Rompecabezas BsAs Tierra Santa. 1st day
(photos by Ramsey Arnaoot)

Tierra Santa is a municipally and ecclesiastically endorsed theme park, or "thematic park" on the Northern rim of Buenos Aires. It is a wonder of wonders; mainly due to its odd meld of piety, pity, plastifoam, and animatronics. Then again, the most revelatory moments are, for me, usually the result of terse combinations of opposites, anyway. I respond poorly to the fully appropriate.


Here, on a plot between a waterpark and Jorge Newberry airport, we find casts, spectacles, and android depictions of the Creation, the Nativity, the Last Supper, the Resurrection, as well as a full-scale three-dee recreation of Biblical history and Catholic imagination. Compared to the relatively European city surrounding it, Tierra Santa is more in the spirit of baroque Southamerican Catholicism; a spirit that can smoothly transition between "Simon of Cyrene helping Jesus carry the cross" and chocolate-covered bananas on a stick.

And sitting in the audience of the Cration, as hippos and lions and giraffes wheel into view, I can findly see the charm of the Creation story; that by allowing a week for the whole shebang, it helps makes succinct the essential mystery of why there is something rather than nothing. The spectacle--- of Adam and the world zoo floating through space--- made the apperance of life rightfully absurd again.


But it was the unchecked enthusiasm that got me. For the Resurrection, a 18m Jesus Christ with motorized hands and eyes emerged "from the mountaintop, blessing worldwide," shooting lasers and blacklight, to the theme of Handelīs Hallelujah chorus. This Resurrection was Manīs attempt to give God a high-five. The others were on the Calvary when the giant rose, noting that we could have, in theory, leapt onto his shoulder and given God a high-five ourselves. Of course, not without spending the next 2 years in an Argentine prison.

Catholicism is better, in general, at that terse combination of opposites I spoke of. Fewer Lutherans or Southern Baptists feel compelled to adorn their houses of worship with golden skeletons and blood. Protestantism too successfully banishes struggle and Satan from paradise; often succeeding in the defeat of its impulses. Catholicism, no. Catholicism continually reminds us.



Outside the temples in Tierra Santa, bellydancers in silver bodysuits tempt the crowds, demonstrating the vices of Judea. During Creation, God creates a very voluptuous and uncovered Eve, giving a hundred schoolboys their very first boner.

God is winking. The same God that strolled through the coolness of Eden, has now written his own Simpsons episode and called it Tierra Santa.


This was only the beginning of the night for us, however. The end was us getting frisked by the Argentine police outside of an underground jazz club. In between, were countless affirmations that Argentina and the four of us do not know quite what to make of the other.