Politics – The Exhibitist

Museo al Banco Central de la Republica Argentina [Argentina Central Bank Museum]

May 9, 2019May 14, 2019The ExhibitistLeave a comment

You might recall I have visited a bank museum before, that of the Banco Ciudad. It was a very interesting look at the bank’s founding and role in society, and I was slow to add any other bank museums to my list when I found another one. I assumed it would be similar.

BUT IT WASN’T.

The new entrance is a bigger version of this one.

Banco Central is the national bank of Argentina, and its history is of course tied to the economic history of the country, which is, to put it generously, bonkers. The museum, officially known as the Museo Histórico y Numismático Héctor Carlos Janson, takes an entirely different course than that of Banco Ciudad and focuses on the history and development of currency. That history is also bonkers.

The first room of the museum looks briefly at the history of currency in South America.

Oh, hey, is that a painting the recreates elements of a 17th century map? Probably pretty charming!

Is…is Buenos Aires Mary? Or Jesus? You know what, nevermind.

Anyway, back before Europeans arrived for their extended pillage-murder spree, frequently used currency items included cocoa beans, leaves, small metal pieces, and cowrie shells.

Only nobles had access to cocoa trees and the bean store houses. Yes, there were also counterfeit beans.

Next up are examples of colonial-era currency.

Obviously everything in this museum was in a glass case, so it’s a whole post of just super shitty photography.

The colonial coins were minted in Potosí, in Bolivia, close to Cerro Rico, a huge silver mine that Spain spent years plundering. A stunning number of miners have died there over time, earning the place the name “the mountain that eats men,” because nothing in colonial history isn’t horrifically grim (mining the mountain continues to be horrifically grim).

VTRAQUE VNUM: “Both Are One” (Spain and the colonies), LOL.

Next up, the first currency minted following independence:

Money was minted by the provincial governments, which is why the gold coin above says “Provinces of the Rio de la Plata.” The Banco de las Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata was created with the aim of unifying the nation’s printed currency, but the other provinces were not cool with this so it did not happen (had a lot to do with economic troubles from the war with Brazil). So, money from all over continued.

Notes were printed abroad, and included portraits of important figures of independence in the New World, such as Simón Bolivar, George Washington, Ben Franklin, and William Penn.

Things got weird, as things tend to do, during the civil war. General de Rosas, blurrily pictured below, dissolved the national bank and created an administration to issue paper money and coins. These were monedas corrientes. I am not nearly as well-versed in Argentine history as the museum’s informational panels assume, so I can’t much fill you in beyond that.

You will note, possibly, two things about the following bill: One, its domination is 1000, which means it was rapidly devaluating, generally not at all a good thing; and two, it’s got palm trees and kangaroos on it.

The money was at the time printed in Buenos Aires, but the plates were engraved in London. The museum notes that printing houses at the time worked for several countries and contends that’s why the kangaroo and llama appear together on an Argentine banknote, but frankly I still have a lot of questions.

I also find the next phase of currency a wee bit confusing, something that can likely be attributed once again to my lack of knowledge of the nation’s history, but next you get “pesos fuertes” and “pesos corrientes.”

If there is any unifying lesson to this museum, it’s that the Argentine economy has never been all that stable.

Here we take a small detour into a historical oddity. A French lawyer showed up in the west of the country and in 1860 declared himself “King of the Araucania and Patagonia.” He then created a constitution, a flag, and a national anthem, and started minting money.

Orélie-Antoine de Tounens, looking a lot like a dude that would just go do something like that.

He was arrested, declared insane, and deported, but he apparently took his claim very seriously and tried, for the rest of his life and without success, to really make it stick. He died childless, but people have claimed to be his heirs for awhile now, and they actually still mint (technically worthless) coins, I guess for the sole purpose of having them displayed at the Central Bank museum.

Now, I’m going to hop forward about 100 years, skipping a major financial crisis, to get to the financial crises of recent history. There was a substantial devaluation during the military dictatorship, which attempted to stabilize things, but, spoiler alert, did not.

These are from the last couple years of the dictatorship, the early 80s.

The military dictatorship fell and democracy was restored in 1983, but there was still a huuuuge problem in the form of a massive external debt, currency devaluation, and serious inflation. The new government started whacking off zeroes, so that 10000 old pesos would equal one new peso.

