4th Jun 2010

SWF's fleeting affair with Catholicism comes to an abrupt end...

By SWF in Buenos Aires

There was an incident this morning that has definitely turned me off Catholicism, I was walking across Plaza Guemes, passing the giant steps to Guadalupe Iglesia and two quite swish dressed women in there sixties came out furiously crossing themselves as they were leaving the church, walking backwards down the big stairs, whilst in the same moment, the old homeless lady who inhabits the square was shuffling about in the background. 

I don’t know who she is but we’re now on nodding terms.  She is well known in the area in that all the locals seem to know she lives outdoors in the square.  She has a very strict routine, I can see her every movement from my balcony.  She continually moves around the square moving her supermarket trolley along with several buckets attached. At intervals she fills these buckets with water and begins to clean the large plaza in sections, she cleans whichever part of the square she happens to be inhabiting at that moment as if it was her front doorstep: continuing that tradition of cleaning your front doorstep and your section of pavement directly in front of your house that exists here.  Everyone knows her and one of my neighbours, a very energetic women of 80 who arrived here from Poland at the age of 9 told me she spent part of her birthday having a chat with her on the steps of the church.  I have watched her some days make her way around the square with I have to say with fascination and fear.  I have begun to worry about her.  When I come back from milongas at 3 or 4 in the morning nipping about myself to get home safely without the expense of taking a taxi, she is always there and she says hello to me as I duck into my apartment building.  There I am, relieved that I am home without any fatalities, and there she is all night like a quiet shadow moving her worldly belongings about the plaza at all hours. I feel we have an understanding as she has spotted me as a fellow nocturne.

  Loly knows her to as he lives around the corner from the Plaza.  Loly says he saw her one-day dying her hair, using the large window of the Santaria as her mirror; he became intrigued as to how she was going to wash out the dye.  Funnily enough she looks very healthy and strong, she wears a lot of clothes, even in the heat of the summer, but her exposed arms and face are street living brown, she looks about 60 and she must walk a couple of miles a day dragging all her stuff from one place to another.

This particular early morning I was running to catch the Quince to my Spanish class and these two swish catholic women started attacking her literarily a second after they had been furiously crossing themselves on the steps of Guadalupe ‘ look what a bad impression she gives the plaza, something had to be done.’ I was so angry I really didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t believe they were attacking this old homeless women, who was probably the same age as them, for ruining the appearance of the plaza. I was late for my lesson I was formulating the sentences in my head. ‘Los pobre van a inherit the earth, hyproticas.' something like that.  I was so infuriated but more that I couldn’t articulate my self effectively.  

I arrived at my Spanish class and told my teacher and she said I should have just spoken in English that the swish women would probably have understood English and would have been more humiliated to have been attached by a European. I don’t know if that is true but it left me thinking I’m not sure if I can be a fake catholic and also it’s difficult to witness injustices when you feel like you have no real power to change anything, and yet a lot of people who live here feel like they have no power to change anything either.

I heard someone say once that not being able to see someone else’s plight was a lack of imagination.  Not understanding how someone got to where they are.  I know you can always analyze it on a political and economic level but I suppose I have a rather over active imagination and I’m always intrigued to know how someone got to where they are and I always feel maybe I could be there too one day, maybe I’m not so different from the woman moving her stuff around Guadalupe. How did she get to that point?  People here have told me many personal stories about the crisis in 2002 and how a lot of people who were just surviving suddenly fell below the poverty line and then they became homeless or became cartoneras and that cartoneras didn’t exist before 2002.  I tune in to the individual rather than statistics and I thought...why where those two swish women so aggressive to a really harmless women of their own age, is it fear? Are they truly that angry that she lives in the plaza, or are they scared that it might be them one day?  People always say to me anything can happen in Argentina.

My only consolation was that the man who cleans the steps of the church turned into a kind of negotiator; he did a lot of nodding to the swish women and when they finally left he nodded to the bag lady indicating that it was ok, carry on, probably far more effective than my direct challenging. Somehow I felt he was on the bag lady's side, so ultimately everything stayed the same, the swish catholic ladies got angry, the bag lady carried on but nothing really changed.

So I don’t think I will be perusing Catholicism for now and of course there is always the abortion issue.   I have had a couple of female ex-pat friends who have had to curtail their trips and make a mad dash back to London after an unwanted result from a passionate fling with a milonguero or some casual encounter with a porteño chamushero, sounds tawdry I know.  But abortion being illegal is another reality of life here, and often it comes as a surprise to foreign women that abortion is illegal when frolicking around this city, which masquerades itself as a thoroughly modern metropolitan city.  And of course a much harsher reality for the impoverished Argentine women who can’t afford to nip over the nearest country where abortion is legal like the richer Argentine women are able to do.