`Spirited Córdoba's Riches`

`By GEOFFREY FOX`

ARGENTINA has become ridiculously cheap for travelers with dollars, and the elegant old mountain city of Córdoba is one of the greatest values. But $20 first-class hotel suites and $10 three-course meals with wine can't last forever in a place that gives such good quality, so if you want to see the other Argentina, the Argentina beyond Buenos Aires, now is the time. An hour's flight northwest of Buenos Aires, this provincial capital - Argentina's second largest city - has a regional character, which includes a reputation for rebelliousness. The university reform movement of the turn of the century began here, as did an uprising in 1969 that gave a new word to the Spanish language, cordobazo - a Córdoba blowup. Che Guevara lived here as a teen-ager, in the 1940's - he was just plain Ernestito then, a heart-throb, smart aleck and daredevil. Another heart-throb and daredevil, the racecar driver, tango dancer and current President Carlos Saul Menem, got his law degree from the university in Córdoba, one of the oldest in the Americas. The city has more impressive Spanish colonial architecture than any other in Argentina - far more than Buenos Aires, where the little there was was almost all torn down in successive urban renewals. The colonial is mixed with Italianate, from a fin-de-siecle cattle and land boom, and with contemporary buildings and public spaces to make Córdoba a complex, human-scaled urban environment designed for walkers and street life. The city was founded by Spanish colonists from Peru who came from the blue-green, snow-capped Sierra Chica - a mountain chain more ancient than the Andes - in 1573. They didn't find the silver or gold they were looking for, but they recognized other virtues: dense forests, fertile grassland - the pampa - and plenty of water. They seem to have been impressed by the sheer number of rivers, naming them Rio Primero, Segundo, Tercero and Cuarto (First, Second, Third and Fourth). They must also have liked the year-round temperate climate with its mild, but noticeable, changes of seasons - a bit like the city in Spain from which they took the name, Córdoba. But the decisive factor was the presence of a large and settled Indian population, the Comechingones - after all, somebody was going to have to do the work. Indians also meant souls to catechize, which was what attracted the Jesuits. For over two centuries Córdoba was nominally a subcolony of Lima, which was months away over the Andes and several other mountain chains by express mule - which may be why the region became famous for its prize mules. In practice, the Córdobans were pretty much on their own. The region thrived with a network of agricultural-industrial plantations, or estancias, built by Indian labor under Jesuit organization. Much of the ingenious 17th-century technology and graceful, substantial architecture of this complex can be seen in nearby towns like Alta Gracia. Although Buenos Aires became the viceroyal capital in 1776 and eventually the capital of an independent Argentina, the cordobeses - Córdobans - have all along maintained their regional individuality. Their brand of humor is displayed in Hortensia, a sassy magazine that looks something like Mad and a little like Penthouse. One of its cartoon characters is Inodoro Pereyra, a seemingly imbecilic gaucho who outsmarts sophisticated cosmopolitans. Córdobans also like to improvise extravagant nicknames: ''Hi there, Lion-who's-been-riding-a-motorcycle,'' was the spontaneous greeting to one young man with long, uncombed hair. Their speech has a sing-songy intonation, and their pronunciation tends to be softer and more slurred than in Buenos Aires. And, ever since the mule trains, they have remained in the vanguard of transportation technology. A century ago, they were among the first in the country to bring in a railroad. In the 1930's, Córdoba pioneered Argentine aircraft manufacture, and since the 1950's it has been a center of automobile production. And this year the city re-introduced streetcars - with women at the controls. As the Spanish colonial ''Laws of the Indies'' specified for new cities, the town was laid out in a grid with the main buildings around a rectangular plaza de armas, now the Plaza San Martin. That plan and many of the old buildings are still there. In colonial times the plaza was the site for civic and ecclesiastical ceremonies. Today it is a grassy park, shaded by bottle trees. The