You don’t have to be all that interested in Argentine history to enjoy Eternautas’ brand-new book on Buenos Aires. A liking for gossip and genteel trivia will be enough to hook you on it, whether you choose to peruse its pages while lazing in an armchair, or in the midst of the urban fray as you follow its mentions of past events from one corner to the next.

The book explains many things that one is curious about but is too lazy to look up on the Internet or an encyclopedia. For instance, the origin of the word “cuadreras” (shortdistance horse races), or the evolution of iconic landmarks like Plaza de Mayo, Plaza Dorrego and the River Plate shoreline.

When they set up the Eternautas travel agency in 1999, historians Ricardo Watson, Lucas Rentero and Gabriel Di Meglio quickly occupied a cultural niche in the market that had lain vacant for some time. Their following of local history buffs quickly burgeoned into a small legion on the weekend days during which they conducted their walking tours, to which bus tours were soon added. The deluge of foreign tourists unleashed by the wildcat devaluation of the Argentine currency two years later brought them new clients for whom their team of guides - university teachers of subjects like social sciences, art, architecture and history - prepared explanations in English. The trio hadn’t originally planned to write a book but, nearly a decade after startup of the agency, they fortunately decided to put some of their itineraries into print.

The book is in Spanish, and they are thinking of preparing “an English version, not a translation” of it. Buenos Aires tiene historia (Aguilar, March 2008, 398 pages) is packed full of fascinating accounts that in many cases seem like pages out of a novel (or soap opera) whose characters live lives that are intermeshed. Following are two examples.

During the dictatorship of Federalist strongman Juan Manuel de Rosas in the 19th century, Unitarian notables who were on the run from the tyrant’s Mazorca goon squad waited for dark moonless nights to make a run for boats that were to take them to safety in Montevideo. This was when the waters of the River Plate still covered what is now Paseo Colón. One night in May 1840, the Mazorca nabbed three aristocrats near the corner of what is now Paseo Colón and Humberto I, and slit their throats on the spot, even though some of the victims were friends of relatives of Rosas.

Charles Ridgely Horne, the US businessman whose wife was the sister of Unitarian General Juan Lavalle, bought the land that is now Parque Lezama from an Englishman in 1845, built the mansion that is now the National History Museum, and was a friend of Rosas (even though his wife’s brother was killed by the strongman’s Federalist forces). When Rosas was overthrown, this friendship resulted in Ridgely Horne’s deportation and the confiscation of his property, which he managed to sell only some years later to Gregorio Lezama, the Salta-born empresario for whom the park is named because his widow made it a condition when she sold it to the city hall.

San Telmo, the neighbourhood where these events took place, is especially rich in tales. As its authors say, 400 years of history are packed into the kilometre of Calle Defensa that stretches from Plaza de Mayo de Parque Lezama.

Rubbing shoulders with these scenes of colonial and 19th-century happenings is the new memorial beneath the 25 de Mayo motorway that commemorates the victims of the federal police supply depotcum- concentration camp known as “Club Atlético” where hundreds of people were tortured and murdered in 1977 in a basement just metres from traffic in the middle of the city.

The 11 tour itineraries included in this book are Monserrat, San Telmo, La Boca, Retiro, Avenida Alvear, San Nicolás, Recoleta, Monuments of Buenos Aires, Palermo Viejo, Puerto Madero, and the “Other South” ( four unsung but intriguing working-class neighbourhoods).
It is not a book that tells history in chronological order; it is a book of itineraries in which history flows through different neighbourhoods.
I suggest that you read the book and then join, one by one, the tours that illustrate its chapters.

BY BONNIE TUCKER
Herald Travel Editor