Sunday, July 1, 2007

Chaos and crooks (Part I)

On Tuesday, I went to Migraciones (Immigration) in Microcentro to file some papers about my resident visa. It was my first visit there and of course I got lost. It's on Avenida 25 de Mayo, a rather small street that leads to the Casa Rosada. I mistakenly assumed it was on Avenida de Mayo, one of the grand boulevards of the city which also leads to the Casa Rosada. This isn't unusual in Buenos Aires. There are sets of streets such as Peña, Saenz Peña, and Rodriguez Peña. There are even two streets that cross, whose names are pronounced identically, so the only way to be sure you're in the right spot is if you agree to meet at the intersection of H. Yrigoyen and B. Irigoyen.

Immigation sent me off on a wild goose chase to have my birth certificate officially translated. I had done that in California, prior to leaving, as per instructions of the Argentine consulate. I paid a certified translator and then got official stamps (notarization and apostille) for everything, the original documents and the translations. Here, they said so sorry, these aren't legal, you need to do it all again using an Argentine translator and they sent me off to the Colegio de Traductores Públicos in Balvanera. When I arrived there, the receptionist explained that they don't actually do any translations there and that I should go to their website to find a list of certified translators to contact privately. Couldn't Migraciones just have told me that, before I trekked all the way there?

Next I went to Constitución to meet my friend Ulises for a late lunch. He works a block from the combined train-subway station, one of the largest in Buenos Aires. We had a nice visit and meal at a restaurant inside the station's concourse and afterward we stood around talking a bit before going our separate ways. Suddenly, he grabbed my arm and said "you have to go to the subway now!" I was puzzled about his odd outburst until he said "look, they're closing the gates, we need to get out of here." Last month there was a major riot at Estación Constitución when the trains were shut down. One of the largest rail stations in the city, with 400,000 people passing through daily, commuters were enraged when they found themselves stranded, unable to get home to the provincial suburbs. So, Ulises was rightly alarmed when he saw the possibility of history repeating itself. In the 60 seconds or so between his outcry and the time I started hustling toward the stairs down to the subte, the crowd pressing against the rail platform gates swelled from a handful to several hundred. I did not want to wait even a few more minutes for it to grow to a horde of irate thousands so I hightailed it down into the bowels of the subway and headed home.

That same day also brought more conniving behavior by a so-called friend or acquaintance named Luis. I met him online long ago and since I arrived in BA, we would meet once every week or ten days for coffee and chat. At first I thought he might be an okay guy. He appeared more stable than some others I had met, such as my camcorder thief, 40 years old with a decent job in public relations. However, he didn't fail to disappoint me given enough time! After about a month, he casually asked to borrow 20 pesos (US $6.50) to buy a card to refuel his cell phone minutes. I saw it as a test, a relatively cheap way of finding out if he was another deadbeat looking to scam a foreigner. He promised to pay it back when we met for coffee again the next week. Never happened. Instead, the next week he said he couldn't meet for coffee because his poor old mom was very sick...and could I lend him 50 pesos to buy her medicine? Then his mom was in the hospital and needed 200 pesos for therapy. He didn't take me up on my offer to visit her in the hospital and cheer her up, wouldn't a surprise visit from an exotic foreigner lift her spirits? I had visions of him scouring hospital rooms, seeking an old lady who would pretend to be his mom for half the take. On Tuesday, apparently mom hadn't died yet because he asked to borrow 150 pesos to buy her a birthday gift.

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