BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (news agencies) — In the crush of anti-government protests paralyzing downtown Buenos Aires in the last months, some Argentines saw a traffic-induced headache. Others saw a reaction to President Javier Milei’s brutal austerity measures.
Alejandra, a street vendor, saw people with nowhere to urinate.
Plazas provided no privacy and cafes insisted on pricey purchases to use the toilet. With little more than a tent and a bucket, Alejandra started a small business that has surged alongside Argentina’s angry rallies and sky-high inflation rate. She charges whatever people are willing to pay.
“I haven’t had a job for a year, it’s now my sole income,” said Alejandra, who declined to give her last name for fear of reprisals from neighbors. Every four or five patrons, she puts on gloves and empties her bucket into the trash.
The political establishment’s failure to fix decades of crisis in Argentina explains the tide of popular rage that vaulted the irascible Javier Milei, a self-declared “anarcho-capitalist,” to the presidency.
But it also explains the emergence of a unique society that runs on grit, ingenuity and opportunism — perhaps now more than ever as Argentina undergoes its worst economic crisis since its catastrophic foreign-debt default of 2001.
“It’s the famous resilience of Argentines,” said Gustavo González, a sociologist at University of Buenos Aires. “It’s the result of more than three generations that have grappled with adverse circumstances, great uncertainty and abrupt changes.”
The libertarian leader warned that things would get worse before they got better.
To reverse the decades of reckless spending that brought Argentina infamy for defaulting on its debts, Milei scrapped hundreds of price controls. He slashed subsidies for electricity, fuel and transportation, causing prices to skyrocket in a country that already had one of the world’s highest inflation rates.
He laid off over 70,000 public sector workers, cut pensions by 30% and froze infrastructure projects, pushing the country deeper into recession. Supermarket sales fell 10% last month. The International Monetary Fund lowered its 2024 growth outlook for Argentina, projecting a 3.5% contraction.
Poverty now afflicts a staggering 57% of Argentina’s 47 million people, and annual inflation surpasses 270% — a level unseen in a generation.
“Argentina is at a turning point,” Milei said in his Independence Day speech on July 9. “Breaking points in the history of a nation are not moments of peace and tranquility but moments of difficulty and conflict.”
Well-heeled Argentines have responded by stashing stacks of $100 bills in safe-deposit boxes and resorting to cryptocurrency to avoid their country’s chronically depreciating pesos.
Middle-class families — whose energy bills shot up last month by 155% — have pared down comforts they once took for granted: No more eating out. No more travel. No more private school. Public hospitals say they’re overwhelmed.
In a country where barbecued beef, or asado, is not only a national dish but a social ritual, meat consumption has dropped to the lowest level ever recorded, according to the Rosario Board of Trade.
The crisis has hit the poor hardest.
“They cannot hedge,” said Eduardo Levy Yeyati, an economist at Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires. “They cannot save, they cannot travel. They are stuck here and are most affected by inflation and the fiscal adjustment.”
In the last five months, the official unemployment rate jumped two points to 7.7%, a figure that appears far lower than it really is, experts say, because Argentina’s underground economy accounts for some half of its gross domestic product.
Rising joblessness and poverty have forced even more Argentines into the informal workforce. “Those who cannot find a job must invent one,” said Eduardo Donza, a poverty researcher at the Catholic University of Argentina.
For 34-year-old Armando Fernández, a broom has become a tool of survival.
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