Educational and ludicrous activities.

The Casa Rosada is Argentina’s more festive, pink counterpart to the United States’ White House. Apocryphal tales as to the origin of the pinkness of the Casa Rosada abound – my personal favorite argues that the building is pink because it was painted with cow’s blood. Awesome. I had also heard that the Casa Rosada featured a crypt, and while I didn’t have any expectations it would equal Paris’s catacombs or the bone church of Kutna Hora, after visiting Recoleta Cemetery, I had high hopes that we would not leave the seat of Argentina’s government without seeing some bones.

Unfortunately, when we arrived at the building, we learned that tours were indefinitely suspended. The surly woman who demanded our identification before letting us enter the lame museum in the basement of the Casa Rosada had no idea when, or even if tours would recommence. Instead of a tour, we wandered through the unedifying museum, examining the official cake cutters and the ceremonial pants and reading the bizarre English-language signage, which informed us that the museum was available for “educational and ludicrous activities.” I looked in vain through the museum for the discussion of the Dirty War. The clever museum designers had managed to avoid any kind accounting for the years of military dictatorship, disappearances, and deaths by pretending the last 30 years hadn’t happened. The museum’s brisk march through Argentina’s history stopped at the year 1976, when the military dictatorship began, with no mention of any subsequent events. A list of Argentina’s presidents near the entrance to the museum ended at 1976, without a mention of even the current president and occupant of the Casa Rosada. -EMW