It did not work. These were printed in 1983; by 1985, 10000 peso notes were back in circulation. That year, the president decided what the country really needed was to start from scratch. The peso was old and busted. The Austral was the new hotness.

Alas:

The name “peso” made its return with the “pesos convertibles” in the 90s, when the peso was pegged to the US dollar at a 1 to 1 rate. This also didn’t work and led to the financial crisis of 2001, which many Argentines can tell you absolutely wild stories about. The president famously fled the Pink House by helicopter. Some of the bills from this period are still in circulation; I could dig some out of my wallet right now.

This time of utter economic collapse led to a widespread return to a barter economy, leading to the use of these barter network vouchers.

Things got…okay after that. And then less okay. That’s kind of how it goes here.

The current government, for political reasons I’m not going to get into, decided that the money needed a makeover, so now it’s all about the nature.

Oh, hey…we’re back up to 1000 pesos notes. Huh.

After the rooms of currency, the museum has some historical artifacts related to the history of banking in Argentina, including French scales used to weigh coins.

Eva Perón spent a few months working out of the Central Bank, and they have her office furniture.

I think I’ve mentioned before that it’s hard to overstate Evita’s importance here.

I’m going to wrap this us with the museum’s most endearing feature, a selfie point.

These denominations should be good for a few months, at least.

The Banco Central Museum is located in the financial district of Buenos Aires, blocks from the Plaza de Mayo, at San Martín 216. It is open Monday through Friday, 10am to 4pm, and is free. There are some information cards in English for each room, although several were missing when I visited, and they are not particularly complete. The main signage is solely in Spanish. As it is located in the city’s heart, you can get to the museum in a million, billion ways.

Museo Malvinas e Islas del Atlántico Sur [Malvinas and South Atlantic Islands Museum]

November 18, 2018The ExhibitistLeave a comment

There is something that has always struck me as phenomenally tragic about the Malvinas War.

Cementerio_Argentino_de_Puerto_Darwin — They weren’t even brought home. Photo by Tomás Terroba

It isn’t the biggest waste of life ever perpetrated, but it was a waste of life all the same.

It’s not easy for people who were born and raised in imperial powers to understand, either. There’s a lot of background to the conflict, which is important for understanding how the islands are generally viewed by Argentines, and I am in no way well-versed in the history of it, so I’m going to try to briefly illustrate what was going on before the war broke out in 1982.

1– The sovereignty of the Malvinas (they are known officially outside of Argentina as the Falklands, but this is where I live and also what the museum is called, so I’m going to stick with Malvinas) had been in dispute for 200 years, although they have been held continuously by the British since 1833.

2– The belief that the Malvinas are rightfully the possession of Argentina has been culturally entrenched for a long time.

3– British rule over the Malvinas is seen as imperialistic, and the imperial ambitions of European nations and the US has long wreaked profound tragedy across South America, and indeed the political interference of those nations was actively still doing that in the support of the various military juntas that overthrew Latin American governments at the time.

4– Argentina’s military dictatura had murdered thousands of people and was facing a severe economic crisis and growing opposition; the war was a somewhat cynical ploy to bolster home support by appealing to that dumbest of manipulable emotions, nationalism. The war, the loss–it’s all tainted by its association with an illegitimate and murderous regime.

5– Unlike the US, which is more or less constantly sending soldiers to die in conflicts, Argentina hadn’t been involved in any foreign conflicts to speak of since the Paraguayan War in 1870. Most of the Argentine war dead in the Malvinas were conscripts.

So–the Museo Malvinas is located on the edge of the ex-Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada, once the largest clandestine detention center and execution site during the dictatura, now a memorial complex. The museum itself is quite new and really lovely.

Outside the building is a large pool with a map of the Malvinas in the middle:

and a memorial to the ARA General Belgrano, which was sunk by British torpedoes with 321 of its crew and two civilians.

It’s not a particularly comforting space. You walk down, until the silhouettes of the ship are above you. The sound of the fountain forcefully brings to mind the idea of water rushing into the ship. It is an evocative, emotional memorial.

