For a long time now, the center of Buenos Aires has shown sordid and hopeless edges, with a growing combination of marginality and people evicted by the economic crisis. But the combination of events in recent days was a blow to Argentines: in the same hours that it was reported that almost 40 percent of the country's inhabitants are poor, a three-month-old baby died on the street at the doors from the Casa Rosada itself.
"A baby appeared dead at the very door of the Casa Rosada. She lived on the street, with her family. Her parents notified the police. Poverty kills and kills children. Half of Argentine boys are poor, a percentage inhumane of them lives in destitution", summarized the columnist Miguel Wiñazki in "Clarín".
The death of the three-month-old baby was known hours after the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (Indec) revealed that 39.2 percent of those who live in Argentina are poor, with 8.1 percent indigent. The figures hit the population hard and were the subject of criticism and lamentation by the media in the midst of a rarefied climate: the third largest economy in Latin America is headed for a presidential election with primaries in August and in the midst of inflation that exceeds 100 percent per year. The peso depreciates without pause and sends more and more citizens to poverty.
"Those who pass through it know that around the Plaza de Mayo, dozens of people live in the streets," said Wiñazki. "This did not happen in general before 2001 (the year of the great crisis). They gather under the archway of Paseo Colón, or on the steps of the Cathedral, and thus they spend their days and nights before everyone's eyes, but invisible at the same time, because poverty is already a 'normal' scene. They are usually covered with black cellophane, on discarded mattresses or on the dry floor."
The event occurred at 5:15 in the morning, a few meters from the Government House and in the Plaza de Mayo, where homeless people usually gather seeking refuge.
"My baby, my baby!" Shouted the mother, in despair. Joselin, her three-month-old daughter, did not react. She was in the cart that she shared with Brunella, her sister, who was left under the guardianship of the government of the city of Buenos Aires. A coffee vendor approached them with the police who were guarding the Casa Rosada, and in a matter of minutes an ambulance arrived that could only certify the death of the little girl.
"I got up to give the baby a breast and when I went to touch her she had no symptoms. I gave her the breast and after two hours I got up and she had no pulse," the mother told local media. "We have been on the streets for two years. We are bad, how are we going to be? We are destroyed," added the mother, who has another five-year-old son, who lives with an aunt.
"We want our children back. I want to find a job and rent something, but we want the boys back," the father asked. The cause of the baby's death is not yet known. The devastating story did nothing more than enhance the despair of Argentines in the face of the fall of the economy and social indicators.
"It hurts us and it occupies us. Inflation is taking the country's growth to a few pockets, leaving a large part of the population mired in the uncertainty and anguish of being able to bring bread home," argued the Minister of Social Development , Victoria Toulouse Peace.
"This is the most catastrophic legacy" of Peronism in power, criticized Mario Negri, one of the opposition parliamentary leaders who aspires to succeed Alberto Fernández on December 10 of this year.
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