Peruvian food in Buenos Aires has been traditionally asociated to a cheap alternative, usually available in neighborhoods such as Abasto, where many peruvians live since the 90’s. To transform this peruvian food into an attractive option for the gourmet market is a complex task, one that implies separating from the “cheap food” imaginarium and fighting the racist prejudices against Peru which are easy to find in Buenos Aires.

In this sense, peruvian food -which, at least in Buenos Aires, consists basically of creole coast and andean dishes, but practically none of the forest region food- starts with a disadvantage facing other culinary traditions. And peruvian food is one of the most attractive and interesting foods of this area of the world, and quite a reason of pride for those who live in Peru.

And to insert itself in the gourmet tradition, peruvian food has to transform itself and adapt to the form plates are served in the haute cuisine tradition. On one side, it has to stop looking like “cheap, popular and aboundant food”; on the other side, adapt its preparation and presentation ways to a haute cuisine tradition.

Do you think this is not happening? In the last number of Luz magazine that comes with Perfil newspaper on sundays (july 3 issue), the peruvian chef Marco Espinoza, owner of Moche restaurant, said about he behavior of the first customers of his restaurant:

“When they realized we had peruvian food, some customers wanted to leave. We offered them not pay for anything if they didn’t like the food. Now, they’re our clients!”

Now, well, it’s important not to exaggerate with a certain purist defense that would say “peruvian food, when adapted to the gourmet market, loses its essence”. First, because the culinary tradition in this country is in fact a product of multiple hybrids with chinese, spanish and other places’ cuisines. So there’s no much place for purism. Second, because within Lima, and not only in Buenos Aires, “cocina novoandina” (nouvelle andean food), a marketing-derived name used to designate the gourmetization of traditional peruvian cuisine, has grown considerably. So, in the end, andean cuisine is separated from the imaginarium of “cheap, popular and aboundant food” and taken to the more expensive restaurants territory.

And here’s another important issue that we could take as a hypothesis: where do prejudices over a culinary tradition meet negative imaginaries on a particular social group? Many people from Lima have little positive preconceptions about everything from the highlands. To what instance does this “novoandina” representation is not trying to eliminate these negative imaginarium about the products that are historically related to the highlands?

I must remark this is just a hypothesis and part of a discussion proposal.

At least in Buenos Aires, the movement to trace a distinction between peruvian food of a more economic background, and a more expensive tradition, begins several years back. The fist step was made by places like Contigo Peru, but now it has more expensive exponents such as Moche (apparently, still doesn’t have its own website) and Cilantro. Note: we’re not talking about highly expensive restaurants on the base of prices, but we’re on a cost level quite above the average supply of peruvian restaurants in Buenos Aires in the 90’s.

I might have left out some restaurants, so you feel free to leave your contributions on the subject in the comments area to cover those historic holes I’ve left.

There are interesting references about the restaurants mentioned here at El Cuerpo de Cristo (spanish), an argentinean wiki about cuisine and culinary issues. Links, spanish only:

Contigo Peru
Cilantro
Moche. There’s also a note about this restaurant in La Nacion newspaper, although it’s pretty light.

A few days ago, Pablo Schweitzer published in the mail list about cultural tourism managed by the people of Naya (spanish only) an interesting message about the problems of tourism and social inequality. We’ve covered the topic several times in this blog, but I thought it was a good opportunity to return to this issue, mostly because Pablo’s text summarizes, in a short space, a series of important items. I will leave you know with Pablo’s text, and I want to thank him for his permission to publish it. By the way, Pablo is working on a website about these problems and, hopefully soon, I’ll be able to tell you more news about the topic in this blog.

Tourism, poverty and social justice?

Usually, receptive tourism is considered and export. But from the social point of view, I believe we’d have to see it as an import of consumers, with the social impacts it implies.

Pablo Schweitzer

Let’s continue with the video series of non touristic areas of Buenos Aires. After such a good reception of the videos dedicated to the Premetro -they had over 200 views in two weeks- this time its turn of Parque Chacabuco, the area I’ve lived in for the past three years. It’s a view of the zone from the roof of my building; besides the park, you can see the surrounding districts of Bajo Flores, Caballito and Boedo. Since the day was very bright and nice, you’ll notice a few people walking in the park. There are two videos; the first one is the longest, and includes my walking tour around the building’s roof. The second one, shorter, is only focused on the view of the Parque Chacabuco. Again, the videos are hosted at my DailyMotion account.

The Buenos Aires Premetro goes by a not touristic at all area located in Villa Soldati. Since I take this path every once in a while, I filmed two small videos of what you see from the Premetro’s window. It’s a form, let’s put it this way, to show you a part of the city that usually doesn’t appear in documentaries or brochures. I uploaded them to my DailyMotion account, an excellent service of video publication. To watch them, just clic on the play sign; if you have broad band, it should start almost right away. If you have dial-up connection, be a little patient. The videos were made with a Canon SD100 digital camera, so don’t expect the greatest definition .

