President George Bush`s visit to Argentina for the Summit of the Americas provoked demonstrations on the streets of Buenos Aires in protest at his foreign policy and attitude to trade. Nick Caistor meets some of the local people who have lived through the economic hardships of recent years.
The man at the bar is crooning enthusiastically if not exactly in tune.
His companion is hunched over that quintessential tango instrument, the bandoneon, squeezing out a song that tells of hope betrayed in a harsh, uncomprehending world.
Sitting next to me, Mario is intent on explaining how it is all George Bush`s fault.
According to my friend, who has lived all his life in Buenos Aires, every time Argentina achieves stability and economic success, the Yankees have to spoil it all.
They cannot, he says, stand the competition.
This was what happened four years ago, when the Argentine economy collapsed.
IMF conditions
The pesos Mario had saved, each of which was then worth $1, suddenly lost two-thirds of their value as the peso plummeted.
And since then the dreaded International Monetary Fund has been trying to impose its stranglehold on the Argentine economy and force Argentines to comply with its recipe of cheap exports, firms being sold off to foreign investors and even Argentine beef being banned from the United States on the grounds that most people in Argentina say are spurious.
Two elderly couples have started to lurch, rather than dance, their complicated tango steps around our dinner tables.
We are in La Boca, once the immigrant area of the port of Buenos Aires, now full of restaurants that all seem to be crammed with ordinary Argentines out to enjoy themselves.
BBC.co.uk
sections: Politics, World News |
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