Inside, the museum covers the history and flora and fauna of the islands.

That is the focus of the very polished film that runs inside this little theater, despite its introduction here.

There is a lot of multimedia in the museum.

There are also areas that cover the older history of the islands as well as Argentine-British relations.

Antonio Rivero is something of a folk hero within the Malvinas story, but he’s maybe better characterized as someone who was really, really upset over a labor dispute.

A sizable portion of the museum is dedicated to how the Malvinas have been and are currently addressed in Argentina’s culture, and the idea and importance of sovereignty.

Much of the museum works to make the concepts accessible to the children who visit; this interactive map says “How do we build paths to the Malvinas?” and the strings are color-coded to the choices that can be made as a nation: diplomacy, dialog, peace, conflict, compromise, etc.

Plenty of space is also given to the war and the dictatura (the leaders had assumed that the UK would not really bother with a military response and that the US, which Argentina had been aiding in funding the Nicaraguan Contras, would stay discreetly out of it, neither of which would be true) that made the dumb ass decision to go through with the invasion.

A Mother of the Plaza de Mayo implores viewers to remember the Disappeared are also Argentines.

A soldier lost his sleeve and the arm that was in it.

A lot of dumb ass propaganda going around, too.

The war dead are, naturally, also memorialized. You can watch the tablets and note how many were young draftees.

So, for better or worse, the Malvinas remain a British holding (the Falklanders, incidentally, are overwhelmingly of British descent and wish to stay within the UK). The brief war ended with 904 dead and 2432 wounded. The loss finally brought down the dictatura, which had bought nothing with all the blood it spent for Argentina except meaningless grief and psychic scars.

The Malvinas are currently on the 50 peso note.

The Museo Malvinas e Islas del Atlántico Sur is free and open seven days a week and holidays. It’s accessible by train and several bus lines, as it is situated at the back of the ESMA on Avenida del Libertador, a huge avenue. None of the signage is in English, so if your language is weak, you’ll need to bring a translator. There’s a nice small cafe within the building.

Museo Etnográfico Juan B. Ambrosetti [Juan B. Amorsetti Ethnographic Museum]

October 7, 2018The Exhibitist1 Comment

Back to the UBA Museum Network! Finally!

The Ethnographic Museum is under the auspices of the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras of the University of Buenos Aires. It was founded in 1904, and it while it houses collections from other places in the world, it’s focused chiefly on this part of South America. There is a lot of information available on the English-language website.

There are several exhibitions, and I’m not going to talk about all of them, because that would be a lot. The first one, The Uttermost Part of the Earth, addresses the native populations of Tierra del Fuego, and what happened to them. It’s not a happy story.

“These people, who fascinated the Western world, are here no more. They were massacred in a few decades and not by the 16th century conquistadors, but by our grandparents less than 100 years ago.”

There were two groups that had lived in the area for thousands of years: sea hunters (Kaweshkar and Yamana) and land hunters (Selk’nam). That went fine for awhile.

The hall is set up with the items of the Native peoples on the left, and items that would be used by explorers and colonizers on the right. A model of a Yamada-style canoe is in the center. There is a guide at the beginning of the hall that translates all the text into English.

Each side is labeled “utopia,” “occupation,” and “science.”

Let’s take a look at the Native artifacts first.

Meet Robert Fitzroy, captain of HMS Beagle, the ship that Charles Darwin sailed around South America on:

Robert_Fitzroy

Now meet O’run-del’lico, a Native boy kidnapped by Fitzroy in retaliation for a stolen boat, who was renamed “Jemmy Button” because his family was given a button for him while he was taken back to England for a long time.

He and three other kidnapping victims, renamed York Minster, Fuegia Basket and Boat Memory, because no indignity was too small to inflict on them apparently, were supposed to be “civilized,” Christianized, and returned to Tierra del Fuego to serve as missionaries and intermediaries. Boat Memory died in England. The other three dropped Europeanism like a hot brick and reintegrated into their tribe immediately on their return.

“Hey,” I can hear you asking, “what other insanely racist things resulted in contact with Natives?” Hahaha.

Incidentally, the quote on the right side of the wall says, “A curious paradox of the West, that it cannot know without possessing, and it cannot possess without destroying.”

