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Interview with Cristina Castello
Buenos Aires City Chairman for a day.
Cristina Castello: “A kaleidoscope city”
By Ricardo Dessau
We inaugurate a new section “Buenos Aires City Chairman for a day”, where, month by month, different representative figure of all the activity areas of the Federal Capital shall show off their opinions and projects, should they happen to govern this city.. Here we listen to Cristina Castello, poetess and journalist. More than three thousand written press interviews, two radio programs, one on TV, a web site - www.cristinacastello.com - and a book of poems to be soon published in a bilingual edition, by L´ Harmattan, Paris: Soif (Thirst).
- You’ve visited different European cities... with such a background , what do you think about Buenos Aires?
- Buenos Aires is a kaleidoscope. Some prism glasses show her alike to Paris, Rome, Madrid. Others, find her one of the most forlorn places on earth. There is a very intense cultural activity and great artists, but she lacks Europe’s century history. She is one and a thousand cities. Just as so many of her beautiful and elegant women - earth’s most beautiful? - have one and many faces. As in the deforming mirrors at the entertainment parks, tourists fall in love with what their eyes see in such a prism dance.
- What’s your opinion about Buenos Aires’ good and evil?
- This is what I was aiming at. Buenos Aires is a contrasts City. Richness versus need, and this - millions of homeless souls “thanks” to former governments that sold the country - beyond being evil, is terrible. As it is that certain places - downtown, with few exceptions, for instance - lost their identities. Her artists, scientist, art galleries and libraries are extraordinary, as are the unknown beings, who build, whilst eluding storms. Still existing brotherly links, in spite of so many knocks, and nights - sleepless in many places - to dawn with a last drink and a friendly dialogue. . And otherwise I watch the chromatic plurality of the kaleidoscope, and I exclusively choose the nicest. The list would be unending: parks and malls, avenues, its districts with so many features, its fashion shops - as María Boneo´s , design artist, up to Paris’ best, right at the Guido and Juncal Parisian nook - restaurants, meals: the world’s tastiest, be they typical argentine or international. The “porteño” is a “bon vivant” awaiting better times for the city to smile.
- What would you do to better the city’s image?
- “I hope not. I imagine” wrote my great argentine poet, Roberto Juarroz. Let us dream... you agree? Let us dream the City’s government should strive to keep the culture inheritance, reopen sites as “Confitería El Molino” (on Callao and Rivadavia, facing the Congress building), for instance. Let us dream it is forbidden that busses travel at airplane speed, without a silencer, intoxicating us with their exhausts. It’s to wonder... as a faithful copy to the States, smokers are daily more condemned, but... is it not more harmful to breathe busses than pure air? Let us dream that the City government scatters seeds and throughout the city all trees mate with heaven. That you can wander fearless through the whole city, that there is an art education, that Buenos Aires is a great library, loved by all and to which all can accede. Let us dream the City Government really understands happiness’s social worth.
- And the living together among its citizens?
- I would build citizenry education schools, with compulsory assistance. I would create a TV channel, with highly qualified programs, so that - at least one - should show, without acting paternalistically, brotherhood happiness, manners, non violence, law respect, and participation mystics, including a rebellious health. I would do and do... but I suppose this out borders the limits of this interview, on account of which, signatures follow all I should do.
- What would you do to attract more tourists? How would you advertise the City in our country and abroad?
- I would advertise her as a life crazy city. For this many of the above mentioned items must be solved. You know... the Greek masks, mouths upwards, spoke of joy, and mouth downwards, of tragedy. Buenos Aires should be a mouth upwards. Joy.
Which would be the interesting foreign city models, to import to Buenos Aires?
- The fundamental one is Paris, world’s smile, and many Vienna beauties, and Germany’s civilized traffic, Amsterdam’s tolerance. But Buenos Aires’s principal model is.. Buenos Aires. She must recover her identity, in her looks and her language, in all the kaleidoscopic prisms. Then she would be an everlasting smile towards the Blue.
Published in « Buenos Aires Times» - July 2004
Translation: Patricio Doyle
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