The anthemic protest song “Cambalache” by Enrique Santos Discépolo (1901-1951) is one of the few tangos that transcends the genre entirely, and it has been adapted by punk bands as well as crossover hip-hop artists. Written in 1934 amid Argentina’s “Decade of Infamy” during the Great Depression, the song gave voice to the disaffected in the face of widespread corruption and lost opportunities for progress. It first appeared in Mario Soffici’s 1935 film El Alma Del Bandoneón, considered an early classic of Argentine cinema. A passage in the third stanza depicts many names of the day jumbled together, and was feasibly taken (as my notes below the text indicate) straight from an actual page of a 1934 newspaper. The later image of the Bible, affixed to a wire hook (the colloquial meaning of sable sin remaches) for sadly sanitary purposes, has recently been explained by an anonymous commentator online.
Junk Shop
Tr. Jake Spatz
YouTube: Tita Merello | Julio Sosa
That the world has been and will always be
A pig-sty, that I knew…
(And in 1492
And 2000 all the same!)
That it’s always been a pit of thieves
And dupes and Machiavels,
Well-offs and Ne’er-do-wells,
Genuines and fakes…
But that the Twentieth Century
Is a riot
Of absolute skulduggery,
There’s no one who’d deny it!
We all live rolling round
In one molasses,
And in one muck together
Punk each other down…
Today it all turns out the same
To be faithful or a facade,
A wise guy, dunce, or copycat,
Philanthropist or fraud!
All fare the same!
Nobody’s better!
A donkey’s on par
With a great old professor!
Nobody fails,
No one excels,
Those with no morals
Have evened the scales.
If this one’s life is all imposture
And that one robs to make his way,
They’re just like one who takes the tonsure,
A mattress-maker, a king of clubs,
A scoffing wag or stowaway!…
What disrespect for decency,
What a trampling on the books!
Now everyone’s a gentle sir,
Now everyone’s a crook!
All mixed up with Stavisky goes
Don Bosco and “The Tart,”
Don Chicho, Bonaparte,
Carnera, San Martín… *
The same way in the heartless junk shop window
You see life’s shuffled stages
In bric-a-brac disorder,
And punctured by a hanger through the pages,
Against the water heater,
The Bible hangs in tears…
Twentieth Century, fevered, shaky
Junk shop fit to collapse!
You squeal or you don’t suckle,
And everyone pinches but saps!
Go right ahead!
Just have a go!
We’ll all meet again
In the furnace below!
Don’t think it through,
Just step aside,
Nobody cares
You were born dignified!
It makes no difference if you labor
Like a mule from dusk to dawn,
Or if you’re sponging off of others,
Or you’re a killer, or you’re a savior,
Or you live outside the law…
Cambalache
Music & Lyrics:
Enrique Santos Discépolo
Que el mundo fue y será
una porquería, ya lo sé…
(¡En el quinientos seis
y en el dos mil también!).
Que siempre ha habido chorros,
maquiavelos y estafaos,
contentos y amargaos,
valores y dublé...
Pero que el siglo veinte
es un despliegue
de maldá insolente,
ya no hay quien lo niegue.
Vivimos revolcaos
en un merengue
y en un mismo lodo
todos manoseaos...
¡Hoy resulta que es lo mismo
ser derecho que traidor!...
¡Ignorante, sabio o chorro,
generoso o estafador!
¡Todo es igual!
¡Nada es mejor!
¡Lo mismo un burro
que un gran profesor!
No hay aplazaos
ni escalafón,
los inmorales
nos han igualao.
Si uno vive en la impostura
y otro roba en su ambición,
¡da lo mismo que sea cura,
colchonero, rey de bastos,
caradura o polizón!...
¡Qué falta de respeto,
qué atropello a la razón!
¡Cualquiera es un señor!
¡Cualquiera es un ladrón!
Mezclao con Stavisky va
Don Bosco y "La Mignón",
Don Chicho y Napoleón,
Carnera y San Martín…
Igual que en la vidriera irrespetuosa
de los cambalaches
se ha mezclao la vida,
y herida por un sable sin remaches
ves llorar la Biblia
contra un calefón…
¡Siglo veinte, cambalache
problemático y febril!...
El que no llora no mama
y el que no afana es un gil!
¡Dale nomás!
¡Dale que va!
¡Que allá en el horno
nos vamo a encontrar!
¡No pienses más,
sentate a un lao,
que a nadie importa
si naciste honrao!
Es lo mismo el que labura
noche y día como un buey,
que el que vive de los otros,
que el que mata, que el que cura
o está fuera de la ley…
NOTES
Alexandre Stavisky (1888-1934) was a French-Ukrainian financier and fraud, whose “hockshop” was a front for selling phony bonds. When government ministers were implicated in his crimes, he fled to a chalet and was found “suicided” by the police, provoking riots in Paris that brought down the government.
Saint Giovanni Bosco (1815-1888) was an Italian priest and educator who founded the Salesian Preventive Method of teaching; he was canonized in 1934.
Mignón was a character in opera and popular culture (derived from Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship); the name and image became a byword for chic fashion as well as illicit affairs. Mignón was also a brand of German typewriter, discontinued in 1934.
Don Chicho (1892-1943), born Giovanni Galiffi, was a Sicilian mobster who styled himself “the Al Capone of Rosario,” and was deported from Argentina to Italy in 1934.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) appears in the title of the very popular author Emma Orczy’s 1934 novel A Spy of Napoleon.
Primo Carnera (1906-1967) was an Italian heavyweight boxer, who was world champion in 1933-1934; he still holds the record for most wins by knockout (with 72).
José de San Martín (1778-1850) was an Argentine general, the national hero and liberador of South America. More topically, the name also indicates Dr. Ramón Grau San Martín, who served temporarily as president of Cuba during the Hundred Days Government in 1934, following on the Sergeants’ Revolt which overthrew the corrupt regime the previous year.