After arriving in Buenos
Aires Sunday morning – 24 hours, door-to-door, from my Northern Hemisphere
home in Oakland – I took a brief restorative nap until the early afternoon.
Still groggy with jet lag, I took a mild spring afternoon’s walk to the grounds of the Sociedad Rural (pictured below), the
traditionally powerful landowners’ organization.
I didn’t go to watch a parade of bulls and milk cows, though
- the annual Exposición Rural,
where breeders display their livestock, takes place in mid-winter. Rather, it
was the fortuitous presence of the Feria
Internacional de Turismo, which takes place every November at this time. From
last Saturday until yesterday evening, international, national and provincial
tourism offices, along with private operators, airlines and bus companies, presented
their “products” to the public at large, but also to professionals such as
travel journalists.
The biggest single presence was Brazil,
which occupied one of three pavilions as the “special invitee,” but numerous
other countries were present in the international pavilion, including every
South American country except Guyana, French Guiana and Suriname. Mexico
and Caribbean countries such as Cuba
and the Dominican
Republic also had a major presence, along with outliers such as India and
Russia. The third “national pavilion” hosted every Argentine province and many
municipalities.
Argentines love their vacations, so locals flooded the La
Rural on Sunday – at times, the aisles were so full that it was almost
impossible to move. There were plenty of live music events – a couple of folkloric dancing drummers (pictured above) from Santiago del Estero were a real highlight – as the crowd
collected fliers and brochures that would help plan, or dream of, their coming
vacations.
For many if not most Argentines, destinations beyond their
own borders are indeed a dream because of the cepo cambiario (“currency
clamp”) that prevents their purchasing foreign currency and blocks their
ATM cards in other countries. On Monday and Tuesday, which were only open to
tourism professionals, the crowds were more manageable, and I got to ask some
friends and acquaintances about their impressions.
Some were not at all sanguine about the event. The
Uruguayans with whom I spoke are cautiously optimistic, as they still accept
the weakening Argentine peso, and Uruguay
will refund IVA (Valued Added Tax) on goods and services to Argentines who
travel to the other side of the Río de la Plata. The government will also
exempt Argentines from a tax on rental properties, and even provide a US$25
fuel credit to cars with foreign license plates (Uruguay has some of the
continent’s most expensive gasoline, approaching US$7 per gallon).
Argentina’s other neighbors are not likely to be so
generous. Brazil, with its large diverse economy and strong currency, is
unlikely to match Uruguay’s incentives. There was a large Chilean delegation at
the FIT, but a friend of mine there said that visiting the foreign destinations
represented here is fantasy for Argentines who visited on the weekend. “Nobody
in Chile wants Argentine pesos,” she told me. As Argentines stay in their own
country, increased local demand could increase prices throughout the country.
Unless and until the cepo cambiario collapses, FIT 2012 may
be Buenos Aires’s last big tourism fair here – in coming years, delegations may not think it worth their while as long as Argentines cannot purchase foreign
currency. The tipping point could be the approach of the 2014 World Cup, due to take
place in Brazil; if fanatical Argentine soccer fans are unable to travel there, things might get ugly.
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