So human zoos were a thing that happened.

And there was stuff to help color-code people.

YEEAAAAAAGH WHY DO THEY ALL HAVE EYELIDS

The Selk’nam didn’t long survive sustained contact with non-Natives, which would come to include actual contract murder. The very last died in the 1970s. I’ll end this part with a song, included in the museum’s English guide and I believe from Anne Chapman’s book The End of a World, of the last shaman, Lola Kiepja (recordings available at that link):

“Here I am singing, the wind carries me; I am following the steps of those who are gone. I have been allowed to come to the mountain of power, reaching the great mountain range of heaven, the way to the house in heaven. The power of those who are gone comes back to me. I step into the house in the great mountain range of heaven. Those from infinity have spoken to me.”

The next exhibition is “Challenging the Silence: Indigenous People and the Dictatorship,” so the reading isn’t going to get any lighter here.

The last military dictatorship (supported by the US, I might add), as I’m sure you’re aware, is still very much in living memory here. Visitors are encouraged to leave a Post-It on the wall, which says, “How to challenge the silence?”

It will come as no surprise that Native rights and labor organizers ran afoul of the dictatorship.

On the left, Mapuche politician and activist Abelardo Coifin, died in internal exile. On the right, Mapuche activist Celestino Aigo, disappeared by the military in 1976.

Marina Vilte, teacher and labor leader, disappeared by the military in 1976.

The exhibition includes information on how the sugar mills (having been the beneficiaries of military muscle keeping workers in check and working for decades) would act as agents of the dictatorship, informing on workers and allow their land to be used for clandestine detention centers. One company’s own vehicles detained over 400 activists, 30 of which were never seen again.

The company was Ledesma, which is still a major producer today.

The exhibit also examines the museum’s own contribution to the erasure of Native cultures during the dictatorship, which celebrated the “Centenary of the Conquest of the Desert” in 1979, which could more accurately be characterized as the centenary of the genocide of the Native peoples. So, sure, parade time.

The busts of Native chiefs were displayed, meant to “remind us of the great facts of this epic that concluded with the happy integration of a numerous mass of indigenous peoples into the national life” are actual words that fell out of the museum director’s mouth in 1979.

Let’s take a gander at the artifacts that live upstairs, and channel our inner (or outer) textile nerds.

This exhibit covers a lot of ground and A LOT of time, there was an entire class of children occupying a large part of the room (and I never, ever begrudge children their space in learning institutions–I just didn’t get to the more recent artifacts because their activity was taking up a lot of floor space, but they were really engaged and two thumbs way up to the museum for having a hands-on activity for them), and my dinky little minor in anthropology did not equip me for being a great source on pre-Colombian history, so let’s hit this in broad strokes.

Here’s the region we’re looking at:

The exhibit covers about 4000 years of cultural development in the region (following roughly 6000 years of hunter-gatherer societies), beginning with the earliest domestication of crops and animals.

How gorgeous are those stitch patterns?!

It would have been very nice to have more information about each object, such as their ages and sources.

As things settled into the first millennium CE, society got less egalitarian and chiefdoms formed. Power became hereditary and ancestor worship was socially important.

Along with the integration of groups into a large political entity came more defined social stratification and a centralization of power and activity.

But nevermind the increasing sophistication of craftsmanship, particularly metalworking, and restricted luxury goods that signified social status, let’s get back to the textiles.

The loom comes into use, and surviving textiles show that weavers developed into specialized master craftspeople, just as the metalworkers and ceramics makers did.

Of course, everything goes to hell when the Europeans arrive, as it does. That was the area that the school children were working in, so I didn’t get photos over there.

The exhibition room is large, and there are a lot of stairs, but they’ve used the space well. Old houses present a lot of challenges when they’re used as public institutions, and they’ve done a nice job with this one. If steps are an issue for you, be aware that there are lots.

There’s more to see at the Ethnographic Museum, which is open Tuesday through Friday from 1pm to 7pm and 3pm to 7pm on weekends (closed Monday). There’s a small shop if you’d like to support the museum by upping your swag game. Admission is 40 pesos (about a US dollar currently), and it’s super easy to get to on subway lines D, A, and E and tons of buses.

