Café San Barnardo: An Image of Buenos Aires Gentrification

When I first walked into Café San Bernardo, I was certain that the curious mix of old men and young trendy hipsters had appropriated my middle school cafeteria. Housed in a 101-year-old warehouse, the 24-hour-café has not closed or changed since the day it opened in 1957. A battered poster of Carlos Gardel hangs above shelves of sports trophies, bottles of Quilmes, Fernet and Whiskey, and a worn rotary pay phone. The old waiters, dressed in traditional black, run back and forth through the massive warehouse space, dodging the ping-pong and billiards players that have increasingly become a staple of late nights at San Bernardo. In recent years, the café, once a traditional respite for the old men of Villa Crespo, has become a popular kitsch destination for Napoleon Dynamite-esque youth. This, like many other places in Buenos Aires, is material evidence of gradually expanding gentrification. Whereas top-down regeneration in neighborhoods like Puerto Madero is unconnected to the urban history of the area—focused on elite businesses and empty money—neighborhoods like Villa Crespo, with traditional or historic legacies, are being culturally converted and commoditized by young people.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, gentrification is defined as “the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents.”[1] In Spanish, this process is translated as “aburguesamiento,” whose root is the Spanish equivalent of “bourgeois.”[2] This definition implies a cultural as well as a physical displacement. It involves two principal factors: the restoration of residential areas in a city’s central neighborhoods and an influx of commerce.[3] Both commercial and residential gentrification account for the rise of rent and property taxes, leading to the displacement of people who have lived in the area, but who are no longer able to afford the price increase.

It is important to acknowledge the fundamental differences in the ways in which Buenos Aires and a city like New York experience gentrification. In New York, there is seemingly no economic ceiling. As housing-costs rise, the city is increasingly populated by the super-wealthy, creating an urban idyll of exclusively rich people. Argentina, on the other hand, does not possess the same wealth as a city like New York. Its unstable economy and fluctuating currency make long-term urban planning impossible. Rather, neighborhoods grow and change, ebb and flow, with much less velocity. This is not to say that gentrification does not exist in Buenos Aires, it just takes a different form.

Gentrification in a Porteño Context

Buenos Aires is a study in contrasts: the grand Avenida del Libertador, lined with art museums, parks, designer malls, and luxury apartments, runs through the city and directly into one of the poorest shantytowns in the city.

Urban renewal began in Buenos Aires in the 1990s in an effort to develop the border of Rio de la Plata. This process involved building roads to increase accessibility between the central area and the metropolitan region and increasing the roles of national and municipal governments in developing economic, social, and environmental improvements in impoverished city neighborhoods.[4]

This process also involved enhancing touristic content in Buenos Aires. This has both positive and adverse effects, for although it involves recovering theaters, museums, art galleries, and other cultural centers, it also requires using a historic culture as a commercial strategy and therefore commoditizing tradition.[5]

The strain of gentrification that neighborhoods like San Telmo and more recently, Villa Crespo, have experienced has largely been geared at satisfying a consumerism born out of cultural appropriation. History, which serves as the basis for this gentrification, is trivialized and reinvented for the sake of private investment.

Villa Crespo: Palermo Queens?

Villa Crespo was established around a large shoe factory that was built in 1888. Life and culture emanated and the neighborhood became home to tangos, quaint cafes, and underground theaters. In the 1930s, there was an influx of Jewish immigrants, and the area has since been associated with the Jewish community, housing synagogues and Hebrew schools. It has also maintained its industrial atmosphere, attracting the commercial activities of other immigrant communities.[6]

Today Villa Crespo’s industrial streets are reminiscent of those of nearby Palermo five years ago. In the early 2000s, the subdivisions of Palermo seemed never-ending: Palermo Hollywood, Palermo SoHo, Palermo Chico, Palermo Viejo, Palermo Cañitas, Alto Palermo. Palermo became synonymous with fashionable boutiques, trendy restaurants, and boutique hotels, and real estate agents, much to the chagrin of longtime residents, started referring to bordering Villa Crespo as “Palermo Queens.”[7]

An influx of hip restaurants was inevitable, but comparing Villa Crespo to the former state of Palermo is to strip the neighborhood of its unique characteristics. The residents of Villa Crespo successfully resisted this Palermo-ification, although it did not stop a younger artistic crowd from recently moving in, forging a new social scene. The neighborhood has become a sort of culinary heaven within the city, and the hippest bars lack signs, imbuing the cobbled streets with a sense of undiscovered mystery. Art studios have taken up residence in warehouses, bars have populated former factories, and finding them feels like stepping into a secret society, despite their complex and extensive histories.

And somehow everyone seems to know that Tuesdays at “Samber” are for ping-pong. Beginning at 22:00, hundreds flock to the bar for an intense night of competition, beer, and greasy food. San Bernardo finds the space between café, salon, and game club, becoming a melting pot of ages and groups, despite the flood of young hipsters and electronic music. Tourists, students, businessmen, and old men are called to the warehouse.

A long-term waiter from Villa Crespo regards the significant changes the neighborhood has experienced with great positivity. Previously, he explained, there were more old people, but there were also lots of suspicious people who did drugs in the bathrooms. It was a dangerous place; he was stabbed more than once and was always nervous to carry his wallet. Now that “the hipsters” have arrived, he’s immensely comfortable, happy, and safe.

It is unfair to condemn gentrification without acknowledging its benefits: increased wealth, and by extension, safety and improved standards of living. However, these benefits are only enjoyed by some, and they exist hand-in-hand with a displacement that has forced those who built the neighborhood to pick up and move.

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[1] "Gentrification." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, Web. 8 Oct. 2015. 

[2] Lozano-Paredes, Luis Hernando. "The Expanding Bourgeois: Gentrification in Buenos Aires, Argentina." The Global Grind. N.p., 22 Oct. 2013. Web. 7 Oct. 2015.

[3] Herzer, Hilda, Mercedes Di Virgilio, Maria Carla Rodríguez, Gabriela Merlinsky, and Mariana Gómez Schettini. "Transformation and Change in Downtown Buenos Aires. The New Urban Social Question." 

[4] Herzer, Hilda, Mercedes Di Virgilio, Maria Carla Rodríguez, Gabriela Merlinsky, and Mariana Gómez Schettini. "Transformation and Change in Downtown Buenos Aires. The New Urban Social Question." 

[5] Herzer, Hilda, Mercedes Di Virgilio, Maria Carla Rodríguez, Gabriela Merlinsky, and Mariana Gómez Schettini. "Transformation and Change in Downtown Buenos Aires. The New Urban Social Question." 

[6] “Villa Crespo.” Buenos Aires Ciudad - Gobierno de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, 1 Jan. 2001. 8 Oct. 2015. 

[7] Sánchez, Nora. "Insólita Pelea Porque a Villa Crespo Ahora La Llaman Palermo Queens." Clarín. N.p., 23 Aug. 2007. Web. 7 Oct. 2015.