Argentine Culture in New York City

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Argentine New York City

New York’s “Little Argentina” is in Corona, Queens. The community used to be centered around an Argentine barber shop.

Argentine Art in NYC

Argentine artists in New York City:

• Aldo Sessa is an Argentine photographer whose body of work embraces port cities.
• Argentine Titanosaur is a major exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History.
• Liliana Porter makes striking miniature dioramas.
• Raul Conti

Argentine art galleries in New York City:

• Argentine Consulate has an active art gallery.
• General José de San Martin whose statue is at Bolivar Plaza in Central Park was an Argentine general who helped free Argentina, Chile, and Peru from colonial domination.
• Hutchinson Modern & Contemporary has some Argentine artists.
• Praxis is an Argentine contemporary art gallery in Chelsea, Manhattan.

Argentine Books in NYC

The Jorge Luis Borges Library at Instituto Cervantes New York is the City’s biggest Spanish library.

Argentine Communities in NYC

Argentinos en NY is New York City’s big Argentine community. argentinosenny.com

Argentine Dance in NYC

Argentine ballet dancers:

• Herman Cornejo is an American Ballet Theatre Principal from Buenos Aires. 🇦🇷
• Luciana Paris is an American Ballet Theatre Soloist from Buenos Aires. She was Julio Bocca’s dance partner at Ballet Argentino. 🇦🇷

Argentine tango dancers:

• Guillermina Quiroga is a renowned Argentine tango dancer, choreographer and teacher known for her work on Broadway, international spectacles, and tango movies.

Argentine tango dances:

• El Destino milonga at Solas in Greenwich Village on Sundays, is popular with New York’s best tango dancers.
• Tango La Nacional is New York’s most traditional milonga.

Argentine Fashion in NYC

• Anabella Bergero

Argentine Film in NYC

Matias Piñiero is a New York Argentine who writes and directs movies based on Shakespeare in Spanish. It evens sounds like Shakespeare in Spanish.

Argentine Food in NYC

Argentina is famous for its meat, but also makes great Italian food.

Argentine Butchers:

• Argentines cut beef European style. To get the right cut, you have to go to an Argentine butcher. El Gauchito Butcher Shop is one of the last remnants of New York’s “Little Argentina” in Queens. elgauchitonyc.com

Argentine Restaurants:

• Balvanera offers small plates in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
• Buenos Aires Restaurant is an Argentine steakhouse that uses high-quality ingredients, and even cuts its own beef, in Manhattan’s East Village. buenosairesnyc.com
• Estancia 460 is an Argentine restaurant in Tribeca, Manhattan. elgauchitonyc.com

Argentine Music in NYC

Zinc Bar, the Greenwich Village jazz club, is Argentine owned.

• Bárbara Martínez is a New York Argentine Venezuelan flamenco singer and dancer descended from Morenita Rey and Libertad Lamarque.
• Federico Aubele lives in Brooklyn.
• Pedro Giraudo is a Latin Grammy winning tango jazz musician based in New York City.
• Isabel Leonard is a New York Argentine opera singer. She sings for the Metropolitan Opera.
• Jorge Parodi is a New York Argentine opera conductor.
• JP Jofre is a New York Argentine bandoneón player.
• Octavio Brunetti (1975-2014) was a New York Argentine tango pianist. [We used to work with him. Miss you Octavio.]
• Rosa Antonelli is a New York Argentine classical pianist. She is a Steinway artist.
• Sebastían Zubieta is the Americas Society music director.
• Sofia Rei is a New York Argentine singer.

Argentine Sports in NYC

New York City Football Club (NYCFC) has several Argentine players. 🇦🇷 🇧🇷 🇨🇱 🇨🇴 🇨🇷 🇵🇷 🇸🇱 🇺🇾

Boca Juniors New York is an Argentine soccer supporters club.

River Plate New York is an Argentine soccer supporters club.

Argentine Theatre in NYC

“Evita,” the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice rock opera about Argentine first lady Eva Perón, ran on Broadway in 2012 and 2017. “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.”

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Argentine Culture

They say the Mexicans came from the Aztecs, the Peruvians came from the Incas, and the Argentines came from the boat. It’s true. Most Argentines are Italian descent. Italian visitors feel at home in Buenos Aires. Most Spanish Argentines are “gallegos” from Galicia, Spain.

Art in Argentina

Catalina Chervin is an Argentine contemporary artist.

Books in Argentina

• Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) wrote “The Library of Babel.”
• José Hernández (1834-1886) wrote “Martín Fierro,” the Argentine literary classic.
• Julio Cortázar (1914-1984)
• Mafalda was an Argentine comic by Quino from 1964-1973. She is innocent, but smart, and always funny.

Dancers in Argentina

Julio Bocca (interview), danced for American Ballet Theatre from 1985-2006. He founded Ballet Argentino in 1990.

Festivals in Argentina

• Argentine Independence Day is July 9, 1816.
• International Tango Day and Gardel’s birthday is December 11.

Music in Argentina

Rock en español started in Argentina. The government coopted it as Rock Nacional.

Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992), creator of the Nuevo Tango (New Tango) style of classical tango jazz, started learning to play the bandoneón in New York City.

Bajofondo is Gustavo Santaolalla’s (Arco Iris) rock band. He’s the father of Rock en Español in the USA, which we now call Latin Alternative.

Carlos Gardel (1890-1935) is the iconic tango singer.

Fito Paez is an important Argentine rocker.

