http://www.sanchospanza.com/2007/11/buenos-aires-starbuckization-of.html
BUENOS AIRES: The starbuckization of Argentine coffeehouse culture
Ugh, Sancho's disposition is upset.
Starbucks has announced that it formed a joint venture with a Mexican company to enter the Argentine market, under the guise of Café Sirena.
I know Starbucks already has a presence in European countries, which have their own coffeehouse cultures, but now it's coming to Buenos Aires. I've already noticed the creeping trend towards Starbucks-style coffee culture in Buenos Aires, a city where there is a café on every corner. Especially in upscale parts of Buenos Aires, the cafes are starting to resemble Starbucks, developing "brands" and multiple locations. Such is the case with the Havanna chain, the Café Martínez chain, the Coffee Store chain (a kind of Starbucks clone) and even McDonalds, with its McCafé chain. Aroma, the Italian café chain, is already here, with its garish blue and yellow storefronts and in-store decor. If one were to tabulate the conversations, poetry, music, jokes, anecdotes, literature, feuds, chess games, speeches, manifestos, etc. that occurred over cups of espresso in the real cafes of Buenos Aires, it'd probably come out that 78% of Argentine culture came out of the experience of consuming caffeine in the company of friends, whiling away the hours in a traditional corner cafe or hole-in-the-wall mid-block cafe. Sure, wi-fi Internet surfers might hatch big plans on their laptops slurping at a huge cup of coffee in a plush couch at Starbucks, but it's different. The collective aspect is missing, as is the interrelation with neighborhood and the capacity to accumulate tradition and history, which are dependent on the stable staff, location and ownership that anchor most traditional cafes. Not to mention the rich material culture (the tangible heritage, as cultural experts say) of traditional cafes: the waiter uniforms, the old fixtures, wood or marble counters, antique cash registers, stained glass, battered tin ashtrays and napkin dispensers, chipped wood or linoleum topped tables, bric-a-brac wall decorations including old photos and mementos, etc, and etc. The government of Buenos Aires gives small subsidies to historic cafes in the city, but it should do something to make sure that every possible remnant of the city's cafe culture is saved, with its decor and staff intact to the extent possible. It would be revolutionary to think of protecting culture in this manner. The idea should be to preserve not only architecture and monuments, but an entire way of life, which in this case depends on cafes of the old school.
