repertoire, cumbias were the preferred choice of the dancers.

The most classic, traditional and oldest salon tanguero is Salon La Argentina, originally located on 361 Rodriguez Peña Street, one block from Corrientes, and today on Bartolome Mitre, near Callao.
Another traditional and very old salon was Augusteo. There were dances with two orchestras: Tipica and Tropical on Saturdays and Sundays, and with recordings on Fridays.

Salon Rodriguez, known this way because of the street where it was located, was actually Circulo Italiano Lider Piedmont. They organized dances always with recorded music Wednesdays and Sundays from 6 PM to 11:30 PM. Notables habitués were Magdalena Copes, mother of Juan Carlos, , Carlos Alberto Estevez better known as Petroleo, a dancer of prestige, and many other well known personalities of the world of tango.

At Salon 25 de Mayo, known in the tango jargon as La veinticinco they danced on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays with orchestras, Tipica and Tropical-Moderna; on Sundays the dancing started at 4 PM and lasted till 1 am. The attendance tended to be an older very tanguero crowd.

Salon Belgrano, located on Belgrano Avenue, was actually the Hogar Asturiano. In the seventies they had dancing every night, with different organizers each night. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays the milonga was known as the Copes Tango Club.

El Nilo belonged to the Croatian community and at one point it was a movie house. Located on Boedo Avenue, they had dancing with orchestras on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 6 PM.

Salon Reduci, as well as Augusteo and Italia Unita, Unione e Benevolenza and Nacionale Italiano, belonged to the Italian Association of Mutual Assistance. It was built in 1929 and it is located on Rodriguez Peña 1442. In the seventies, they danced there with orchestras on Fridays and Saturdays from 10 PM to 4 AM, and on Sundays with recorded music from 5 PM to 2 AM.

Salon Canning on Scalabrini Ortiz 1331 offered (and still continues) dancing every night to recorded music.

Casa de Galicia had dancing Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays; on Sundays they danced with four orchestras, two Tipicas and two Tropicals. They worked in two shifts, two until 9 PM and two until closing time. Each orchestra played half hour sets.

Salon Italiano, actually Nazionale Italiano also had two orchestras, Tipica and Tropical on Saturdays from 9 PM to 4 AM, and on Sundays until 1 AM.

Palacio Rivadavia offered dancing with a high percentage of recorded tangos on Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays.

Salon Constitution offered tangos in the Seventies. Later it became the palace of the bailanta, a dance party considered by many even “lower class” than the tango, perhaps because it was the preferred form of entertainment for the dark skinned people of the interior of Argentina, and the dark skinned immigrants from Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru.

The Casa Suiza, also known as Salon Suizo held dances only during Carnaval time. They were organized by the Shimmy Club, a black association, and it had two dance floors. The main floor at street level attracted the tango crowd in a similar way as the salon listed above. In the basement, members of the Shimmy Club danced candombes to the sound of small drums, although they also went upstairs to dance tangos and cumbias.

Other salons where people danced tangos in the seventies where, Verdi, Region Leonesa, Glorias Argentinas, America del Sur, Unione e Benevolenza. Some are still in existence today. There were also social clubs like Estudiantes de Buenos Aires, Almagro, Bristol, Huracan, Boca Juniors. And confiterias such as Marcone, Mi Club, Crillon, Okey, Tourbillon, Retratos, Marabu, Bamboche, Savoy, Siglo XX, and Regine. It was not unusual that around midnight or 1 AM, they stopped selling admission tickets because they were filled to capacity.

There were other venues like Antezana, Circulo Social Mariano Acosta, La Taberna de Ricardo, Sociedad de Fomento Mariano Acosta, Noches de Atenas, Los Bohemios, Peña de Tango Angel Villoldo, Cantina La Galera and Cantina La Herradura.

