(CNN) - It's a pretty unusual sight. Felipe Evangelista is sitting in the cafe he has had for nearly four decades and all he can see are upside down chairs placed on empty tables.
"El Viejo Buzón" was a popular café in downtown Buenos Aires and a gathering place for generations of Argentines, common people and celebrities alike, since it was founded 37 years ago. It's the kind of old-fashioned corner cafe that is never empty. That was the case until March 20 when the coronavirus pandemic hit Argentina and the country closed.
"It's an unusual situation because the blinds are closed and the tables are empty when the main thing in a place like this is the people," Evangelista said.
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A normally bustling establishment, El Viejo Buzón is now quiet, waiting, hoping to survive. When CNN visited, the only sound heard was a coffee machine for the meager take-out business operated by the only employee, one of eight in all. Evangelista says he has managed to avoid layoffs thanks to a government loan program that expires on September 20.
For Santiago Olivera it is already too late. The businessman had to close three establishments - two bars, "Bad Toro", "Sheldon", and "Clara", a cafeteria - in the exclusive Palermo neighborhood of the capital, laying off more than 60 people.
“We started accumulating debt in March that resulted from paying salaries and rents without generating income. I had to borrow from the banks. We accumulate more debt month after month for taxes, utilities and rents, "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. Her demise is a worrisome new chapter for Argentina's ailing economy, which was rocked by runaway inflation and stagnant growth even before COVID-19 closed the door on businesses.
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Posted by CNN en Español on Friday, August 14, 2020
'Argentina hasn't grown since 2011'
The pandemic has been brutal for small and medium-sized businesses in Buenos Aires. According to the Federation of Commerce and Industry of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (FECOBA), 24,200 of these businesses, approximately 22% of the total, had definitively closed their doors in mid-July.
"The closures did not stop even when the country began to reopen," according to FECOBA president Fabián Castillo, referring to a brief reopening in Buenos Aires last month that was reversed due to an increase in coronavirus infection rates. .
Jonatan Loidi, a financial analyst, author and economics professor, says the pandemic and the implementation of a lockdown exacerbated an economy that was already in recession.
"Argentina has not grown since 2011. In the last three years there has been not only a lack of growth but also a drop in the country's GDP, 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 businessmen and individuals must tolerate five different exchange rates for things like paying for imports in dollars or shopping online.
Argentina has had its share of financial collapses. In December 2001, riots and civil unrest erupted after then-Finance Minister Domingo Cavallo announced a freeze on bank deposits, a crisis that would result in the resignation of Cavallo himself and his boss, then-President Fernando de la Rúa. By Christmas, Adolfo Rodríguez Saá, De la Rúa's successor, was forced to resign after announcing that the country had defaulted on $ 93 billion of Argentina's sovereign debt. The crisis left one in four workers unemployed and 55% of the population in poverty.
Less than two decades later, Argentina faces another financial crisis that has been brewing for more than a year and already sparked protests in September and October due to its current currency crisis, among other factors. The Argentine peso plummeted more than 35% against the US dollar in August 2019.
The US dollar is currently sold in Argentina for more than 70 pesos, and the amount of dollars that a normal Argentine can buy is strictly limited.
The government of President Alberto Fernández reached a settlement on August 4 with creditors who are owed $ 65 billion, roughly 20% of the nation's crushing total debt of $ 323 billion. The agreement provides some short-term relief by avoiding another default while preserving some access to foreign capital.
But Fernández says his priority is a plan that involves the coronavirus vaccine that AstraZeneca develops with the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and that it would be manufactured in Argentina and Mexico, with which he hopes to put the country's economy back on track.
Meanwhile, the president announced Friday that the quarantine measures will remain in effect across the country until the end of August.
Patience runs out.
Some 25,000 Argentines took to the streets of Buenos Aires on Monday to protest a judicial reform launched by Fernández aimed at adding more judges to the Supreme Court, which opponents say is a tactic to stack the court with allies, the economic crisis and the government management of covid-19. There were also similar protests in major cities such as Córdoba, Mar del Plata and Rosario.
Sitting at his desk in the El Viejo Buzón café, Felipe Evangelista fears that the development of a vaccine will take longer than the country's economy can bear.
"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 cafe on the corner that has been a meeting place for generations of Argentines ... but hope is the last to die.
“We hope that when this [pandemic] changes, people will come back, fill the tables and sing again. We hope they are willing to dance a tango again and go back to where we were ».
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