Sports in Argentina

Juan Martín del Potro (1988) is an Argentine tennis player who won the 2009 US Open.

Argentines are crazy about football (soccer). Even the homeless hustle to get money for the game.

The Argentina National Football Team won the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Boca Juniors is the working class team. River Plate is the elite team.

Maradona (1960-2020) played soccer with the “Hand of God.”

Theatre in Argentina

Argentina has a Broadway theatre tradition on Avenida Corrientes in Buenos Aires. Community theater is popular throughout the country.

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Argentina

Argentina is the southeastern tip of South America. It has pampas (plains) in the north and Andes mountains in Patagonia in the south.

The capital Buenos Aires is on the Rio de la Plata whose mouth is so wide, it seems like a bay. Montevideo, Uruguay is the other side of the river from Buenos Aires. We share a lot of culture. The ferry takes about four hours. The flight is 45 minutes.

It used to be one of the world’s richest countries, like the United States, but the first Perón Administration (1946-1955) ruined the economy and it never recovered.

• The region’s Indigenous people ate the first Europeans after 1502.
• Spain colonized Buenos Aires in 1580. 🇪🇸
• The African Diaspora came because Buenos Aires was a free city. They brought tango from Mother Africa through the Brazilian candomblé religion; Uruguayan candombe drum, song and dance tradition; and milonga, the oldest form of tango.
• In the pampas Indigenous, Spanish and African blended into gaucho culture, the South American cowboys.
• Spain established the Vice Royalty of Rio de la Plata in 1776. 🇪🇸
• Argentina declared independence from Spain on July 9, 1816. Argentine generals then played major roles in the liberation of South America. 🇦🇷
• The big Italian migration started around 1870. Rich Italians migrated to Argentina, poor ones to New York. 🇮🇹
• The big German migration was 1870-1914 and after World War II. Their bandoneón portable church organ became the iconic tango instrument. 🇩🇪
• José Hernández published “El Gaucho Martín Fierro,” the iconic Argentine novel (like Tom Sawyer is to the United States) in 1872. 🇦🇷
• The big Jewish migration was between 1880 and 1920. ✡️
• Rich Argentines used to send their children to Europe for finishing. They seduced the French with their tango. The Tango Craze of 1913 started in Paris, jumped to New York, and then Argentines accepted the tango. 🇫🇷
• French-born tango singer Carlos Gardel established Tango’s nostalgic tone with “Mi Noche Triste” (My Sad Night) in 1917. 🇫🇷🇦🇷
• Juan d’Arienzo, “El Rey del Compás,” launched the Tango Golden Age (1935-1955) by making stronger beats that made the music more danceable. 🇦🇷
• Populists Juan and Eva Peron ruled Argentina from 1946-1955. They ran a textbook propaganda operation that claimed tango as their own. 🇦🇷
• Astor Piazzolla started his nuevo tango movement (new tango) that combined classical, tango, jazz in 1954. At first traditionalists said it wasn’t tango. Now it’s the dominant form. 🇦🇷
• Tango was banned in Buenos Aires from 1955-1983. The government believed people gathering in the middle of the night must be plotting Peronists. They shut tango down by arresting club owners for underaged drinking. Swing dancing was allowed. Argentines call it rock and roll. Many dancers switched. Tango survived in secret in the city center and more openly in the suburbs. That’s why Villa Urquiza’s Sin Rumbo and Sunderland are important. Tango culture survived in the barrios. 🇦🇷
• A military dictatorship ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. With American support, they went to war with their own people. The Dirty War caused the “disappearance” of around 30,000 Argentines. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo used to protest in front of the Casa Rosada (Argentina’s White House). We still find children taken from their mothers and given to military families. 🇦🇷
• Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice produced the Broadway rock opera “Evita” in London’s West End in 1978. It ran on Broadway in 1979. 🇦🇷
• Tango was basically a dead folk dance, but when the military dictatorship collapsed after the Malvinas War in 1983, tango came back because we took a deep breath and asked ourselves who we are. Famed dancer Gustavo Naveira said yoga classes were empty, but tango classes were so full, he had to have half the group come back the next day. Tango clubs were so crowded that we started dancing close embrace. You couldn’t dance so close in the past because your parents were watching. 🇦🇷
• Producer Claudio Segovia took Juan Carlos Copes and his partner Maria Nieves (the artists who created stage tango), and other now famous dancers to Paris where they opened “Tango Argentino,” the seminal tango show in 1983. French lined up around the block and even broke down the theater doors. Now tango was back internationally. 🇦🇷
• Tango Argentino ran on Broadway in 1985-86. Teaching from Dancesport, the dancers seeded the first generation of American tango dancers. Some are still dancing in New York. 🇦🇷
• Gotan Project formed in 1999. They launched the “tango nuevo” style of tango club music out of Paris in 2001. Uruguayan candombe is part of the tango nuevo tradition. 🇫🇷🇨🇭🇦🇷
• Argentina defaulted on its international debt in 2001. It restructured in 2005. 🇦🇷
• UNESCO named tango part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009. 🇦🇷
• Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church in 2013. 🇦🇷
• The Argentine National Football Team won the 2022 FIFA World Cup. ¡Vamos Argentina! 🇦🇷

Argentines speak Spanish with a beautiful Argentine Castellano accent. It is not Madrid Castellano. It pronounces “ll” as “sh” instead of “y,” so “yo” is pronounced “zho” and “castellano” becomes “casteshano.” Argentine Castellano has Brazilian influences from Uruguay (“vos” for you, like the Portuguese “voce”).