Sunset of an era

The “Recoleta” is, without discussion, the most classic and refined neighborhood of the city of Buenos Aires. Throughout Alvear and Quintana avenues several of the smarter, expensive and elegant apartments buildings of this huge city are located. Most of these buildings were and continue to be inhabited by families of Buenos Aires high society, benefited -especially in the first decades of the twentieth century- from a successful agricultural, livestock and export industry that enriched many families of the time. For some time I lived in an apartment whose rear windows, facing the back , stripped the inside of many of those elegant buildings. Dozens of windows were lit each night to reveal the rituals of life in the most traditional neighborhood of Buenos Aires. The night scenes confirm a demographic phenomenon that takes place in this famous neighborhood: ages beyond repair. Since the early 1990s the young upper classes began to move to greener areas (Pilar, Tigre), modern (Puerto Madero), or more trendy (Palermo Soho). In the vast and magnificent apartments in which extended and traditional families used to live there are today old couples and elderly widows, with his unfailing service staff. His days pass within the same sets but without the brightness of the past, both because the political and economic changes in the country took the new fortunes to other sectors of the city. Household chores, visits from family and friends, boredom, and must live with memories and loneliness, set the pace of this aged section of Buenos Aires.