# 56 Bonding with the Dead at Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires
On retro culture, Argentine politics, and wandering dead.
I don’t vibe with Buenos Aires, or Buenos Aires doesn’t vibe with me.
I blame the traffic—loud, toxic—but most big cities have a traffic problem.
I blame the sad state of structures—graffitied, barbed-wired—but I love dilapidating buildings elsewhere in the world.
Perhaps Buenos Aires is too European for me, too reverent of the French. Everywhere I look, there’s Beaux-Arts, Belle Époque, and Art Nouveau architecture, and for breakfast the Porteños, as citizens of Buenos Aires are called, enjoy coffee with sweet croissants. I love Paris, but I lived there for two decades, so the “Paris of South America” as Buenos Aires is called doesn’t appeal to me as such.
It’s possible that I reject the city’s air of defeat. After being in Brazil for three months, where most people I met seemed to know how to enjoy life, the Porteños appear to me as rather depressed. And not without reason. Argentina is still mourning its disappeared, has not been economically healthy or even stable since its gilded age (1880–1914), and is once again in an economic crisis, battling chronic high inflation.
Retro Culture
One thing I love about Buenos Aires, though, is how it has embraced retro culture.
Antique shops and vintage clothing boutiques give the streets a paradoxical sense of aliveness, as though nothing here ever dies. The eighties are particularly popular. Songs from the Cure and the Bangles are blasting from store speakers, and this is the place to buy your stonewashed high-waisted jeans or single-color tracksuit. Random passersby look like extras from the movie Purple Rain—it’s great!
Do the eighties remind people of a time that was not necessarily economically better, but marked the return to freedom? Dictator Videla, known for his Dirty War in which he disappeared 30,000 people and tortured countless more, was removed from power in 1983. With the return of democracy, Buenos Aires experienced a cultural blossoming, particularly in music, arts, and nightlife.
Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires
After two weeks in the city, I decide to go to the Recoleta Cemetery. I visit cemeteries wherever I go—the way people bury their dead tells us something about how they live—and since I’m not yet vibing with the living, perhaps I can bond with the dead.
The Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires is world-famous. Not because of all the celebrities buried there, though. Other than Eva (Evita) Perón and perhaps a few ex-presidents, most non-Argentines wouldn’t recognize the engraved names. Despite Jorge Luis Borges’ desire (expressed in a poem) to be buried here, he ended up in Geneva, France. Recoleta is famous because it’s like an open-air museum with nothing but fancy mausoleums, vaults with stained-glass windows, tombs, temples, pyramids, and funerary monuments. “Death on display,” Mariana Enriquez calls it in a book I highly recommend.
The necropolis designed by Prosper Catelin—a French man, quelle surprise—was built in 1822 as the city’s first public cemetery. It ended up as the graveyard for the rich upper class.
An imposing Neoclassical portico with four Doric columns welcomes us. Daniel and I, not grieving a relative buried here, must pay an entrance fee. Recoleta is Buenos Aires’ primary tourist attraction and has been a National Historical Museum since 1946. The fee has an expiration date, as do all costs in Argentina. Prices are only valid until inflation justifies a rise.
The large cemetery is like a city within a city with a grid-like structure where you can easily spend an hour or two. There are no trees and plenty of coffins: The rich don’t bury their expensive coffins underground but leave them in the crypts for all to see.
Daniel and I meander, stopping at mausoleums and funerary monuments that speak to us. As we admire the art and take pictures we openly wonder about the privileged lives of the people buried beneath all this expensive stone. Plaques give away titles. Statues indicate age, profession, and character. I’m reminded of how I used to wander Cimitière du Montparnasse in Paris whenever I needed inspiration. Stories are for the taking among the dead.
Eva (and Juan) Perón
We finally arrive at the graveside most other visitors here have come to see, that of Eva Perón. On the metro ride toward Recoleta, I read up on her and her husband, Juan Perón, a man selected as Argentina’s president three times.
Was Juan Perón a socialist or a fascist? Although known as a hero of the working class, he imprisoned opponents and attacked intellectuals who questioned his methods. Jorge Luis Borges, for example, was “promoted” from his position at the Miguel Cané Library to the post of Poultry Inspector at the Buenos Aires Municipal Market. The writer quit instead.
Some argue that Juan Perón was maligned in the foreign press because he didn’t advance British and U.S. interests. But a man who openly admires Mussolini and welcomes Nazi war criminals such as Mengele and Eichmann into Argentina deserves criticism. My original question about Juan Perón was misphrased. He was a complicated man who stood for contradictory things.
