Viviana Rodríguez feels powerless. The lines in the soup kitchen she manages in Villa 31 are getting increasingly longer after poverty in Argentina hit 55% in the first three months of the year according to official figures. The government, meanwhile, continues to fight a court-mandated order to deliver food stashed in warehouses and has stopped sending goods to soup kitchens like hers due to its war with social organizations, which President Javier Milei calls “poverty managers.”

According to Rodríguez, the soup kitchen she has been in charge of for more than six years only receives some food from the city government and nothing from the national administration. She said that in the latest months, more people — especially retirees and homeless people — are coming to eat, but there is never enough food.

“I have been diagnosed with severe stress — this place is impossible to sustain,” Rodríguez told the Herald.

One in five Argentines were destitute and over half were poor in the first quarter of 2024, according to data published by the official statistics bureau and analyzed by the respected Social Debt Observatory of the Argentine Catholic University (UCA). Poverty hit 55% and destitution rose to 20% in the first three months of the year, the observatory found.

According to a recent UNICEF report, one million children go to bed every night without having dinner. Their assessment of the first trimester of 2024 revealed that seven out of 10 children in Argentina are poor.

Rodríguez said those numbers are showing.

“I see more people than ever on the street and children who have to live on just one meal a day while [authorities] take the carts away from urban recyclers and the small amount of goods people who sell on the sidewalks have,” Rodríguez said.

UCA observatory director Agustín Salvia said that poverty was already increasing in 2023, but that December was a “turning point.” He added that the previous government had implemented “electoral subsidies” — giving the population tax breaks, credits, and bonuses to help them win the elections — but that the current administration forced a recession since it took office.

“There was more consumption last year,” Salvia said. “Well, that machinery stopped working, and with the worsening of the recession, the demand for goods and services for the self-employed fell, especially among those in the informal sector.”

For Salvia, there is only one way to solve the problem. “We do not need more welfare programs or to only improve formal workers’ salaries to overcome the structural deprivations of poverty and indigence,” he said. 

“We need job creation, more and better jobs; expanding job creation is the only alternative we have to face this structural poverty.”

Salvia said investments, not necessarily large, but “small and medium investments that multiply small and medium enterprises” could help the economy grow and create better jobs.

“That horizon is not yet in sight,” Salvia said.

The government continues to fight the courts over stashed food

News that the government was stashing 5,000 tonnes of food sitting in state warehouses was first confirmed in May. In June, a court ruled that the Human Capital Ministry must distribute it to those in need. The Milei administration’s response, however, has been to consistently fight that mandate and, to this day, continues to retain the majority of that food and refuses to hand it over. 

So far, only a batch that was close to its expiration date has been delivered. Multiple courts have obligated the administration to hand out the food to soup kitchens, but the Human Capital Ministry has yet to comply. On Thursday, the Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation rejected Minister Sandra Pettovello’s attempt to take the matter to the Supreme Court.

The ruling, signed by judges Angela Ledesma, Guillermo Yacobucci, and Alejandro Slokar, said Pettovello could not argue properly that the case needed to be debated in the Supreme Court. The ministry has exhausted all legal resources and must now deliver the food stored in warehouses in Buenos Aires and Tucumán.

“The government does not understand,” Rodríguez told the Herald. “You just can’t cover up poverty and the lack of jobs.”