Argentina facts

Here are some lessons from the Embassy about Argentina as a country:

• Forty-two percent of Argentina's population lives in the Greater Buenos Aires area.
• Argentina has hyperinflation at rates from 30 to 35 percent, but the official government statistic is only 4 percent. You can be arrested for publishing numbers different than what the government lists.
• The distance from the northern point of Argentina (the Misiones province, where Iguazú is) to its most southern point, Tierra del Fuego (Oswaya in the Patagonia area) is the same distance from California to Maine. We're bigger than you think!
• Argentines eat their own weight in beef each year, and consume more beef than anywhere in the world.
• Before the economic crisis in 2000, Argentina had the 5th highest GDP (gross domestic product) in the world.
• Market drivers include cars (especially to Brazil), soybeans, beef, oil and gas and the IBM company (International Business Machines). Argentina's IBM office has over 10,000 employees!
• General Motors (GM) had its most profitable year in Argentina and makes up a huge part of the market.
• Mattel's Barbie has been banned in Argentina. Instead, they sell a lot of knock-off Barbie dolls.

The presenter from the US Department of Commercial Service started off his slideshow with a slide titled "Argentine culture." Four pictures were on it.

• Diego Maradona playing soccer
• Two tango dancers
• Beef
• A gaucho drinking mate

While incredibly accurate, Argentines can easily get offensive at this brief representation of their country. The man even said that his Argentine coworkers told him to take this slide out, and he just didn't. Instead, he made amusing commentary like the following:

• The tango. "Complicated dance, complicated country." I was dying of laughter.
• "I made Maradona thinner there to make him the same size of the gaucho."
• "Understanding Peronism is like trying to understand existentialism. ...No one knows what it means, it can mean something different to each person."
• "If there's one thing less popular with the government here than the US government, it's the IMF."

While being an amusing presentation, we also learned a lot!