The Last of Good Air

Palermo, the neighborhood I stayed in was exciting, lively--it was seemingly the prime spot for nightlife. But the day in Buenos Aires belonged to La Boca (my pics here), by far my favorite neighborhood. Although touristy, La Boca has a charm that comes from more than just the colorful streets--it'll bring the gadabout right out of you. You might think its gaudy or tacky, at first, but the variegated scheme comes from the tradition of having used leftover paint from the shipyard to coat homes those that could otherwise not afford it.

The highlight of La Boca wasn't the Caminito or even stopping in at a random cafe and catching a tango show, but rather the most note-worthy book press I've yet encountered:

During the crisis Argentina’s middle class, which historically had been the largest in Latin America, collapsed. Half the population fell below the poverty line, and thousands of people walked the streets collecting scraps of cardboard and paper from the gutters and rubbish bins to sell for whatever they could get. They were, and still are, known as cartoneros – ‘cardboard people’. With most consumers finding it almost impossible to buy everyday household items, let alone luxury goods, Argentine publishing houses were struck particularly hard: imported books cost four or five times more after the great devaluation of the peso at the beginning of 2002.

Social experimentation, improvisation and cooperation occurred in neighbourhoods and cities across the country: factories started up again, run by shop-floor workers; a barter system evolved, in which millions of people participated; unemployed members of the middle classes and others began to create their own forms of self-government; street artists formed themselves into collectives. Since 2005 the country’s political institutions have been shored up, and a process of macroeconomic recovery has taken place. The period of greatest social crisis has passed, but it has left its mark; the government can no longer follow the neo-liberal approach of the 1990s. Yet while there has been a slight shift to the left, basically the system has recovered, and although there is less poverty, wealth is still mainly concentrated in the hands of the few. There is less unemployment, but people’s buying power has also decreased.

EC’s work began in this economic and political context. From the outset it bought cardboard from the cartoneros for five times the normal price. Several of Latin America’s most important writers or their literary executors waived the copyright on some of their works. The front and back cover of each of EC’s publications is produced by a group of cartoneros, cutting and painting and then attaching a little pile of photocopied text (although this is gradually being replaced by offset printing).

They kindly posed for my pictures, here.