Born in Montevideo in 1851, the Cané family returned to Argentina when Miguel was only two years old. Their self-imposed exile from Rosas likely influenced the young Cané to become involved in Argentine politics, but he also left behind a body of literature that reflected the spirit of a new nation discovering itself.
In the 1860s, Cané attended the prestigious Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires along with classmates who would also become leaders of Argentina. With a new curriculum directed by Amadeo Jacques, twenty years later Cané would look back on his time there & write a memoir titled Juvenilia:
After participating in the War of the Triple Alliance, Cané accompanied his cousin on an extended trip to Europe. He also became a European correspondent for the newspapers La Tribuna & El Nacional while on the road, covering conflicts & recording his experiences. Travelogues were all the rage & allowed Argentine readers to get a vicarious taste of travel.
On his return, Cané married & had two children then graduated from law school. His political career began as mayor of Buenos Aires. Eventually Cané crossed over to national politics & served in Congress as well as became ambassador to Colombia & Venezuela in 1893 under the presidency of Luis Saénz Peña. The largest plaque on his mausoleum reminds visitors that he became president of the influential Jockey Club in 1894. After many years of public service, Cané passed away in 1905. His neglected tomb sits along a major walkway in the cemetery, barely attracting the attention of tourists on route to see the nearby burial place of Eva Perón:
This article appeared in the online edition of the Kennesaw State University official student newspaper. Although this Georgia university publication has received awards & praise, there are a few major errors in this article that warrant some fact-checking & revision…
Cemetery built in Buenos Aires due to yellow fever to sell with Covid
In 1871, Buenos Aires experienced a serious health crisis. Struck by yellow fever, the Argentine capital saw the only two cemeteries in the city at the time overflowing at the very start of the epidemic.
Faced with death figures rising to 700 a day, authorities saw no other solution than to hastily open a new cemetery – that of Chacarita, which ended up receiving most of the 18,000 victims. of disease. At the time, Buenos Aires had no more than 180,000 inhabitants.
Our comment: City historians generally estimate the number of yellow fever victims as 14,000, or 10% of the population of Buenos Aires, with burials taking place first in the Southern Cemetery & later in Chacarita Cemetery.
Today, 150 years later, expanded and with new areas intended only for those killed by the coronavirus, Chacarita cemetery is once again on the edge. The employees, members of the park and cemetery workers union, have asked the Ministry of Labor to be vaccinated as soon as possible, otherwise they will participate in a nationwide strike and stop collecting bodies and taking them to their graves.
“We were classified as essential from the first moment because we had to keep working to keep the flow of burials going. Now, at the time of vaccination, we are not considered essential and we go to the end of the line,” says Folha Salvador Valente, from Soecra (Union of Cemeteries Workers and Employees of the Argentine Republic).
“It’s not fair, we are much more exposed than the general population, we are on the front lines, as doctors, and we have already lost many colleagues.”
Our comment: The SOECRA union secretary is Salvador Valente. Folha is a Portuguese word that means “leaf”, “sheet of paper” or “page”. Oh, I know where this is going…
A first request for priority vaccination and additional protective equipment, made in January, was refused by the government. For this reason, cemetery workers returned to register the same demand this week, now with the threat of a strike. If it is a national problem, it is in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires, epicenter of the pandemic in Argentina, that the situation is most serious.
The traditional cemetery of Recoleta has been crowded for some time and today it functions more as an open-air museum, as it no longer receives new burials. There is also a more popular cemetery in the Flores neighborhood – another opening up an exclusive area for the dead by Covid – which, like Chacarita, is saturated.
Our comment: Completely false that Recoleta Cemetery no longer receives new burials. It is still a functioning cemetery.
La Chacarita is the largest in the city in activity and one of the most emblematic of the Argentine capital. He buried the idol of the tango Carlos Gardel, the writer Roberto Arlt, the plastic artist Antonio Berni and the composer Enrique Santos Discépolo, among other celebrities.
The cemetery also housed the body of Juan Domingo Perón for many years, until his grave was attacked, and the hands of the former president uprooted and stolen, in 1987. The reason for the crime and the fate of the Perón’s hands remain unknown, in another mysterious story of local politics.
Perón family mausoleum. Photos by Robert in 2005, one year before Perón was moved to the Quinta de San Vicente.
“Chacarita is an Argentinian heritage. It is the cemetery that is home to popular culture icons, football players, tangueiros, actors, in addition to Perón to a certain extent. [após o sequestro das mãos, o resto do corpo foi levado a uma propriedade particular da família]“If the Recoleta cemetery is that of the aristocratic elite of the 19th century, that of Chacarita is that of popular culture,” says historian Felipe Pigna.
Our comment: More random Portuguese! So this article was lifted from the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo. But why use a Brazil source for an article about Argentina? Odd to say the least.
For the researcher, it is important to preserve the cemetery both as a place of functioning and as a memory of the porteños. “As much as the current pandemic is causing great suffering to the city, we must remember the nightmare of yellow fever and how frightened the people were. At that time, it was not known that the disease was transmitted by a mosquito. There was an important crisis policy and even the president [Domingo Faustino] Sarmiento left town, “Pugna recalls.” Buenos Aires was in charge of a commission of notables, doctors, politicians, who were also dying.
The historian recalls that at that time, the so-called “death train” also circulated in the city, a locomotive of a wagon that crossed the Argentine capital to pick up the dead from their homes.
Valente, from the cemetery workers union, recalls that today they collect corpses from their homes and accompany them to the grave. “Due to the current protocol, only a loved one can be present at the funeral, in addition to one of our employees. In other words, our role in this pandemic is essential,” he recalls. “There are private funeral homes that had to close because all the employees were infected. We are working overtime and at our limit. We want the vaccine so that we don’t have to interrupt our work.
