Community Magazine February 2003

10 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE W hen I arrived in Buenos Aires I saw a beautiful old city with wide avenues, magnificent buildings, and well-dressed people strolling among the sidewalk cafes. I heard tango music floating through out- door markets and squares, and saw tourist traps full of photos of Eva Peron and other Argentinean souvenirs and memorabilia. I wondered what all the commotion was about. This did not look like a country in the throes of a major economic crisis. However, when I looked a bit closer, beyond the superficial hustle and bustle of the streets and markets, and spent time in Buenos Aires with the people, I got the real story. It unfortunately is a very sad one; a story of a crisis that runs so deep that it has led many to extreme desperation and lack of hope. Economic crisis has clearly wracked Argentina and with it Latin America’s largest and once most vibrant Jewish com- munity. What has stunned people is how quickly their comfortable lifestyles have fallen apart. Argentineans, over a good part of the last ten years, experienced pros- perity and a very good quality of life – a quality of life that was very similar to that which we have in the United States. Life has taken a tragic turn for the worst for most Argentineans, driven by political tur- bulence and economic difficulties. The economic difficulties include the devalua- tion of the currency (which until a year ago was convertible on a one to one basis to the dollar), and most bank accounts being unilaterally frozen by the government. In an instant, much of the Jewish com- munity’s assets and many of the communi- ty’s businesses evaporated. Essentially, they went to sleep one day and woke up the next to find that every dollar was worth a quarter of what it was the day before. Many of those dollars, now worth only twenty-five cents, were held in bank accounts that were frozen, so the little that they had left was largely inaccessible. One can imagine trying to run a business with a banking system and economy in such dis- array; it isn’t difficult to understand why 70,000 Jewish businesses have been forced to close down…70,000 businesses closed down in a country with less than 250,000 Jews. A recent report indicated that 58% of Argentineans are now living below the poverty line – consider that in a country whose capital was until recently known as the “Paris” of Latin America. Can you imagine overnight the vast majority of the B Y J O N A T H A N G O L D ARGENTINA Still Crying s ” xc

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