In Buenos Aires, near a brothel where a man was stabbed to death while a young Jorge Luis Borges watched from behind a steel gate, a leather-goods purveyor named Don Gines Aynié set up his shop in 1919.
He had recently left northern Spain and France, where he made saddles for Hermès. In his new home, he picked a neighborhood known for its violence. But on the opposite side of the street was a racetrack and polo field which would soon fill his shop with horsemen, gauchos, and aristocrats.
