A friend says that Caballito is full of “aspirational things.”
It seems unfair to me.
I am not from Caballito nor do I live there.
I live in Parque Chacabuco, which is its southern border, and I am from further down, from Pompeya.
Caballito always represented a middle class ideal
, as if its location as the geographic center of the City also determined its socioeconomic level.
Neighborhood of villas in the 19th century, the urban expansion of the Capital that occurred in the 20th century modified its profile.
Rivadavia Park was, precisely, part of the estate of the businessman and politician Ambrosio Plácido de Lezica (1808-1881);
At his time, the richest man in Argentina.
Generators that supply the Aysa Lifting Station, in Caballito.
Photo: Juano Tesone.
Caballito had a subway station in 1914
and was filled with schools, shops and buildings.
Cozy residential areas (such as the English Quarter) coexisted with others with more modest houses.
Its luxury: the tree-lined streets.
And the silence.
It did not have the industrial nerve of Pompeii, with its factories and workshops, nor the aristocratic pretensions of Recoleta, with its mansions with double surnames.
For those from the south of the City, it was our nearby exit
.
The place to do high school.
Or learn English.
Or having the first teenage date.
Today, Caballito looks like a war zone.
The explosion of the Edesur substation filled its streets with generators the size of a studio apartment,
monsters loaded with diesel
that offer a precarious electricity supply in exchange for thunderous noise and polluting gases.
Seeing them in operation is scary.
The collapse of Pedro Goyena at 500 became the macabre tour of the neighbors: everyone goes to see the house fallen due to the construction of a tower, driven not so much by the morbidity generated by the tragedy of others but by
the secret fear of that something similar could happen to them
with the wave of giant buildings that mercilessly disfigure the appearance of the neighborhood.
Collapse in Pedro Goyena at 500, Caballito.
Photo Juano Tesone
Another tragedy spills out onto the sidewalks, which is social and has been going on for years: that of the people who sleep in the alcoves, inside ATMs, under balconies and eaves.
Here, a specialty coffee.
There, a ranch of homeless Argentinians.
And the silence?
Lost.
Caballito is now noise.
That of the construction of the tower that rises at record speed where there used to be a house.
The one about street repairs, which you notice when the pneumatic drill is breaking your corner.
That of the garbage collection trucks, “transformers” that stun at the least desired hour to empty containers that have already been emptied before (informally, another sign of the times).
Caballito developed a gourmet polo.
Yes. And the book stalls in Rivadavia Park are prettier and neater.
Also.
And there are free gymnastics classes in the same park.
Okay.
But the feeling one gets when walking through the neighborhood is that
something is creaking
.
Perhaps they are the foundations of that middle class of the 20th century, which got here as best it could and may never be the same again.