Like all neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, Abasto has a unique and complex history. The first time I walked through the neighborhood I found it to be charming in its own way, lined with technicolor houses and quintessential murals under the looming art deco architecture of the mall.
At its start, Abasto was considered to be the outskirts of Buenos Aires. It received many Jewish immigrants and other Eastern Europeans and continues to hold the highest concentration of Jewish residents in Buenos Aires. Zwi Migdal, founded in Poland, was a Jewish organized-crime group that ran the sex slave trade in Argentina.
They lured women from impoverished neighborhoods in countries like Poland and Russia, promising them housekeeping work in Buenos Aires. After getting established there, they expanded operation into countries like Brazil and the United States. These gangsters would also lure women along and often feign love, marrying the girls in order to successfully bring them overseas in what was called a shtille chupah , meaning quick wedding.
Makes tons if sense, right? So now here we are at the beginning of the 20th century in a city deprived of women and a booming brothel business. Immigrants began to dance tango either with one another two men or with prostitutes women. In reference to the prostitution, the tango lyrics were sexually violent, referring to women as sex slaves, and infertile, and implying they are emotionally weak.
So much so that in the extremely rare occasion of a woman singing tango, she impersonated a man. The surrounding community began to take steps to separate themselves from the Zwi Migdal.
