Class divide hardens for Argentina's growing poor

A quarter of the nation now lives in poverty in a country that once prided itself on an egalitarian ethos.

from the January 7, 2008 edition

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The income divide is apparent just beyond the gates Ms. Tedin must pass to access her driveway. Her family relocated to this gated community, where 100 families live on 100 plots of land, for security, says Tedin, whose grew up in the same area, but in the center of town.

Known as "countries," they were once the weekend getaways for the urban elite, but now more and more Buenos Aires residents are making them their permanent homes.

Some communities are massive mini-cites with schools, churches, and shopping centers. "It's a little bit like the 'Truman Show,' " says Tedin, whose manicured lawn looks onto an artificial lake.

"If the country becomes secure again, I'd like to live outside," she says.

Only a few blocks away, on the main road, Nieve Barrio lives in a simple concrete home. Many of her neighborhood's streets are unpaved, dirt alleys that become giant puddles when it rains. Most residents are domestic workers, like Ms. Barrio, or bricklayers and gardeners, and many work in the gated communities nearby. Barrio also mends clothes on the side.

Barrio says she raised six children as a single mother on a maid's salary, but that is no longer possible today.

When she first moved here, she says it was open country, dotted by a few rustic homes. Now, the gated population provides employment but also reminds them daily of inequality. "Things are so much harder today," she says.

Argentina's poverty rates are lower than most others in the region – about a quarter of the population – but still high for a country that once had a 5 percent poverty rate in the 1970s.

"There is no other county with such social regression, such social shame," says Bernardo Kosacoff, the representative of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Argentina.

Mr. Kosacoff says the country has experienced 14 financial crises in the past 30 years, exhibiting more volatility and stunted growth than any other country in the region besides Nicaragua.

Jorge Giacobbe, an independent political consultant in Buenos Aires, agrees, "Argentina is going backwards, not forwards."

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