The current Peronist regime of Alberto Ángel Fernández has attempted to steer talk of responsibility for the widespread looting away from the country’s sky-high inflation.
Alternatively, the government is trying to pin the blame on Javier Milei, a conservative front-runner candidate in the upcoming presidential election.
Argentina has the third-highest inflation rate in the world after Venezuela and Lebanon, prompting locals to call out the current administration for attempting to dodge accountability for what some say is the “inevitable” outcome of a collapsed currency and economy.
Photos and videos of crowds storming supermarkets with their heads and faces covered and carrying improvised bags into which they loaded all that they could carry began popping up on social media on Aug. 19.
Cities that suffered looting over the prior weekend included Córdoba, Mendoza, and Neuquen.
Local reports on Aug. 20 noted other smaller food-related businesses in the Río Cuarto area near Córdoba were also attacked by thieves.
By Aug. 23, there had been at least 56 arrests in Buenos Aires province and more than two dozen arrests associated with the looting on Aug. 19–20.
Mr. Berni was quick in his attempts to quell local panic. “We just finished touring a large part of the suburbs, and everything is back to normal,” he told local reporters.
In the wake of the Aug. 22 food looting in the capital, officials from Fernández’s administration were quick to respond and redirect the language surrounding the attacks.
A government spokesperson at Casa Rosada—the presidential palace in Buenos Aires—said the “criminal acts” were orchestrated by groups looking to “incentivize” conflict.
Cause and Effect
“It is tragic to see again, after 20 years, the same images of looting that we saw in 2001. Poverty and looting are two sides of the same coin. Argentina no longer resists this impoverishing model that is sustained by the force of those who live at the expense of the efforts of good Argentines,” Mr. Milei wrote on his social media account on Aug. 22.In the wake of his post, Ms. Cerruti took to social media and openly blamed Mr. Milei for the chaos, writing, “The images that are circulating on the networks are false, published on accounts that are clearly followers or employees” of the presidential candidate.
“There is no looting. There are rumors and agitation through WhatsApp groups because they are deeply anti-democratic and want to destabilize,” Ms. Cerruti wrote.
“Throughout the weekend in several provinces and today, in the city of Buenos Aires, they tried to generate fear and uncertainty among merchants and neighbors.”
Between Aug. 19 and Aug. 22, local complaints surfaced on social media that videos and photos of the plundering were quickly being blocked and taken down by unknown sources, only to reappear and then disappear again hours later.
But by the morning of Aug. 23, it was too late.
Early attempts by the Fernández administration to spin the situation as a hoax were then upgraded to a grudging admittance of what it called a few thieves—not a pack of looters. But the narrative crumbled quickly amid an avalanche of videos and photos that showed entire crowds of people flooding narrow grocery aisles, sweeping entire shelves of items such as pasta and bread into empty pillowcases, and emptying meat department cases.
At this point, the official language from Casa Rosada softened from outright denial and political rival finger-pointing.
“Someone is encouraging it, looking for an alternative. That has nothing to do with looting, which is a vocation to generate a conflict,” Aníbal Fernández, the national security minister, told reporters.
Someone Else’s Fault
“It’s a joke that the government tried to blame Milei. Are they serious? Over 100 percent inflation, and they think it has to do with an economist that’s not even president?” Buenos Aires local Lucilla Martinez told The Epoch Times.Ms. Martinez said that watching how fast “someone” kept trying to eliminate evidence of the nationwide siege of food centers on social media was scary. But determined locals foiled early information suppression efforts, which she says is a wake-up call to those in power.
“We’ve heard the [Cristina Fernández de] Kirchner speeches for years, and this government is no different. It’s always someone else’s fault their policies don’t work. But no one is listening now,” she said.
Ms. Martinez, who works close to Casa Rosada in the downtown neighborhood of Monserrat, believes that civilian unrest will get worse as the Oct. 22 presidential election approaches.
“Our money can barely buy food, and more people are getting desperate. It’s inevitable things will get worse before they get better,” she said.
Fellow Buenos Aires resident Álvaro Gómez, a native of Argentina, agreed.
“We’ve been here before. We’ve faced consequences from failed economic policies before. But the election will complicate this,” Mr. Gómez told The Epoch Times.
He said inflation has always been a good barometer for predicting public behavior in Argentina. Yet when you throw in poverty rates hovering near 43 percent, a national inflation rate of 113 percent becomes a recipe for disaster.
“This has happened before in 2001. It has similar elements. The Peronists aren’t willing to learn from history, but we pay the price,” Mr. Gómez said.
Former President and current Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a populist political figure, has presided over some of the worst periods of inflation that Argentina has experienced in the past 20 years.
She’s also the biggest champion of Argentina’s hotly debated generous subsidy programs, which has earned her a cult following of welfare recipients known locally as “planeros.”
Historically, she has blamed the International Monetary Fund for periods of high inflation that passed under her watch.
She has also criticized Mr. Milei’s plan to “dollarize” Argentina’s economy with an influx of U.S. dollars to replenish depleted foreign reserves.
Raúl Castells is the leader of an organized union of “planeros” in Argentina, who are often called “piqueteros” because of the massive public protests that they frequently stage.
On the evening of Aug. 22, Mr. Castells called into the live news show Cronica and said that he was the ringleader behind the wave of grocery store attacks and looting.
When the show’s host accused him of helping Argentinians commit a crime, he replied: “A crime is the fact that a kilo of milineza (meat) is 4,200 pesos. One kilo of potatoes is 1,000 pesos. One kilo of sugar is 1,000 pesos. One bag of yerba mate (tea) is 2,000 pesos.”
Mr. Castells illustrated how Argentina’s deflated peso could no longer buy basic food staples and said that officials need to “stop insulting people from Argentina” for taking the food that they need to survive.
He openly admitted that inflation drove the organized raid on multiple food centers and businesses across the country. Mr. Castells said that he doesn’t believe that the acts count as a crime because the looters were taking only food products.
Latin America analyst Evan Ellis told The Epoch Times that looting isn’t an uncommon feature in the “periodic disasters” that have befallen the people of Argentina.
“Looting is an act of economic desperation and frustration. Ironically, it’s one of those quirks of recurrent Argentine crises,” Mr. Ellis said.
Although the current economic situation is grim, Mr. Milei told his fellow Argentinians that the future is unwritten.
Despite Mr. Castells’s confession, Ms. Cerruti stuck to her guns and her original story in her capacity as presidential spokesperson on Aug. 23.
She continues to claim that Mr. Milei incited the attacks through chat groups and platforms such as WhatsApp, Twitter, and TikTok.
