I paused for a moment under the shady avenue of trees which led from the main entrance of La Chacarita Cemetery, grateful to be out of the hot March sunshine.  Wide streets fanned out from the gates, lined with the grand, dark limousine tombs that carry those of Argentina's rich dead who didn't make it into La Recoleta.  The streets are wide, much wider than in the other cemetery, and there are so many streets that they have numbers.  It makes the place feel more like a deserted town than a graveyard, and La Chacarita's dead take up most of its namesake barrio, leaving only a little space for the living.

The condition of the tombs varies more widely than in La Recoleta.  They follow the same model of a simple cuboid, three metres tall and two wide, an altar with shelves to hold one or two coffins and steps down to a vault containing more.   I passed one with its immaculately clean gates open, a smartly-dressed man inside dusting the coffins and replacing the cut flowers.  The one across the way had every pane of glass smashed, doors and windows, and was full of mould and plaster dust. I could have reached in and taken a small coffin as a souvenir without much effort.  I didn’t.

I stopped to admire a long stretch of high-sided mausolea, late afternoon light playing through the gaps.  I reached for my camera and tried to compose a picture.  Someone tapped me on the shoulder.  I turned and saw a burly, graying man in his fifties wearing dark formal trousers and a light-blue short-sleeved shirt that made him look like an American policeman.  He blinked his hazel eyes at me and waved a finger.

‘No’.  He paused a moment.  ‘No, no, no.’  I could tell that he was a man of few words.  Or maybe just one.

[Sorry?], I said in Spanish, [Are photos not allowed here?

‘No,’ he persevered.  ‘No.’  He squinted down at the screen of my camera and pointed at it with the first two fingers of his right hand.  ‘Show,’ he said, pointing at the screen and then his eyes.  ‘Show.’

[You want me to show you my photos?]

‘Show.’

[My photos?]

He relented and switched into exasperated Castilian.  [Yes.  I want to make sure you haven’t taken any pictures here already.]

I touched the power button and treated him to some landscapes of a snowbound Wye Valley, a few pictures of a vineyard in Maipu and then one or two of a recent Onda Vaga gig at Konex.  He was politely appreciative of the better ones, evidently considering that his lofty position required him to look at other people’s holiday photos with the stoicism usually seen only in put-upon relatives at a family slideshow.

[Okay,] he said.  [No more photos.]

I told him I was sorry and said I was confused because I’d been allowed to take pictures in Recoleta.

[Yes.  In Recoleta you can.  Here, no.  Except for Gardel.  You can take pictures of him.]

He directed me to Gardel and I strolled in that direction, my promising career as a graveyard paparazzo cut short, wondering if the guards were employed by the government or by those families who could still afford to maintain their tombs in this exclusive part of La Chacarita.  Certainly there were no uniforms in sight further into the cemetery, past the eternally smiling Gardel and the gently smoking cigarette that rested between his unmoving fingers.