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With Congressional elections set for Sunday,
Argentinians will pass judgment on their government's crisis management
this weekend. President Cristina Kirchner has been campaigning on
doctored statistics, but with the economy tanking, it is unlikely that
voters will be fooled.
Business is not good in El Calafate. Everything is on sale in the
shops, and young locals spend their days killing time in tourist cafés.
The weather is overcast, and the constant drizzle has deterred all but
a few Brazilian backpackers. "The crisis has arrived in Patagonia,"
says Cristiano Romero, 28.
Four years ago, Romero moved from Buenos Aires to El Calafate, deep in
the south of Patagonia. He is a tour guide whose business consists of
chauffeuring tourists to the Perito Moreno, the country's most famous
glacier, 70 kilometers (44 miles) away. The tourists normally provide a
good source of income; since the government sharply devalued the peso
seven years ago, visitors from around the world have been coming in
droves to the southern tip of South America. Those days are gone
with European tourists now staying home. Argentina has become too
expensive for them, now that inflation has wiped out the benefits of a
favorable exchange rate.
The best hotel in town, the Los Sauces, which sits on the shore of
the glacier-fed lake Lago Argentino, is empty. But the lights are on in
a small wooden building next to the hotel, where two policemen are
stationed. A high wall and a dense row of poplar trees block the view
of the estate the two officers are here to protect, a purple villa
where the most prominent part-time residents of El Calafate live:
President Cristina Kirchner and her husband, former President Nestor
Kirchner. They own the entire block.
When the lights are on in the guardhouse, the neighbors know that
"la Presidenta" is home, and the lights have been on relatively often
in recent months. In fact, the president has fled to her refuge 2,700
kilometers (1,690 miles) south of Buenos Aires almost every weekend.
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