Buenos Aires baby!

So after all that drama we finally got to enjoy ourselves a little in Buenos Aires. We were lucky enough in La Paz to meet a wonderful Argentinian called Fernando who lives in Buenos and hosted us here. He helped us find the Polish embassy on the first day and has been looking after us superbly since. 

Buenos Aires is the most European city we have been to in Argentina and many parts of it are stunningly beautiful. In the late 1880s, Argentina opened up its doors to many Spanish, Italian and other European immigrants who flocked to Argentina in hopes of escaping poor living standards in Europe. Argentina had cattle and crops which they would export to Europe, and most importantly they had jobs and land….looooots of land. Even today Argentina is pretty underpopulated for the amount of surface area it covers (population is only 2 million more than Poland). So all these foreigners came and worked hard and by the beginning of the 20th century Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world. As in many other countries at the time, the richer layers of society started copying the French mode in many aspects, including architecture. This is visible in many colonial buildings seen in Buenos Aires even today.

Around the time of the second world war, Argentina started to lose capital from Europe and trade began to decrease. By the time of Perón’s second presidency in the 50s the economy started to deteriorate. (Incidentally this is around the time when Evita died and everything seemed to go downhill). The country continuously got itself into more and more debt during the second half of the 20th century and suffered through many crises, which eventually resulted in the famous crisis and massive bank run of 2001.

In recent years the economy has stayed relatively strong and Argentina has paid paid back some of its debt to the IMF. However, there is still instability in the country. Many people believe president Cristina-wannabe-Evita has been manipulating official economic figures (even some friends we met who work in the Government believe that), and there is a lack of reserve funds in the country. This means there is no way for people inside the country to get their hands on dollars and foreign dollars are currently worth almost double on the black market because people are desperate to get their hands on some foreign currency. One friend we made told me how he never puts his savings into the bank but always looks for ways to buy land or dollars. Even Fernando had to cut his holiday in Bolivia short because the Argentinians put a ban on people using their credit cards to take out money abroad and he had no access to his funds.

So people generally are pissed off. The police strikes we witnessed in Cordoba have recently been spreading through the country as workers are constantly complaining about low wages, and even those who are not complaining seem to be pissed off enough to tear the city apart. In conclusion there is still quite a way for this country to go in order to reach the status achieved in the beginning of the 20th century. And despite the very European image it has in the rest of the world, Argentina displays lots of reminders that it still very much is South America and suffers many similar problems to the rest of its neighbours.