FUERZA AÉREA ARGENTINA

I saw it coming home one Saturday night on the exposed wall of a 3-story building -- a sky-blue mural displaying an art deco airplane on a runway, poised for take-off: a beautifully drawn advertisement for a little-known, Argentine state-run airline, a freshly-painted tribute to San Telmo murals and stenciled graffiti.

"A través de la Patagonia, integrando el país." 

The plane was landed in the south of the outline of a map of Argentina, with thick black lines connecting it to distant northern cities.

"LA PRIMER LINEA AÉREA DE FOMENTO DEL MUNDO"

The Spanish word foment is often used and has many meanings, including encouragement, incitement, patronage, public works. The verb, to encourage, to produce, to boost.

"The first airline to foment in the world," it says, without a noun to say what it will foment, though the mural is certainly reminiscent of government propaganda in the U.S. and Europe in the 1940s.

Indeed, I later discover it is an art ad for the publicly-financed airline established by President Ortiz in 1940 to connect the federal capital with remote, isolated populations elsewhere in the country. I am literally dazzled to be in front of a modern version of the propaganda posters hanging in the Wolfsonian, these words in that font, evoking in bright colors a bright future ahead.

Upon studying my terrible photo of the mural, my Argentine friend Amelia settles it -- in this context, fomento means development. Ortiz hoped that investing in infrastructure and creating new routes would draw commercial airlines. With newly nationalized Aérolíneas Argentina the most predominant carrier in the country, I am left to wonder about the subtext of this recent addition to the neighborhood.