Eva Perón, his first wife, inspired less controversy. Although hated by some, she was adored by most—still is. She’s known for introducing social justice into the national discourse. “It is not philanthropy,” she writes in her book La razón de mi vida (The Reason for My Life), published in 1951. “Nor is it charity. It’s not even social welfare. To me, it is strict justice. I do nothing but return to the poor what the rest of us owe them, because we had taken it away from them unjustly.”
Maria Popova from The Marginalian recently wrote an article about Eva Perón’s revolutionary decalogue of rights for the elderly that were meant to ensure Argentines could age with dignity.
What happened to Eva Perón’s body after her death is worth telling. When cancer killed her in 1952, at the young age of 33, her corpse was embalmed and displayed. Three years later, following the military coup that sent Juan Perón into exile, officers stole her mummy in the middle of the night. As if removing her corpse might also remove the people’s admiration for her and her ousted husband.
For nearly twenty years Eva’s mummy circulated secretly. It was kept hidden in offices, transported abroad, buried under a false name in Milan. In 1971, it was returned to Juan Perón in Madrid in a damaged state. Perón’s third wife Isabel restored the mummy and brought her back to Argentina. But it wasn’t Isabel who buried Eva at the upper-class cemetery; it was yet another dictatorial regime who decided to bring her mummy into her father’s family vault in Recoleta. Here she lies five meters deep in a crypt fortified like a nuclear bunker.
Rufina Cambaceres: The Girl Who Died Twice
Daniel and I don’t yet know Rufina Cambaceres’ story when we stop at her grave. Something tells me to pay attention. Minutes later, a guide arrives, and I eavesdrop.
Legend has it that on her 19th birthday, Rufina collapsed and was found without pulse. Doctors declared her dead from a heart attack. Days after her burial, cemetery workers noticed that the casket was moved and slightly ajar. They opened it further and discovered scratch marks on the inside of the lid, indicating that Rufina had woken up in the coffin and tried to claw her way out. Her second death was probably from asphyxiation.
Her mausoleum contains a gorgeous Art Nouveau statue that mirrors her tragic tale: she’s holding the door to her vault, moving between the living and the dead.
As I leave the cemetery, I pass again through the Neoclassical gate.
Requiescant in Pace it wishes on one side. Expectamus Dominum, it contradicts on the other. Rest in Peace and We’re Waiting for the Lord.
Back on the streets of the living, I vibe more with Argentina’s grand and withering capital. Porteños squeeze through holes in the traffic. Buenos Aires is neither a city to like nor to loathe.
I’m Claire Polders, a writer of fiction and nonfiction. Read about my books and more on my website www.clairepolders.com.
Desk Journeys aka Reading Recommendations
If you’re interested in longer essays that mix (dark) history with personal explorations, I recommend reading Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys by Mariana Enriquez, an Argentine author known for her horror stories such as Our Share of Night, A Sunny Place for Shady People, and Things We Lost in the Fire.
Enriquez guides us through 21 cemeteries across the globe, inviting us into the liminal space between the dead and the living. As people in power keep covering up their crimes, she tells us stories about inequality and injustice so we might remember.
Another book that takes you to cemeteries and other places of macabre interest is Sidewalks by the Mexican author Valeria Luiselli. As she drifts between Venice, Mexico City, and New York, she lingers on untranslated words and marginalia, turning private memories into meaningful narratives.
Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell (Hogarth, 2025)
Sidewalks by Valeria Luiselli, translated by Christina MacSweeney (Coffee House Press, 2013)
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Author News
Just a reminder that Woman of the Hour: Fifty Tales of Longing and Rebellion, my debut story collection, can be found wherever you buy books. For my indie publisher and me it’s best if you order it directly from the press. You can also support local stores by getting it at bookshop.org. Other options are Amazon or Barnes&Noble.
Wanted: Homes in Europe
Daniel and I are still looking for housesitting and subletting opportunities in Europe. For the summer of 2026, we’re mostly interested in the Netherlands, France, Italy, and Greece. If you’re away for a week or more and would like us to take care of your place, please contact us! We don’t smoke, won’t bring pets, and are respectful of your property. References upon request.
Related Essays
Time to Say Goodbye
Daniel and I are flying to Argentine’s lake region today and are looking forward to some spectacular hikes near Bariloche. It’s been unusually warm there, too warm for long days on trails without shade, but cooler weather is supposed to be on the way. Let’s hope we don’t melt.
All my best,
Claire
P.S. Have you been to Bariloche, El Chalten, or Torres del Pain? What was your favorite day hike?
Always enjoy reading your posts, Claire (and I just ordered your collection for my local library). <3
Fascinating.