Argentina: eating is a daily struggle for many, due to soaring prices

Gimena Páez is one of the women waiting her turn to pick up some meat in a community kitchen located in a neighborhood of Buenos Aires where, unlike others, the poverty not obvious.

Every day she comes equipped with a bag to guarantee her daughter a ration of nutritious food.

In the small premises located on the ground floor of a building in the Nueva Pompeya neighborhood, other women strive to attend to the neighbors who arrive after noon to provide themselves with food, which in Argentina today is a daily struggle for those with limited resources due to accelerating prices.

Páez, mother of an 11-year-old girl, told The Associated Press that she has had to eliminate many products from her diet and the only meat that is eaten at home is what is provided in that kitchen.

“Sometimes I don’t eat to save a little food for the girl for the night, or I eat rice, but what is meat I prioritize for her”said Páez, 43 years old and separated, when he appeared at the scene on Tuesday.

Since she lost her job in 2020 due to the pandemic, the woman receives assistance in the soup kitchen run by the social cooperative “The Spark”of the Socialist Movement of Workers (MST) party.

Get dry food in stores with the “food card” provided by the government that covers expenses for a value of 15,000 pesos a month (about 63 dollars) and receives donations in a Church.

His case represents a growing impoverished middle class that has been battered by the economic hardships of the last three years and now feels overwhelmed by soaring inflation.

Rising prices have been a problem around the world, but Argentina ranks second in the World Bank’s ranking of countries with the highest food inflation after Lebanon.

On Friday, the National Institute of Statistics and Census reported that the general level of the consumer price index registered an increase of 8.4% in April compared to the previous month and accumulated a variation of 32% so far this year, two figures of high impact for the battered pockets of Argentines in the middle of an election year.

In the interannual comparison, inflation was 108.8%.

Economic analysts highlighted that this is the highest monthly inflation rate since April 2002, when the rise in prices exceeded 10%.

As in previous months, the value of food and non-alcoholic beverages was above general prices in April, with a rate of 10.1%. The highest increases were in vegetables, legumes, dairy products, eggs, sugar and meat, among other foods.

“We have a very serious problem with inflation… The goal is to stop it somehow”affirmed the president Alberto Fernández hours before the data was known.

The Peronist leader added in an interview with Radio 10 that one of the problems with the rise in the cost of living is the “speculation” that there may be a depreciation of the peso. “It is what many criticized me and that I called self-constructed inflation… what is called psychological inflation, which is not in the consumer, but in the small merchant”held.

When Páez went to the dining room that serves 505 servings of food a day, the neighbors took away meat schnitzels with rice, an orange and some bread.

More and more residents of the neighborhood are knocking on their doors asking if they can sign up for the list of those who receive food every weekday. Since a year ago “Many people come asking questions, but we can’t keep up”said Evelyn Morales, one of the coordinators.

A recent visitor is Juan Carlos Barreto, 73, who started coming this year.

“I want to eat dulce de leche, some fruit or bread. How much does it go there? I am losing a lot of money, with 58,000 pesos (about 253 dollars) it is not enough and then there was no other way out than to come here “said the man, lamenting his meager retirement.

Argentina ranks second among the countries with the highest food inflation with 107% per year, following Lebanon, which registered 352%, according to a report on food security by the World Bank.

Data are not available for Venezuela, the country with the highest cost of living rise in Latin America, followed by Argentina.

The skyrocketing prices increased poverty, which currently affects almost 40% of the population, that is, some 18.5 million people. Child poverty rose to 54.2%, covering six million children under 15 years of age.

Susana Martínez is one of the MST militants who collaborates in the soup kitchen and also provides food for herself and her youngest daughter, Valentina Jiménez, seven years old.

Martínez is tired of denying Valentina yogurt or “little desserts” sweet because it does not arrive with the budget. Many times he gives up taking her to the square to play because there are too many temptations that he cannot afford, such as “balloons or candies”.

“Going to the supermarket depresses me a lot and it gives you impotence when you have children… because the grown-ups are assimilating it, but how do you tell a girl ‘I can’t buy you that little dessert now, you’re going to have to eat this?’lamented the 47-year-old woman.

The accumulated increase in the basic food basket in the first four months of 2023 was 42.4%, according to a survey carried out by the Institute for Social, Economic and Citizen Policy Research (ISEPCi) in 900 neighborhood businesses in the urban belt that surrounds the Argentine capital. This increase is the highest in the last five years.

Martínez charges just over 40,000 pesos ($168) for his work in the kitchen, as part of a government aid plan to provide precarious job opportunities. But just for the rent of the Buenos Aires apartment where he lives with his daughter, he has begun to pay 65,000 pesos (273 dollars).

Her job as a masseur brings her more income, but now she is not active because she is recovering from an operation on her hand and the idea of ​​paying for an inflammatory to alleviate the pain fills her with anguish.

Inflation is one of the main concerns of Argentines along with insecurity, according to public opinion polls released ahead of the presidential elections in October, in which Fernández will not appear.

The government tries to alleviate the impact of prices with regular updates of wages for workers in the formal sector and the implementation of precarious work programs for informal workers that guarantee them a minimum income.

In addition, it has announced increases in retirement and various social benefits and tax cuts on wages.

It has also implemented periodic price checks on businesses that have failed.

Nothing seems enough in the midst of a long drought that hurt crops, reducing the inflow of foreign currency and in the face of the strong depreciation of the peso in financial markets in a context of strict capital controls.

“They talk about our children as the future and I always say ‘give them a present if you want them to have a future.’ Those kids who don’t eat, what future will they have?”questioned Martinez.

Fountain. PA