1282  El Cafishio

Date: Tue, 13 May 2003 12:48:00 -0400
From: Sergio <cachafaz@ADELPHIA.NET>
Subject: El Cafishio

CAFISHIO -
Procurer - It seems that this lunfardo word that means "Procurer" "Pimp"
came from Italian "stoccafisso" (in turn taken from German Stockfisch)
literally stick fish or dry cod. This term was initially used to describe a
rigid and thin person.
Pimps at the end of the 19th.century walked in a stiff way, at times they
had powdered faces; it was due to these characteristics that they said
"parece un stoccafisso" - he looks like a stoccafisso (dry cod) the word
was later deformed to "Cafishio".

Buenos Aires like any big city of the world has certain characters. One of
them is "el cafishio".

They lived where the tango was born, the outskirts, the poor neighborhoods
surrounding the big city, bars, gambling houses, brothels, tango and easy
women were part of their daily lives. They are still very much alive,
semi-illiterate, their art is to live without working by exploiting women
(physical effort does not agree with their life style) . They usually had
only one, perhaps two "pupils". Their art was/is to attract women on the
basis of seduction and "pinta" good looks and good tango dancing. Their
pretension was to have enough money to eat and dress well, the barber, the
horse races, the card games and to spend time with the boys at the "cafe" (a
bar, point of daily socialization). So if they could hook a nice pupil they
had a comfortable life style that lasted for a while...for a while I say
because it was question of time that the woman would leave them. When "la
mina" (the woman) leaves, the cafishio experiences genuine pain, he will
cry not only because of his hurt pride, or the loss of a profitable
merchandise but because he will miss her, since quite deep in his heart, in
his own peculiar way, he loves her.

The tango world of our days is a cultural pot where interact all sort of
characters. It is necessary to be aware and discriminative.
This is perhaps one of the reasons it is so interesting.

Have good tangos, but be aware of Cafishios.

Date: Tue, 13 May 2003 12:12:41 -0700
From: Bruno <romerob@TELUSPLANET.NET>
Subject: Re: El Cafishio

In reference to "El Cafishio" posting I recalled what Robert Duvall said in
an interview related to the upcoming of his film Assassination Tango" which
appeared in local magazine in Calgary, Alberta. Quote "....to dance tango
well one has to be a pimp (cafishio) and a thief.... told by a famous tango
dancer who passed away. I thought about this and the sought out tango
dancing skills a pimp and a thief might have, are the pimp (cafishio) has a
developed skill in the art of seduction and the thief a developed skill in
getting to know a potential victim(s). I guess if a tango male dancer is
good in the art of seducing women, and he has that ability to get to know
people as a thief would then he meets the requirements expressed by the
famous tango dancer mentioned above to be a good tango dancer.

Bruno