plaza is dominated by an equestrian statue of the Liberator, Gen. Jose de San Martin, whose oversize bronze finger points toward the mountains that he and his Argentine troops crossed in 1817 to liberate Chile from the Spaniards. His horse, however, is forever charging toward the cathedral, the oldest in Argentina. This cathedral is probably the country's most important surviving colonial building. Construction began in the 1600's, and successive generations kept adding to it. The dome was added in 1758, the bell towers still later and the final ornamentation in 1804 - just 12 years before Argentina's declaration of independence. The building has been restored to its late colonial grandeur and, in the wide paved atrium stretching between it and the plaza, the architect Miguel Angel Roca has worked in a life-size silhouette in white stone, as though the door frames, windows and bell tower were casting ghostly shadows. Also facing the plaza is the somewhat newer cabildo (1785). Until recently this housed the headquarters of the provincial police, but it is now being turned into a museum. ROCA'S silhouetting has been carried through in front of other colonial buildings, including the all-stone Church of the Company of Jesus, a block from the cathedral near the corner of Caseros and Obispo Trejo and the nearby National University of Córdoba. The National University began life as a Jesuit seminary in 1613 and was elevated to the status of university in 1622, making it the oldest in Argentina and one of the oldest in the Western Hemisphere. Together with the cathedral the university was at the center of a large operation developed to catechize the Comechingones and other Indians. In 1767 the Jesuits were expelled from all Spanish dominions and their property handed over to the Franciscans. The university was eventually secularized. Students here have long played a key role in national intellectual and political life - student strikes here in 1918 sparked a nationwide university reform movement, and a rebellion of students and young auto workers in 1969 - the cordobazo - nearly brought down a military dictatorship. In the 20th century, under a government friendlier to the church, the Jesuits returned and built the Catholic University in the same neighborhood. It is smaller and looks quite ordinary next to the late medieval, early Renaissance structures of stone that those earlier members of their order had designed. Córdoba Province's three north-south mountain chains are crossed by more rivers and streams than the four counted by the first settlers, and are dotted by lakes and lagoons. Local entrepreneurs harnessed some of this water power for electricity almost as soon as the technology became available, contributing to a fin-de-siecle boom. The coming of the railroad in this same period made it easier for the cattle barons in the lowlands to ship beef to Rosario or Buenos Aires (the two main ports) and to import luxury goods and machinery. European architects, stone masons and engineers, many of them French or Italian, arrived to supplement local talent and erect such buildings as the Bank of Córdoba and the Teatro del Libertador General San Martin, still the home of the Córdoba Symphony Orchestra. The bank, just off the plaza on San Jeronimo Street, between Buenos Aires and Ituzaingo, recently celebrated its 100th anniversary. Its high-ceilinged central space is worth a quick look. Near the ceiling, murals depict the transformation of the countryside by the dams that accounted in large part for the prosperity that built the bank. The Teatro del Libertador is near the Plaza Velez Sarsfield, which is really more like a big traffic circle than a traditional plaza, three blocks south and two west of the Plaza San Martin. ITS plush seats are a bit threadbare and the gilding on the many balconies and the ceiling could use retouching, but a visitor can still discern its former elegance. In the little cafeteria, where the audience retires during intermission, is a display of old scores and instruments. The provincial orchestra, by the way, is a serious affair; this fall it did all nine Beethoven symphonies. The restaurants and cafes around the Plaza San Martin and the Company of Jesus Church are attractive and - for Argentines - pricey. In today's conditions that means that if there are two of you and you are really hungry, you might have to break a ten. The Argentine austral is worth so little and the dollar so much that I