Hostile 12 Year Olds

Parque Las HerasIs there a back region to a city, and is it possible to find it in four months?

Reading Staged Authenticity, by Dean MacCannell, I found myself thinking a lot about these people we keep running into at different clubs and parties we tend to show up to, who I alluded to in my last post. We’ve stumbled upon a certain community within the nightlife. I described specific people because they are the ones we connected to, but really at each of these events, there have been a lot of overlapping people, overlapping authentic Argentines. As a fringe participant of a legitimate community of Argentine young people, have I stumbled upon an authentic experience? Honestly, this question is hard for me to answer because my friends and I tend to show up at these places when we hear about them, I am beginning to suspect, because they are similar to what we are used to in New York. I understand the concept of a back region in a restaurant. I understand that taking a tour of the hostess factory, looking down on the floor from a balcony and behind a glass window, is a fabricated experience that is meant to be authentic, or a stage five back region in MacCannell’s terms. But cities are experienced by everyone differently. I don’t know if the identity of tourist immediately places someone in the superficial, inauthentic space of the front region, or if being a resident automatically gives privilege to the back region, when we are talking about experiences of a city. We are all walking down the same street in the end.

This weekend denying any grasp of the Spanish language came in handy. Two friends and I spent most of the day in Parque Las Heras, several green rolling hills off the Avenida Las Heras, and a popular spot for a gourd of mate and people watching. The sun set before we left, and two young boys, probably about twelve years old, squatted down next to us. One asked if we had money; I assumed they were just asking for monedas, a common occurrence, and feigned incomprehension. He asked where we were from, and again we all continued to pretend not to understand. Two more young boys walked over from the street and squatted down on the other side of us. Then the boy who had been making conversation before said in Spanish, “give us all your money, you’re being robbed.” Again, I said I didn’t understand. Then he said, calmly, “We are going to kill you, give us your money.” I asked my friends if we should go and they agreed so we got up to leave and the boys just ran off. I don’t know if there was a better way to handle this situation, but I was thankful that they didn’t think we were ignoring them, just oblivious to what was happening. If you’re too young to shave, you’re too young to mug me.