ARGENTINA-POPULATION: Pensioners – the ‘New Poor’

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 19 1997 (IPS) - The detention of a “gang” of three elderly thieves who had chalked up more than 60 armed robberies is not entirely surprising news in Argentina, where 87 percent of the 3.3 million retirees receive pensions three times lower than the minimum salary.

The “geriatric gang” was comprised of three men, aged 67, 72 and 74. The youngest, who underwent dialysis every other day, lived in a hotel, and the other two in a nursing home. They planned the robberies while lawn bowling; now they are going to prison.

Carlos Imizcoz, a leader of Argentina’s pensioners, told IPS that robbery was condemnable in any case, but said there was a growing number of elderly persons living in a “desperate” state of abandonment and misery, which sometimes led them to extreme measures.

“When elderly people who are still lucid have to live shut up in nursing homes or miserable hotels,” he said, “terrible situations arise in which, for example, television as an escape route has a pernicious influence on them just as it does on children.”

The elderly men robbed small businesses, fleeing in taxis. The police had already received 70 reports of hold-ups perpetrated by “grandfathers.” One of them – who used a cane – stood in the doorway of the business, another stood watch on the corner outside and the third entered the locale armed.

The three men, who are facing sentences of up to 25 years in prison, were arrested after having stolen 15,000 dollar from 67 businesses. The error they committed, perhaps due to faulty memory, was to rob the same pharmacy in the space of one week. The unusual thieves had not gone unnoticed.

Argentina’s elderly have taken on a sad new protagonism over the past decade, holding street protests each Wednesday in front of Congress, throwing eggs at the building, grappling with police and even exchanging blows with legislators.

Of the country’s 3.3 million retirees, 87 percent earn less than the minimum wage, which is around 500 pesos (on par with the dollar) a month, and 25 percent earn less than 150.

Pensioners have thus joined the ranks of the “new poor,” those who once formed part of the middle class, many with their own homes and educational degrees, but who now have meagre incomes.

Amalia, a pensioner from the province of Rioja, is a friend of Imizcoz. Amalia owns her own home, which she bought on loan while working. But her monthly pension is a mere 140 pesos.

“Luckily Amalia enjoys good health. But she is facing desperate problems and does not know how she will pay her expenses,” said Imizcoz.

While the minimum pension rose 34 percent from 1991 to 1995, the prices of medicine nearly doubled. When the current economic programme, which brought stability, was launched in 1991, the buying power of pensioners began to decline. One of the measures which had the strongest impact on the fall of their income was the privatisation of public enterprises.

When the companies providing public services were under state control, retirees enjoyed significant discounts. But those benefits were eliminated by law when private concerns acquired the firms.

Amalia’s last electricity bill was 70 pesos for two months – half her monthly check. She decided to go without electricity.

One of the most common survival strategies is to do without basic services, while others turn to the barter system, a growing phenomenon nourished by an increasing percentage of retirees who cook or sew in exchange for goods or services. With what they save by bartering, they pay their basic services and taxes.

The basic services of thousands of pensioners are maintained thanks to their sons and daughters, assistance that is becoming increasingly difficult to provide in a country with an unemployment rate above 17 percent. Others live in public nursing homes, in overcrowded and frequently appalling conditions.

President Carlos Menem said this week that next Monday he would announce a 50 peso a month raise for retirees whose pensions were lower than the minimum wage.

But the elderly protesters rejected that promise Wednesday, burning a letter from the president in front of Congress. This month – just a few weeks prior to the October legislative elections – Menem sent out letters promising to address the situation of pensioners, whose leaders call the promises a bid for votes which will very likely vanish into thin air.

Imizcoz said that even if the meagre raise is implemented – pensioners are demanding a minimum of 450 pesos a month – it would be applied to only 300,000 of the 800,000 retirees who receive the minimum pension, because the rest are given a “poverty subsidy” of 70 pesos.

“I believe it is wrong to steal, and I think that maybe those old men were trying to evade reality or that someone was behind them, taking advantage of them,” said Imizcoz. “But what is certain is that there are more and more elderly falling ill from nutritional problems, a desperate situation.”