Hidden

by Melissa Casey (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find Argentina

Hidden in the hills of Córdoba, Argentina rests an alpine-style hamlet that heralds itself as the nation’s first ‘walking town.’ Shrouded in a fragrant forest of pine and spruce and dotted with Bavarian-style restaurants where patrons wash down thick bratwursts with cold steins of beer, visitors are instantly teleported to Munich, Bamberg or Friedrichshafen. Prost! Another round, che? But lurking behind the pedestrian-friendly cobbled streets, cozy cottages and Bavarian-style inns lies the unnerving legend of a hidden past. Coming down from a walk in the hills, I️ encountered an old man in ragged clothes along with his beautiful beast of a dog whose thick black fur surely made the heavy heat of high noon even less bearable. After exchanging greetings the man asked if there were many people on the trail. “Just groups at the summit who will likely soon be heading down,” I️ reported. He grumbled something incoherent and said he’d hoped for solitude. I commiserated and asked if he was from La Cumbrecita. He lifted his hitherto lowered head revealing tired eyes of crystalline blue and said he lived in Buenos Aires but had been coming here since 1945. Knowing that the town had only recently been open to outsiders and tourism of any sort, this intrigued me. I️ commented that the trees and plants looked much like those at my home in the northeastern United States (spruce, pine, oak and even wild black raspberry bushes!) but that the earth seemed much too dry to support such vegetation. The unorthodox combination perplexed me. “These plants are not native,” he said. “You could sweep these hills with a broom when I was young.” Hmmm…I thought. ”So how did all of this get here?” “Humans brought this. And of course the birds helped,” he responded matter-of-factly. Something in the way he communicated was different. He clearly spoke fluent Castellano without any trace of a foreign accent, but there was something just slightly un-Argentine in his tone, and even in his demeanor. Back at the hotel I told the owner, an elder gentleman himself, about my encounter. He explained that the old man with the dog was the son of one of the town’s founders. He then went on to share that this place was founded by Germans, but made it clear that these were not the same German soldiers who came to the province after the Battle of River Plate when their ship was sunk in Montevideo Harbor; no, those Germans founded the town down in the valley. “The Germans from this place,” he said, “were of another caliber.” In fact, as legend has it, this land was chosen by Hitler before WWII, along with another spot further south in Argentina and a third in Brazil as part of his ‘Plan B.’ There are even a few photos of Hitler in the flesh from when he came to scout the place. “This place was different” the hotel owner told me, “This place was deliberately chosen. See how hidden it is? You don’t know it’s here until you’re nearly on top of it. And all of this exotic vegetation? All of the German-style construction? They planned every detail. They planned it for their progeny. My wife and I bought this land about thirty years ago from a man who had little time left to live. He told me he had been a dentist in Germany and that he had removed gold teeth from the mouths of Jews. That upon arriving in Argentina, he brought the gold straight to President Perón in exchange for a fake passport and new identity. This place, he maintained, is not a coincidence. Don’t let anyone tell you the founder came here on vacation and, enamored by the location, decided to found a town. Nobody wanted this land. There was nothing here, nothing to love. They brought all of this. The trees, the squirrels, the black raspberries - none of which are native to the region. They lived cut off from the rest of the world. They were hiding something.”