MUSIC: Controversy Still Surrounds Dead Tango Singer

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Raul Ronzoni

MONTEVIDEO, Jun 23 1998 (IPS) - Uruguay and Argentina, great rivals on the soccer field, will not be facing each other at the current World Cup tournament in France; but this week saw the renewal of another feud between the two countries – which also involves France- over the birthplace of legendary singer Carlos Gardel.

Gardel, the tango idol from the Rio del Plato, died in a plane crash in Colombia on June 24, 1935. He was then 45, and at the height of his career.

Controversy over Gardel’s birthplace flared again when the International Soccer Federation (FIFA) issued an official communique welcoming the Argentine team to Toulouse claiming it to be “the city where Carlos Gardel was born.” Uruguay and Argentina have been more vocal in claiming that he is from their respective countries.

In the past few years, however, Argentina appeared less inclined to push their claims on Gardel and the dispute appeared to be between Uruguay and France.

The French theory, actually supported by Argentina, maintains that Gardel was born in Toulouse, and given the name Charles Gardes.

The Uruguayan thesis argues that he was born in Tacuarembo, 350 kilometers north of Montevideo, and that he was the illegitimate son of Carlos Escayola, a powerful landowner married to Maria Lelia Oliva. Escayola, according to this theory, gave the boy to Berthe Gardes, a French woman who did his ironing who later moved to Argentina with the child.

According to the FIFA communique, Berthe Gardes emigrated from France to Argentina in 1893 with her child, who was born in 1890. FIFA also stated the French view that Gardel came back to Toulouse in 1924 “with a Uruguayan passport, in order to avoid any reprisal from the French for not serving with the military during World War I.”

Uruguayans disputing the French theory say that Berthe Gardes gave birth in Toulouse to a boy and named him Charles Romuald Gardes, who soon died. Years later, when she received the boy from the landlord in Uruguay, she named him after her son who had died, and the singer took “Carlos Gardel” as his stage name.

The singer made his debut in Paris in June 1928, where four years earlier, Uruguay had become the first Olympic champion in soccer. Alternating between tuxedos and a gaucho’s outfit, Gardel conquered the artistic scene in Paris with his performances at the Femina Theater and the Cabaret Florida.

Last week, Daniel Herrera Lussich, a correspondent for the newspaper El Pais in Paris, made reference to the communique and pondered on the intentions of the Argentine Soccer Federation (AFA), who had placed a commemorative plaque at the place in Toulouse where Gardel supposedly was born.

“Despite all the evidence, Argentineans insist on their theory and, in order to deny the fact that he was Uruguayan, they even want to make him French!” Herrera wrote indignantly. He also said that AFA had “pulled many strings” to get FIFA to issue the communique.

He pointed darkly to the fact that new vice-president of FIFA is Julio Grondona, an Argentine who is also president of the AFA.

Gardel, like most Uruguayan artists, developed his entire artistic career in Argentina, a country with a population 10 times that of Uruguay. It was Argentina that he made all his tours throughout Latin America, and the rest of the world, which beganin 1923 and Argentina has claimed him as one of their own.

The battle between Argentina and Uruguay over the nationality of artists or artistic creations in not new. In 1992, during the Olympic Games in Barcelona, there was a row between the two nations that led to diplomatic negotiations. Argentina had used as its theme song the tango “La Cumparsita,” by the Uruguayan Gerardo Matos Rodriguez – considered to be one of the greatest expressions of the genre – and jealously guarded by Uruguay..

“Gardel loved France very much, but he never hid his Uruguayan nationality. To the contrary, he displayed it with pride,” said Nelson Dominguez, a local tango historian.

“In my opinion…Gardel was not born in Toulouse. In 1920 Gardel declared that he was born in Tacuarembo, Uruguay, and he also used Uruguayan documents”, said Horacio Loriente, another expert on the topic.

Loriente refuted the argument of the FIFA communique: “It is not true that he was called on by the French army. He was an only son and lived outside the country, so he did not have to perform military service – and therefore was not a deserter.”