‘Everything is so bad’: Argentina’s poor hit hard by Milei’s ‘chainsaw’ measures
Late at night, a young father stands in a dumpster in Buenos Aires, passing scraps and discarded food to his wife and two young children. In a subway station, a homeless couple sleep in an unoccupied corner, their heads sheltered by cardboard boxes. On the streets of the city’s slums – known as villas miseria – children queue for plastic containers of food, their parents hiding out of sight.
Such scenes have become increasingly common as Argentina faces some of its harshest austerity measures yet. Under the rightwing president Javier Milei, who came to power a year ago, public spending has been slashed, wages depressed, tens of thousands of government employees laid off and subsidies for energy and transport ended.
Milei’s allies celebrate the impact of their leader’s “chainsaw” campaign of fiscal balance and deregulation.
“I’m very happy with the job we’ve been doing,” beamed Federico Sturzenegger, Argentina’s minister of deregulation and state transformation, praising the government’s “difficult, bold decisions”.
“We believe things have worked much better than anybody could have imagined. I think people feel the same thing … there’s an increased optimism.”
