STORY: :: The former home of Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona is turned into a soup kitchen
:: Buenos Aires, Argentina / March 29, 2026
:: Poverty has been trending downward in Argentina but many say a cut in subsidies has hurt people's spending power
:: Leonardo Fabian Alvarez, Soup kitchen manager
"We have increased food requests by about 300%. People have obviously lost their jobs and come to the line in shame, collecting food and whatever we give them. This is something that never happened to us before."
Official poverty statistics show a drop to 31.6% in the first half of 2025 from 52.9% in the first half of 2024, when President Javier Milei sharply devalued the peso and inflation spiked.
The drop in the poverty rate has followed a substantial drop in monthly inflation, from double digits when Milei took office to 2.9% in February.
Milei's austerity measures have sharply diminished the public sector workforce.
