Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Argentines seek soup kitchens, barter markets amid crisis
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Men wait outside the metal-grill door of a soup kitchen in a slum, hoping to get a small serving of beef and mashed potatoes. At a barter market on the capital’s outskirts, a woman tries to persuade another to trade for her granddaughters’ tiny shoes.
Argentines are struggling in crisis in what was once one of the world’s most prosperous nations. Consumer prices are soaring, unemployment is high and the Argentine peso has plunged, bringing back haunting memories of the country’s economic meltdown in 2001 that pushed millions into poverty.
A growing number of people arrive at the “Happy Kids” soup kitchen, where servers try to stretch out steaming pots of stew because many more than expected are lining up for food.
“The city government gives us money for 440 rations a day, but we’re being forced to prepare smaller portions so that we can cover 600 rations,” said Cintia Garcia, who runs the soup kitchen.
A series of events battered the economy.
First, a severe drought damaged crop yields in the world’s third-largest exporter of soybean and corn. The situation worsened beginning in the first quarter of 2018 as world oil prices increased and then interest rate rises in the United States led investors to pull dollars out of Argentina.
That caused jitters among Argentines, who have stashed away dollars as a cushion since the 2001 economic implosion, and a rush to buy scarcer dollars pushed the peso’s value down. Despite several interest rate hikes by the Argentine Central Bank, the peso has lost more than half its value in less than a year.
The tumbling peso has pushed up prices for fuel and, in turn, transportation costs. That has affected food prices in a country where most grains and other goods are transported in trucks. Inflation is expected to reach an annual rate of more than 40 percent this year, the Central Bank says.
The rapid fall in the peso brings frequent boosts in the prices charged by vendors, leading to anger. Some slum dwellers recalled that when the peso recently fell to 40 to the dollar, they lined up at small local stores but the owners refused to sell to them.
“I told my husband: ‘Let’s go buy.’ People were all riled up seeing that businesses were closed,” said Martina Bilbao. “I remember the looting of 2001 and I think it’s going to happen again.”
The crisis 17 years ago was so bad that one of every five Argentines was out of work and more than half of the population fell into poverty. The peso, which had been tied to the dollar, lost about 75 percent of its value.
Banks froze deposits and barricaded behind sheet metal as thousands of protesters unsuccessfully tried to withdraw savings. More than 20 people died in protests and looting that swept Argentina in December 2001 as Latin America’s third-largest economy unraveled and eventually defaulted on a debt of more than $100 billion.
The current economic woes are far from that collapse. But analysts say that poverty, which affects about a third of the population, will rise this year, and the economy will take a dive.
Those forecasts are far from the promises of President Mauricio Macri. The conservative president took office in 2015 vowing that he would revive Argentina’s weak economy and end poverty.
Although his marketfriendly reforms were initially praised by international investors, who said they laid the groundwork for growth, they also brought pain to the country’s poor and stoked labor unrest.
Many of Argentina’s poor live in slums known as “misery villages,” where they often lack access to transportation, running water or sewage. Argentina’s northern regions have chronically high rates of child malnutrition, even though the country remains a top global grain supplier.