You’re strolling along Mexico street in Buenos Aires’ colonial district, when suddenly you see a menu that rings a bell: Burzako. It’s not that you’re hungry. But you just can’t help reflecting a little on something you read in a history book: that food somehow is a badge of identity. Your hand creeps into the pocket where you keep your cash: barely enough to get started. Still, you stay there staring at the menu and peering into the darkish restaurant, set with grace, candles and all.
That’s it! San Telmo! The Spanish conquistadores lambasted the indigenous inhabitants, didn’t they? And then took up the habit of drinking "yerba mate," the closest relative of green tea that you might imagine. Not to wander off the track, yet a picture flashes before your mind of horses and cattle, looking around dumbly as Spanish sailors beat their rumps to get them to leave the boats.
Maybe they are to blame for this Argentine penchant with beef steaks! Well, just a hunch. Nothing more. Now you imagine a fine Spanish gentleman showing off his bright Sunday dress at what is now Mexico and Bolivar streets, sheepishly sipping the green herb through a wooden straw, while the smell of the afternoon barbecue wafts the air.
Wait a minute! Look at His Majesty’s soldiers running as if all Hell had broken loose. Those Argie women throwing boiling water at them sure did create a havoc, didn’t they? Were they the real cause for the defeat of the English, you think, a tiny smile creasing the edges of your mouth. Would there have been so many coups and political zig-zags if Argentina had become an outright British colony? Would the middle classes be drinking Lypton tea instead of yerba mate?
Time goes by, doesn’t it, taking its villains and heroes with it. Flash! Rats have taken over San Telmo, people are dying right and left and the ladies and gents with heavy ladden pockets scramble for safer, higher and more healthy lands...woh! Y
You’re nearly knocked over by the sounds of those Italian immigrants, and the smell of pizza and pasta...but mate hangs on...everyone seems to have a sweet obsession with it, you think, still unable to get the gist of where you are or what is going on in your confused little brain.
You’ve got longish hair and are wearing blue jeans and there are Ford Falcons screeching night and day, dragging people off to unknown places, setting their bodies ablaze with electricity, dropping dead bodies from planes...it’s the "war" of the anti-communist dictatorship against "subversives" and for the para-military gang that grabs you at the corner of Independencia avenue and Peru street you’re certainly a "Montonero."
"A what?" you ask in astonisment.
"No problem, just sign here..."
"But I don’t know what you’re talking about, really."
You’ve got a real headache there. If you don’t sign, they’ll...and if you do sign, they’ll...Thank God! Before you make that fatal decision, masses of people march down the avenue shouting "never again!" and you realize that your neck has been saved by the return to democracy.
"Hungry?" booms out a deep seated voice. You look around, still blurry eyed, somewhere in that no-man’s land between dream and reality.
"Yea, sort of..." you manage to blubber.
"Follow me!"
"Ah, well, ah, I was just passing by..."
"I know. Don’t worry. I’m not a thief. Not a pocket grabber. Not a para-military gangster. Just want to show you something."
So you go along, with your nerves just a bit wound up, winding your way down a cobbled stone street until you see the guy dodge into an empty lot, signaling you to cross the threshhold of a crumbling down building that probably used to be somebody’s pride and joy, maybe last century.
"See this mate," the stranger says joyfully, "it belonged to General Whitelock."
"You mean the English General?"
"Yea...let’s brew some of the green stuff and take a sip with the General’s gourd."
And your guest does just that. First it’s mate with salt crackers, then barbecued beef plastered with a hot spicy sauce, dark red wine to wash it down, and another mate to top it all off.
"Don’t worry, it won’t kill you!" warns your guest playfully.
Yea. Don’t worry. All those mouths that have sucked the straw, you think, men and women, probably sparkling eyed gals, artists, writers, generals, torturers, priests, shoe-makers, bakers, maybe even Maradona, Gardel, Peron, Tupac Amaru, Lopez Rega, the queen of Holland...who knows?
Funny how eating habits are somehow an identity kit. Well, you don’t exactly eat mate, do you? But how can you get to know an Argentine without sipping the greenish liquid with a roll of your eyes and a pile of folk legend on the edge of your tongue? Woh! If the straws or the mate gourd or the herb itself could speak, maybe an adroit exchange of ideas could straighten out some of your historical black-outs.
