Economist.com Cities Guide: Buenos Aires Briefing - June 2006

News this month

Kirchner day

Néstor Kirchner, Argentina’s president, held a rally in Buenos Aires’ central Plaza de Mayo to honour Argentina’s national day on May 25th. The celebration was no small affair: a 64-block area in the heart of the city was cordoned off, and trains and buses provided free transportation for the crowd of some 350,000. But only a minority came unsolicited (a fact made apparent by the notable lack of enthusiasm): most of the throng was shipped in on 5,000 buses and fed traditional sausage sandwiches at a cost of $1.3m, with many receiving an additional $10-17 apiece for their time.

Mr Kirchner’s plan rattled his opponents, who carp that the president used a national holiday to help launch his 2007 re-election campaign. But Mr Kirchner’s top advisors claim that the rally had nothing to do with the imminent election. “I’m sure that’s not what [the president] is thinking about right now,” said his chief of staff, Alberto Fernández. Rather, the event was merely “a celebration to renew the president’s contract with the people”—one that senior government officials have told local media they hope will encourage “the people” to demand that he stand for a second term.

Dirty water

President Kirchner has tried to reinvent himself as an environmentalist of late, supporting groups who oppose the construction of cellulose factories in the neighbouring country of Uruguay. But the president’s new-found green conscience has made him vulnerable to criticism of pollution at home. Argentina’s gravest environmental problem is the Riachuelo, a river that snakes through 64 kilometres of southern Buenos Aires and its suburbs, which has been used as an industrial-waste dump for the last century. In 2003, the year of Mr Kirchner’s inauguration, the national public defender’s office issued a report decrying the Riachuelo’s filthy condition and demanding that the government take action. More than two years later, little has been done—a fact that Mr Kirchner’s critics eagerly highlight. “There hasn’t been any action to break the polluting inertia,” said Eduardo Mondino, the public defender, on May 3rd. Spokesmen for the government point to a treatment facility that was completed under Mr Kirchner’s watch, but acknowledge that “not everything that could have been done was done.”

Mr Mondino has called for a single agency to clean up across the 15 different municipalities bordering the Riachuelo. But the task's financial hurdles may be greater than the bureaucratic ones: one watchdog predicts that fully protecting the 4.6m people who live near the river would require the construction of four treatment plants and two parallel canals, at a cost of $130m.

A seed of reform

One of Argentina’s most politically sensitive issues surfaced last month, when members of the justice ministry called for liberalising the country’s abortion law. The ministry’s panel of experts did not demand outright legalisation, suggesting instead that the procedure be decriminalised in the first trimester of pregnancy and where “circumstances make it excusable”. But this modest change would be a big departure from today’s rules, which do not permit abortion even for rape victims unless they are shown to be “sick or demented”.

According to the pro-choice health minister, Ginés González García, 800,000 Argentine women (4% of the female population) have abortions each year, and 500 die from malpractice. Recent polls show that more than 50% of Argentines believe abortion is justified in some cases. But the government appears to want no part in such a divisive issue, particularly with a presidential election scheduled for 2007. Mr Kirchner’s spokesmen said the president would never support decriminalisation. “It’s a closed topic,” said Aníbal Fernández, the interior minister.

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em

Has Argentina’s football mania gone too far? In an effort to prevent students from cutting classes to watch the World Cup, which will begin in Germany in June, schools in Buenos Aires province will broadcast Argentina’s matches in their classrooms. The national education ministry has sought to paint the policy, which varies by province, as a pedagogical opportunity, issuing a booklet with suggestions for teachers on how to use the tournament to teach language, history and geography. But many educators have expressed concern over the plan, suggesting that it will trivialise the classroom atmosphere. As the author of a letter to La Nación newspaper wrote: “I like football too, and I will want to see every game I can, but I’m not going to stop eating, studying, or sleeping because of it...There’s something wrong with us if we allow this.”

A plague be upon them

An infestation of flies in the Buenos Aires suburbs of Pilar, Luján and Exaltación has reached almost Biblical proportions, making it virtually impossible for the 350,000 people living in the area to open their windows or eat outside. The swarms are being blamed on the owners of the 180 chicken farms in the region, who have failed to clean up quickly the waste of some 1.5m chickens, providing a fertile breeding ground for the insects. Although the agriculture ministry of Buenos Aires province announced that 11 establishments in Luján will be subject to fines or closure as a result of the infestation, some chicken farmers appear to be resisting enforcement of the regulations. In April one group of sanitation inspectors was robbed of all their valuables and even their official van. Locals characterised the crime as a “Mafia-like” statement of defiance.

Catch if you can

June 2006

Julio Alan Lepez

Until June 30th 2006

Collectors snapped up paintings by Julio Alan Lepez, a 30-year-old Argentine artist, at arteBA’s recent contemporary art fair in Buenos Aires. Thankfully some of Mr Lepez’s most provocative work remains on display at the Dharma Fine Arts gallery. The salient theme of his paintings is that art cannot be kept inside a frame. Numerous paintings feature subjects literally sitting on their own portraits—with legs painted on the canvas and a cardboard head and torso protruding beyond the top of the frame. In “Green Spaces” a woman sits on a couch that juts far beyond the nominal right edge of the work.

The most visually arresting items on display are “Free Show” and “Caution”, in which cardboard figures in brightly coloured, striped outfits make sweeping gestures toward lights that illuminate them from behind. Mr Lepez’s vibrant, animated subjects defy the boundaries of the viewer’s imagination just as they do the limits of their picture frames.

Dharma Fine Arts, Arroyo 889 Local 16, Retiro. Tel: +54 (0) 11 4328-6219. Open: Mon-Fri 11am-7pm; Sat 11am-1.30pm. See the gallery’s website.

More from the Buenos Aires cultural calendar