Buenos Aires, Argentina — In the crushing of anti-government protests As downtown Buenos Aires came to a standstill in recent months, some Argentines suffered a traffic headache. Others saw a reaction to President Javier Milei’s brutal austerity measures.
Alejandra, a street vendor, saw people with nowhere to urinate.
The squares offered no privacy and the cafes insisted on expensive purchases to use the bathroom. With little more than a tent and a bucket, Alejandra started a small business that has emerged alongside Argentina’s furious protests and sky-high inflation rate. She charges what people are willing to pay.
“I haven’t had a job for a year, now it’s my only income,” said Alejandra, who did not want to give her last name for fear of retaliation from neighbors. Every four or five customers, she puts on gloves and empties her bin into the trash.
The failure of the political establishment to fix decades of crisis in Argentina explains the tide of popular anger that surged the irascible Javier Mileia self-proclaimed “anarcho-capitalist,” to the presidency.
But it also explains the emergence of a unique society based on courage, ingenuity and opportunism, perhaps now more than ever as Argentina endures its worst economic crisis since its catastrophic 2001 foreign debt default.
“It is the famous resilience of Argentines,” said Gustavo González, a sociologist at the University of Buenos Aires. “It is the result of more than three generations that have dealt with adverse circumstances, great uncertainty and abrupt changes.”
The libertarian leader warned that things would get worse before they get better.
To reverse the decades of reckless spending that brought Argentina infamy for defaulting on your debtsMilei eliminated hundreds of price controls. He cut subsidies for electricity, fuel and transportation. causing prices to skyrocket in a country that already had one of the highest inflation rates in the world.
It laid off more than 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 growth outlook for Argentina for 2024, projecting a contraction of 3.5%.
Poverty now affects a staggering 57% of the 47 million inhabitants of Argentina.and annual inflation exceeds 270%, a level not seen in a generation.
“Argentina is at a turning point,” Milei said in his Independence Day speech on July 9. “The breaking points in a nation’s history are not moments of peace and tranquility, but moments of difficulty and conflict.”
Wealthy Argentines have responded Hide wads of $100 bills. in safe deposit boxes and turning to cryptocurrencies to avoid the chronic depreciation of their country’s peso.
Middle-class families, whose energy bills soared by 155% last month, have cut back on the conveniences they once took for granted: no more eating out. No more trips. No more private schools. Public hospitals say they are overwhelmed.
In a country where barbecue is not only a national dish but a social ritual, meat consumption has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded, according to the Rosario Stock Exchange.
The crisis has hit the poor hardest.
“They can’t protect themselves,” said Eduardo Levy Yeyati, an economist at Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires. “They can’t save, they can’t travel. They are trapped here and are the most affected by inflation and fiscal tightening.”
In the past five months, the official unemployment rate jumped two points to 7.7%, a figure that seems much lower than it really is, experts say, because Argentina’s underground economy accounts for about half of its output. gross internal.
Rising unemployment and poverty have forced even more Argentines to enter 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 Armando Fernández, 34, the broom has become a survival tool.
Last month, Fernández walked hundreds of kilometers south on foot from his impoverished hometown in Santa Fe province, looking for work in Buenos Aires. He now sweeps the sidewalks of the capital in search of the pesos that merchants throw at him.
Like Milei Takes his chainsaw to state anti-poverty programsThe poorest Argentines do not have the survival mechanisms they had before.
“Politicians talk a lot but do nothing,” said Fernández, devouring a chicken stew provided by Red Solidaria, a charity born out of Argentina’s successive crises. “I survive thanks to these soup kitchens, to these people who offer me a little food. “
Seven days a week, as night falls, hundreds of people queue for free meals in the square in the center of the capital, in front of the presidential palace, which Solidarity Network turns into an open-air dining room.
“Every night we serve more people,” said Pilar Cristiansen, a 31-year-old volunteer. “There are more and more people who cannot afford to buy food.”
On a recent night, in line were homeless men like Fernandez, but also newcomers: a chef whose work had dried up, a bank employee who was recently laid off, an electrician whose salary had lost most of its value.
Argentina’s downward spiral has long been visible in the southern suburbs surrounding Buenos Aires. The streets are not paved. The sewer lines don’t reach. The walls of Noelia López’s house are covered in random patches of concrete.
From an attic covered in clotheslines, López and his 21-year-old son Patricio run the only laundry in their urban slum. At dawn, the ground shakes with the noise of washing machines as they sort coats and duvets for a dozen neighbors a day.
What started as an impromptu revenue boost during the pandemic It has become their livelihood.
“There is nothing greater than being able to recognize that this country is like this,” López said of Argentina’s volatility. “Now we have to make the effort once again.”
Growing up destitute as the daughter of Paraguayan immigrants in Buenos Aires, Maybel Delvalle was determined that her own children avoid the same fate.
She soon became a single mother with two hungry young children and realized that selling empanadas wouldn’t cover her bills.
Today, the 25-year-old is a successful content creator in the fans only platform, where she sells sexual fantasies to subscribers around the world and promotes her story to legions of like-minded women. His monthly income of $6,000 would be unthinkable for any Argentine doctor, lawyer or professor.
The work was not easy. Few had heard of the platform in 2020 when Delvalle stumbled upon it. She had to learn to stay anonymous and safe while posting explicit content, convert her earnings from dollars to pesos at a favorable exchange rate, and speak enough English to act as a “virtual girlfriend” for subscribers in the United States.
Once she got her windfall, she became Argentina’s top OnlyFans teacher. Delvalle is struggling to keep up with the demand for her classes. “It’s been amazing,” she said of the past seven months since Milei took over.
Some 5,000 students, 4,000 of them from Argentina, have enrolled in their training as they try to escape the growing poverty in their country.
“There won’t be a miracle that will get us through this,” he said. “You have to trust yourself more than anyone else.”
___
Associated Press writer Natacha Pisarenko contributed to this report.
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
