Fear-mongering in the Traffic War

Argentine highway safety is a serious problem, and one that concerns me the moment I step out my door of my apartment building. I try not to exaggerate, though, so it's hard to accept the sensationalist coverage, in this morning's Clarín, of a head-on crash that killed 13 people in Córdoba province.

According to a sidebar to the story, 81 Argentines have died so far this year in vehicle crashes. As deplorable as that may sound, it's possible to consider this good news: In 2007, more than 8000 people died on Argentine highways, an average of roughly 22 per day; in the 13 days so far this year, the average is only six-plus per day. Should this trend continue through the year, highway fatality rates would decline by about 70 percent, so let's give Argentine drivers credit for getting off to a positive start in 2008--especially when so many are en route to their vacations.

Still, the carnage on Argentine highways is real enough without Clarín's alarmism over a single accident that may have been caused by a blown tire. It's worth noting, though, that 33 of those 81 fatalities so far have happened in Córdoba province, a popular vacation destination for Argentines.

Up to Here with Aerolíneas

The situation at Ezeiza, Buenos Aires's international airport, is apparently returning to normal after some of the 5,000 passengers booked on various Aerolíneas Argentinas flights responded to lengthy delays by vandalizing the airline's check-in facilities; other indignant clients even forced their way into the immigration area. Flights were delayed anywhere from seven to 24 hours, while Aerolíneas declined to provide vouchers for anything other than snacks.

Aerolíneas officials blamed the problems on a strike by labor intransigents, who in turn proclaimed that there was "shortage of staff"--explanations that are not mutually exclusive. In reality, there's plenty of blame to go around, though it's clear that Aerolíneas (with the bulk of market share) has the most problems of any Argentine airline. I addressed the topic of domestic flight problems, due to a shortage of planes, in an earlier post.

Meanwhile, today's Buenos Aires Herald contains a large advertisement recruiting cabin staff for Austral, Aerolíneas' domestic affiliate (any distinction between the two is more or less fictitious). In additional to fluent English, one of the basic requirements is the ability to swim.

A Containment Policy

It might not look like much, but the dumpster to the right is one of the most encouraging sights I've ever seen in Buenos Aires. In the aftermath of the 2002 economic meltdown, desperate cartoneros (informal recyclers from the poor suburbs, so called because cardboard is one of their preferred materials) invaded the city in search of materials they could sell to help themselves through the crisis. In the process, they would rip open the plastic bags of household refuse that Porteños leave nightly on the curbside before city trucks could haul them away, and scatter them everywhere. Despite the economic recovery, some cartoneros even scavenge food from restaurant refuse, and the practice is not likely disappear soon. Stray dogs, not to mention rats and cockroaches, make a potential public health hazard even worse.

Two years ago, when I last visited Montevideo, it was clear that the Uruguayan capital had found at least a partial solution to the problem. On almost every block I saw, the city administration had placed such containers and its own cartoneros could rummage through them for recyclables without scattering their contents. Like Montevideo, Buenos Aires at least has started to work toward cleaner streets, without penalizing the poor for their activities. Progress in providing containers, though, has been slower than some of us might like.

In "Palermo Hollywood," the neighborhood where I took the photograph above, a woman carrying out her garbage confirmed that the cartoneros no longer fling the trash in all directions and that the streets are cleaner, but the process hasn't been without disruptions. "There are a lot of bars in this neighborhood," she told me, and "sometimes the kids here take the containers for rides after they've been partying." At least inebriated dumpster-divers aren't getting behind the wheel of an automobile.

The Peso Also Rises

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Southern Cone countries were the world champions of inflation. In the midst of political turmoil and economic mismanagement, Argentine prices often increased 50 percent per month. This created a scenario in which saving was pointless since, by month's end, their money would lose half its value. Instead, Argentine consumers quickly spent their salaries on essentials--food, for instance--and durables (automobiles, say, but even items such as refrigerators which held their relative value). When my wife and I got married in Argentina in 1981, we received 3.6 million pesos in cash and checks as wedding gifts (see the accompanying photo; as we were moving to California, we asked people to refrain from refrigerators to avoid baggage surcharges). This we quickly changed for about US$700, which seemed a lot of money at the time.

As the peso deteriorated and a black market for dollars developed, the handful of tourists not deterred by military dictatorship lived like kings. Civilian government returned in 1983, but manic price swings continued--while spending several months in Buenos Aires in 1985, I sent friends in California million-peso notes, which were by then worth less than a dollar, as Xmas gifts. Finally, in 1989, then President Carlos Menem pegged a new peso to the dollar and reasonable stability reigned for a decade-plus (though the currency peg created longer-term problems).

