VENUS IN THE RIO DE LA PLATA

April 24, 2017 SouthAmerica

It was our last day visiting Buenos Aires and after breakfast we took a yellow and black cab to the colorful neighborhood of Caminito; a 42 pesos ride that, if inflation remains steady at 30% for next year, would be more affordable later. Caminito has some two-storied corrugated metal buildings along an old defunct rail line and sits in front of a small harbor along the Rio de la Plata estuary. The houses and trinket shops sit back two blocks from the muddy water and form a chaotic cluster of repeated souvenir vendors. It’s a colorful, hot, and somewhat overpriced.

Yani and I found in a very small store a two-meter by two-meter acrylic painting that depicts wide-hipped women in short dresses at a bar with several cats and bottles with windows framing silhouettes of the city. The muted hues of orange through blue to violet make an attractive composite with contrast and pleasing balance, an essence of Buenos Aires…of easy women in a sweltering Tango bar. We discussed it for about ten minutes, because the price for us was substantial, and then decided to buy the largest painting in the store by Roberto Jofre; this is his stated master piece. The young chubby girl working the store covered the price on my MasterCard for 26,000 pesos, or about US$4,300. This is December 24^th– is a Christmas present for ourselves, the first painted artwork we have ever purchased, and it was the most expensive art item we have ever bought. But it absolutely was worth it. We are excited about it, and went to lunch while the chubby girl took the painting titled “Miss Venus y gatos en el bar” off of the wooden frame to roll the canvas for packing on our trip to Santiago in the evening.

During lunch next door at tables arranged in the street with shade awnings, we sat near the small stage and watched a woman in a silver dress and black lacy top dancing Tango with a man dressed all in black. It was hot. We ordered Quilmes beer. We had our son Owen pose with the chica in a Tango move for his picture. It was a relaxed lunch, discussing how to frame the painting, how best to later move it to the USA- should we keep it rolled up or frame it in Santiago? More Tango dances, sweat, throngs of tourists strolling by, and then the check.

The chubby girl had the painting packaged in a long cardboard tube. It did not appear sturdy enough for the trip home. On the taxi ride to our hotel Yani and I discussed the options for better securing our new artwork. At the hotel we cooled off in the air conditioning, killing time until 3 p.m. and our check out. We decided to try the plastic wrapping services that you see at all airports these days, something that we have never used before, always considering it paranoid and unneeded in travel.

The taxi ride to the hotel was quick, the streets relatively empty going into Christmas Eve. For 72 pesos we arrived at the airport building complex overlooking the coast route and the muddy waters of the Rio de la Plata. I gave the taxi driver a hundred pesos, a bit of tip for good karma. I have been tipping everywhere, it actually adds up to a lot of money, but I would do the same in the States and do not treat the people in South America any differently.

It was essentially empty inside the airport. I was here in March the year before and waited an hour at the check-in lines, now we walked up to the counter with no wait. Too easy. The man working the desk said they are not accepting check-ins for Santiago until 5:15 p.m., so we had an hour to wait. We sat down at a small café in the dark claustrophobic airport lobby. A couple of beers, coming up short on pesos and paying with a US$50 dollar bill and getting a few worthless pesos in change. And then it was time to check in our baggage, which was the greatest uncertainty we had been wondering about. How will be transported the painting? The carrying tube wrapped in orange plastic now for a cost of 95 pesos could still be damaged with something heavy landed on top of it. Would the airline have an over sized charge for the painting?

At 5:15 p.m. we walked to the counter again, still no lines. Too easy. The skinhead man told us that he cannot accept the painting for shipping until it is cleared by customs. Fine, we checked in our three small cases and then walked down to the customs office. Here we found one man waiting outside of the locked glass door. He said the customs officer has stepped out and will return promptly. We waited holding our two-meter long orange plastic wrapped tube, wondering if it needed a stamp or document or what.

The office is small. We entered it once it was our turn. The place was only 1.5-meter wide, just enough room for Owen, Yani, and me to be inside it while holding the painting vertically before the small white counter-top. A pudgy older Latino man in a white dress shirt stood tall behind the counter- the Argentinean customs officer.

The man said, “What are you declaring?”

This place was more for, get this of all possible things ridiculous, tax refunds for purchased items leaving the country. I am not interested in the refund, even if there was one; we just wanted to leave hassle free. We told him, “The LAN agent sent us here saying our painting has to be cleared by customs.”

He said, “How much is it worth?”

