Tango by Mike Gonzalez

political system – as it was very clear that in an election in which the middle classesvoted, their majority support would go to the Radicals and their leader, and presidential candidate, Hipólito Irigoyen.
    Irigoyen was elected in 1916; his rise to the presidency marked the end of a century-old political system controlled by the old elite and used to maintain its interests. They remained the controlling economic class, of course, but the shifting and changing balance of power between these two social forces would mark and shape the subsequent two decades of Argentine political life. The Radicals, even before their election to the national government, had consolidated their influence at local and regional levels, in particular in the growing cities where the networks they created felt and looked very like the system of controlling city bosses that was already well established in the United States. For the working class, however, the changes were limited, and what improvements were achieved were the result of militant trade union action. While the immigrant populations may well have thrown their support behind the Radicals and against the old ruling class, their relationship with a Radical party in power remained tense and conflictive. 3
    POLITICS AND CULTURE
    After its boom years on both sides of the Atlantic, tango came home in 1914 as the exiles returned. They came flushed with their success in the cafés and clubs of the demi-monde of Paris and their acceptance in the elegant salons of the city. Those who returned from the United States brought back a different, sexually less adventurous tango, its steps sacrificed in exchange for access to the thés dansants of the Upper East Side and the elegant parties of the grandes dames of New York. What they found in Buenos Aires was that news of Europe’s craze for tango had arrived before them, and that new cabarets and cafés had opened in the city centre, bearing French names and European decor. The Armenonvilleand the Pigalle, Lo de Hansen or the Café Tortini mimicked a kind of French grand style. There was little here to recall the rural interior from which the internal migrants had come nor to reflect the poor rural background from which the steerage passengers on the migrant ships had emerged.
    The beginning of the First World War brought the exiles back to the River Plate. But tango had arrived back before them. Though it was still seen as risqué, tango could now be danced in Buenos Aires at semi-respectable tea dances, where the more adventurous ladies of the middle class partnered the slick young gigolos who frequented the cafés of the city centre in the afternoons. In the evenings their husbands would dance with women who were definitely not of their social circle, but young women who had graduated from the brothels and cabarets of the port areas to the grander surroundings of the new cafés. The resentment of their erstwhile pimps, the compadritos , when they had to watch their charges disappear into this other world on the arm of a wealthy protector (the bacán ) would be a central theme of the tango songs of subsequent decades.
    Muchacho
    Que porque la suerte quiso
    Vivís en un primer piso
    De un palacete central ,
    Que para vicios y placeres
    Para farras y mujeres
    Dispones de un capital .
    Muchacho
    Que no sabes el encanto
    De haber derramado llanto
    Por un amor de mujer ,
    Que no sabes qué es secarse
    En una timba y armarse
    Para volverse a meter . . .
    Young man / who because destiny placed you / in a first-floor apartment / in a mansion in the centre of town / and for vices and pleasures / for parties and women / gave you money to spare .
    Young man / you don’t know the enchantment / of weeping tears / for the love of a woman / who doesn’t know what it’s like / to be cleaned out in a game and steel yourself / to go back the next day and start again . .  .
    (‘Muchacho’, Young Man –