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Argentina’s growing drug problem represents a major threat to the kind of peaceful political and social stability the country has enjoyed, with infamous exceptions, in recent decades.

Experts say crushing the threat early is crucial to overcoming it before related violence and corruption infect public officials and police forces as they have in other countries. Once the problem has corrupted a country’s judicial system, it is exponentially harder to eradicate.

About two dozen journalists at the 135-year-old Buenos Aires Herald went on strike Monday, demanding higher wages and better working conditions.

As of late Wednesday, the journalists were still on strike, having rejected a 3% retroactive pay hike for 2010 and a 10% raise for 2011.

The Herald, Argentina’s only major English-language newspaper, gained international recognition for its courageous coverage of disappearances and other dastardly deeds during the country’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship.

“Unfortunately we haven’t been able to reach an agreement about salaries,” said Judith Rabinovich, a spokeswoman for the Buenos Aires Press Workers Union, or UTPBA. “We’ve had a lot of patience with these negotiations, which have been going on since January.”

Journalists at the Herald typically make somewhere between 2,300 (US $563) and 4,000 pesos a month, with the average likely being closer to 2,700 pesos.

“There’s a big difference between what Herald workers make and what reporters at other papers make,” Rabinovich said in a phone interview. “These salaries are very low. But these are very qualified reporters who speak two languages.”

Herald employees are seeking a 35% salary hike for 2011, putting the basic salary at the paper at around 4,100 pesos a month, she said.

The vast bulk of economists in Argentina estimate that inflation totals somewhere in the neighborhood of 25% annually. Most major unions have obtained annual salary hikes of between 20% and 30%, and often higher, in recent years.

“The company is very far from satisfying that request and making a deal,” he added.

The Herald is owned by the same publishing company that owns the financial daily Ambito Financiero. Despite the strike, Rabinovich said a reduced version of the paper is being published.

Union reps are set to meet with management Thursday at the Labor Ministry to try and reach a a settlement. A spokesman for the Herald’s management could not be reached immediately for comment.

UPDATE: The Herald workers on Thursday suspended the strike in hopes of reaching an agreement soon with management.

The number of so-called “express kidnappings” reported by local media soared in the first quarter of 2011, according to a new study.

The media reported 28 of these kidnappings in the province of Buenos Aires in the first three months of the year, according to an analysis by the think tank Centro de Estudios Nueva Mayoria.

That’s up from just one in the same period last year and indicates the first three months of 2011 were the worst since 2004.

The vast bulk of Argentina’s kidnappings occur in the province of Buenos Aires.

Of course, the study reflects only express kidnappings reported by the media. It’s unclear what percentage of overall kidnappings this actually represents, though I suspect the percentage is extremely low.

I was kidnapped briefly in a taxi in 1999. The whole incident lasted only about an hour, making it an express kidnapping. I reported it to police, who didn’t seem to care at all. It never appeared in the media. Meanwhile, I know of two people who were kidnapped for much longer periods of time a few years ago. Their stories never made it into the press.

It can be very hard to get accurate crime data in Latin America, where, according to experts, only about one in 10 crimes are reported.

While this study is alarming, it should not be taken as a definitive statement on the nature of crime or kidnappings in Argentina. Because it is based on media reports, it’s very hard to know how reliable it is because the media can be a fickle beast.

A more accurate overview of crime in general is probably Di Tella University’s monthly crime survey, which I will post on Wednesday.

By Katia Porzecanski

There’s a great deal of irony at play in the way this business is covering up older prices to reveal its newer, higher price. Despite the government’s best efforts to cover up official signs of inflation, the kinds of covering-up vendors do tell a different story. All over Argentina we see prices scratched out and rewritten or sheets of paper or stickers covering obsolete price tags. Some restaurant owners have even resorted to printing priceless menus.

The government says prices are up 10% from a year ago, but virtually all economists find this estimate risible. They say inflation totals about 25% annually. Economists use the word inflation when talking about rising prices, but government officials, including Economy Ministry Amado Boudou and President Cristina Fernandez, refuse to do this. Instead, they talk about an “immense dispersion of prices.”

