Endnotes
i. Knights of the Round Bed, Injection Experts, The King of Urges, A Slip of the Surgeon’s Hand, and I’ll Break Your Ratings Wide Open: a series of Argentine sex comedies from the late 1970s and early 1980s, directed by Hugo Sofovich, most often starring Jorge Porcel and Alberto Olmedo.
ii. Fun for the New Recruits, Big Rambo and Little Rambo: First Mission, and Recruits Attack!
iii. Bosques de Palermo is a large urban park on the north side of Buenos Aires. It was built on land seized from Juan Manuel de Rosas, a 19th century governor, following his defeat at the Battle of Caseros.
iv. “I don’t pretend to own you / I am nothing, I have no pride.” From the song “Sabor a mí,” a bolero written by the Mexican composer Álvaro Carrillo, and popularized by the Mexican group Trío Los Panchos.
v. “Who is worth more, a simple girl like me or you so proud, / or is your fragile beauty worth even more? / Think carefully, because deep down in the pit / we’ll all be dressed the same.” The song in question, “Ódiame,” is based on a poem written around 1920 by the Peruvian poet Federico Barreto. The song itself, originally a Peruvian vals, was composed around 1950 by the Peruvian composer Rafael Otero López. It was popularized throughout South American some twenty years later by the Ecuadorian singer Julio Jaramillo. Many other versions exist, including a bolero composed by the Cuban singer Bienvenido Granda.
vi. The quote comes from the 2 April 1972 edition of Potere Operaio del Lunedì, a weekly pamplet produced by Potere Operaio, the radical left-wing Italian political group out of which the Red Brigades were born. The Spanish translation comes from Montoneros, la soberbia armada by Pablo Giussani, who found the original quote in Giampaolo Pansa’s Storie italiane di violenza e terrorismo (Laterza, Bari, 1980, p. 33).
vii. Rosas’s paramilitary security force was called the Mazorca, the name a pun uniting mazorca (an ear of corn—a common ruralist symbol) and más horca (“more gallows”).
viii. The bolero in question is “Se te olvida,” popularized by Trío Los Panchos. Lines 1–4 are identical to those of the song. The wording of lines 5–8 is correct, but the narrator has changed the punctuation, and with it the meaning. Small changes were made to the wording of lines 9–12.
ix. The cadence calls of the leftist urban guerrilla group known as the Montoneros were shot through with references to historical, political and military figures. They were also rife with sexual and military slang, and with insults directed at other political groups. Roughly:
We aren’t rent-boys, we aren’t druggies,
we are the soldiers of FAR and Montoneros.
x. Roughly:
Neither votes nor boots / but guns and balls.
Come here, El Brujo, come here El Brujo come here / your ass is going to end up looking like the Tango de París.
Traitor Rucci / give our best to Vandor.
We the people are asking you for it / we want the head of Villar y Margaride.
Hard hard hard / those are the Montoneros / who killed Aramburu.*
Five for one / you’ll end up with none.
Loyal Mugica / we are going to avenge you.
What beautiful teeth you have / said Rucci to Perón / Perón answered with a smile / Ha ha! You’ll die just like Vandor.
Voting urns are the path to government / weapons are the path to power.
Smoking a cigar / I say fuck Aramburu / and if that makes them mad / fuck Rojas too / and if that makes them even madder / Fuck the Libertadora commandos.
Smoking a cigarette / I say fuck Santucho / and if that makes them mad / fuck Estrella Roja too / and if that makes them even madder / fuck the Left and all its commandos.
Look look look / what a beautiful thing / Peronists and Marxists / working for the socialist Fatherland.
We are going to build the Peronist Fatherland / we’re going to make it Montonero and socialist.
We’re going to make it a country of fighters / harmonious and custom-built.
If we aren’t the people, who could the people be?
Abal, Medina, we want cocaine!
Quit busting my balls / there’s only one Evita.
Fight fight fight / don’t stop fighting / we’re going to string up every gorilla.
With the bones of Aramburu (bis) / we will build a ladder (bis) / so that Evita our Montonera / can come down from Heaven.
What’s going on, General? / The government is full of gorillas.
Yes sir, General, we agree / the gorillas agree too, and the people will fight.
What’s going on, General? / We can’t afford anything even with the raise.
I’ll give you I’ll give you / beautiful Fatherland / something that starts with p . . .
The union bureaucracy / it’s going to end, it’s going to end.
This little piggy went to market / Now the people are leaving.
Youths: Present! / Perón, Perón or death.
It isn’t time to vote / it’s time to fight.
Spilled blood is non-negotiable.
If Evita were alive she’d be a Montonera.
*To which the unionist right wing responded, from the other side of the plaza, “Hard hard hard / the socialist Fatherland fucks them in the ass!
xi. Founded in 2001, Los Pibes Chorros are among the pioneers of a style of music called cumbia villera, which was born in the slums of Buenos Aires. Musically, it traces its roots to rock, rap, and reggae, and, somewhat less directly, to tango, punk, and narcocorrido. The lyrics often deal with poverty, drug abuse, and prostitution. They make ample use of Lunfardo, an argot that developed in the prisons of Buenos Aires in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Lunfardo is shot through with various forms of wordplay including a form of syllable reversal called vesre (where, for example, “muchacho” becomes “chochamu,”) and with slang terms derived from Italian, French, Portuguese, and Guaraní. It is thus something of a challenge to translate. The lyrics quoted here might be rendered, very roughly, as:
The kid thieves are here
we want to see all your hands in the air
because the first one to act like a snitch
is going to get the shit beat out of them.
xii. “Scram, idiot, scram.”
xiii. “(T)he city enclosed to the north and east by a belt of water and mud”: from “El Matadero,” a short story by Esteban Echeverría, who was a central figure in the Romantic movement in Argentina.