Photo by courtesy of Buenos Aires city government

Seemingly overnight the Buenos Aires government’s signature yellow posters sprung up throughout the city ominously asking passersby: ‘do you know where you’re going out tonight?’ The grainy accompanying image featured a menacing-looking portal with the words ‘dark basement bar’ scrawled on it in white chalk, while the text invited the curious to visit www.saliseguro.gob.ar.

A quick visit to the website was all it took to strip Saliseguro of its aura of mystery, and reveal it to be a city-wide initiative aiming to monitor safety in nocturnal entertainment spaces.

The timing of Saliseguro’s launch is no accident. It comes in the wake of the verdict of the Cromañon trials, which once again thrust the scandal into the media spotlight. The sentences handed out on 19th August placed responsibility on the negligent club owner for the nearly 200 people who were killed owing to the nightclub’s inadequate safety measures. This has brought personal safety to the fore of many clubbers’ and their families’ minds as the Cromañon deaths were brought about by a lethal combination of a highly flammable interior, a venue filled over capacity and blocked emergency exits. By inspecting the fire-safety standards in venues, Saliseguro aims to avoid a repetition of this tragedy.

The seemingly innocuous website can be consulted by anyone for information regarding their security before heading on a night out. It informs the visitor as to how well equipped the venue is, whether it has a history of failing to comply with government norms and if it has in the past held events for which it was deemed unsuitable. This is vetted by the Agency of Governmental Control, which inspects venues on a regular basis in order to ensure that they are not filled over capacity, and are properly equipped to deal with fire, including an adequate evacuation procedure and accessible points of evacuation. Members of the public are also invited to report any of their own nocturnal haunts that they have perceived to be of questionable safety.

When Is a Bar Not a Bar?

Worthy as it sounds, it is unclear as to whether Saliseguro is quite so simple. While head of cabinet for Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, enthuses that “parents can control where their children are going out and young people can enjoy a safe and risk-free night out,” many working in the nocturnal entertainment industry are up in arms.

A forward circulating by e-mail entitled ‘The Closure of Bars: The Truth’ highlights the thousands of people losing their jobs as a result of the initiative. It suggests that late-night pubs and bars are falsely classified by Saliseguro as cafes, drastically reducing their maximum capacity to 3m² per client. A network of successful clubs is believed to work in collusion with the government, denouncing others in order to eliminate the competition.

The forward further argues that spontaneous dancing does not turn a venue into a club and therefore Saliseguro classifications are often fraudulent. Anecdotal evidence testifies to bars in Buenos Aires that ask their clients to refrain from dancing in order to avoid a switch in category which would make them susceptible to government intervention. These unclear definitions have been accused by blog ‘ChauInfracciones’ as a “confused attempt at classification with a complete lack of legally established regulations to back it up.” According to news website ‘Noticias Urbanas’, shortly after the September launch of Saliseguro, “out of a total of 180 venues inspected, ten bars and pubs were closed.” The question remains as to whether these were dangerous dives shut down for the public good or simply neighbourhood watering holes that rubbed the inspectors up the wrong way.

Photo by Thomas Locke Hobbs

Club Niceto packed with revellers

A Government Keeping Up Appearances

The scheme and its unusual system of classification affects a wide range of venues which occupy very different places in Buenos Aires’ nightlife scene. The popular Club Niceto attests to relatively favourable treatment. Pablo del Bosco, of the communications department, asserts: “The truth is they keep an eye more on other places because there are other nightclubs with heavy drug circulation. Of course anyone can come to Niceto and take whatever but it’s generally relatively clean. In any case the owner is a very honest, clean guy in that sense, he has no connections with the underworld.”

Nevertheless there are still certain aspects of Saliseguro which they oppose. Corruption is a recurrent theme, and Del Bosco claims that “the club next door was repeatedly closed then reopened so surely they must have had a contact in the government.” Furthermore, he derides the incentives-based system of remuneration for the inspectors, which means “they earn more money the stricter they are…so you could end up with inspectors closing everything down just to earn more money.” Niceto’s major bugbear are the fines for smoking, as it is almost impossible to control. Overall, Del Bosco considers Saliseguro to be rather inconsequential: “I haven’t really noticed any change since Saliseguro came out.”

Club Niceto’s indifference, however, is not shared by more alternative venues, such as the bar at community radio station La Tribu. Journalist and bar manager Rafa Lopez Binaghi laments that “they don’t treat everyone the same way, they distort the facts.” The cycle of inspections is neverending, the rules inconsistent. As another member of La Tribu, Diego Skliar, explains, the regulations “change all the time. The inspectors come and say ‘you can’t have this chair here’, so we move the chair. They come back the following week and ask ‘what’s this chair doing here? It can’t be here, it’s got to be there’, and they put it back where it was in the first place.”

Photo by courtesy of La Tribu

La Tribu Patrons enjoying a show

They feel that the Buenos Aires music scene has suffered most from impossible restrictions, notably the decrease in available spaces for aspiring acts. There are illogical disparities in what the legislation does and does not permit. Skliar explains that “any poet can come to La Tribu to recite a poem and that’s fine. But the instant you bring in a guitar, then it’s not. Musicians are effectively discriminated against.” Lopez Binaghi suggests that the government is overcompensating for the inaction and corruption which led to Cromañon: “When the state tries to look active what happens is they forcibly destroy things which already exist…They just do things for show, which are in the public eye, like a website where you can check things out for yourself.  But the reality is that it solves nothing, it’s an illusion, perhaps linked to the idea of marketing, that they’re working.”

The conclusion that La Tribu has reached offers a disheartening portrait of a government preoccupied with superficial gestures to the point of paradox. Lopez Binaghi adds: “The initiative is senseless, because if the rules and methods of control are fair then everyone should conform to them, and there’s no need for a website which tells you what’s safe and what’s not. The moment you have to worry about where fulfills safety regulations and where doesn’t, that’s when you know something’s wrong. How can the government tell you not to go somewhere because it’s unsafe and at the same time let it remain open? So I’m against the website, because there shouldn’t be a need for one. It dies by its own sword.”

Not Part of the Solution, Part of the Problem

Perhaps increased government scrutiny is never in the venues’ favour. Nevertheless, as for the people to whom it is destined to be useful, online electronic music forum ‘Buenos Aliens’ similarly evidences rejection of the government’s attempts to make the night a safer place. Although many young clubbers agree that social problems need tackling, they also bemoan that a city famed for its all-night party culture should be handled in such a repressive manner. Their attitudes seem a further manifestation of a very Argentine distrust in its government. One participant asks: “Do you pay taxes so that some man behind a desk can tell you when you can have a beer at a party? Does that sound like civilisation or the first world to you?” Another emphasises that the idea should be “to prevent rather than prohibit”, with Saliseguro only serving to exacerbate existing tensions by driving cultural activities underground.

It is unlikely that the slope is so slippery as to lead to the apocalyptic vision of a Buenos Aires devoid of bars, clubs and pubs that the forum members propose. Nevertheless it is clear that many Argentines believe that the government does not act according to what is genuinely in their best interests. From both sides of the bar accusations that a potentially useful scheme is both poorly applied as well as riddled with corruption are rife. Saliseguro may in theory offer a solution to appease nocturnal nerves, however in practice it is just another throwaway symbol of a government out of touch with its citizens.