Posts
A growing number of housing protests are becoming symbols of President Cristina Kirchner's inability to solve the worst social unrest in years.
Her disapproval rating is up 9% recently to 52%.
And copycat land takeovers have spread from Buenos Aires to the campo.
Critics say that she can't handle the unrest without the steady hand of her late husband Nestor.
An encampment at the soccer field, Villa Lugano, "is just one of a series of land invasions by thousands of people in the last few weeks that have pushed the capital to the brink of crisis. The ostensible cause, analysts said, is a shortage of low-income housing that has been exacerbated by high inflation and a boom in immigration.
But scratch the surface and there are mind-twisting layers of maneuvering and intrigue that one resident called “Alice in Wonderland” politics, in which the president and the mayor of Buenos Aires are blaming each other.
“This is very worrying because before, Néstor Kirchner kept everything under control,” said Carlos Germano, a political analyst here. “Now we are seeing that the government no longer is capable of that. There are dark figures behind the scenes that are at the core of these conflicts.”
