SEBASTIÁN FEST
@sebastianfest
Buenos Aires
Thursday, 13 August 2020 - 23:44
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- The Correspondent's Look. From Easter Island to the Malvinas: the end of the world avoids the coronavirus
The president said he was astonished, but what was astonishing was that he said what he said the moment he said it: "That they keep talking to me about quarantine is something that amazes me." The phrase of Alberto Fernández was revealing, who with that confession on Thursday night deviated for a moment from a very positive announcement, that Argentina will produce the vaccine against Covid-19 developed by the University of Oxford. Along with Mexico, Argentina will manufacture between 150 and 250 million doses to cover the needs of all of Latin America, except Brazil, which has its own agreement.
The admission of Fernández, however, is a gesture of realism in the face of an eternal quarantine, which this weekend will reach 150 days and which will be prolonged for several more weeks, although that data matters less and less. Because one thing is what the law dictates and another, reality: political and social tension is growing in the third largest country in Latin America, with the economy collapsing to historical levels, crime again on the rise and the fact that When 2020 ends, 63% of children will be poor, in a context of general poverty that now exceeds 40% and continues to grow.
Thus, many of the people from the less favored classes who need to go out to work do so, even at the risk of being detained at checkpoints. Thus, the middle and upper classes who feel that they cannot continue shut up in their homes occupy the parks to play sports and fill the streets to feel free at least for a while. Thus, Ariel Suárez, fourth in the rowing competition of the London 2012 Olympic Games, took his boat out on Monday to the waters of the Delta del Tigre, north of Buenos Aires, and launched a phrase overflowing with logic: "If football He can go back to training, I can row again. Who can I infect alone in the river? Let them come and put me in prison. "
Rowing is prohibited, but two days later, when Ginés González García, Minister of Health , was asked about the case, the answer was disconcerting for the citizens of a country in which the practice of much of the sport has been banned since five months ago: "And what do you want me to do ...? Rowing is difficult to infect someone."
The problem for Argentina is that its logic fails: it entered the hard quarantine with very few cases when the summer was exhausting and it frays in the depth of winter while the numbers of infected and deaths do not stop growing, with 268,000 cases already and peaks of 241 dead in one day . In the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires (AMBA), which with 15 million concentrates a third of the country's population, the confinement is much stricter than in the rest of the country, but it is there, in a centralist country despite the proclamation federal, where political and economic tension is concentrated.
And that tension grows, because the figures for the economic downturn are chilling: according to estimates from private studies, in the second quarter, GDP collapsed by about 20% , the worst record in Argentine economic history. It was a relief for the country that Fernández confirmed an agreement with foreign creditors and avoided falling into default on its hostile and final foreign debt, but Argentina does not even live in stagflation: no, the country combines a strong recession with a very high inflation of between two and three percent per month, quite an economic extravaganza.
The economist Carlos Melconian, former president of Banco Nación , believes that there is no risk of hyperinflation as in 1989 and 1990, but he also does not see that the government has "any serious anti-inflationary plan."
Argentina is also experiencing an unusual situation with national and international air traffic paralyzed since March 20. Flights were supposed to resume on September 1 in the world's eighth largest country, but Transport Minister Mario Meoni puzzled this week by stating that the flight stoppage could continue for 60, 120 or 180 more days. The airlines cry out to be heard, they say they are going to disappear.
The bronze crisis
The economic disaster is compounded by political uncertainty, because Fernández has chosen to put his body to all the issues, which has caused him significant wear after a surge in his popularity between March and May. According to the consulting firm Elypsis, after a peak in the positive image in early April, when six out of ten Argentines approved of Fernández, that figure fell at the end of July to four out of ten, and 43.3% of the population has a negative image of the head of state. It is the first time, since he came to power on December 10, that the Peronist has more negative than positive image.
The opposition nucleated in the Together for Change coalition, which initially backed Fernández's strict quarantine, is now extremely critical. It is not favored, however, by the fact that former President Mauricio Macri left the country and went to spend a vacation on the French Riviera. Macri, who weeks before had made a strange trip to Paraguay to meet with the current president and his predecessor, did not clearly explain the reasons for the trip to Europe, which in his political space is seen as highly inappropriate.
Thus, there are many citizens who manage themselves. For this Monday a march against the Government has been called under the slogan "for the Republic and Freedom." The chosen date, August 17, is not accidental, it coincides with a holiday that commemorates the death of José de San Martín, the great hero of independence.
The tension and the crisis are guessed at in the smallest details. Neuroscientist Facundo Manes pointed out that we must get out of the false dilemma between "quarantine or death" and warned that a "mental health pandemic" is looming. And in the center of Buenos Aires, all the elements that have bronze are disappearing, a material for which the reducers pay an attractive price.
"They have torn off everything that are bronze handles from old buildings. On Santa Fe Avenue (one of the main in the city) all the railings on the access stairway to the Church of San Nicolás de Bari were stolen," he laments Ignacio, who knows the center of Buenos Aires well, in dialogue with ELMUNDO.es. "Do not give my last name, ask", with the usual prevention in a country where everyone is suspicious of everyone. "There is a street in which all the doorphones (telephones) of the buildings have been stolen. They are made of bronze."
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