A Love Affair That Even Modern Times Can’t Stop

Although the streets of this city echo Madrid and Paris, they lack monumental cathedrals and museums. Instead, Buenos Aires has cafes.

The quantity and quality of cafes here rival any city in the world. The biggest and best are turn-of-the-century palaces with stained-glass windows, rows of chandeliers and solemn waiters who set out the espresso and croissants as if they were dispensing Holy Communion.

Cafes are the cathedrals and museums of Argentina. For 200 years, they have figured in revolutions, assassinations, art and literature. Argentines like coffee and intrigue. They like to see and be seen. They like to talk and mope. So, cafes have inspired poems and musical odes.

Leaning over a scarred wooden table in the Hippopotamus Cafe of the cobblestoned San Telmo district, Eduardo Rafael squints over a cigarette and cortado (espresso cut with a touch of milk). A graying journalist and connoisseur of tango, soccer and other national obsessions, he looks appropriately nostalgic and Argentine as he recites the tango “Little Cafe of Buenos Aires” with the reverence worthy of a hymn or anthem:

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As a boy I watched you from outside

Like those things you can never have

My nose against the glass . . .

Like a school of all the subjects

As a young man you gave me, amid astonishments,

the cigarette

faith in my dreams

And hope for love.

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To the casual observer, the Argentine love affair with the cafe thrives. Most neighborhoods are full of cafes full of people. In a recent historical treatise studded with quotes from anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, a scholar described the institution as a cherished “frontier zone between public and private life.”

“In our secularized and anti-participatory societies . . . that increasingly lack spaces for reflection and debate of communal problems (in the manner of the Athenian agora) the cafe preserves . . . the illusion of socializing, of belonging,” wrote Mabel Belluci. “No city has developed the almost ridiculous (but also tender) adoration for cafes of the porteno [Buenos Aires native] to the point of transforming the cafe into a maternal metaphor.”

But scholars and old-time portenos worry that the tradition is crumbling. Economics, changing tastes and weak management threaten several historic jewels.

Neither its venerable past nor its architectural distinction saved El Molino (the Windmill), an out-sized establishment in a six-story tower topped by a sculpture of a windmill, from closing this year. Graffiti-stained metal shutters cover its decaying facade.

El Molino, built by Italian architect Francisco Gianotti in 1912, is an art nouveau treasure. Gianotti brought in immigrant craftsmen for the ornate metal and woodwork of the columned interior. The location next to Congress made the cafe a political haunt known as “the parallel Congress.” El Molino was the birthplace for political movements; in 1930, snipers holed up inside to resist a military coup.

In response to heretical talk of turning El Molino into a McDonald’s, City Councilman Eduardo Jozami has led a campaign to preserve it and other icons like the La Paz cafe.

While a law student in the 1960s, Jozami bent many an elbow in La Paz among leftist intellectuals, actors and assorted cafe revolutionaries. An invitation to meet at that cafe was a password; accepting was a countersign, an ideological declaration.

Jozami recently crafted an agreement with the owners to remodel La Paz in a way that would prevent it from becoming another generically sleek pizzeria.

“The danger of modernization is that is wipes out the unique physiognomy of the city,” the councilman said. “Government can create policies that foment the preservation of historic buildings, provide credits, work with owners. The problem is the lack of resources.”

In a time when the middle class is being squeezed by high unemployment and prices, the very size and sumptuousness of the old cafes threaten their survival. Some owners exploit the tourism potential of the cafes, but others “do not realize the cultural value they have in their hands,” said Gustavo Brandariz, a professor of architectural history at the University of Buenos Aires.

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Cafes have been a stage for history. In 1810, during the ferment of the Argentine independence movement, a band of rowdy patriots who conspired in the Marco cafe celebrated their release from prison by shouting “To the cafe!”

Assassins tried to kill President Domingo Sarmiento in a cafe in 1873.

During the Spanish Civil war in the 1930s, Spanish immigrants poured out of rival establishments on the stately Avenida de Mayo to fight a miniature war with bottles and chairs.

The roots of this Argentine tradition stem from the coffee-loving, politically volatile nations of Spain and Italy, which account for most immigration to this country. Other influences include the fixation of Argentine intellectuals with French culture and the dominance of an English business class, which introduced the tea-time ritual.

Cafes proliferated after hundreds of thousands of male immigrants arrived here to hacer l’America (make America), a term that combines fortune-seeking and nation-building. The wayfarers filled male-dominated waterfront dives and groceries that added a few chairs and tables, refuges where immigrants drank, lamented and fled their solitude in upstairs brothels.

Prostitution was simultaneously concealed and institutionalized by victroleras, whose ostensible job was to turn the handle of the Victrola, or female orchestras whose musical training was often dubious.

Despite the foreign influences, the New World scale and elegance of El Molino and other giants reflect the early 20th century era when Argentina was a world power booming with immigrants, investors and confidence. Since then, as any historian or waiter can tell you, things have gone downhill.

“When I started here 48 years ago, there were 21 waiters, four coffee-makers, four bartenders, seven dishwashers to wash and polish the cups so they shone,” recalls Fermin Alvarez, at 81 the oldest waiter in the 79-year-old Ideal cafe. “Working full tilt. We made a thousand sales a night.”

Alvarez and La Ideal survive in increasingly rickety splendor on a downtown side street. Its high-ceilinged interior is the size of a ballroom or several basketball courts; the room upstairs is just as big. Its spider-shaped chandeliers are French; its dark wood was imported from Slavonia; the stained glass is Italian. Scenes from “Evita” and other movies were shot in La Ideal.

But the crack running across the glass front door has not been fixed for a year. Scattered islands of elderly regulars occupy tables in the sea of red tablecloths. As an organist plunks out “As Time Goes By,” it is clear that time has indeed gone by in La Ideal: the white-haired Alvarez drags a foot behind him as he makes the long creaky voyage to the kitchen and back.

But he is tougher than he looks. He comes from a family of sailors from northwest Spain. Years at sea left his skin leathery and impervious to cold. And he remains an institution within the institution.

“I had a black tuxedo in those days,” Alvarez said. “A hard collar. A black vest. Very elegant. I wasn’t allowed to lean on the table or make chitchat. If I did, the captain had a buzzer he would push to warn me. He was a Gallego, very tough. Now I can talk as much as I want.”

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Most traditional waiters and cafe owners here hail from the green countryside of the province of Galicia. Invariably they have never lost the melodic peasant accent, never stopped following Spanish news and politics and never once gone back. They don’t have time. They make up for their lack of education with innate business acumen and a mule-like work ethic.

It is common for Alvarez to shake the hands of regular clients like a respected professional greeting a valued customer; cafe waiters in Buenos Aires are a smooth, fast and dignified class apart. The jobs pass from father to son.

“The waiters are like friends and confidants,” said Eduardo Rafael. “The porteno is very democratic. The waiter won’t hesitate to stand around and join in a conversation.”

The allure of such civilized human contact draws Argentines to their favorite cafes two and three times a day amid an onslaught of computers, cable television and other isolating modern comforts. A few aging palaces may fade, but the poetic ritual will survive as long as there are portenos who remember the old song.

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How can I forget you in my lament

Little cafe of Buenos Aires?

If you are the only thing in my life

That reminds me of my mother?

In your miraculous mix

of wise men and suicides

I learned philosophy,

dice, poker . . .

and the cruel poetry of

thinking about myself no more . . .