June, 2015 | Wander Argentina

Angel Moriera is not a knife murderer on bike, but an afilador, or knife sharpener. As in some other parts of Latin America, afiladors ride along on their bicycle playing a little pan flute to announce their services. Once stationary, a cylindrical grinding stone is hooked up to the bike pedals so that Moriera can quickly and perfectly sharpen knives, scissors and other cutting instruments.

Moriera lives in Buenos Aires province but has worked around the neighborhoods of Monserrat, La Boca and San Telmo for decades.

Although his profession is dying, on this day he found work for one of the city’s Bar Notables, El Colonial, an over 80-year-old bar on Belgrano and Peru in Monserrat. Moriera is seen working in front of the courtyard’s new yogi-style lotus mural that’s more in keeping with its shiny new neighbor, Starbucks, than the old Gauchito Gil mural that stood there for ten years.

Billboards on the streets of Buenos Aires promote Omar Obaca, who wants to be Argentina’s first black president. On an election year, the ‘Argentine Barack Obama’ upholds an appealing, if ridiculous, platform. On the transportation front, he promises a bullet train to Ezeiza from downtown Buenos Aires. Instead of undertaking the grand task to clean the polluted Rio Mantanza he proposes paving it over to make an avenue to reach the southern suburbs. In addition to ‘Futbol para Todos’ — the government program providing free transmission of professional soccer games via public television — Obaca suggests ‘Porno para Todos’ — porn for everyone.

For football fans, Obaca promises to enact legislation that Argentine footballers have to play for Argentine clubs for a minimum of one year. Obaca lampoons currency controls, pledging to provide US dollars for those who deposit pesos in the bank. He’d also up the permitted negative balance on the Sube transit smart card from the current 7 pesos to 100. Oh, and he’ll also share his Netflix password with anyone who votes for him.

While he doesn’t resemble Barack Obama much, finding someone who does is a tall order in a country with only a few thousand Afro-Argentines. Obaca’s satire of Argentine politics runs deep and hits some low points in the collective consciousness of the country, even poking fun at Fernando de la Rúa’s “They say I’m boring” 1999 Presidential ad. De la Rúa is the president who famously bailed on his office, escaping by helicopter from the Casa Rosada. Surely Obaca couldn’t be much more ridiculous than that.

Behind the stinging presidential campaign parody is Nah Productions, a company hired to plug FWTV, a web TV outlet.