Argentina is a land of passion and drama – as I discovered when I tried out a few dance moves with a smouldering Argentinian dance partner. All the songs are about suffering and misery and the dance moves emphasize the melancholy of the music.
And it’s not just the music here that evokes passion and drama; people’s lives are bound up in it too. And one of the best stories I’ve heard here in Buenos Aires, from a tour guide, serves as an excellent example.
Unusually for such a male-dominated culture, in the late 19th and early 20th Century, three of the most important families in Buenos Aires were led by widows. These three widows hated each other and were all vying to be the first woman in Argentina to be elevated to the nobility by the Pope – there are no hereditary titles in Argentina – no dukes or earls or marquises. They all donated generously to good causes, founding orphanages and museums, but the Pope never seemed to notice. Eventually one of them, Mercedes Castellanos de Anchorena, decided to give a donation directly to the Vatican. This was a risky strategy as it could have been viewed as a bribe, but she was successful and the Pope name her a Pontificial Marchioness … she had won!
To celebrate she built herself a sumptuous palace, which is now the Argentinian Foreign Ministry, and at the other end of the avenue leading to her palace, she arranged to have a church built, the Basilica of the Holy Sacrament. It would be her own personal church where she would eventually be buried – and she would have a beautiful view of it from her palace.
In the meantime, her eldest son fell in love with a girl called Corina Kavanagh, the daughter of an Irish banker, and they planned to get married. Her family were rich, but to Mercedes they were ‘immigrants’ and ‘new money’ and not good enough. Before the wedding could take place, she gave her son an ultimatum: Corina or the family wealth. Rather disappointingly, he chose the family wealth, and jilted his fiance.
Mercedes and her family went to France for an extended trip and while they were away, a block of land beside her church came up for sale. Corina bought it and built the Kavanagh Building, a huge Modernist block which was the tallest building in South America for many years. It completely blocks the view of the Basilica of the Holy Sacrament from Mercedes’s palace – and from pretty much anywhere else.
In fact, the only place to get a good view of the Basilica now is from the small street next to the skyscraper, which is called Corina Kavanagh Street.
The building may look like a raised middle finger to modern eyes, but it isn’t, it’s a style called echelon, designed to get around building regulations and make something as tall as possible. The perfect revenge of a jilted woman.