Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
GLORIOUS DEATH IN BUENOS AIRES
Only in Buenos Aires can the wealthy and powerful elite keep their status after death. When decades
of dining on rich food and drink have taken their toll, Buenos Aires' finest move ceremoniously
across the street to the Cementerio de la Recoleta ( Click here ), joining their ancestors in a place they
have religiously visited all their lives.
Argentines are a strange bunch who tend to celebrate their most honored national figures not on the
date of their birth, but on the date of their death (after all, they're nobody when they're born).
Nowhere is this obsession with mortality more evident than at Recoleta, where generations of the elite
repose in the grandeur of ostentatious mausoleums. Real estate here is among Buenos Aires' priciest:
there's a saying that goes, 'It is cheaper to live extravagantly all your life than to be buried in Re-
coleta.'
It's not just being rich that gets you a prime resting spot here: your name matters. Those lucky few
with surnames like Alvear, Anchorena, Mitre or Sarmiento are pretty much guaranteed to be laid
down. Evita's remains are here (in the Familia Duarte sarcophagus), but her lack of aristocracy and the
fact that she dedicated her life not to BA's rich but rather to its poor infuriated the bigwigs.
A larger and much less touristy graveyard is Cementerio de la Chacarita , located in the neighbor-
hood of Chacarita. The cemetery opened in the 1870s to accommodate the yellow-fever victims of San
Telmo and La Boca. Although much more democratic and modest, Chacarita's most elaborate tombs
match Recoleta's finest. One of the most visited belongs to Carlos Gardel, the famous tango singer.
Plaques from around the world cover the base of his life-size statue, many thanking him for favors
granted. Like Evita, Juan Perón and others, Gardel is a quasi saint toward whom countless Argentines
feel an almost religious devotion. The anniversaries of Gardel's birth and death days see thousands of
pilgrims jamming the cemetery's streets.
Another spiritual personality in Chacarita is Madre María Salomé, a disciple of the famous healer
Pancho Sierra. Every day, but especially on the second day of each month (she died on October 2,
1928), adherents of her cult cover her tomb with white carnations. To visit Chacarita, take Línea B of
the Subte to the end of the line at Federico Lacroze and cross the street.
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