Queen Holds Court in South America

In Argentina, the military—and terror—reigns supreme. According to Amnesty International, about 15,000 people have "disappeared" since 1976, when Juan Perón's second wife and successor, Isabel, was thrown from power in a coup d'état. Since then, a guerrilla war has been waging between the dictatorship and opposition groups, mainly Perónists, and citizens have routinely been plucked off the streets or out of their homes, taken to secret detention camps and systematically brutalized. But as VS. Naipaul writes in his book The Return of Eva Perón, "Style is important in Argentina; and in the long-running guerrilla war — in spite of the real blood, the real torture — there has always been an element of machismo and public theatre."

Amid the hubbub at customs, I notice a middle-aged man in gray—gray suit, gray tie, gray hair — making his way through the crowd, shouting something in Spanish. The only word I understand is Queen, and sure enough, he's looking for us. He takes our passports, whisks us past the inspectors without so much as one bag being opened, and leads us upstairs to the bar for an early morning cerveza. He speaks little English, but there are two words he knows quite well. No matter what anyone asks for, his response is the same: "No problem."

Maybe this won't be so bad after all.

By the afternoon of day two, none of the writers has yet been introduced to any of the band members. We while away the time in the hotel bar, but in this country, where the annual inflation rate is around 100 percent, a bottle of beer costs the equivalent of twelve dollars, keeping us sober against our wills. Finally, Jim Beach, Queen's business adviser, allows a few of us to attend the sound check at Velez Sarfield.

The Argentines have a rather nifty concept of crowd control, as I find out when I reach the stadium: a moat, about six feet wide and three feet deep, runs around the perimeter of the field and is filled with foul-smelling water and patrolled by dragonflies. Queen has brought its own artificial turf so that the promoters will allow people onto the field.