Museo Evita [Evita Museum]

September 7, 2018September 7, 2018The ExhibitistLeave a comment

I’m working at a tiny disadvantage today, as I visited the Museo Evita a couple of weeks ago and photographs are not allowed, but fortunately for potential visitors, the website is well done with a lot of information.

The English-speaking world is often introduced to her first via the musical “Evita,” which is unfortunate, as it was sourced in anti-Perónist accounts and is historically inaccurate. In any case, regardless of the facts of her life, Eva Perón is subjected to the sort of scrutiny and sneering criticism that male political figures are rarely, if ever, subjected to.

It would be difficult, or even impossible, to overstate the cultural impact of Eva Perón in Argentina (as a foreigner here, I am reminded of this Sarah Glidden comic often). She is memorialized in very large ways, including the 100 peso note…

100_Pesos_bill_-_Evita_(Argentina)

…and the entire Ministry of Health building:

Edificio_del_Ministerio_de_Salud_(27266229158).jpg — There’s a whole other portrait on the other side. Photo by Deensel.

Small wonder then that the museum dedicated to her appears to be well-funded with a very engaging community presence. The vexing question of why the English-language Wikipedia identifies her primarily as an actress is perhaps a larger one.

Incidentally, wanna see how she’s identified in her Latin American Google results?

The building that houses Museo Evita and the cafe was built in the early 1900s and acquired by Eva’s social aid foundation in 1948 as Temporary Home #2, serving as a transitional support home for women and children.

These sorts of buildings present a bit of a challenge for chronological presentation, as you can see on the map that visitors receive:

Enter, right, right, slight right, left, left, left, right, right, up, left, left, right, right, left, right, right, right, slight left, slight left, right, left, right, right, left, right, left, down, exit through the gift shop.

But it’s not so difficult to navigate. There are signs and an abundance of security staff to make sure visitors know where the chronology goes next. Honestly, I would not change the set up at all; who ever feels like life moves predictably?

The museum assumes visitors have enough familiarity with Argentine history to understand the context of things, and the treatment overall is kept rather light. Most of the signage is translated into English, so English speakers will not be lost. Video clips are also subtitled with English.

Since I don’t have many photos to offer, I’m going to briefly mention my biggest impressions from the museum.

The woman had an exceptional amount of hustle. Evita was born in the sticks, the fifth child in a wealthy man’s illegitimate, side family. That man abandoned her family, leaving them in dire poverty. She went to the big city at age 15 to be an actress, which had to be at least as unforgiving an industry to women in the 1930s and 40s as it is today. She worked hard and was active in her unions, helping found the Argentine Radio Association and serving as its president in 1944. Evita took no half-measures and was probably incapable of doing so.

Women’s suffrage. Evita is widely credited with driving the issue of women’s suffrage to its political fruition, legalized in 1947 and first exercised in 1951. She also organized a women’s political party. The museum has a newsreel on the women’s vote, showcasing the government’s preparation of the new voter rolls and how to vote, and featuring a scene in which an Evita lookalike argues passionately with reluctant female family members on the civic duty of women to exercise their right to vote.

I have a very specific museum postcard collection going.

The funeral room. The room adjoining the funeral room shows a large video of the Cabildo Abierto del Justicialismo–a massive rally where the assembled people pressed Evita to accept the nomination for vice president–and the Renunciation, a radio address made nine days later where she declined the nomination (these would be among her last public acts; she would die of uterine cancer less than a year later). The visitor then turns and sees silent footage from her 14 day funeral, during which more than two million people came to pay tribute. Her voice from the Cabildo rally and Renunciation in the room behind is still heard over the funeral images, creating a moving impression of memory and legacy.

Before exiting through a nicely stocked gift shop, visitors can participate in the Millones photo project, taking a self-portrait with a photo of Evita using a mounted digital camera. I took one, but it doesn’t seem like the website has been updated in awhile.

Finally, I had some fun in the swag room, where I picked up the museum guide and the lady’s autobiography.

At 180 pesos (at the time, anyway; about US $6), it’s one of the more expensive museums I’ve been to. But it is certainly worth a visit! It’s easily accessible via the D line of the subway, and is very close to the botanical gardens. The cafe is really nice, too.