'Forget it, Jake- it's Mendoza'

I wander from city to village, among figures in a changing landscape...

I'm champing at the bit in the relentless, soul-sapping heat, looking forward to taking a 'vacation' from my frustrating, thus far fruitless struggle to network among winemakers, & riding a train as far South as I can-- in Chile, where rumor has it there is still some working passenger service: to Temuco, with its Pablo Neruda Railroad Museum; to Puerto Montt...?
--maybe take the ferry to the island of Chiloé...

I've been e-mailing the occasional random comment to friends concerning the-- strange, obvious, fanciful?-- analogies between Mendoza & the city of Los Angeles:
as a widely spread conurbation in a semi-arid, earthquake-prone valley bowl where water rights are a crucial (survival & political) issue, Mendoza would seem to conflate-- or tangle up?-- the Northern & Southern economic & environmental paradigms of the Golden State--
where the wine business is largely, to this day, an aristocratic, old money club; with exponential growth only lately fueled by a major influx of European capital & supported by its marketing channels; & with all of the exclusive, rigidly segmented social hierarchies reminiscent of the (Spanish colonial) Old West (--& Old Hollywood) still in place...

I mean, imagine Hollywood with a more prominent, clearly evident Spanish character--
as late as the end of the 1930's there were exclusive bridle paths for film industry moguls to ride to their studios-- Spanish riding culture being another peculiarly aristocratic link between these sprawling towns...
...as far as the look & decentered 'feel' of the place, the historical heart of Mendoza was flattened by a major earthquake in 1861 & there is very little remnant of its colonial origins-- major but 'only mid-strength' temblors have ocurred as recently as 1985 & 2006...

As if to more securely ground this speculative train of thought, a documentary on the local Public TV station yesterday alerted me to the efforts of a group of journalists & film historians to document, salvage, & exhibit the record & extant examples of what may have been, at one time, a locally thriving film industry-- with a documentary tradition going back to the late 1920's & their first silent fiction feature dating to 1938.
Amazing. The group itself was surprised at the amount of material moldering away in various institutional film archives in Buenos Aires. The most impressive-- & charming-- piece of filmmaking showcased was, to these eyes, a Western parody rather obviously titled 'El Último Cowboy'. The selection of clips evidenced excellent visual, photographic & directorial quality; it seemed a well-acted, spot-on satire featuring droll, dry humor which may (or may not?) be another regional Mendocino character trait...