Libertadora del Libertador

Though it is said that you learn something new every day, most of my knowledge about the liberation of South America from Spanish colonial rule has been obtained by a sort of osmotic process over a year: statues and street names, obelisks and museums, artworks galore. I am at the point where I could recognise a silhouette of Sucre or the back of Bolivar (though the portraits of the latter by Julio Blanco (a good link to which I cannot find) were something different). 

Before noticing a museum two days ago (behind the Monastery of Santa Catlina, where she was raised after  her mother died a month after giving birth), the name of Doña Manuela Sáenz meant nothing to me, however. No feminist will be surprised to hear that the woman Bolivar called the “liberator of the liberator” (she is said to have saved her lover´s life on three occasions) had been airbrushed from history until recently. 

The tour round the museum (again, “no photos”, again, a lenient guide) was more of an attempt to insert her into the liberation story than a genuine reflection on her life (I had learned more from Wikipedia last night) but most of her belongings had been burned when she died a pauper´s death in Paita, Peru. We were told she was a brave woman, fearless: unfortunately there is little left to illustrate her heroism.

Senate Museum

Ah! How great it is to be in a big city amidst real culture again... Today we went into the free Senator Domingo F. Sarmiento museum round the corner and saw the remains of a chair burned when the congress was attacked by rioters in December 2001 and one of Eva Peron`s outifts. There were newspapers from 1933 announcing the death of two-time 1920s President Hipolito Yrigoyen, whom a street here is named after, just as they were lamenting "Father of Democracy" Raul Alfonsin`s death last week. A wall was decorated with a number of colourful caricatures, one of which refers to British greed though I am unsure in what context.