In response, the government claims to be assessing demand, but Argentina suffers from a vaccine shortage. The main government contract with the Russian laboratory Gamaleia has been delayed and deliveries of the Sputnik V immunizer are taking too long. Likewise, drugs purchased from AstraZeneca and Chinese Sinopharm arrive in smaller quantities than promised.
So far Argentina has only vaccinated 15% of the population with one dose and 2% with both.
Glaring errors aside, cemetery workers should be considered frontline workers just like health care providers. They provide an essential service in normal times & even more so during a pandemic.
Opening with over four minutes of historical videos of violent confrontations & death scenes set to the Argentine national anthem, Tierra de los Padres (Fatherland) then switches to the walkways of Recoleta Cemetery. Director Nicolás Prividera uses this final resting place to explore not-so-traditional points of view of Argentina’s complicated history. Whatever opinion leaders had on particular issues during their lifetime, they often ended up in Recoleta Cemetery almost side by side… friends & foes alike.
The second scene sets the tone for the rest of the movie: everyday people —not trained actors— read excerpts written by historical figures buried in Recoleta Cemetery, often at the site of their burial. Prividera explains his concept:
El cementerio de la Recoleta es el más antiguo de Buenos Aires. En 1881, en coincidencia con la formación del estado moderno, se lo transformó en una necrópolis: una simbólica ciudad dentro de la ciudad en la que los mausoleos de los “padres fundadores” trazan un recorrido por la historia oficial. Sin embargo, esta historia también puede ser leída desde la perspectiva de los vencidos…
Recoleta Cemetery is the oldest in Buenos Aires. In 1881, coinciding with the formation of the modern state, it was transformed into a necropolis: a symbolic city within the city in which the mausoleums of the “founding fathers” trace a journey through official history. However, this history can also be read from the perspective of the defeated…
After great debates of Argentine history are spoken aloud, their readers fade away & are replaced by shots of specific sculptures, cemetery caretakers cleaning & repairing mausoleums or the occasional tourist:
Ideologies at odds are presented more or less in chronological order: civilization vs. barbarie as defined by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento· internal conflict as a means for glory in South America according to Juan Bautista Alberdi· immigrants viewed as immoral & anormal by the Liga Patriótica Argentina·Eva Perón dividing people into those who hate, those who are indifferent & those who love ·Aramburu at the hands of the Montoneros · Rodolfo Walsh confronting the military junta· and many others.
As this excellent review by Guido Pellegrini states, the director’s political stance is made clear by his selection of texts & images. Anti-elite & wholeheartedly Peronista, Prividera makes no attempt to balance opinions or explain historical context. This bias can be confusing & mislead viewers who have little idea of Argentina’s many historical twists & turns… something we make an effort to explain in this blog & in our PDF guide. No small task but ultimately worthwhile to gain an understanding of Recoleta Cemetery.
The only other criticism would be a failure to respect architectural heritage. Recoleta Cemetery is almost 200 years old, & its mausoleums need to remain for future generations to contemplate like Prividera has done. But he places his readers directly on the tombs of their author’s texts —sitting, standing or inserted among the statues. While his intentions are good, those type of takes should have never been permitted.
Tierra de los Padres can be seen for free in its entirety on YouTube.
Juan Bautista Mignaquy exemplified the entrepreneurial spirit of the early 20th century in Argentina. Seemingly with a hand in every pot, successful business ventures gave Mignaquy a great deal of influence… but surprisingly few people remember his contributions to a growing nation today.
Born in 1859 in the French Basque Country, a young Juan Bautista arrived alone in Buenos Aires at the age of 12 or 13 & began to work for Luis Logegaray, a fellow Basque who had established a successful wholesale & warehouse business. Following in his mentor’s footsteps, Mignaquy became part of Logegaray’s association & kept offices in downtown Buenos Aires for 70 years.
Much of his success would come from dedicated night study sessions, encouraged & supported by Logegaray. That hard work paid off when Mignaquy was accepted to the Colegio San José —founded by French Basque missionaries— and had classmates who would later go on to make names for the themselves as well: Luis María Drago, General Enrique Mosconi, Tomás Duggan & Jacobo Peuser to name a few.
After the death of Logegaray, Mignaquy went to Paris & lived there for two years with Logegaray’s widow; no doubt he saw her as an adopted mother. Besides maintaining the import & distribution business, Mignaquy would return to Argentina & occupy several important positions on the local & national level, many noted by plaques which decorate his family mausoleum. He passed away in 1940 but is remembered by the Provincia de Buenos Aires bank where he sat on the directive board:
Mignaquy acted as President of the Buenos Aires stock market in 1902 & also had a top position in the El Comercio insurance company:
A reminder of Mignaquy’s French roots are present with a plaque from a prominent Basque organization:
He also acted as director of Cusenier, an importer of distilled French beverages & cider. He also imported the popular vermouth Cinzano from Italy:
As if those accomplishments were not enough, Mignaquy founded a trolley company that connected Retiro to the southern suburbs of Buenos Aires. In 1930, one of their trolleys fell into the Riachuelo when the conductor failed to see red lights in the fog that indicated Puente Bosch had been raised. Almost all 60 passengers on board died. You can imagine the city’s shock. A few tracks of that trolley line still exist, but the largest vestige of the Mignaquy trade empire sits abandoned in La Boca, waiting for restoration & for someone to take advantage of its prime location… directly across from La Bombonera. At least this warehouse keeps his memory alive:
