2003  Touring with Mimi Santapa

Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 12:57:12 -0800
From: randy cook <randycook95476@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Touring with Mimi Santapa

On Wednesday afternoon, in a heavy rain with high
wind, Mimi Santapa passes by our guesthouse to give
Donna and I a tour of the Costanera Reserva Ecologica
and the old ports of La Boca and Barracas.

Mimi is in a good mood, as she nearly always is, and
cheerfully tells us that the power was out at her
house in DeVoto this morning. She had assumed it was
because of a tree that had fallen in the night, but it
turned out to be water from the plumbing that had
short-circuited the wiring. "Menos mal. !Que broma!"

As she talks and drives us down Belgrano towards the
port, I study Mimi: her frizzy reddish hair, her
pleasantly worn face, her lively eyes. Above all her
hands, which speak a second language of gestures to
accompany her porteno dialect. She is a character,
typical of Buenos Aires, but also unique.

We pass the monumental statues on Avenida Julio A.
Roca, the Plaza de Mayo, the Palacio de Gobierno with
its presidential museum and crowds of schoolchildren
on tour, the Parque Colon, and the masts of the
frigate "Presidente Sarmiento".

I ask Mimi about Eva Peron. "She was a woman with the
force of a man. She was ruthless, but always on
behalf of the poor and powerless. When she found out
that her brother-in-law was a chorro, a thief who was
robbing entire barrios, she had him assassinated."
Mimi shrugged, as if to say, What else was a girl to
do?

We cross a bridge in Puerto Madero and enter Costanera
Reserva Ecologica. The area used to be a resort.
There are cement pools where bathers would wash the
sand off their feet when they were done swimming in
the Rio de la Plata. There is a beautiful sculpture
of sea nymphs and stallions, now protected by a glass
wall to keep out vandals. We see swallows and large
birds with rust-colored feathers and yellow
underwings. Another bird with a funny crest on its
head and a long tail.

Most of the buildings have been torn down, and nature
is coming back. Mimi tells us that the many ponds are
the work of beavers. We see an old bandstand where
orchestras used to come and play.

"When I was a girl, I was a great walker. I used to
walk the whole length of this coast from my uncle4s
apartment in La Boca. Now much of it is fenced off,
so you can4t get here from there anymore."

She drives us down old roads sprouting grass along the
curbs and in the cracks. Abandoned shipyards. Huge,
rusting warehouses. Some men waiting for the bus in a
shelter. From where to where?

"I like to take visitors here because it is a place
they will never see on some organized tour.
Historically, this old port was the life of the city,
and of the entire country too, because we have always
been an exporting nation. When the boats left, the
people moved away and the life went out. I saw the
last of the good years when I was a child."

Mimi drives us out of the Costanera and through the
barrio of La Boca immediately to the south. "Each
barrio in Buenos Aires had its Golden Age. San Telmo
was where the wealthy lived until the yellow fever
came and they all moved to Belgrano. La Boca4s Golden
Age was around the turn of the last century, when the
railroads brought agricultural products to be shipped
off the Europe. Look at the beautiful facades of
these buildings! They should be restored and
converted into bookstores, theaters, and restaurants."

Mimi sings the opening verse of "El Barrio de Tres
Esquinas":
Yo soy del barrio de tres esquinas,
Viejo baluarte del arrabal,
Donde florecen como glicinas
Las lindas pibas de delantal...
"This is it! This the Barrio of the Three
Streetcorners, and there is the school where the
pretty girls with their uniforms used to go, and the
blue flowers, the glicinas, on the wall. So many
tangos were born here. But look at it now--boarded up
and forgotten.

"See that building? My uncle lived on the third
floor--there! My family was Italian, French,
Galician, and English. Only the English side had any
money. Cold formal people. When my mother4s
brother-in-law got sick, they let him die in the
hospital without visiting him. Never went to the
funeral. That4s the kind of people I was expecting
when I came to San Francisco. Stiff anglo-saxons.
But it was just the opposite. I felt right at home."

She showed us the theater of Senor Tango, for which
she works as a consultant on posture, her specialty.
"I am a cura, a priest. Dancers come to me with their
problems and I give them a penance and an absolution.
They go away and don4t tell anybody that they have
seen me. Does that bother me? Not in the least! In
their place, I would do the same. If people found out
that a their teacher was going to Mimi Santapa, they
wouldn4t study with him, they would study with her.
Except Eduardito Balmaceda. He tells everyone that I
was his teacher. He4the only one I can really call my
student from start to finish."

I ask her if she has a regular partner. She mentions
Roberto, Carlos, Daniel, and other men she performs
with. "But I don4t want to belong to anybody. I
don4t want to further anybody4s career. That4s all
orgullo, ego. Carlos wanted me to perform with him in
front of 67,000 football fans at half-time last Sunday
at River Stadium. I told him no. But if he had asked
me to dance here, at this streetcorner, I would have
accepted gladly."

I feel a lump in my throat. That this woman, whose
whole life was the tango, would share her city and its
memories with a couple of novice dancers from
California, while reserving the right to pick and
choose her dances with the best in the business--this
was truly an uncommon blend of freedom and generosity.