Latin America is the most unequal region in the world. It has the biggest gap between the many poor and few rich. Argentina is no country of exception, though it’s economy was long considered to have one of the lowest relative inequality in Latin America. As a matter of fact, the inequality has deteriorated over the past three decades, a trend also being global as the French economist Thomas Piketty concluded in his book ”Capital in the Twenty-first Century (2014).

One out of three Argentines is poor. The governments official statistics agency, Indec, stated 28,6 per cent of Argentines are living below the poverty line. That is, as UNICEF emphasized, 5,6 million children in poverty, making this almost half of the countries children in total. 1,3 million children are affected by hunger living below the extreme poverty line.
Though Buenos Aires is a thrilling, beautiful city, the inequality and poverty is brutal, and life hard for many of the inhabitants.

 

30 Green Blocks visit
Many of the poorest are living in the many shantytowns in big cities, called villas or, by the government, barrios populares. Recently the CSR class went to visit the Villa 20, a shantytown south of the city center. There the NGO Amartya and the government environment agency APrA have gone together to make the project “30 Manzanas Verdes”, or 30 Green Blocks. The aim of the project is to contribute to a sustainable culture in the shantytown with 25 000 inhabitants living in an area of around 30 blocks. The neighborhoods told the students about the different areas they have been working with as a result. Firstly, they have been engaged reducing the garbage floating around. Secondly dedicate to collect the food oil to prevent it from clogging the sewage infrastructure and drains. Thirdly they have been rehabilitation a abandoned public space, making it into a beautiful vegetable garden. They also showed how they made a little part of the villa into a public playground for children. Some neighborhoods told how the project had united them, changing their lives, and giving them hope of a better future.

Growth of shantytowns
Only in Buenos Aires there are 1612 shantytowns where the people has access to two or less than two basic services: running water, electricity and a sewage system. Of the total of 4100 shantytowns in the whole country, more than half of them where established after 2000. Another one forth (749) were established after 2010.

Totally wrong numbers
As crazy as it is, the former Kirchner administration dealt with incorrect poverty numbers, claiming poverty was as low as 4 per cent with a destitution rate at 1 per cent. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner even told the U.N this, announcing a number lower than the poverty rate in Germany. The current President Macri, a wealthy businessman, was repeating “zero poverty” in his presidential campaign leading him to power in December 2015. In office in the Pink House, the Macri administration declared a “statistics emergency” and allowed the INDEC to publish the real poverty numbers being around 30 per cent.

Favored the top 1 per cent
In 1913, Argentina had a income level among the world’s top ten countries. After the Second World War, the growth in economy stagnated before it later stagnated. “During the last fifteen years, the increase in inequality in Argentina has outpaced Latin American averages. Finally, the periods of negative growth strongly hit the poor”, as written in the book “Top Incomes in a Global Perspective”. A report from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) published in June this year, relieved that 106 families own 10 percent of Argentina’s wealth. The report also showed that Latin America had the second highest increase in personal fortunes in 2016. After the scandalous economical crisis declaring Argentina bankrupt in 2001, poverty skyrocketed and unemployment rate went over 20 per cent. The economic recovery was rapid and favored more than any the rich top 1 per cent. “The crisis generated a massive redistribution in favor of the very rich”, the book “Top Incomes in a Global Perspective” tells, as the rich has their income in foreign currency overseas.

-Hilda-