Economist.com Cities Guide: Buenos Aires Briefing - October 2005

News this month

Hot water

Aguas Argentinas, the company that runs Buenos Aires’s water and sewage system, announced in September that it plans to end its services—thus raising the prospect of water shortages. The crisis was a long time coming. After the peso’s devaluation in 2002 Argentina’s government froze water prices—an emergency policy that remains in place. Aguas Argentinas had demanded a 60% price rise to invest in infrastructure but the government offered 16%, and negotiations fell apart.

The government has accused Aguas Argentinas of bad service and sub-standard infrastructure—failings that may have been inevitable given the company’s debts of $700m. It has also said it will guarantee water service but has not named a new supplier.

Aguas Argentinas’s decision may worsen a system that is already ailing: while the company has served 6.5m people in greater Buenos Aires, and privatisation has improved water service, 1.5m homes in the area are still without mains water, and 3m are not connected to the sewage system. Aguas Argentinas will also continue to demand at least $1.7 billion from Argentina at the World Bank’s international tribunal.

A brawny bench

Roberto Gallardo, a controversial local judge, has once again clashed with local officials by ruling that they must subsidise some of the city's poorest families. Mr Gallardo ordered the city to pay around $70 a month for each child of the city's cartoneros—the scavengers who recycle the city’s rubbish for a living—as long as the child attends school rather than work alongside his parents. Some legal experts accused Mr Gallardo of trying to dictate social policy, which should be left to elected leaders. But others argued that the judge was merely forcing the city to obey its constitution, which guarantees “food, housing, work, education, clothing, culture and environment” to all inhabitants.

The case was just the latest example of Mr Gallardo riling the city’s mayor, Aníbal Ibarra. In a prior ruling, he docked Mr Ibarra's wages to punish him for failing to provide proper lodging for the city's homeless. This time, local politicians appealed Mr Gallardo’s ruling and directed the case to another judge in mid-September. But the plan backfired: the next judge simply embargoed the city's bank deposits until the government paid the cartoneros. Though some payments have been made, the grant programme will probably be stuck in the courts for some time—the case has been referred to yet another judge.

A communal decision

After years of delays, the city legislature has finally approved a new tier of local government. Buenos Aires will be divided into 15 “communes”, each run by seven locally elected representatives, who will make planning and budget decisions for the neighbourhood.

The change was intended to involve residents more closely in policy-making. But so far it has met muted enthusiasm from both politicians and Porteños, as city-dwellers are known. The communes were established in principle in the city's new constitution in 1996, but the plan's idealism was tarnished by years of unseemly fights between political factions keen to run the communes. And thanks in part to these scuffles, the legislation comes late—four years after a deadline for elections set by the constitution. Now finally approved, the communes will have only limited power: legislators, wary of feeding bureaucracy, capped yearly spending at 5% of the city’s budget—around $6.5m for each neighbourhood—for the first two years.

Soap opera

The Teatro Colón's opera season descended into farce in September, when its staff staged wildcat strikes. Two concerts in an annual festival organised by Martha Argerich, an acclaimed Argentine pianist, were suspended as a result. The strikers, who included orchestra members, demanded improved pensions, higher wages and fees for maintaining their instruments. City authorities have agreed to raise wages and the theatre's staff have gone back to work, though talks on the other issues continue. Employees may pursue their extra demands by more inventive means: in the past, orchestra workers protested by unfurling banners before opera functions and arriving for work in casual clothes rather than the customary black-tie.

The strike only added to the general mayhem at the Colón, which has had seven directors since 1996. In an attempt to quell the turmoil, the city's culture secretary has assembled a committee to study the Colón’s operations and devise a strategy to prepare for the opera’s centenary in 2008.

Prejudice poll

Porteños are a tolerant lot, according to a survey by a local university. More than three-quarters of those interviewed thought foreigners should be given Argentine citizenship if they request it, while 96% said that no one should be barred from entering the country on the basis of their religion.

Perhaps because so many locals are descendants of immigrants—particularly of Spanish and Italian origin—only one person in five expressed any hostility to foreigners. Of those that did, the largest proportion—around one-third—said they disliked Bolivians. Fifty-six per cent of Porteños backed same-sex marriages; the figure rising to 66% among those under 40 years old. But while 70% said they would not mind their children having a gay teacher, 62% opposed letting homosexual couples adopt.

Catch if you can

October 2005

Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures

Until November 21st 2005

Following the success of the recent exhibition of Andy Warhol prints at the Centro Cultural Borges, the Buenos Aires Latin American Art Museum (MALBA) has organised a show of the pop artist's lesser-known film portraits from the early 1960s. The films, loaned by New York’s Museum of Modern Art, are part of a series of 500 screen tests of friends and celebrities recorded at Warhol's legendary New York factory between 1964 and 1966. They feature famous models, actors and musicians of the time, including Dennis Hopper, Susan Sontag and Salvador Dalí.

Shot in black and white, without sound, the films originally averaged around three minutes in length. Warhol later slowed them down, giving them a surreal, lyrical quality. They are accompanied by fragments of five of his most famous silent films, which Warhol had always intended should be projected in an art gallery.

MALBA – Colección Costantini, Avenida Figueroa Alcorta 3415, Palermo. Tel: +54 (0)11 4808-6500. See the museum's website

More from the Buenos Aires cultural calendar