I replied, “We have the factura, the bill.” And show him the receipt for 26,000 pesos. His eyebrows skyrocketed up his forehead, and series of emotions quickly flashed across his face- one could describe it as hunger.

He said, “I will have to notify the director,” and he walked off with the factura going into a small back room. A minute later another pudgy older man came up to the counter with the first officer.

The director said, “You cannot take this out of the country, it has to be accompanied by a certificate that it is not violating Argentina patrimony laws.”

We explained, “We just have this factura, the store did not give us anything else, they said it would be no problem because it was being sold directly from the artist.”

The director said, “All paintings valued over 2,000 dollars must be cleared.” Now it is Christmas, and Argentina, this government office probably will not reopen until after New Year’s, we have other trip plans, and more importantly, I want my son home this year for Christmas morning to open presents. So no way we are we missing our flight, which is the very last one on the board, departing at 8:20 pm; no more flights follow it today.

I told him, “We don’t have time to return into the city and find this certificate. The store we purchased it from is probably closed now.”

The director directed, “You must take it to the central customs office downtown to be cleared.”

We told him, “This is impossible, we can’t do that. We have never heard of such a law travelling through numerous countries. If anything, this is more of a concern of the Chilean customs office for import duties. It is a new painting, with no historic value whatsoever.”

The director said, “This is Argentina law, you must leave the painting here.”

I replied, “Either you approve the painting to be shipped or I will go outside with it and rip it in half and throw it in the trash. How then is this protecting the patrimony of Argentina? You will be breaking the heart of the artist.”

The director stated, “It cannot leave Argentina.”

We walked out of the office, stomped back down to the LAN counter, and talked with their agents, telling them that these sleazy officials are putting up roadblocks in attempt to receive bribe money. The skinhead agreed to talk with them, but I can see in his face he was doing this more as trying to calm us down and fully knew that he was powerless to make any difference in the situation. So we walked back down to the customs office, finding the same result. This time walking out of the office, I told the customs officers and the LAN agent “I am going to throw this painting into the Rio de la Plata.”

They probably did not believe me- they probably make as much money as what we paid for the painting in six months of work, if not in more time. Yani said we should leave the painting at her sister’s house, but she did not have her phone number. I was now thinking about the distance between the airport and her house; they would not make it in time before we must leave. We went back to the LAN counter and asked for our luggage to be returned so Yani can get her sister’s phone number. Again, I could see this would not happen. The seven chicas working at the desk all shook their heads, saying the luggage is in route and cannot be returned. Yani asked them for a telephone guidebook to look up her sister’s number. They said we must go down to the pay telephone kiosk. Yani grumbled, “These people are the least helpful kind around.”

At the kiosk we can’t get in touch with Yani’s sister, but she did get a phone call through to the painting store in Caminito, finding out that the owner is travelling. She gets a cell number and then talked to the artist. Roberto Jofre told Yani that they have sold lots of paintings and never had any problems before, and then went on to say “You should bribe the customs people.”

I am unwilling to pander to the officers, to humble myself before their power trips and lying faces to ask how much the “fine” is. I refused to participate in the pervasive corruption of Argentina.

Yani was stressed, Owen was asking what’s going on, are we going to miss our flight, and we were all sweating in the humidity. I have had it with this problem. We walked back near the LAN counter and put our stuff down at the small café. I tore off the orange plastic and whipped out the long heavy canvass roll. I held it up unfurled so all the chicas at the LAN desk could see the rather nice artwork, and two security guards looked over my way from the sliding glass doors that lead outside. I crumpled up the painting into a large ball the size of a pumpkin and tucked it under my arm and walked out those sliding doors. Outside the heat swamped me, the sun burned, and I waited at the traffic light to cross the six-lane road to reach the coast boardwalk. This gave me minutes to contemplate the corrupt dishonesty of Argentina and then I walked to the shoreline and threw the painting into the muddy waters of Rio de la Plata!

* * *

Two months later we moved out of Santiago and relocated to Denver. Six months after returning to the states, though still doing work travel in South America, the artist Roberto Jofre had repainted his Miss Venus y gatos en el Bar. We paid for the shipping. It took Jofre two weeks of dealing with the federal government to arrange the paperwork for its export. It arrived at the Denver house rolled up in a tube. We unrolled it, finding the work is fairly similar to the lost painting in the Rio de la Plata in Buenos Aires, however, the tones are less warm, and it has more blue shades, as you can see. I tell Yani it’s because the lost original painting broke the artist’s heart. For the last three years it has made a remarkable work of art hanging in our living room.