LETTER FROM BUENOS AIRES/Seamus Mirodan: When I first arrived in Buenos Aires last February, predictions of social unrest and an ever-worsening economic situation abounded.
It was also widely predicted that Carlos Menem, the controversial former president whose management of the economy during the 1990s was for many the predominant source of woe, would win the general elections in May. Not that Mr Menem was in any way popular. At the time, 80 per cent of Argentines said they would never vote for him, but 80 per cent also said they expected him to win.
A shroud of political apathy hung over a people who had been robbed and pillaged by every government in the last 30 years.
On arrival in the Argentine capital, I found an apartment in a beautiful old building among the cobbled streets of San Telmo, the first barrio, or district, in the city and the birthplace of the tango. Up to the crash in 2001, Argentina had enjoyed a decade-long, one-to-one currency peg with the US dollar. This meant that middle-class residents such as those in San Telmo were earning Western wages and were able to consume the latest technology, clothing and luxuries at almost the same rate as their US counterparts.
In 2001, the bubble burst and the country went into default followed by a currency devaluation in 2002. The community in San Telmo is typical of those who fell furthest during the crisis. The locals suddenly found their incomes reduced to one third of their previous value and their savings frozen in the central bank. Unemployment soared to 25 per cent.
Today, international aid agencies estimate more than half population live below the poverty line. On every street corner in San Telmo, entire families can be seen sifting through rubbish bags in search of cardboard and plastic which they can sell to recycling plants for a few pesos.
This situation is painfully ironic for a population of 37 million whose vast nation is so rich in natural resources that it is estimated to be capable of feeding 180 million mouths. Despite this, the foul play of consecutive administrations has left people pleading for what should otherwise be their birthright.
Maria-Laura, an office administrator for most of the 1990s, lost her job in 2001. I met her night after night in the streets of San Telmo, going from house to house with her three children and asking for any food that could be spared.
Six months into my stay I caught the flu and decided to go to the local public hospital. The low, dimly lit waiting room was filled with around 40 sickly people, all chain-smoking. Three hours later a doctor came through the door, also brandishing a lit cigarette, and called my name.
As he led me through the maze of passageways, I noticed cats running around everywhere. The good doctor told me why: "For the rats - it's cheaper and safer than poison."
However, not everyone here did badly out of the crisis. Argentina's wealthiest citizens managed to stash their dollars outside the country before the devaluation. A short train ride out to the exclusive country clubs of Sanisidro and Martinez reveals that people there are still enjoying the lifestyle to which they became accustomed during the Menem years. In fact, the wealthiest Argentines have actually deposited $120 billion dollars overseas.
These people have effectively become three times as wealthy in the aftermath of the crisis as they still hold dollars but pay for commodities in devalued pesos. They live like royalty, playing polo and sporting the latest fashions from the catwalks of Milan while the World Bank bears the financial burden and the Argentine middle and working-classes bear the human cost of Argentina's crisis.
Walking down the elegant, 12-lane Avenida 9 de Julio in downtown Buenos Aires, one becomes accustomed to so-called "picketer" demonstrations. Men wearing ski masks and brandishing wooden poles or lead pipes regularly block off major roads. They aim to cost big business millions of dollars and force it to recognise the plight of the impoverished. Most of them are paid to be there. Like Roman senators, important members of Argentina's political mafia flex their muscle by showing how many thousands of people, or clients, they can put on the street.
Many demonstrators see no other option but to join the picketers, becoming dependent for their daily crust upon manipulative, populist politicians. Others turn to crime: gangs of delinquents have been terrorising the country. Since January alone, the Buenos Aires area has seen on average one kidnapping every day.
President Nestor Kirchner, who launched an anti-corruption campaign after his election in May, has an 80 per cent approval rating.
As if responding to political change, the Argentine economy has begun, slowly, slowly to grow again.
Maria Laura and her friends in San Telmo are beginning to feel more positive and have thrown aside their apathy, once again placing their confidence squarely on the shoulders of a political leader.
Nevertheless, whether he can help them emerge from a more severe economic contraction than that experienced in America during the Great Depression of the 1930s remains to be seen. In the meantime, their best hope is that the cobbled streets, tango-dancing couples and devalued prices will entice more and more tourists to spend time in the barrio, leaving behind them a little of their wealth.