An unauthorized translation of a passage that originally appeared in a magazine: La Patria Argentina, no. 636, Buenos Aires: 1800, p. 1.
The regulations, fines, and taxes that the Municipality uses to discourage public dances have resulted in a new, creative system of putting on these entertainments for the common people.
Generally, the establishment that is used as a front for these clandestine dances is a café.
On some dirty windows, painted white, are big black letters, illuminated from within, that announce to the public “café such-and-such.”
On the first floor, towards the street, there is a real café, with waitresses who are more or less ugly (a great attraction). The door at the back of the room is closed, and one doesn’t hear anything more than the voices of the customers and the natural noise of the serving.
After a while, a customer gets up and goes through the door, disappearing for a while, or the door opens, and someone comes out looking tired, and goes up to the counter to order a drink, usually a French wine mixed in equal parts with soda water—a strange drink, invented by Italians on the bocce courts. Each time the door opens, you can hear from the interior a strange brushing sound from the floor, as if many people were walking, dragging their feet.
This is because behind this door, there is a large ballroom where dances are held—quite unusual dances, in fact.
At the back of the ballroom there is one of those piano organs, covered with a mattress which is tied tightly to the instrument.
The mattress has the advantage of dampening the sound, which doesn’t make it to the street—or even out of the room—and the muffled striking of the instrument’s hammers mark the time of the piece being danced to, making a strange noise, something like a damp percussion instrument.
To this strange music, they dance in the ballroom.
And they dance with only two, three, or four women who are hired by the owner as dancers.
These poor women dance all night, every night, without resting, passing from the arms of a Criollo dancer who pushes them through a milonga, to those of an Englishman who shakes them dryly through a leaping waltz, to those of an Italian who twists them around in a peringundín.
The room fills up with dancers, and since women are scarce, the rest dance men-with-men, in order to take advantage of the sonata that someone has paid a peso for, which is its price.
When the piece ends, you hear a local voice yelling “lata!” This means that the next sonata is for him; he goes up to the organer [sic], asks for his favorite piece, and gives him a lata [tin/coin] for the piece that he is asking for next—if he pays, he is always understood.
And the dance continues, with a warm atmosphere because the room is closed. Smoke from the cigars fogs the air, and the brushing of feet on the floor is the dominant sound.
Everyone is quiet, no one speaks, because here, they dance to dance.
“Lata!” or “Girl, dance this one with me,” are the only words that are heard.
The female dancers cannot say no, because they would lose their jobs.
In these ballrooms are are no chairs, to discourage the public from ogling: whoever enters has to dance or leave.
Anonymous, 1880.
The magazine passage is taken from the book:
Benedetti, Héctor. 2017. Nueva historia del tango: De los orígenes al siglo XXI. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores. p. 34-35.
The photo is not from Nueva historia del tango. It is from the Queer Tango Image Archive, at queertangobook.org (Pareja de hombres bailando en conventillo).