So What Would You Do?
Argentina (by the way, I made it to Chile on a long bus ride through amazing Puna and Andes landscapes and we only had one flat tire) calls their fiscal collapse of five years ago ¨The Crisis¨. I heard bits and pieces about what happened to the real Argentineans, but I got the full rundown with a very specific story this past week and I thought I would share it to give you some insight into the psyche of Argentina and how I believe they are very different for better and worse than Americans and Europeans.
An uncle works his whole life and over a fifty year period he saves 175,000 US dollars. He has it in an account with a contract that stipulates dollars. The country wakes up one morning, I believe in 2002, to learn that they now only have one fourth of their deposited pesos. The uncle learns that his account really is not in dollars due to some fine print – a total crock as it was told to me and that is supported by other stories I have heard. And more importantly, he learns that his $175,000 is now $40,000 equivalent in pesos (I guess that would be about 120,000 pesos at 3 to 1). He tries to withdrawl it and the banks decide that is not possible. They tell him he gets $5,000 and he will get the other $35,000 paid out in equal payments over a ten year period.
But it gets worse. See this didn´t happen to the elite of the country. It just happened to the regular folks. No legislation or penalties occurred to the banks. The banks, the elitists and the government are all one and the same. It sounds like as big of a scam as I have ever heard. It would be one thing if it happened across the board. And it would also be less smelly if they paid out the readjusted amount. But instead, some keep their money and some are paid out a pittance while the banks are obviously using their money to make a lot more over a ten year period. The uncle needs heart surgery (to add insult to injury) and he obviously cannot afford it so it is likely this whole thing will kill him. (This story also shoots down a myth that everyone in Argentina gets great, free health care – a topic I decided not to discuss with Argentineans for a number of reasons yet it came up circuitously in this conversation about the crisis.)
I believe we would have had a revolution on our hands back at home. I believe that 100%. A justified revolution no less. Instead, Argentineans backed down as soon as the government killed a few protestors and they accepted it. It threw the country into instant problems, but I can see that they have made the adjustments and are trying to move forward. People were buying things prior to the crisis and they have adjusted to broken down cars, worn clothes, etc. I told I am concerned that keeping something like this contained will only result in a bloodier explosion later, buthe believes Argentineans will always just accept what is handed to them. They may protest a bit, but they accept that they are kept down while the elite run the whole show and get richer at their expense. I love Argentina, but I certainly do not understand it!
Tags: argentina, south america, Travel
vagabondrick
Leave a Reply