The Argentine middle class: an emblem that fades with the crisis

Agustina Bovi has two jobs, but she cannot spend on sports or leisure. Samanta Gómez can no longer pay for education or health: the middle class, historical emblem of a Argentina egalitarian, is sinking under the weight of inflation and adjustments.

“This is my best job and my worst economic moment,” says Bovi, a 30-year-old cook who works at a trendy six-table vegan restaurant in Buenos Aires.

He combines this task with another night job, but he still can’t make ends meet because there are no clients. The volume “There were twice as many people three months ago as there are now. And that feels a lot. It is felt in our salaries.”

Since the inauguration of President Javier Milei in December to February, accumulated inflation exceeded 70%. In 12 months, it is close to 280% after years of price increases, which results in a continuous collapse in purchasing power and therefore consumption.

“The last three months I had to cancel exercise, going out, everything that is leisure”Bovi tells AFP. “I haven’t been able to buy clothes for a long time. Household expenses are only basic. We had to change brands of toothpaste, deodorant. Now it’s going to the supermarket and looking for the cheapest and giving up things.”

“I considered myself middle class a long time ago. Now I feel that the people who used to be middle class are lower class or poor.”says the young woman, surrounded by pans, pots and refrigerators. “I can’t afford to take a week or stop.”

A national emblem is shipwrecked

The decline of Argentina’s middle class, an example of upward social mobility in Latin America, precedes Milei.

Ezequiel Adamovsky, a historian specialized in the subject, explains that the Argentine middle class has been shrinking for 50 years until losing the foundations that once made the country prosperous.

But the situation has worsened since Milei cut subsidies on transportation, fuel and utility rates, and eliminated regulations that placed limits on rental contracts and private healthcare prices. This added to the inflationary blow caused by a devaluation of fifty% a few days after taking power.

Consequently, since then wages have lost a fifth of their purchasing power. (18%)in its worst fall in 21 years, according to the official RIPTE index.

Poverty affects almost six out of every 10 Argentines. “Salaries have had an unprecedented drop”Adamovsky said. “There has not been such a rapid drop in salary levels since the time of the military” (1976-1983).

Currently, the middle classIt is not a homogeneous class.” but rather “a collection of fragments, like the remains of a shipwreck,” he added. One of her icons was Mafalda, the cunning girl from the comic strip of the same name by the cartoonist Quino (1932-2020).

This transformation is not only quantitative but also ideological. Now public spending on health and education, as well as subsidies for culture and research, are “attacked and blamed as the country’s ills”, according to Adamovsky. “And that is a very strong cultural change.”

“If Mafalda saw the country today she would not recognize it as the country she lived in 60 years ago,” the historian told AFP.

“My head collapsed.”

This is the case of Samanta Gómez, a 39-year-old nurse who had to transfer her three children from a private school to a public one due to the increase in tuition prices and who also suspended any recreational activity that involves an expense. “We’re just going to the square.””, he relates.

“Before I lived in a more controlled way and suddenly a tsunami came and destroyed our lives that we had lived until December as normal. Now there was a 180 degree change,” says the woman, who suffered a cerebrovascular accident (CVA) in February.

“I think my head collapsed because of financial worries, the children’s health, school and their daily lives,” sobs.

Now “milk costs more than 1,000 pesos (US$1.15) per liter and my children drink milk in the middle of the afternoon”explains Gómez, in whose household the monthly income is 400,000 pesos (US$ 460).

“Before you made ends meet, you could buy your children what they wanted and needed. Now things are increasing every day,” she laments.

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