Buenos Aires is the capital from which the chronicle measures its distances: a port city, a network of libraries holding esoteric material, and the seat of an occult lodge, recorded around 1920–1922 and again in 1966.
| Type | City |
| Recorded periods | c. 1920–1922; the 1960s; September 1966 |
| Spanish entry | Buenos Aires |
Society
Around 1920 its community’s first value is “Buenos Aires is the Paris of the Plata”; the second, rational and scientific progress toward “a perfected society”. In 1922 “people dress in suits, even by day, with a little handkerchief”; reputable tailors work on Plaza and Avenida de Mayo, one named “Casimiro Rocha” (spelling not fixed). In summer “the neighbors say it is hot here”.
Around September 1966, at the Aeroparque boarding checkpoints, stands a soldier: “helmet… with a submachine gun, with a paunch… as if making a round, also watching who is there”.
Port and underground
The Customs House keeps the old “semicircular building”, “from Sarmiento’s time, not as late as 1900”, beside a modern one. A convent stands near the port, around San Martín/Miamonte. Immigrants arriving by port have ties to “a more plebeian sector”. Under the city run tunnels “discovered in the ’80s”.
Libraries
Books move between the National Library and the Faculties of Exact Sciences and of Philosophy and Letters, so a catalog card “could be anywhere”. The University of Buenos Aires libraries hold esoteric and occult material. Jorge Luis Borges, as director of the National Library, authorizes bibliographic records, including the card for the book the order seeks. One library holds the books “where the necronic ports are”, a term that reached the Archive garbled.
The esoteric field
In the 1920s the city has an abundant “esoteric field”, “people interested in occultism”. A Buenos Aires lodge coordinates the region’s occult activity; the call that set off the lighthouse operation came from it.
Surveillance and deposit
Commissioner Bueno, of the city police, follows someone. Half an asteroid was kept at the Buenos Aires Planetarium while NASA studied the other, “and that is why at one point they were joined again”.
Distances from Buenos Aires
- Tres Arroyos: about 500 km.
- Mar del Plata: by car, “two trips” (unit unexplained).
- Texas, United States: where Irene traveled to see Harrington a month or a month and a half earlier.
Open questions
- Whether the 1920–1922 and 1966 records belong to one line of events or separate dossiers.
- Which “‘80s” the tunnels date from; who found them, where they lead.
- The correct form of “necronic ports” and which library holds those books.
- The lodge’s name, seat and membership; the convent’s order; whom Bueno follows; the immigrant communities.