Word: plata
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...world's biggest gambling palace is having its biggest season. On a single day last week, 16,480 Argentines entered Mar del Plata's huge oceanside casino, left $160,000 in the tills. Every evening 10,000 players packed the $70 million main gambling hall and spilled into the newly opened annex across the street...
...Plata's boom was brought by: 1) Argentina's hottest summer in 16 years; 2) currency difficulties that kept most Argentines away from Uruguay's resorts; 3) plenty of inflated pesos. Some of the pesos were flung away by newly rich industrialists plunging at punto y banco, a South American version of baccarat. But most of the money came from the pockets of vacationing descamisados, who preferred roulette. The casino's main hall looked like Macy's basement as players pushed and shoved to bet at the 71 roulette tables. Most of them ignored...
Taking its profit in pennies, Mar del Plata was making over $10 million a season. That suited the government, now the casino's sole owner. It suited the casino's 1,050 staffers, too. Their incomes, including tips, would run as high as $3,000 for the three-month season...
Many an Argentine scoffed-discreetly. Only fanatic Peronistas took the plot seriously. John Griffiths seemed to be both amused and bewildered at his new prominence across the Plata. Five months ago, he had been jailed in B.A. on Peronistas' charges that he had fomented a bank strike in Argentina's capital; the new role assigned to him seemed to knowing Argentines to fit even more awkwardly. The "plotters" rounded up in Buenos Aires were an oddly assorted group: Cipriano Reyes, a former Peronista labor leader now in the opposition, three priests, a half-blind doctor, two women...
...tango tunes put together by the Tin Pan Alleys along the Plata, the one locally regarded as No. 1 is La Cumparsita. Gerardo Hernán Mattos Rodríguez, a Uruguayan, wrote it in 1916. An architecture student at the University of Uruguay, he had seen a group of boisterous fellow students, evicted from their rooming house, pick up the tables and chairs and march out in a noisy procession (cumparsa). That gave him a title. He quickly knocked out a doleful melody and a set of lyrics that were soon replaced by those of a rival lyricist...