learned to leap for the tab - better that an Argentine friend be embarrassed by a reversal of etiquette than impoverished by cakes and coffee. Little pastries called factura are traditionally served with yerba mate, a tealike brew - but to get it properly brewed you'll have to visit someone's home, where everyone will share the same bombilla - a straw, often of silver, with a strainer at the end to keep out the bitter green yerba leaves. If you don't have the opportunity or inclination to try this, facturas go well with coffee - which is a vigorous, full-roasted drink in Argentina. A Córdoban specialty, very good with coffee, are the pastries called alfajores, a kind of petit four. Although I was happy with a diet of pasta and beef, I knew I had an obigation to seek out more upscale dining. So I took an old Córdoban friend to lunch at the Hotel Crillon. The maitre-d'hotel sat us in the lobby - the temperature had dropped slightly, and the main dining room was out of service because the heat had broken down. You could tell the place was supposed to be classy, because the menu was in French and the usual Argentine ingredients were offered with sauces. The service was attentive, and the excellent Argentine wine (Lopez) made us willing to ignore the feeling that we were eating on linen-covered packing crates in somebody's hallway. If you have more than a couple of days to spend, you could venture into the mountains. The provincial Tourism Secretariat will supply a free, bilingual road map of the central part of the province (with a map of downtown Córdoba on the reverse) plus detailed highway maps of five scenic circuits from Córdoba. About 30 minutes due west of Córdoba - or an hour by bus, which is the way I went - is Villa Carlos Paz in the foothills on the edge of an artificially enlarged lake, San Roque, which is the source of much of Córdoba's hydroelectric power. The hills of Carlos Paz must have once been very beautiful, and perhaps still are if you get out of town, which is crowded with casinos and bars. A chairlift will take you to the top of La Cruz mountain, and there are riverbank beaches and numerous resorts offering hiking, horseback riding, and so on. Perhaps I'm being unfair - I have trouble feeling affectionate toward a place that tries so hard to be cute and whose biggest boast seems to be a giant outdoor cuckoo clock. More satisfying was a visit to AltaJU Gracia, about 20 miles southwest of the city. This is another of the places Ernesto Guevara lived before he became Che. His parents brought him because the climate was supposed to be good for his asthma. What attracted me was not the climate but the remains of one of the best preserved of the Jesuit estancias, or agricultural complexes, where the priests trained and employed Indian labor in what amounted to the first modern ''development'' project in the area. The estancia was later owned by Santiago Liniers, hero of the defense of Buenos Aires against the English in 1806-07 and the next-to-last viceroy of the Rio de la Plata. Liniers opposed Buenos Aires' declaration of autonomy from Spain in 1810, and fled to his estancia to organize a royalist resistance. He was captured and executed in Córdoba later the same year, but the estancia remained in the family for many years. THE church and old priests' quarters are now a museum, owned by the state but cared for by an administrator who is a descendant of Liniers. The plumbing is a marvel; the 16th-century priests had a perpetually flushing collective toilet so pristine and inviting that the museum staff has put up signs telling you to look, but not to use it. This, together with the architecture and other fixtures, suggests much about the urbanity and ingenuity of the Jesuits.Despite its long use as a secular residence, the dormitory level of the main building still retains inscriptions in a rather simple, late medieval Latin, reminding the fathers that they slept in the company of angels. Furnishings from the Liniers family and later owners include enormous wooden sideboards and other elaborate, heavy furniture, which tells another kind of story. In the last years of the 19th century, these objects were brought by sea from Germany or France and then by rail to Alta Gracia - despite the ready availability of local wood and craftsmen, many of them European immigrants. Such were the extravagant tastes of the landed gentry in those long-ago days, when ''rich as an Argentine'' was a common saying in Europe.

