I decided to join this forum exclusively so that I can add my opinion to this particular discussion,
as I feel very strongly about this subject. I've been reading other threads here treating the same
topic and I wanted to add my perspective.
I am a Porteño, left argentina 17 years ago and never missed it and never regretted emigrating,
and one of the key reasons for that to happen was exactly what is being discussed here: I had
enough of feeling like a foreigner or "not quite the same as the majority" in my own home.
I find the appreciations expressed here, about how difficult porteños can be to be absolutely true
and accurate.
To me, it's not that difficult to be an outsider in Bs As (or Argentina, but never lived in the interior
so I can't tell). You can be an argentine, born and bred, and still not belong because your individuality
makes you stand out as different: you can talk endlessly about Buenos Aires being a cosmopolitan
and world class city, but lightly scratch the surface and you'll find small town mentality.
Insularity pretty much sums it up perfectly.
And I want to make sure I am not saying this to compare Arg to other countries.
God knows I did all that stuff about joining an activity, do courses, be actively involved as much
as I could in everything. It's not enough I'm afraid. There are deeper currents and stronger elements
that bond people, you can join all the choirs and knitting clubs and stamp collecting societies in town,
people will still find reasons of their own to like you or dislike you, ways to embrace you or reject you
regardless of your own efforts, enthusiasm and willingness.
In my view, there are very defined cultural elements, behaviours and traits that you must possess,
profess, do, believe in etc, in order to be really part of the national fabric. If you do not show signs of
having some, or any, of those qualities then you'll have a very hard time if you intend to feel like you
belong. Some of them are having one of those clannish large families, those lifelong friends from
childhood, believing in all the national myths, being football mad, etc.
And I'm not sure that exclusively an argentine thing, I'd say it's universal.
Then there are other issues: being judgemental is normal in Argentina, not being open minded is too,
individual free thinkers are unusual if not regarded as suspect, as is anybody who's not easy to pigeonhole.
Intellectuals aren't massively popular either, they're appreciated mostly or only within the cultural elite.
I'd as far as to say that you have to be a stereotype of one or another kind to have better chances to fit in.
When I read that warm and welcoming, supportive large families are the norm, my bloods boils.
Not in my experience they aren't!
For whatever complex (or otherwise) reasons I never managed to belong to one of those ultra tightly
knit clans, I couldn't keep a "childhood friends gang" -I tried- my extended family, not being very big
to begin with, is also very distinctively not the supportive, warm and "there for you" type that some
here argue is "typically" argentine. As if elsewhere in the world there weren't large loving families!
I can go on endlessly with examples and so on, but for what?
I can only begin to imagine what it might be like for an expat or a perma-tourist to try and fit in Bs As
when I, as a local, got the same treatment newcomers say they get, only I got it on a lifelong basis
till I left for Europe, where I am really a foreigner so at least there is a real reason for feeling like it.