Of all places, Salon Italia Unita was perhaps the one that typified best, the popularity of the tango in the seventies, a period when tourists stayed away because of the political and economic unrest in Argentina. Built between 1878 and 1883, it is an ample salon with balconies at both sides and at the entrance.
The dance floor has a parquet floor that has been completely replaced twice in 1981 and 1989. At the far end is the stage where the orchestras sat. Large mirrors covered the side walls, and all around the dance floors there were chairs for the ladies to sit. The gentlemen stood in the center of the dance floor (dancers moved around in la ronda) and from their vantage position they observed the ladies sitting or standing around the dance floor, ready to invite them to dance using the classic cabeceo, the nod of the head. They danced with the lights on. Gentlemen were refused admission unless they wore a jacket and a tie. Persons under the age of eighteen were not allowed in, and it was forbidden to smoke in the salon. Smokers had a side hall with chairs to enjoy their vice.

Many orchestras played at Italia Unita. Maestro Juan D’Arienzo’s final performance at the helm of his orchestra took place there, and there is a long list of major personalities of the tango scene who, alongside thousands of unnamed milongueros, spent many glorious hours enjoying and dancing the tango in the decade of the seventies, while some kept saying, and pathetically some still repeat, that the tango was dead.

Marisa Donadio, an attorney and also a founder member of the Research Institute of Tango contributed with documentation used in this article.

THE PROFESSOR

Copy of the March/April 1999 issue of Danzarin courtesy of Judit Lentijo

Shortly before the successful Congreso Internacional de Tango Argentino held in Buenos Aires at the end of March 1999, Fabian Salas, one of the organizers of the event was interviewed by the underground publication DANZARIN. In the March/April issue of the eight-page publication, Fabian was featured on the cover in a Tango pose with Lucia. The tongue-in-cheek headline reads EL CATEDRATICO, (the professor). Inside, along with the interview, the same photo is framed behind lines, triangles and circles to emphasize the title being conferred to Salas on the cover.

There is no name anywhere to identify who publishes DANZARIN or who’s the interviewer. A phony website URL promises English versions of the interview. The chat with Fabian Salas proves to be candid and revealing.

Asked if he always dances with Lucia, the girl on the cover, Fabian says, “No, but she is one of those who accompany me the most when we train.”

To the interviewer, the word “train” sounds like it refers to sports instead of dancing.

“What happens is that for us the tango is gymnastics,” Salas explains. “We get together to work on movements that allow us to improvise continuously. Above all, we dance fully aware of what we do, like a research that leads us to specific results.”

What we have generated in the tango until now, comes from a process of many years working together with the intention to apply a reason to the movements.

We consider the tango as a dancing technique and as such having a theory and certain tactical questions that make it a science and not a pastime.

It sounds extravagant but there are mathematical questions in the tango that deal with the logic of the bodies. Besides, I feel that rational knowledge, can’t take away from the emotional aspect.”

The interviewer is concerned about Salas projection towards an excessively specialized society.

“One thing is to talk about professionalism,” Fabian says, “and another is to talk about mediocrity. Soccer continues to be very popular, yet it is more and more professional.”

The interviewer says that doing what Salas proposes will generate some resistance from the people who base the tango on feelings.

“That’s anecdotal,” Fabian says. “The tango was born in the neighborhood, I’m a product of the neighborhood and I like that twist, but I can’t help recognize the value that technique has on the most advanced couple’s dance in the world.

What’s fundamental about the renaissance of the tango is not a feeling that somebody who lives abroad can’t feel. Why do they dance in the USA for example? They dance because the tango represents the universal man/woman relationship. Today we analyze the dance as language. Most people speaking a language know nothing about grammatical rules, however they speak. Here (in Buenos Aires) it is the same; we dedicate ourselves to do the grammar of the dance.”

Fabian Salas began to dance i 1988 and he learned like everybody else with things that later he realized didn’t work.

“The first time I went to Almagro, they kicked me off the dance floor; it was a time when they danced a style with very short steps,” he says. “I tried to do what I had learned from Copes: ‘one-two-three and ocho,’ and in the ocho they systematically pushed me away, until I had to leave.”

Fabian Salas in the beginning had very few options.

“Yes,” he confirms, “and they pushed you around everywhere. If you went to a milonga right away somebody would come close to intimidate you, or if you were lucky to be like,” here the interviewer uses the letters NN to hide the name of a well known show dancer who according to Salas is the mama’s boy of the milongas.

He sat at the table with the milongueros and they adored him; he could screw up at will and all was cool, but if you just screwed up once, they would push you, kick you and hit you. I’m not complaining, but that is the way it was.