`ON THE PAMPAS AND IN THE MOUNTAINS`

`Getting There`

Austral airline and Aerolineas Argentinas both have frequent one-hour flights between Buenos Aires and Córdoba. The round-trip fare is $166.

`Where to Stay`

Rates for the following hotels, all in downtown Córdoba, are for two people in a room with bath and include breakfast. If calling Córdoba from the United States, dial 011-54-51 first. Crillon (85 Rivadavia; telephone 46093), best known and most traditional of the older hotels; $25 a night. Gran Hotel Dora (70 Entre Rios; 42031), elegant in a convenient location in the old colonial center; $25. Mediterraneo (10 Marcelo T. Alvear; 226025), very comfortable alongside the Canada (the tree-lined channel that is like a quiet, elongated park); $23. La Canada (580 Marcelo T. de Alvear; 31227), newest hotel in town; $24. Nogaro Córdoba (137 San Jeronimo; 224001), convenient for conventions and meetings; $23. Sussex (125 San Jeronimo; 229071), on Plaza San Martin; $42. In Villa Carlos Paz, there is Portal del Lago (corner of Alvarez and Cabrera Streets; from the United States 011-54-541-24931), on the shore of Lake Carlos Paz; $42.

`Where to Eat`

Even in Córdoba's most expensive restaurants, dinner for two, including wine, is unlikely to cost more than $25. Crillon (85 Rivadavia; telephone, dialed locally, 46093). Elegant European-style dining, French influenced, with a variety of meat and fish dishes. Guccio (81 Avenida Hipolito Yrigoyen; 225135) and Longchamps (110 Avenida Hipolito Yrigoyen; 43283) have menus similar to Crillon's. La Mamma (270 Figueroa Alcorta; 228330) is Córdoba's premier Italian restaurant, a short cab ride or a long walk (about nine blocks, but the blocks are short) north and west of Plaza San Martin. El Rancho Grande (4142 Avenida Rafael Nunez; 811529) specializes in chivito asado (roast kid) and other grilled meat dishes. Rancho Don Polidoro (513 Calle Gauss 513, Barrio Villa General Belgrano; 817382) also features the traditional Argentine mixed grill. Good home-style Italian meals at $5 or $6 for one, including wine, are available at Romagnolo on Boulevard Presidente Peron (still known by most residents by its former name, Boulevard Guzman), between San Jeronimo and Entre Rios.

`Shopping`

Besides the many well-turned out galleries in the old section around the plaza, there is a scruffier crafts fair every Saturday from 9 A.M. to 9 P.M. and Sunday from 5 to 9 P.M. at the Paseo de las Artes, corner of Achaval Rodriguez and La Canada, a short taxi ride (about seven blocks) south of the plaza. Leather and wood crafts are among the specialties. A bustling produce and meat market, the Mercado Sur, is three blocks south of the plaza, on Boulevard Arturo Illia between Buenos Aires and Ituzaingo, and the Mercado Norte is six blocks north, on Oncativo between San Martin and Rivadavia.

`Information`

Before you go:The Argentina National Tourist Office (12 West 56th Street, New York, N.Y. 10019; 212-603-0443) or the Argentina Tourist Information Office (330 West 58th Street, Sixth Floor, New York, N.Y. 10019; 212-765-8833 or 800-274-3684) can supply maps and brochures on both the city and province of Córdoba. The Córdoba Trade Center (230 Fifth Avenue, Room 701, New York, N.Y. 10001; 212-779-2975) has both tourist and commercial information on the city and province and can help with plane and hotel reservations. Once you get there: The Tourism Secretariat (Secretaria de Turismo) of the Province of Córdoba offers maps of the city and the mountainous tourist zone. The central office is at 25 Tucuman, Córdoba, Argentina; 33248-44027. The Secretariat also has offices at the airport and at the bus terminal on the eastern edge of town. Maps are also available at most hotels. - G. F. GRAPHIC [in original; not reproduced in this website]: Photos: Córdoba Cathedral, started in the 1600's and silhouetted in white stone, faces the Plaza San Martin; bedroom furniture once belonging to Viceroy Santiago Liniers in the museum of the Jesuit agricultural complex in Alta Gracia; an outdoor cafe on the plaza, facing the Crillon Hotel; door knocker at the Church of the Company of Jesus; The arcaded sidewalk of the cabildo next to the cathedral (pg. 19); ceiling detail in the Church of the Company of Jesus (pg. 28) (Eduardo Escudero); map of Argentina showing location of Córdoba (pg. 28)

MAP[not part of original article] from Ranchweb.com