Small change for Argentina's 'old' poor

By Wendy McTernan in Argentina

Their bank accounts are frozen, their wages are being withheld, and their businesses are closing. This is the situation facing Argentina's middle classes, the new poor, whose lives have been turned upside down by the economic crisis.

And they are furious, disgusted at the way they have been let down by the government. But they are also hurt and insecure - and they feel powerless. Suddenly, those who were comfortable are experiencing something of what the 'old' poor, those who were poor long before the present crisis, have always felt.

Pastor Roberto leads a small church, the Congregación de Vida in Virreyes, a very poor suburb to the north of greater Buenos Aires. 'The attitude to the crisis is completely different here,' he explains, 'These are people who have always been poor, who have never been listened to. So why should anyone listen to them now?'

With its history of prosperity, it's a shock to find that today in Argentina some 40 per cent of the population still lives below the poverty line.

While middle class people were banging pots and pans outside the presidential palace and congress in peaceful protest against a government that, last Christmas, robbed them of their life's savings, the people of Virreyes were looting San Cayetano, the huge, local supermarket.

'First the food went, but then it was TVs and fridges,' remembers Roberto. 'Initially people in the church resisted the temptation to join in, although they were pressurised by their neighbours. Eventually people arrived at the situation where they had robbed too much for their needs and were giving things away! Then some people in the church did accept goods.'

It's a hand to mouth existence. 'Money is used for absolute necessities - putting food on the table and a roof over their heads,' Roberto says. 'They've stripped everything but the basics away. Even paying for electricity or a telephone would be considered an extra - usually obtained unlawfully.'

Four years of recession have sent the official unemployment figure soaring to 22 per cent, but most of the work done by people who live around Pastor Roberto's church is casual work that doesn't figure in statistics. Many rely on middle class people for work as a maid, doing odd jobs, cutting the grass or trimming hedges - the first things people cut back on in times of hardship. Yet wages were so low that a reduction in pay, sadly, does not make all that much difference.

'It's a situation they are used to,' says Roberto. 'They have always coped - but the middle classes have never had to.'

The government's emergency freeze on savings accounts doesn't affect them. Those living in Virreyes who do have bank accounts are richer than most, but the small amounts of money they draw are well within the low limit set by the government.

Roberto and his wife Julia recognise that the people they work among will probably remain the same, economically. 'We can't give them food, money or work, but we can offer spiritual support, or 'containment'. Over the years we've changed from running a paternalistic model of church to become an incarnational ministry - we live alongside them, cry with them and rejoice with them. We've worked on ethics. We want change, when it comes, to come from within.'

© Latin Link 2002