Posted on 12/17/2008 9:57:04 AM PST by TenthAmendmentChampion
Hi guys, this article is pretty old, dates back to 2002. English not being my mother language, this is a well written piece that explains many things much better than I can.
If you believe USA is already in a depression and it could get worse, PLEASE read this article. It will explain better to those that are unfamiliar with Argentina, why there are many parallelisms between this country and USA, and in some ways it will portrait a better picture of what I try to explain here many times.
Please do read it. A lot of water has gone under the bridge and we have an entire set of new problems, but these ones during the first months and years, may unfortunately become common in USA one day.
I took the liberty of marking in bold letters the parts that I may have talked about before, or the ones that I found particularly interesting.
Again, PLEASE notice the marked comments about the situation in rural and agricultural areas, and the explanation on what happened to the middle class. These folks left behind their homes in the agricultural provinces and moved to pick trash for a living in the city for a reason, them being stupid not being it.
FerFAL
Despair in Once-Proud Argentina After Economic Collapse, Deep Poverty Makes Dignity a Casualty By Anthony Faiola Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, August 6, 2002; Page A01
ROSARIO, Argentina -- Word spread fast through the vast urban slums ringing Rosario. There was food on the freeway -- and it was still alive.
A cattle truck had overturned near this rusting industrial city, spilling 22 head of prime Angus beef across the wind-swept highway. Some were dead. Most were injured. A few were fine.
A mob moved out from Las Flores, a shantytown of trash heaps and metal shacks boiling over with refugees from the financial collapse of what was once Latin America's wealthiest nation. Within minutes, 600 hungry residents arrived on the scene, wielding machetes and carving knives. Suddenly, according to accounts from some of those present on that March day, a cry went up.
"Kill the cows!" someone yelled. "Take what you can!"
Cattle company workers attempting a salvage operation backed off. And the slaughter began. The scent of blood, death and fresh meat filled the highway. Cows bellowed as they were sloppily diced by groups of men, women and children. Fights broke out for pieces of flesh in bloody tugs of war.
"I looked around at people dragging off cow legs, heads and organs, and I couldn't believe my eyes," said Alberto Banrel, 43, who worked on construction jobs until last January, when the bottom fell out of the economy after Argentina suffered the world's largest debt default ever and a massive currency devaluation.
"And yet there I was, with my own bloody knife and piece of meat," Banrel said. "I felt like we had become a pack of wild animals... like piranhas on the Discovery Channel. Our situation has turned us into this."
The desolation of that day, neighbor vs. neighbor over hunks of meat, suggested how profoundly the collapse has altered Argentina. Traditionally proud, Argentines have begun to despair. Talk today is of vanished dignity, of a nation diminished in ways not previously imaginable.
How about food, shelter, water...those things are also discussed on most survival forums.
You didn’t see the food forum? I’ve also seen water filters discussed in the equipment forum.
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