De La Rua blamed the food riots on delinquents and vandals, offering no solutions to Argentina’s economic crisis, no plans for the future. As soon as he finished, people spontaneously streamed into the streets, banging pots and pans and honking horns in a symphony of protest. “Basta,” they cried. “Enough.”
This was not the country I had hoped to see. The son of an Argentine mother, I have been a visitor and sometime resident in Buenos Aires since I was a child. It has always seemed a magical place to me–a romantic, cosmopolitan city with grand boulevards and a churning night life. Portenos, as the city’s denizens are called, are a fascinating breed: gruff and affectionate, sly and self-assured, with a penchant for psychoanalysis and dramatic gestures. They have always relished the notion of living in what is often described as the Paris of Latin America. When I last visited Buenos Aires three years ago, people could still cling to that idea. True, the economic recession was already beginning, but many Argentines were still taking advantage of their overvalued currency to consume vast quantities of imported goods and to vacation in Miami and Europe.
This time, I saw a different tableau. When I arrived in mid-December–four days before the rioting began–the signs of social strain were evident. Bedraggled homeless people lay curled on sidewalks. A district on the outskirts of the city that is home to two of my close friends had become too dangerous to visit. Taxi rides, always a source of entertainment–with drivers offering me a cigarette as they delivered opinionated pronouncements on everything from soccer to politics–were now laced with anxiety. I heard plenty of tales of passengers being assaulted by criminals working in cahoots with cab drivers. One friend recounted how he was robbed twice in daylight, once under the threat of being beaten to a pulp. No one I know hails taxis in the street anymore; instead, they call private cab companies.
The night the protests began, they had an electrifying feel. People were channeling their simmering rage over austere economic policies and a grinding recession into healthy and festive defiance. They laughed and sang and embraced. Middle-class families marched alongside poor laborers to the plazas in front of the government house and the Congress. Accustomed to feeling impotent, they could now taste their collective strength: they were taking down a president with the simple clanging of cooking implements. The pots and pans were especially symbolic. Traditionally a sign of middle-class protest, they signaled to Argentina’s leaders that opposition to their policies ran through the mainstream of the country’s society.
But the situation soon turned ugly, starting off the gravest spate of violence the country has witnessed in more than a decade. Within hours, rioters had clashed with police and blood stained the pavement. By the following evening, some two dozen people were dead, and De la Rua was fleeing the presidential palace in a helicopter.
Argentina is still on its steep descent into the fog of uncertainty. In the three weeks since the rioting began, the country has had five presidents. More pots have been banged and more stores looted. Protesters have stormed the gates of the government house and smashed the windows of the Congress. For the moment, the country has settled on Eduardo Duhalde as its leader. But residents are tense and in an unforgiving mood as he tackles a daunting economic crisis. The country has defaulted on its towering $132 billion debt–the largest default in history. Early this week, Duhalde announced the official abandonment of a decadelong policy linking the Argentine peso to the dollar, devaluing the local currency by nearly 30 percent. People are lining up at banks to try to gain access to their money, which the government has partly frozen in an attempt to avert a collapse of the financial system. For Argentina, the challenge is to rebuild itself amid the detritus of a ravaged economy and a morally bankrupt political leadership.
After the crisis hit, it dominated discussions almost everywhere I went. One friend with a newborn baby told me the sales in his furniture store have dropped by 75 percent. He’s unsure whether he’ll be able to salvage his business and feed his family. One couple is postponing their wedding because they won’t be able to scrape together enough money in time for the original date. My cousin and her boyfriend asked me how I might help them spirit their life savings out of the country and into a safe account overseas. And my parents, who now live in Buenos Aires, have some of their savings tied up in the banking system–inaccessible, they’re told, for at least another six months.
Faced with countless unknowns, Argentines are struggling to take some measure of control over their lives. Some are hurrying to buy goods or make payments before inflation–an all too likely possibility–kicks in. Others are concocting schemes to get their money invested in hard assets, like gold or real estate. And still others are planning on abandoning the country altogether. At the Spanish consulate across the street from my friends’ apartment, I watched how every night, the line for visa applicants would begin forming at around midnight in anticipation of the next business day. Another friend jumped at a job offer in Italy and is leaving in the next several days. Thus the country is slowly drained of some of its most talented and energetic youth.
There was some cause for celebration, though. In the midst of the crisis, the soccer club Racing won the national title for the first time in more than three decades. Fans poured into the streets, waving jerseys, blaring horns and chanting songs–the only mass gathering in the three weeks I spent in Argentina that was prompted by celebration rather than disgust. Even supporters of rival clubs ended up cheering on that victory of the underdog. Perhaps, in a way, they were cheering on Argentina.
