La Recoleta
…Equivocamos esa paz con la muerte
y creemos anhelar nuestro fin
y anhelamos el sueño y la indiferencia.
Vibrante en las espadas y en la pasión
y dormida en la hiedra,
sólo la vida existe…
por Jorge Luis Borges
…We confuse this peace with death
and we think we long for the end
when all we long for is indifference and sleep.
Vibrant in swords, tremulous in passion,
asleep in the ivy,
life is all there is…
by Jorge Luis Borges
Translation by
Robert Mezey & Richard Barnes
The Recoleta Cemetery is one of the most popular cemeteries in the world, listed by guide books on Argentina as a must see. Ironically, the cemetery grew from the garden of a monastery for monks who had retreated (recoleto) from the material world to explore the spiritual.
Today, just inside the formal entrance, tour guides compete to lead crowds of tourists through the rows of mausoleums for tips. You can hear German, English, Spanish, Italian, a babble of voices at almost any time of the day.
It is also the cemetery used by Argentina’s most famous poet to embody an somewhat pompous mediation on death and life. I am not a big fan of Borges’ poetry, although his fictions are marvelous and witty. And his poem was written when he was very young.
But then, la Recoleta itself is given to excess upon excess in the fantasies of angels and miniature cathedrals. It is the surrealism of Italianate cemeteries but raised to a power that only can be reached outside of Europe.
My wife Toni (http://tonibeattyphotography.com/) lives for graveyards. She spent three days shooting la Recoleta, arriving in the early mornings before the swarm of tourists descended. The graves are a who was who in society, 
the ‘jet set,” the heroes, the bankers, admirals, an illegitimate grandchild of Napoleón Bonaparte, generals, Evita Peron, colonels, a boxer known as the Wild Bull of the Pampas, and other stars of the nation.
Later in the week we went to a highly recommend restaurant, La Parrilla Don Julio, in the Palermo district. While we waited for a table, Toni looked around the restaurant and said that it must be family day given the number of children at the restaurant. A man at the next table added in somewhat rusty English that Sundays were always family days.
This began a conversation with him, his wife, her friend and their son in both English and Spanish. Both 
he and his wife were psychologists and gave us tips and observations on Buenos Aires, the national character, the best malbec, the quality of the food, and the cemetery of la Recoleta.
According to him, “real Argentineans” were not buried in la Recoleta, but in cemeteries like the Chacarita, Argentina’s National Cemetery. La Chacarita was farm land converted to holy ground in 1871 by a yellow fever epidemic. At the epidemic’s peak more than 500 people a day were dying. All the other cemeteries were rapidly overflowing with the dead, and the fashionable la Recoleta refused to bury yellow fever victims.
La Recoleta has run out of room and no new burials are allowed, except for those with existing family crypts. It is now just a tourist destination. It is the visual archaeology of the customs of death for Argentina’s rich, powerful and fashionable in the 19th and 20th centuries.
