It´s prounounced CORE-do-ba

Greetings from Còrdoba! This is the second biggest city in Argentina, located about 500 miles away from Buenos Aires. It may be a big city, but they take their smallness very seriously. I began to notice yesterday, Saturday afternoon, at about 2 o´clock that businesses started closing up. Today, Sunday, the place is like a ghost town. I had to walk about a mile, up and down the busiest streets, past rows and rows of shuttered up businesses, to find an internet cafe that was open. To put this in context, there´s 1 to 2 internet cafes per block. 90 percent of the occupants of internet cafes are teenagers. How the heck to the adults of the community train teenagers not to use the internet on Sundays??

Cordoba boasts 7 unviersities and it definitely feels like it. There are lots of young people everywhere, many bookstores, etc. The first thing that struck me is the difference in the people from Buenos Aires. Here, they are open and curious, reminding me very much of the people of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. I go in to the small shop to buy a bottle of water and they ask "Where are you from?" Ten minutes later, we´ve talked about Bush´s trip to latin america, Hugo Chavez, how I like Argentina, etc. It´s refreshingly different from B.A. Like New Yorkers, porteños admire witty comments, sharp clever comebacks, etc., all of which is impossible for a foreigner like me with a limited ability in the language to come up with. So the porteños come across as cool and abrupt.

Cordoba is reputed to have the best preserved colonical architecture in Argentina. It boasts the oldest church in Argentina, going back to 1640. It´s called the "Jesuits´Church." From the outside, it´s heavy, imposing and graceless. The walls are up to a meter and a half thick, a mixture of stones and brick and mortar. Fortunately, Cordoba doesn´t have earthquakes. The interior is appropriately baroque. Interestingly, it´s not warm Italian baroque with ceramic cherubs and bambino-angels gazing upward over gilded leaves, grapes, and neo-greco columns. Instead, it´s dark, candle-lit paintings and bloody crucifixes reminding us of the evil that awaits us if we stray from the jesuitical truth.

As we know from reading history, or watching The Mission (was that the name of the movie?), the Jesuits built terrific churches like the one in Cordoba and set up missions throughout southern Brazil, Uruguay, and northern Argentina. Cordoba was the capital. They also set up some great vineyards and estancias, many of which are still in operation today. Let´s hear it for altar wine! In the mid-1700´s, the Jesuits were perceived to be a bit too independent by the Spanish monarchy, and, as we know from the movie, Robert de Nero, Jeremy Irons, and the other Jesuit priests were expelled.

Right next door to the Jesuit Church is the National University of Cordoba, also the country´s oldest, and founded by the Jesuits. I took the tour. It was fascinating. There´s something about looking at leather bound books from the 16th century that inspires an almost religious awe in me. There were only 3 of us on the tour, 2 Argentines and me. The tour guide sized me up very quickly. She spoke very understandable Spanish (thank you, thank you!) and every few minutes would interject an English word right after the Spanish one, like "scaffolding," or "parchment." I was impressed!

There was a room where a doctoral candidate had to subject himself to questioning by university professors. There was the candidate´s chair and then banks of chairs for up to 3 dozen or so university professors to sit, and behind all that chairs for interested members of the public, like the poor applicant´s family. The questioning lasted for 3 days! If a candidate admitted he could not answer a question, he "failed" the exam and the exam was ended. And I thought the bar exam was hard!

In April, a new rector (the president, or head) of the university will be sworn in......a woman! This will be a first in the 400 year history of the unversity. I wonder if any one will be posted at the former rectors´gravesites to look for possible rollovers.

Hasta luego!!