Argentina: Homeless live in Buenos Aires airport – 05/28/2023 – World

Argentina: Homeless live in Buenos Aires airport – 05/28/2023 – World


“Eat without guilt”, says the package of fries that a friend of HernĂ¡n Osvaldo has just brought from the next table. “People here have money, they take a bite like that and throw it away,” he says, taking a bite out of the air, holding an imaginary hamburger. “But for us it’s worth a lot.”

Fast food leftovers are all the 38-year-old man has eaten since he moved to the curb at Aeroparque Jorge Newbery six months ago. The international airport is just a few minutes from the heart of Palermo, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, and is the gateway for many Brazilian tourists to Argentina.

With the worsening of the economic crisis and the growth of poverty, the place became a home for those who have nowhere to live, as published by the newspaper O Globo. There are dozens of people sleeping in the halls and corridors for months and even years, in a scene that resembles the marquees of capital centers like SĂ£o Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, on a smaller scale.

Police officer Lisandro Nuñes estimates that at least 50 homeless people live permanently there, but calculates that at night the number exceeds one hundred. “When I started working, a year ago, it was like that, but it has intensified in recent months,” he says, wearing the orange vest of the Airport Security Police (PSA).

These residents began to arrive in 2021, when the aeroparque reopened after being closed for almost a year due to the Covid pandemic. Today, the concessionaire Aeroportos Argentina 2000, which manages the place, has a control list with the names of the most fixed inhabitants —the Sheet was unable to contact the company during the holiday in the country.

Laura DĂ­a, 53, for example, has been living there for a year and a half, because the hotels paid for by the government where she lived do not accept her “perrito” Toto. The caramel mutt she calls her son spends his days inside a bag, because he can’t stay loose inside the airport.

“I took the 26,000 pesos from my pension [R$ 270 na cotaĂ§Ă£o paralela, que rege o cotidiano local]I saved 16 thousand and with the rest I bought this for him”, she says while arranging the bench where she sleeps.

Laura uses a wheelchair, which is why she prefers the second floor, as there is nowhere to sit on the first floor. It is on this floor, close to national boarding, that most people gather, laying out cardboard and blankets on the floor to insulate against the cold and using the luggage trolleys as a support for their belongings. In a corner, the suitcases still serve as a cabin for a man to sleep separately from the shuttle passengers.

Some travelers look on without understanding, while most rush through the crowded corridors in the middle of the national holiday of the Fatherland Day, without even seeing the number of people who sleep under escalators, in front of flight signs and in the chairs next to those who charge the cell phone.

Argentine inflation, which continues to rise and now exceeds 100% annually, makes the peso melt and places an ever-increasing portion of the population below the poverty line. In just one year, from 2021 to 2022, the index rose by two percentage points, from 37% to 39%.

Among these 19 million poor, almost 4 million are indigent: that is, they do not have enough income for a minimum level of food. Data from Indec (National Institute of Statistics and Censuses) are from the second half, and expectations are that they will increase this year.

The same should happen with the measurements of people living on the streets. In 2022, the institute counted nearly 3,000 in the country, in the first census of its kind. But NGOs and institutions such as Public Defenders estimate much higher numbers, closer to 10,000.

For comparison, the latest counts made by Brazilian city halls show almost 32,000 homeless people in the city of SĂ£o Paulo alone and 8,000 in Rio, in numbers also considered underestimated. Researchers at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), for example, estimate 206,000 across the country.

Roberto Bernal, 36, is one of those who should swell future statistics in Argentina. He finished school and worked all his life as a bricklayer, painter and odd jobs in the province of Missiones, on the border with ParanĂ¡ and Santa Catarina. He says that he has traveled to Brazil several times and that he loves FlorianĂ³polis.

But months ago he stopped finding work, also because of his criminal record, and he decided to leave his family to look for a job in Buenos Aires. He arrived at the airport three days ago, following a friend’s recommendation for safety and protection from the cold — winter is approaching, and temperatures start to drop to 8 ° C at dawn.

“I’m going to call people I know who might have work to get out of this situation,” he says, sitting outside the airport next to HernĂ¡n, who is eating leftover fries. In the back, his T-shirts are drying in a potted plant. He has been washing clothes and showering at a reception center in Villa 31, a nearby slum.

“We don’t do anything because it’s not forbidden to sleep at the airport, we just don’t let them ask for food or money in here,” says police officer Lisandro. Which doesn’t mean that living together is completely peaceful: “Sometimes some thefts happen”.

Laura, a wheelchair user, also complains of discrimination. She says the cleaning lady refused to clean the preferred bathroom for her. “I need to go to a hotel that accepts TotĂ³, I can’t stay here anymore”, she laments, her voice cracking. The aid amount does not reach a rent, which costs more than 50,000 pesos (about R$500).



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