Crying for Argentina
On that very same plaza, we see some of their constituents.
These are not drunks. They're not addicts. They're not crazies. They are intelligent, able-bodied people who cannot find work. They make a few pesos by collecting recyclable cardboard and soft drink containers at night, and so are the backbone of the recycling program in Buenos Aires.
Lots of people beg for coins in San Miguel de Allende. Most are pros, wearing traditional indígena dress, their hands permanently cocked in a supplicating gesture, their expressions conveying practiced misery and want.
Not these people. Not this little girl, receiving a few coins from a tourist just before the waiter ejects her from the sidewalk restaurant.
Her expression is lifeless. She doesn't want to be doing this. But she has to, along with the rest of the family, if they're going to eat tonight. Hell of a childhood.
Here we have a group of women and children, spending their days on a street corner. They're making the best of a bad situation, sitting in the shade, holding the kids, sharing a mate. I gave them $4 pesos ($1.20 US) after they noticed me taking their picture: 20¢ a person. Cheap bastard.
You think they're in it for the money? This man comes occasionally to our corner breakfast place. The waiters give him a plastic bag full of stale bread. A nearby patron gives him the fisheye. That bum is ruining his breakfast.
Housing stinks, too. This woman lives in a hut made of plastic bags. She's literate. The paperback she's reading has no pictures in it, so she must be reading the words. There's no job for this educated woman.
Cops don't hassle her. They know she has no place to go. They don't protect her, either. That's why she has a dog.
Most dogs like me. This one didn't. Stay away buddy.
At least she has some kind of shelter. When you don't, and you don't have friends or a dog for protection, you sleep under an awning, in a place so public no one will risk harming you.
The poor in Mexico have pretty much always been poor. Their lot, while tragic, is slowly improving or at least static.
These Porteños are people who had jobs and homes. They lost all that beginning seven years ago. They live in a first-world country, a European country. What the hell happened?
Carlos Menem listened to experts at the IMF, who horned in on Argentina's economic miracle. Policymakers wanted to showcase their skills at economy-building in developing nations. They convinced Menem to fix the dollar-peso exchange rate at parity, and when Argentina's export volume dried up as a result, they shoveled loans into the country to prop up the currency—more loans than could ever be repaid. Before long, everybody knew Argentina was going to default on its bonds.
Finally the bankers cut off credit. The economy collapsed. Rioting broke out. Argentina went through four presidents in eleven days. Citizens were told they could not pull their deposits out of banks, so they watched as the peso sank against the dollar, wiping out their savings.
Of course, the wealthy held their assets in dollars, banked outside the country. The elite barely saw a ripple.
But not the middle and lower classes. Businesses closed. People lost jobs and homes. One or more of the people in the photos above may once have been a member of the middle class.
They were robbed. By their leaders. By American policymakers. Another reason Latin America is turning against us.
I'm angry and there are tears in my eyes as I write this. For some illogical reason, I can handle poverty in Mexico. I can handle homeless people in Golden Gate Park. I can't handle former homeowners pushing their ratty carts at night, rooting through the garbage set out on the street, tearing up cardboard boxes for sale.
I've been avoiding writing this one. Too painful. BsAs is a lovely city in a lovely country. But it has open sores.
Think it can't happen to you? The US is the biggest debtor nation by every measure. The dollar is sinking. Asset prices are collapsing.
Think again.