dictatorship. And, miraculously, her body has not decomposed.
“That,” Borges said, “is a story I could
never
write.”
But at seventy-six, and after seventeen years of proscription and exile, Juan Perón, from the Madrid suburb known as the Iron Gate, dictates peace terms to the military regime of Argentina. In 1943, as an army colonel preaching a fierce nationalism, Perón became a power in Argentina; and from 1946 to 1955, through two election victories, he ruled as dictator. His wife Eva held no official position, but she ruled with Perón until 1952. In that year she died. She was expensively embalmed, and now her corpse is with Perón at the Iron Gate.
In 1956, just one year after his overthrow by the army, Perón wrote from Panama, “My anxiety was that some clever man would have taken over.” Now, after eight presidents, six of them military men,Argentina is in a state of crisis that no Argentine can fully explain. The mighty country, as big as India and with a population of 23 million, rich in cattle and grain, Patagonian oil, and all the mineral wealth of the Andes, inexplicably drifts. Everyone is disaffected. And suddenly nearly everyone is Peronist. Not only the workers, on whom in the early days Perón showered largesse, but Marxists and even the middle-class young whose parents remember Perón as a tyrant, torturer, and thief.
The peso has gone to hell: from 5 to the dollar in 1947, to 16 in 1949, 250 in 1966, 400 in 1970, 420 in June last year, 960 in April this year, 1,100 in May. Inflation, which has been running at a steady 25 percent since the Perón days, has now jumped to 60 percent. Even the banks are offering 24 percent interest. Inflation, when it reaches this stage of take-off, is good only for the fire insurance business. Premiums rise and claims fall. When prices gallop away week by week fires somehow do not often get started.
For everyone else it is a nightmare. It is almost impossible to put together capital; and even then, if you are thinking of buying a flat, a delay of a week can cost you two or three hundred US dollars (many business people prefer to deal in dollars). Salaries, prices, the exchange rate: everyone talks money, everyone who can afford it buys dollars on the black market. And soon even the visitor is touched by the hysteria. In two months a hotel room rises from 7,000 pesos to 9,000, a tin of tobacco from 630 to 820. Money has to be changed in small amounts; the market has to be watched. The peso drops one day to 1,250 to the dollar. Is this a freak, or the beginning of a new decline? To hesitate that day was to lose: the peso bounced back to 1,100. “You begin to feel,” says Norman Thomas di Giovanni, the translator of Borges, who has come to the end of his three-year stint in Buenos Aires, “that you are spending the best years of your life at the money-changer’s. I go there some afternoons the way other people go shopping. Just to see what’s being offered.”
The blanket wage rises that the government decrees from time to time—15 percent in May, and another 15 percent promised soon—cannot keep pace with prices. “We’ve got to the stage,” the ambassador’s wife says, “when we can calculate the time between the increase in wages and the increase in prices.” People take a second job and sometimes a third. Everyone is obsessed with the need to make more money and at the same time to spend quickly. People gamble. Even in the conservative Andean town of Mendoza the casino is full; the patrons are mainly work-people, whose average monthly wage is the equivalent of $50. The queues that form all over Buenos Aires on a Thursday are of people waiting to hand in their foot-ball-pool coupons. The announcement of the pool results is a weekly national event.
A spectacular win of some 330 million pesos by a Paraguayan laborer dissipated a political crisis in mid-April. There had been riots in Mendoza, and the army had been put to flight. Then, in the
“That,” Borges said, “is a story I could
never
write.”
But at seventy-six, and after seventeen years of proscription and exile, Juan Perón, from the Madrid suburb known as the Iron Gate, dictates peace terms to the military regime of Argentina. In 1943, as an army colonel preaching a fierce nationalism, Perón became a power in Argentina; and from 1946 to 1955, through two election victories, he ruled as dictator. His wife Eva held no official position, but she ruled with Perón until 1952. In that year she died. She was expensively embalmed, and now her corpse is with Perón at the Iron Gate.
In 1956, just one year after his overthrow by the army, Perón wrote from Panama, “My anxiety was that some clever man would have taken over.” Now, after eight presidents, six of them military men,Argentina is in a state of crisis that no Argentine can fully explain. The mighty country, as big as India and with a population of 23 million, rich in cattle and grain, Patagonian oil, and all the mineral wealth of the Andes, inexplicably drifts. Everyone is disaffected. And suddenly nearly everyone is Peronist. Not only the workers, on whom in the early days Perón showered largesse, but Marxists and even the middle-class young whose parents remember Perón as a tyrant, torturer, and thief.
The peso has gone to hell: from 5 to the dollar in 1947, to 16 in 1949, 250 in 1966, 400 in 1970, 420 in June last year, 960 in April this year, 1,100 in May. Inflation, which has been running at a steady 25 percent since the Perón days, has now jumped to 60 percent. Even the banks are offering 24 percent interest. Inflation, when it reaches this stage of take-off, is good only for the fire insurance business. Premiums rise and claims fall. When prices gallop away week by week fires somehow do not often get started.
For everyone else it is a nightmare. It is almost impossible to put together capital; and even then, if you are thinking of buying a flat, a delay of a week can cost you two or three hundred US dollars (many business people prefer to deal in dollars). Salaries, prices, the exchange rate: everyone talks money, everyone who can afford it buys dollars on the black market. And soon even the visitor is touched by the hysteria. In two months a hotel room rises from 7,000 pesos to 9,000, a tin of tobacco from 630 to 820. Money has to be changed in small amounts; the market has to be watched. The peso drops one day to 1,250 to the dollar. Is this a freak, or the beginning of a new decline? To hesitate that day was to lose: the peso bounced back to 1,100. “You begin to feel,” says Norman Thomas di Giovanni, the translator of Borges, who has come to the end of his three-year stint in Buenos Aires, “that you are spending the best years of your life at the money-changer’s. I go there some afternoons the way other people go shopping. Just to see what’s being offered.”
The blanket wage rises that the government decrees from time to time—15 percent in May, and another 15 percent promised soon—cannot keep pace with prices. “We’ve got to the stage,” the ambassador’s wife says, “when we can calculate the time between the increase in wages and the increase in prices.” People take a second job and sometimes a third. Everyone is obsessed with the need to make more money and at the same time to spend quickly. People gamble. Even in the conservative Andean town of Mendoza the casino is full; the patrons are mainly work-people, whose average monthly wage is the equivalent of $50. The queues that form all over Buenos Aires on a Thursday are of people waiting to hand in their foot-ball-pool coupons. The announcement of the pool results is a weekly national event.
A spectacular win of some 330 million pesos by a Paraguayan laborer dissipated a political crisis in mid-April. There had been riots in Mendoza, and the army had been put to flight. Then, in the
Similar Books
