A Creepy Side to A Quaint Town

            It has been four weeks since I boarded a bus to Iguazú, and Buenos Aires is certainly feeling like a home. The past month IES students have kept busy on the weekends with various day trips to local destinations.

            On Saturday, August 22 we visited San Isidro, a rich town outside of the city. The tour around the town was fine, but nothing appeared that different from any of the other neighborhoods. The streets are made of cobblestone, there’s a quaint café on every corner, and there are two orange trees for every stoplight—standard beauty. Yet my blasé attitude diminished immediately when I listened to my guide explain in broken English why we had stopped in front of this particular house.

            We were standing in front of the home of the Puccio family. The family is famous in Argentina because a movie just came out called “The Clan” that tells their story. Mr. Arquímides Puccio, the father, kidnapped rich people, held them for ransom, and obtained large sums of money from their panicking parents only to then brutally kill them in his own basement. His oldest son, Alejandro, was initially famous as a rugby star who used his fame to assist his father in luring posh victims to the pretty home. Arquímides and Alejandro died in the last ten years, but today Mrs. Puccio occupies the house.

            The most unnerving anecdote I heard was that Arquímides used to constantly sweep the front of his house; he was always in the street with a broom in his hand and a grin on his face. San Isidrians thought he was there to greet neighbors, but his true intentions were much more sinister: Arquímides was constantly paranoid that screams could be heard from the street.

           Although guided tours can sometimes be unvarying, I ended up learning a lot more about the town than I otherwise would have.

            After this eerie experience, the bus took us to the salmon-y orange mansion of Victoria Ocampo. She was a famous Argentine writer with impeccable taste in real estate. Villa Ocampo is like a hybrid of a Newport mansion combined with the house in Downton Abbey. After the tour, we wandered the grounds (mindful not to bother the swans…) and then had tea on the terrace.