Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In January 2002, he had little choice but to maintain an unpopular
freeze on the bank accounts of millions of citizens so that capital
flight would not further sink the already weakened peso. Depositors
then lost up to 40 percent of their frozen assets, as the link between
the peso and the dollar was finally severed. In the meantime, the
indifference of the IMF and the United States stung many Argentines.
While the United States had bailed out Mexico in its 1995 monetary
crisis, the U.S. secretary of the treasury, Paul O'Neill, refused to help
Argentina, saying that the Argentines themselves had to solve the
problems they had created. Furthermore, O'Neill claimed that Argentina
had little in the way of an export industry and preferred to stay that
way. Crime increased and uncertainty followed. The grandchildren
and great-grandchildren of Italians, Jews, and Spaniards lined up at
the embassies to return to the lands of their ancestors. As the public
protests continued and the economic crisis deepened, no one seemed
able to predict how the Argentine people would overcome perhaps their
greatest national crisis since the War of Independence almost two cen-
turies ago. They despaired that “
nohaysalida
,” there was no exit.
