Deadly storm in Buenos Aires

Last night a powerful storm hit Buenos Aires City and Province. Parts of our old Palermo neighbourhood were flooded to some degree, but other areas of the city were truly devastated.

At this writing, twenty-four hours later, eight deaths related to the storm have been confirmed, including one Subte worker. The entire subway system has been running at reduced capacity today, and all of Line B has been closed.






Many areas of the city and province remain flooded and about 500,000 residents are without power (in context: there are about fourteen million people living in metropolitan BA).




According to the BA City Government more than 155 mm of rain fell in various parts of the city within a two hour period after 6:00 p.m. This exceeded the record of April 8, 1989 when 142 mm fell, the highest for the month of April since records began in 1906.




As usual, the politicians have been active too. The Mayor returned from vacation in Brasil and promptly blamed the Federal Government for not having resources in place to deal with the storm.

A minister in President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's federal cabinet put the blame squarely at the feet of the mayor, accusing him of holidaying abroad while the city suffered. Rumours abound that the Mayor is ready to mount his entry into national politics.


Argentina is a highly political arena, and people enjoy their political discussions around coffee and dinner. In this tragic situation work now needs to be done to help residents of those areas flooded and to repair the damage throughout the entire city. It will happen, and quite possibly in spite of the politicians. It's unfortunate for the citizens of this great city that politicians have to find their photo ops and sound bites first, even in tragedy.




Which reminds me of a BC premier who did the same thing after Vancouver's infamous Stanley Cup riots. Yes, the common touch - in pearls and high heels.

Photos of BA from La Nacion and Clarin. Photo of sweeping up from The Sun.

It's spring!

It's springtime on the left coast. And for faithful readers in Argentina, that doesn't mean Chile. Nor does it mean that's it's September already.









We're on the upper left coast, past the Excited States of America, in Canada, and while the rest of this nation continues to have winter like conditions, its spring in Vancouver.

This Passover and Easter long weekend brought temperatures inland to over twenty. On the coast it's only slightly cooler and nice and warm, and everything is beautiful.

Argentina's disappeared: never forgotten

The terrible events of Argentina's dirty war remain close to everyday life. Criminal proceedings continue to this day. Mothers continue to seek the truth about what happened to their children. The stolen children are being sought, and in some cases, found.

Pagina|12, a  daily newspaper, runs memorial adverts that regularly appear in its pages. Placed by friends and family on the day their son or daughter, or uncle, or mother... disappeared, they are memorials and warnings both; that this will not be forgotten, justice will prevail.



Young men and women, often students, or workers, or teachers, or ...

Sometimes grandmothers, whose only crime might have been to rent a room to someone under suspicion.

The ads, usually in the lower left hand corner of an inside page, remind us, almost everyday.

In this advert, the young couple are Silvina and Daniel, detained in Cordoba in 1976. Silvana was six and one half months pregnant at the time of the arrest. In all likelihood, she was kept alive until giving birth when her child was then adopted, and she was dumped from a plane into the ocean.

Memoria, verdad y justicia

Memory, truth and justice