Chile, too, underwent hyperinflationary episodes and painful readjustments, both during and after the Salvador Allende years; in some cases professionals were earning just a few dollars per month. Leaving aside the issue of the Pinochet regime's ability to impose economic orthodoxy and repress labor unions, Chile has managed to avoid such crises since the mid-1980s, even after the return to civilian rule in 1989. Argentina, of course, has not been so fortunate, as the 2001-2 crash drove half the population into poverty. Under former President Néstor Kirchner and his successor/wife Cristina Fernández, the recovery has been impressive, but it's not been problem-free.

Is Inflation Back?
In both countries, one of those problems is inflation. In Argentina, after the peso collapse, the government froze bank accounts, along with many prices, but with annual GDP in the nine percent growth range, it's hard to resist pressures from both business (to liberate the market) and labor (to raise wages). I haven't time right now to address complex policy questions such as energy supplies and costs (which I've dealt with elsewhere on this blog), but for the moment it's enough to say that prices for many goods and service are rising (see, for instance, my separate entry on public transportation in Buenos Aires).

Prices are rising in Chile as well, but the cases are not exactly parallel. Chile, for instance, imports nearly all its fossil fuels, whose cost is about double that in Argentina (which has been self-sufficient until relatively recently). This has been a major contributor to a 2007 inflation rate of 7.8 percent--high by recent Chilean standards, but hardly hyperinflationary. The independent central bank anticipates a four percent figure for 2008.

Argentina's inflation rate is a controversial topic. The government publicly claims 8.5 percent for 2007, but has been accused of meddling in the ostensibly autonomous state statistics agency INDEC--much as the Republican Bush administration prevented the US Census Bureau from using advanced statistical techniques to arrive at city population figures that might have tilted redistricting in favor of the opposition Democrats. According to an article in today's Clarín, internal government documents use 14 percent as a base inflation figure for 2008.

Exchange Rates and Travelers
Meanwhile, in the travel and tourism sector, other factors are at work. In Argentina, the dollar is holding its own at about 3.1 pesos, though travelers with euros, pounds, and other strong currencies are gaining. With a relatively weak peso, Argentines are traveling outside their borders less frequently than in the past; instead, they're competing with foreign visitors at popular destinations such as Patagonia and Iguazú Falls, where the increased demand means higher local prices.

The Chilean peso, by contrast, is strong. Only a couple years ago, it was nearly 700 pesos to the dollar, but windfall copper prices have earned an abundance of dollars and the exchange rate has fallen below 500 pesos. Domestic inflation apart, this would mean price increases of more than 25 percent in dollar terms; in practice, it's not quite so extreme, but the trend is clear. Meanwhile, plenty of Chileans are traveling outside their own borders (in fact, they're among the pressures driving up prices in the Argentine tourism sector).

Neither of these trends necessarily means a return to the nightmarish 1980s, but they do mean that that neither country is the cheap destination that both were in the recent past. In general, for most travel and tourism services Chile is now dearer than Argentina. The gap, though, is not so great as it was a couple years ago.

Stubbing Out the Pucho

Not so long ago, entering any Argentine cafe or restaurant, especially in Buenos Aires, meant exposing yourself to toxic tobacco clouds of Parisian proportions. The city that painted itself as the "Paris of the South" was a free-fire zone and, when I first came here in the 1980s, smokers lit up in cinemas, theaters, and just about anywhere else with impunity.

Nearly all my wife's family and friends smoked heavily (she herself quit shortly after moving to California); when we would visit their apartments for dinner, I often had to flee to the balcony for an oxygen hit. Most of those family members and friends quit sooner or later, but it still seemed inconceivable that stopping smoking would become public policy. After all, a survey just a few years ago reported that three out of ten Argentine cardiologists smoked!

As of March 2006, though, Buenos Aires City Ordinance No. 1799 prohibited smoking in schools, hospitals, and other enclosed public places; following a seven-month grace period, the measure applied to restaurants, bars, cinemas, theaters, shopping centers, and similar sites. What's impressive is not the legislation per se, but the degree of enforcement and compliance--even though Argentines often evade the intent of unpopular laws, there seems to be a consensus that smoking is unhealthy and inappropriate behavior.

That's not to say that smoking has disappeared. Since smokers may still light up at sidewalk tables or on patios, they often congregate there so that, paradoxically, indoor air quality can be better than outdoors. There is also an exception for large locales able to create an effectively segregated indoor smoking area.

It bears saying, meanwhile, that my observations may not apply to working-class neighborhoods that foreigners and tourists rarely visit. For most visitors, there's little reason to visit outlying barrios such as Liniers, where compliance may be lower. For that matter, I've even seen policemen and others smoking in the Retiro bus terminal where in principle it should be illegal; once, at the city airport, a taxi driver got hostile when we asked him to put out his pucho (a lunfardo or slang term for a cigarette). Still, both the city and the country deserve credit for rapid progress in controlling tobacco abuse, and the percentage of Argentine smokers is decreasing.