Finally, the traditional Buenos Aires - San Miguel de Tucuman train, quite used by argentinean backpackers who wanted to go to the north of the country for a low cost, will start funcioning again this december. There’ll be two in between stops at Rosario Norte, Santa Fe and La Banda, Santiago del EStero. The cost of the cheapest tickets will be quite lower than the bus one, 35 pesos (less than US$12). One thing to consider: the whole trip takes 26 hours, compared to 16 by bus. And if you travel during the summer, the heat inside the train, especially when crossing through Santiago del Estero in the afternoon is just impressive. I made that trip twice, once in 1999 and later in 2001, both times I arrived exhausted and desperate to take a shower at San Miguel de Tucuman, but I also had a few more pesos in my pocket.

Anyways, it is important that a cheaper alternative to travel is back.

One of the most common destinations of travellers that arrive to Argentina is Tigre, a location close to the capital Buenos Aires. In fact, you can get there in a reasonable time, thanks to the trains system service. And the most visited area at Tigre is the riverside port, which has ship departures to other sites of the local Delta (a large number of interesting islands) and Uruguay; and also the Puerto de Frutos, a big number of small businesses that sell all kinds of goods, specially crafts made of cane and wicker.

There are two ways to arrive to Tigre, both by train. On one side, you can use the traditional service, provided by Mitre trains, branch Tigre, departing from Retiro station, a few blocks away from the center of Buenos Aires. With a low cost of 0.90 pesos (US$ 0.30), the best maintained public service trains in Argentina will take you there in less than an hour. These ride through the north zone of the city and Gran Buenos Aires, the area with the country’s highest incomes. On the other side, you can combine the Mitre train, Bartolome Mitre branch, and take the Train de la Costa, a touristic service that costs, on weekends, 4 pesos for locals and 6 (US$ 2) for outsiders. The tickets allows you to get off and on the train any time you want along the way. Some interesting stops are Anchorena station, where we can access the Rio de la Plata, and Barrancas de San Isidro, with an antiques fair where you’ll find many interesting items, similar to those you find in Defensa street at San Telmo.

The TBA train schedule among Retiro and Tigre stations can be found here. The Train de la Costa has its own website.

The touristic interest on Tigre becomes clear if you consider that the local government has invested for years in the positioning of the location, through infrastructure and landscapes improvements. In the begginings of the XX century, Tigre was the destination of the wealthiest class in Argentina, who moved from their expensive homes in San Isidro. You can still find excellent examples of the architecture of those times in the Rowing Club (in front of the river terminal) and the so called Tigre Club, a huge old house with a big explanade that goes through the street and heads right into the river, a location I was lucky to visit during the times I worked as a journalist in the northern zone. More about historical houses in the Municipalidad de Tigre website.

Of course, not everything at Tigre has been “touristified”. We refer only to the area of the location’s center, around the river port, and the river’s margins. Anyways, there’s a growing private investment in the area, now that the touristic interest is increasing on the side of foreign tourists, who didn’t use to get there so frequently.

The Puerto de Frutos is an interesting locations to shop if you’re looking for handcrafts made of cane and wicker. There’s a huge variety, although with the touristification of the area, the prices have rised and the supply is becoming more complete and sofisticated. The weekends the place is completely packed with visitors and it’s a quite interesting visit that can take a few hours. Particularly, every time I went there I’ve come back home with some wood or wicker craft, cheese -I particularly like the spicy ones- and Otto Tipp red beer, now among my favorites (Otto Tipp is from the locality of El Bolson, in the argentinean Patagonia, but the truth is I don’t know any other place in Buenos Aires that carries this beer; if anyone knows, let me know in the comments). Anyways, every time it’s easier to find diverse products, even wicker baskets … made in China. Of course, the artisan spirit of the first years is slowly being lost, in the same way the fruits -particularly oranges, harvested in the Delta islands- are limited to a small part of the place.

There are good references to the destinations you can visit in this area at the Municipalidad de Tigre website. It’s an alternative to spend the day, basically, unless you’re interested in spending the night at some hotel in the Delta islands, which is not a bad option.

I already insisted many times in this point: when one proceeds as an analyst, one can never assume the point of view of the interviewed person. That they assume the world in a determined way and explain it a certain form is the start point of an analysis, not the whole work. As Bruno Latour puts it, as researchers we must never describe the tribe in the tribe’s language. Or as Bourdieu says: to recover the common senses of the agents is the first step, a necessary one, of any research, but in the second stage one should take distance frome these speeches, make them objective.

What’s the point with all of this? Let’s take an example: tourists, particularly travellers and backpackers, affirm they travel to see other people, other cultures. But as Natalia Delfino and German Pikas analyze in their about-to-be-delivered thesis, when interviewing tourists in a hotel in Buenos Aires, most of the travellers admitted they had barely spoken to any native people, except those who worked in the hotel or other services. In a way, the traveller affirmed he traveled to see other people, which whom they finally didn’t interact. This doesn’t mean they’re lying; representations about our practices, and our practices themselves, are not always easy to agree. Think here about what you’ve done the first time you visited a city. Except when you have a friend who lives there, usually the people we met are our hotel’s roomates. This changes, of course, in those cities we visit over and over, or the ones we stay at for work reasons.

