La Matanza (Argentina) (AFP)

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Daisy Garcia, 26, served meals to some 80 people every day in a soup kitchen in a poor town southwest of Buenos Aires.

Today, she distributes nearly 1,000 meals a day.

"We never imagined it would come to this," said the young woman.

Since emigrating from Paraguay 14 years ago, Daisy Garcia has lived in the municipality of La Matanza, the most populous in the province of Buenos Aires.

The soup kitchen, funded by charitable donations, is housed in a concrete building, a luxury in this slum area, whose dirt streets are littered with garbage.

"We never stop. Before, we distributed 70 or 80 meals. The pandemic has made us change course, we serve between 450 and 500 meals every day at noon and 350 to 400 in the evening. We also work on weekends. "says Daisy.

“There are a lot of needs, a lot of demands, people coming from everywhere,” she says.

Located about twenty minutes by car from the center of Buenos Aires, La Matanza and its "villa miseria", the local name for the slums, dramatically illustrates the explosion of poverty in Argentina.

The latter now affects 42% of the population (45 million inhabitants), under the combined effects of the deep economic crisis that has shaken the country for three years, and the pandemic.

Almost half of the 1.7 million people who live in the municipality are poor.

The cases of Covid-19 are increasing without respite as the country is hit by a virulent second wave: last week, the number of contaminations was 6,680 in the town, or 1,000 more than the previous week.

In the western zone of La Matanza, crime for the control of drug trafficking has not diminished.

Public services are absent.

No electricity, sewerage, drinking water.

Regular flooding of the La Matanza river leaves the streets submerged in dirty water.

"We are abandoned," says a man.

- "Too difficult" -

Silvana Grisel Meza is 20 years old.

She wishes her two-year-old son had more opportunities than she had.

"You don't learn anything good here," she says, pointing to her slum, Puerta de Hierro.

She speaks from experience: one of her brothers died following a settling of scores, another is in prison for murder.

She and her husband met in rehab.

She is a housewife, she lives "de changas", odd jobs.

But in times of pandemic, "getting changas is very difficult".

Further on, the slum of San Petersburgo is one of the most dangerous in the area, surrounded by police checkpoints.

The neighborhood had recently managed to reduce violence linked to drug trafficking, but with the pandemic, "things are back to what they were," said Martin Portillo, a 47-year-old resident.

"As they cannot go out" due to the restrictions linked to the pandemic, the traffickers "steal from each other," said the man born in the neighborhood and who works for the local parish of San José.

The consequences of the pandemic are wreaking havoc in Argentina where around 40% of the population lives in the informal economy and where chronic inflation (36% in 2020) makes access to food impossible for many.

In these neighborhoods, almost everyone resorts to soup kitchens.

In San Petersburgo, a nearby neighborhood, Silvia Rodriguez feeds her seven children with the soup kitchen.

But the water supply is a challenge.

"If we run out of water, we run out of everything," she says.

The same goes for the Ciudad Evita district.

Whenever Natalia Elizabeth Colbet, a resident, wants to wash her hands, she goes with a bucket to the common tap that she shares with her neighbors.

“The truth is, it's a daily struggle,” she said.

"With the pandemic, everything has become more difficult, too difficult".

© 2021 AFP