Mingo Pugliese would tell me, ‘if you take classes with me, you can’t take classes with anyone else,’ and he was the kindest of all. The rest would tell me, ‘if you are going to see so and so you are not allowed to set foot here anymore.’ Antonio Todaro was the only one nobody would badmouth. Everybody else was at each other’s throat. I was in that quandary when I met Gustavo Naveira. I thought I was number one and he slapped me to reality. I realized that he was on the same road as I was, but he had been traveling longer. We became friends and began to hang out together in spite of the fact that until very recently we continued to work separately.”

The interviewer expresses a wide accepted impression that Salas is Gustavo’s lieutenant.

“Sometimes they refer to me in a derogatory way as a clone, but the truth is that I never took a class with Gustavo. Long ago he helped me with some choreography and I worked next to him as an assistant, but never as a student. Notwithstanding, it is not an offense because for me he is the best dancer in the world.”

The interviewer wants to know if Gustavo and Fabian transmit how to reach the foundations or do they convey a sequence of steps derived from the foundations.

“Our wrongly called ‘clones’ understand the functioning of the system. They come from a different direction because they learn to dance the way we teach them (sic). We mix in the teaching what we do now and what we used to do before, so they don’t really know how to distinguish what is traditional and what is not.

To have a guy who in three years can dance, like Chicho for example, is something that didn’t happen before. So they chastise us and they say that we have ‘clones.’ But, look at Zotto and tell me if he doesn’t have ‘clones.’ You enter a milonga and see a kid dressed in a suit, stiff looking, his dancing looks refined, and a look of consternation on his face, and you say, ‘this guy took classes with Osvaldo or with Miguel.’ Their ‘clone seal’ is more evident than ours. To me, dancing brings me happiness, not sadness. I can have a look of concentration, but I’m not suffering and my heart is not broken.”

The interviewer points out that Fabian seems to find pleasure in making things difficult. For example he rotates his hip 270 degrees when a move may require only 90 degrees.

“Yes, of course, but as a dancer I’m still in the formation period. As a teacher I am clear about what I teach and one of my tasks is to find all the possibilities.”

So what’s the idea?

“Every change produces resistance. We are beginning to value some elements as techniques for dancing, which is not to say that you dance better or worse. It means that they are elements, essential knowledge that make the dance what it is.”

So what are those elements?

“As a technique of motion between two persons, it is handled as a system of axis. The possibility of motion of two bodies in general is handled in a circle, that is, the dance is designed to flow in a circular trajectory. From the moment that an axis appears, there is circular motion around that axis. This is changing constantly and the dance is built rotating, not in the limited sense of turning around the same axis but in the sense of moving the axis. The axis can be in the man, in the woman, or be external to them. Always one of these elements is the axis and they represent the concrete motion possibilities between two bodies with four legs. This is an important element too. When you walk, you go from a position of balance to a position off balance constantly. Between two legs and another one you get a logic of pizza slices, that’s the reason of the triangle.”

The interviewer wants to know if it is mandatory to step inside the pizza slice.

“When you mark with your body, you don’t need your hands because the dance is handled in space. When you occupy a space, the woman cannot occupy the same space unless you slap her into it. She goes to the space that you generated with your body, that’s why she is inscribing a triangle into where the motion has dynamics. If you are standing in the center and the woman approaches the center, you fall unless you look for the centrifugal force. We don’t mark with our hands. We use the hands for containment. We use our bodies very much.”

Is Fabian worried about polemics created by C.I.T.A.?

“They are useless. We are beyond the anecdotal. We are doing something for the tango, good or bad we have clear intentions. For C.I.T.A. we convoked all the teachers. Many are not here because they didn’t want to be here, or because they couldn’t be here. The problem is that it takes a whole lot of money to organize something like this and that is the reason for the high prices. We would like to do something that is very good and has lots of popular support.”

How can the locals participate at about $700 a head?

“We are looking at the possibility of offering grants so the cost of the whole week would be around $200. We are working with the people of New Direction in Culture. Those interested in grants can come to see us everyday from 2-6 PM at Cochabamba 444.”