Love notes from Siel is a newsletter about love, writing, and the nomad life from me, Siel.
Dear friend —
The first Argentinian I met was my taxi driver, though he was originally from Peru, he’d moved to Buenos Aires as a teenager some thirty-plus years prior. Recently, he’d tried living in Santiago for a year, that was where he’d come to realize he was now more Argentinian than Peruvian, and also, that he disliked Chile.
“What didn’t you like about Chile?” I asked.
“The food, it wasn’t as good,” he said.
I sensed there were other things he’d disliked but was too polite to go into them. Or maybe he didn’t think I’d understand; we were speaking in Spanish. So instead we talked about Buenos Aires, the current vibe of the city, what with the presidential elections coming up in a couple weeks. “Milei,” he answered immediately when I asked whom he planned to vote for. The country needs a change, he said, that’s why he was supporting this outsider.
I’d read about Milei in the news — a far-right libertarian who’s anti-choice and anti-gun control and often likened to Trump. The part of Milei’s platform that’s gotten the most attention, though, is his bid to U.S. dollarize the Argentinian economy — because there’s a major inflation crisis in Argentina right now. At the beginning of the pandemic, a U.S. dollar was worth about 80 pesos; now it fluctuates between 800 to 1200.
“The thing is, dollarization has already happened, just unofficially,” my taxi driver said. “People who can have been saving money in U.S. dollars for years.” He paused. “Which president did you prefer, Biden or Trump?”
“Biden. With Trump, every day we woke up to a new disaster.”
“Yeah — we saw,” he said thoughtfully.
Suddenly, he asked if it would be alright if he made a quick stop at a bakery, he was dying of hunger. Okay, I said, surprised. He hopped out and returned with a box of facturas, offered me one, then got us back on the road and recommenced talking about Buenos Aires as he ate.
“Around here you can walk around at three in the morning, no pasa nada.” he told me. We were almost at my Airbnb in Palermo Chico and the blocks had gotten noticeably nicer. On the outskirts of the city we’d passed the slums — villas miserias — then areas that looked East L.A.-ish, and now we were in a neighborhood that resembled Madrid. Between the 1880s to 1930s, when Buenos Aires was a richer city, many Italians, Spaniards, and other Europeans immigrated here and deliberately built a city that looked European.
Today Buenos Aires is often called the Paris of South America. It’s really a beautiful place, with big green parks and botanical gardens, inviting cultural centers, impressive museums — many of them completely free. Palermo and its surrounding neighborhoods are just pretty to walk around: tree-lined pedestrian sidewalks, independent bookstores, quirky cafes. I like looking out the balcony of my sixth floor studio, then taking the elevator down to say hi to Sergio, the friendly doorman, and getting cinnamon babka at the popular Jewish bakery next door.
Now is a strange time to be in Buenos Aires because the city looks happy, peaceful — yet economic anxieties roil under the surface. You’re reminded of them from time to time, like when your restaurant bill offers exchange rates in dollars, Euros, and reals. Rogue money changers called arbolitos stand on street corners whispering to passersby the way drug dealers might. More legit currency exchange offices dot the city too, there they’ll take your dollars and hand you gigantic stacks of 1000-peso notes. For some reason these businesses prefer hundred-dollar bills, go in with twenties and they’ll give you a slightly lower exchange rate. What you really want to avoid, though, is going to an actual bank or ATM — that’s where the real scams happen because they offer only the official exchange rate, which will give you roughly half the pesos of the unofficial, market value rate.
Despite its elegant ambiance and relaxed culture today, Buenos Aires is a place with a very long, rich, and turbulent and violent history, which I’m finally starting to learn about now. At the moment, there are posters plastered all over the city celebrating 40 years of continuous democracy — the longest run the country has ever had.
What will happen on November 19, when porteños return to the polls? Will Milei win, or will the voters opt for Massa, the current economy minister who’s had a lot of apologizing to do for the current inflation crisis?
More on that soon —
Love,
Siel
Three links you might love:
100+ economists have published an open letter warning against Milei. “Javier Milei’s dollarization and fiscal austerity proposals overlook the complexities of modern economies, ignore lessons from historical crises, and open the door for accentuating already severe inequalities.”
Milei has also attracted other highly motivated opponents: Swifties. “Squadrons of Argentine fans of the pop star Taylor Swift have gotten political. They have trained their online sights on Mr. Milei and his rising libertarian party, framing them as a danger to Argentina.”
Odd fact: Milei owns five cloned dogs. “They are genetic copies of Mr. Milei’s former dog … and were created in a laboratory in upstate New York…. He has made the cloned dogs symbols of his libertarian ideals by naming four of them for three conservative American economists.”
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