“It’s an unusual situation because the blinds are closed and the tables are empty when the most important thing about a place like this is people,” Evangelista said.
A normally boisterous establishment, the Old Mailbox is now mostly silent – hanging on, hoping against hope that it can survive. When CNN was visiting, the only sound to be heard was a coffee machine for the meager takeout company operated by the only employee running, one in eight in total. Evangelista says it has managed to prevent layoffs through a government credit program that expires on September 20.
For Santiago Olivera, it’s too late. The restaurateur had to close three establishments – two bars, “Bad Toro” and “Sheldon,” and “Clara,” a cafeteria – in the upscale Palermo district of the capital, and housed more than 60 people.
“We started collecting debt since March, which resulted in paying salaries and rentals without generating income. I had to take over loans from banks. We collect more debt month after month from taxes, utilities and tenants,” Olivera told CNN.
They are among the hundreds of cafes, bars and restaurants in Buenos Aires that have been forced to close due to the coronavirus pandemic. Their downfall is a difficult new chapter for Argentina’s sluggish economy, which was roiled by rising inflation and stagnant growth even before Covid-19 slammed the door on businesses.
‘Argentina has not grown since 2011’
“The shutdowns did not stop even when the country began to recover,” according to FECOBA President Fabián Castillo, referring to a brief opening in Buenos Aires last month that was reversed due to a spike in coronavirus infection rates.
Jonatan Loidi, a financial analyst, author and professor of economics, says the pandemic and the implementation of a lockdown are exacerbating an economy that was already in a recession.
“Argentina has not grown since 2011. In the last three years, there has been not only a lack of growth but also a fall in the country’s economy, as well as other macroeconomic indicators that are clearly not ideal. , “Loidi told CNN.
Loidi pointed out that the annual inflation rate in Argentina, even before the pandemic, was 55%.
“Uncertainty is the word that best describes life in Argentina today,” Loidi said, adding that business owners and people need to set up five different exchange rates for things like paying for imports in dollars or making purchases online.
Less than two decades later, Argentina is facing another financial crisis that has been raging for more than a year and has been protesting past September and October because of its ongoing currency crisis, among other factors. The Argentine peso fell in August 2019 by more than 35% against the US dollar.
On August 4, the government of President Alberto Fernández reached a deal with creditors worth $ 65 billion, roughly 20% of the total debt of $ 323 billion. The agreement provides some short-term relief by avoiding another standard, while retaining some access to foreign capital.
But Fernández says his priority is a company in which the vaccine for coronavirus is being developed by AstraZeneca with the UK’s Oxford University which would be produced in Argentina and Mexico, which he hopes to get the country’s economy back on track. set.
Meanwhile, the president announced Friday that quarantine measures will remain in place until the end of August.
Patience is running low.
Some 25,000 Argentines took to the streets of Buenos Aires on Monday to protest a judicial reform launched by Fernandez aimed to add more justifications to the Supreme Court – which opponents say is a gambit to bring to justice. to pile up allies – the economic crisis and the overthrow of the Covid-19 government. There were also similar protests in capitals such as Cordoba, Mar del Plata and Rosario.
Felipe Evangelista sits at his desk in the café ‘The Old Mailbox’ and fears that the development of a fax machine will take longer than the country’s economy can resist.
“One of my main fears is that people will not return,” he said.
He says he wonders if life will change so much that people will never return to the little corner cafe that has been a place for generations of Argentines … but hope is the last to die.
“It simply came to our notice then [pandemic] turns around, people will come back, fill the tables and sing again. We hope they are ready to dance a tango again and go back to what we once were. “
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