But in Natalia and German’s work there is an “other”: the other tourists. In the middle of these unknown cities, travellers establish new relations, but usually with those who share their conditions. That is, since they’re moving around the city, trying to get to know it, they get used to fighting the difficulties of moving around unkown territories. Instead of the native, Natalia and German hypothetize, the other is, precisely, another tourist.

What’s exposed here is rather a series of hypothesis that work fine in the case of Natalia and German’s thesis, based on a field work and interviews in a Buenos Aires hotel. It’s interesting to see how much distance there is between what we think we’re doing -in this case, meeting new people- and the practice itself -that is, not meeting natives, but other tourists instead. It would be interesting to think how does this relate in such a complex field as tourism and how this kind of hypothesis can allow us to think about the structures of a field such as travel, which is always moving but also quite still at the same time.

One of the oldest polemics in social sciences is the one that hypothesizes on the capacity of autonomy by individuals. To put it simply, there have always been two extreme postures and a vast variety of in-between positions. In one side, we have those who believe society has such solid structures that it restrains any autonomy of the subject, who ends up doing what “society” wants him to -this is usually referred to as “macrosociology”. On the other side, there are those who theorise on the ability of individuals to creat social reality in a contingent way -”microsociology”.

Some reader asked me about the possibility of independent professionals in the tourism field, and if there was nothing left to do but to get tied to the mummyfied tours. As I stated in a previous entry (spanish only), in fact there are possibilities to make some innovations. But, as with any change, you start from zero. The tourism field has a huge solid structure, where tourists and operators share a determined vision of the world. Thus, “touristified locations” are almost obvious: deep down, everyone knows what to visit. But this doesn’t mean that everyone ends up going to the same places. For example, those who developed tours to football games in Buenos Aires (I talked about it a few days ago, spanish only too) combined in a very insteresting way the visits to Caminito -one of the most touristic sites of the city- with the offering of assisting to one of the games in the Boca stadium, only a few steps away. And those who sell tours through tango salons, innovate in locations and the type of dance to be shown -the so called “tango salon” and the touristified “tango fantasia”, full of movements and unnecessary figures- but not so much in the product. Tango, as a touristic merchandise, is installed long ago, and it provides a good base to innovate upon.

To change things on any market, as Bourdieu puts it, first one has to know the rules of the market and to possess certaing symbolic and material capital to legitimate our position in it. To innovate is not starting from zero; usually, it’s more a proposal of change that, to be known as such, must start by certain shared perceptions of the world, that can be recognized by actors in that field.

In The condition of postmodernity, David Harvey hypothesizes that what many call posmodernism or posfordism doesn’t imply a rupture with the past, but tendencies that accelerate the conditions that were already present in the modernism/fordism. More likely, what we have is a capitalism that has accomplished the combination of techonologic advance and the dismantling of the Welfare State which allows impressively the rotation of capital and managing the timings of workers and consumers. None of this is entirely new: the marxist theory had analyzed time as one of the main functions when securing the capitalist’s profits. And many before had theorised about the uses of space not only as a representation, but also as a form of legitimation of the domination. Harvey contributes by establishing the relations between the space-time understanding which allows a higher rotation of capital and the changes in the cultural sphere -which is usually known as posmodernity. Harvey is more than interested in taking a strong idea of determination; what is usually resumed in Engels words: “at the end, the determination is economic”.

But what’s interesting is that this whole idea of capitalism rentability coming from the use of the capitalist’s time and space has recently moved from the industrial production to the services field. And you can see this very well in tourism market. The earnings of the actors that provide services are clearly related to the ability to manage the tourist’s spaces and times.

On the side of space, we have the conformation of enclaves. It’s about specific areas of the city, dedicated to tourism. Not always they’re separated from working zones; in the last years, there’s a tedency to mix them, as Shannon O’Halloran analyzes in a work that can be found at Blog de Viajes (spanish only). The central point: to keep tourists from leaving a determined area, which guarantees a bigger profit to those who offer services there. In Buenos Aires, for example, a very characteristic enclave is Caminito, at La Boca, Buenos Aires. There, tourists are told not to away too far. The reason: the area is dangerous and they could be robbed if they leave the enclave. This is reinforced by the fact that there’s a strong presence of policemen in the recommended area: so if you leave, you are practically on your own, not a single policeman is there. One would have to be very naive not to see that here’s a strategy destined to manipulate the movement of the tourist and place it at the service of the tourism industry. And there are similar examples everywhere in the world. I’m not saying enclaves are inventions; most of the times they’re locations of historical and social based importance. But cannot oversee that the tourism market and the government make strong efforts to give these locations even higher importance.