Buenos Aires Week One: The Smoke Lifts...
I arrived in Buenos Aires to find that a strange haze of smoke had enveloped the city. This was not the light haze of smog and/or pollution I'd seen firsthand and read about prior to this trip. No, this was something more. This was the smell of a massive amount of burning vegetable matter, like the leaf fires we used to have in autumn in Pennsylvania. Except it felt as though someone had made a massive leaf fire in the middle of the city.
As it turns out, the truth was not far from what I'd imagined. Farmers in the Paraná River delta region, northwest of the city, had been setting fire to their fields in order to clear land for new crops and to graze livestock. This, apparently, is an annual event. However, this year is the first time the smoke ever actually made its way into the city of Buenos Aires, and it did so for about two weeks.
The newspapers ran stories, every day, with titles like ¨And the Smoke Continues.¨ People were walking around with hankies over their faces. The smoke was so bad that some highways outside the city were closed, schools canceled physical education classes, and even regular classes, and a few subway (subte) lines were closed as well.
From a personal point of view, the smoke was tolerable during the day, but took on sort of a suffocating, apocalyptic quality at night. On my second night here I was at a bar in the fashionable Palermo Soho district, and by 2:ooam my eyes were burning and I couldn't see even 50m away. This was no gentle evening fog...my coat still smells from that night.
But, the smoke seems to have lifted now. I read in the paper, or so I think I read (with my limited Spanish), that firefighters went to the scene and have been extinguishing some of the fires, and flooding the plains where they took place. Also, the wind may have had something to do with it.
Strangely, the Smoke Haze coincides with a great dispute between the farmers here and the government. "El Campo" (the farm lobby) is protesting export tariffs on soybeans, as I understand it. Soybeans have become a very profitable crop in the past few years, even more profitable than the beef which Argentina is famous for. But the government has raised export taxes on soybeans in order to curb the increasing trend of devoting land to soybean, and not cattle, production.
So, in an ironic twist of fate, the farmers have had their revenge by causing a an almost crippling miasma that would have brought the city to its knees had it not lifted so abruptly today. On the other hand, some say the smoke was caused precisely because farmers have to clear new land for grazing, because they are growing soybeans where their cattle used to graze. Aye...
Just like with anything, there is always more to the story...and then even more to the story...and then more behind that. All I know is that I can now go out at night and not have to take a bottle of eye drops with me.
As it turns out, the truth was not far from what I'd imagined. Farmers in the Paraná River delta region, northwest of the city, had been setting fire to their fields in order to clear land for new crops and to graze livestock. This, apparently, is an annual event. However, this year is the first time the smoke ever actually made its way into the city of Buenos Aires, and it did so for about two weeks.
The newspapers ran stories, every day, with titles like ¨And the Smoke Continues.¨ People were walking around with hankies over their faces. The smoke was so bad that some highways outside the city were closed, schools canceled physical education classes, and even regular classes, and a few subway (subte) lines were closed as well.
From a personal point of view, the smoke was tolerable during the day, but took on sort of a suffocating, apocalyptic quality at night. On my second night here I was at a bar in the fashionable Palermo Soho district, and by 2:ooam my eyes were burning and I couldn't see even 50m away. This was no gentle evening fog...my coat still smells from that night.
But, the smoke seems to have lifted now. I read in the paper, or so I think I read (with my limited Spanish), that firefighters went to the scene and have been extinguishing some of the fires, and flooding the plains where they took place. Also, the wind may have had something to do with it.
Strangely, the Smoke Haze coincides with a great dispute between the farmers here and the government. "El Campo" (the farm lobby) is protesting export tariffs on soybeans, as I understand it. Soybeans have become a very profitable crop in the past few years, even more profitable than the beef which Argentina is famous for. But the government has raised export taxes on soybeans in order to curb the increasing trend of devoting land to soybean, and not cattle, production.
So, in an ironic twist of fate, the farmers have had their revenge by causing a an almost crippling miasma that would have brought the city to its knees had it not lifted so abruptly today. On the other hand, some say the smoke was caused precisely because farmers have to clear new land for grazing, because they are growing soybeans where their cattle used to graze. Aye...
Just like with anything, there is always more to the story...and then even more to the story...and then more behind that. All I know is that I can now go out at night and not have to take a bottle of eye drops with me.
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