Neighboring Chile has been less successful. It's enacted only a half-hearted tobacco law that lets restaurants determine whether they want to permit smoking or not; if they do permit smoking, they may not admit customers under age 18, though some have created tobacco-free areas that comply with the legislation. Bars and discos are still tobacco-friendly, and Chile has one of the highest smoking rates in the Americas.

The Robin Hood of Corrientes

Yesterday, January 8, more than 100,000 pilgrims swarmed to a sprawling shrine just outside the Corrientes provincial city of Mercedes (population about 30,000) to remember the gaucho Antonio Gil. Gil, according to legend, was a Robin Hood figure who was unjustly executed in the 19th century but has survived in Argentine folk consciousness, especially among the poor and dispossessed. All year, there's a steady flow of kneeling, miracle-seeking visitors in economic distress, and others who come to offer thanks--and bring gifts--for favors already granted. They lug home souvenirs that are numerous and often huge--including life-size or larger plaster statues of the "Gauchito" (known affectionately by his diminutive).

Since the Argentine economic disaster of 2001-2, impromptu red-flagged Gaucho Gil shrines have proliferated alongside highways from the Bolivian border to the tip of Tierra del Fuego. In fact, the Gauchito has moved into the top echelon of Argentine folk saints with San Juan province's Difunta Correa, whose own roadside shrines are distinguished by plastic bottles filled with water. Legend says the "Difuntita" died in the desert following her draftee husband during the 19th-century civil wars, but her baby survived at her breast. There is no evidence whatsoever for this, but believers have made the Difunta's home shrine near Vallecito even larger than Gil's at Mercedes.

Devotees of both the Gauchito and the Difuntita consider themselves genuine Catholics and see nothing contradictory in their beliefs. The official Church thinks differently, though some of its more open-minded priests have tried to come to terms with ineradicable popular beliefs whose strength and durability are a mirror of the Church's shortcomings.

Argentine directors Ricardo Becher and Tomás Larriñaga, meanwhile, drew parallels between the 19th century and the present in their 2006 film El Gauchito Gil: La Sangre Inocente (Gauchito Gil: Innocent Blood), whose trailer can be seen on YouTube. For what it's worth, a Chilean rock band goes by the name of Difuntos Correa.

Comet (and Sky) over Natales

For many years, the travel and tourism sector in Puerto Natales has complained over the lack of direct air services from Santiago; until now, visitors to Torres del Paine and other nearby attractions had to fly to Punta Arenas, which is three hours away by bus or car. Recently, however, Sky Airline began flights from Santiago, and Air Comet is due to begin them next Saturday, January 12. Natales's airport runway is too short for the bigger jets, which may be one reason why the flagship airine LAN has no apparent plans to land here, but the new services will add flexibility to Patagonian travel plans.

Sky's flights from Santiago stop in Punta Arenas before continuing to Natales, three times per week. From Natales, the flights continue nonstop to Santiago. Air Comet will be flying Saturday and Sunday, but the routing is not yet posted on their website. Both services should also link up with Navimag ferries and Skorpios cruises to the nearby glacial fjords such as Pío XI (pictured above), and are likely to be seasonal.

Air Comet is considering flights to Easter Island, which would be LAN's first commercial competition to the World Heritage Site, known from its iconic moai (statues). It will have to avoid conflict with LAN's schedules, however, on the five-hour flight from Santiago.

Back to Viña

Before the economic meltdown of 2001-2, Argentine vacationers flocked to Chile, especially to the "Garden City" beach resort of Viña del Mar, for their summer holidays. Even though the Pacific Ocean is much colder, and Viña's Mediterranean climate is much cooler, than their own Atlantic beach resort of Mar del Plata, Argentines still overran Viña every summer.

All that changed with the peso collapse and subsequent banking restrictions that, for several years, kept the great majority of Argentines within their own borders. In fact, the flow of tourists reversed as Chile's appreciating peso made Argentina, and particularly the nearby city of Mendoza, a bargain destination. Many Chileans flew to Buenos Aires for the weekend, and Mendoza province tourism authorities openly invited Chileans to spend their mid-September patriotic holidays in Mendoza--the rough equivalent of Mexicans campaigning for Americans to celebrate their Fourth of July south of the border. In some ways, it might have been considered the "Revenge of the Chileans," after so many years of the annual Argentine invasion.

Chileans are still flocking to Argentina but, in what might be the clearest signal yet of the Argentine economic recovery, the online Santiago Times has reported that 100,000 Argentines are expected to spend their vacations in Viña and vicinity this summer. Even though the Chilean peso remains strong, more than 20,000 Argentines crossed the Libertadores pass over the Andes from Mendoza into Chile in the last week of December. The more northerly beach resort of La Serena is also getting many Argentine visitors.