Whatever you call it, prices are up across the board, as this photo shows.

*Katia Porzecanski is an economist and writer in Buenos Aires

OK, this is an admittedly bad photo. But the point isn’t to showcase my photography skills.

The point is to inquire about honesty in Argentina and ask if it would be possible to do something like this here. Would it be?

To clarify, this is a photo of a newspaper stand at the Dallas airport in Texas. The “stand” allows people to grab a copy of USA Today. In exchange people are supposed to put a folded dollar bill in the clear receptacle.

The business model is based on the honor system. That is, you could, if you wanted, take a copy of the paper and walk away without paying for it. The odds are that nobody would say a thing. You would not go to jail or even face ridicule.

But most people don’t do this. They put the dollar in the receptacle.

So, the question is, could this kind of “honor system” work in Argentina?

Photo posted by @denisitabaires, a bystander, to her Twitter account.

In an absolutely extraordinary event Monday, a young woman fell about 23 stories, from the top of the Panamericano Hotel in downtown Buenos Aires, and smashed, back first, onto the top of a taxi.

Remarkably, she’s didn’t die.

Though police aren’t certain about the details of her fall, investigators think she attempted suicide.

The driver of the taxi that the woman smashed into, seen in the above photo, described the experience in a brief interview with Radio 10.

In between tears the man, who goes by Miguel, said his “intuition” told him to step out of the car. “I saw a policeman looking up,” he said, adding that he also saw the woman “hanging” from the top of the hotel. Miguel got out of the car “a second” before the woman smashed into it and created a “terrible noise.”

He said he was standing about 10 meters from the car when she hit it.

“I just want to tell everyone that everything in life has a solution,” he said. “Life is for living.”

The state news agency Telam reported that the woman is 32 years old and named Daniela. At the very least, she suffered internal bleeding and the fracturing of both of her hip bones.

According to the World Health Organization, global suicide rates have risen consistently since 1950, totaling about 16 per every 100,000 people today. Men are much more likely to kill themselves than are women.

Worldwide, a person commits suicide every 40 seconds. A person attempts suicide every three seconds.

The highest suicide rates are in Eastern Europe and former Soviet bloc countries.

“More people are dying from suicide than in all of the several armed conflicts around the world and, in many places, about the same or more than those dying from traffic accidents,” according to the WHO.

The WHO puts Argentina’s suicide rate at about 7.9 per 100,000, compared with 11 in the U.S. and just 4.6 in Brazil.

In 2005, the last year for which WHO data is available, 3,069 people committed suicide in Argentina. About 78% of those suicides were men.

Statistically speaking, people are more likely to commit suicide between the ages of 15 and 35.

*If you are considering suicide, please talk to someone about your thoughts. You deserve it. Life does get better. If you speak Spanish, call this number in Argentina: 135. If you speak English, or are in the U.S., call 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Torcuarto Di Tella University’s latest crime “victimization rate” survey indicates that overall criminal activity fell last month.

The victimization rate refers to the percentage of households which reported that at least one person in that home has been the victim of crime within the past year.

This could be any kind of crime, reported or not to the police.

According to the latest survey, which polled 1,193 households, 28.7% of the homes said at least one member of the household had been the victim of crime.

That rate is down about two percentage points from the previous month and down eight from a year earlier.

Violent crime accounted for about 64% of the crimes experienced by household members. That is to say, for every 100 homes surveyed, 21 reported experiencing violent crime.

This figure rose last month from the previous month (November), when it totaled 18. It is also up slightly from a year ago, when it was 20.

Di Tella’s study surveys households in 40 urban centers around the country. The survey was conducted from December 2-13.

The safest place to be in Argentina, according to the survey, is in scarcely populated towns of less than 10,000 people. The victimization rates in these towns is about 20%.

Cities with more than 500,000 residents appear to have the most crime per household, with a victimization rate of about 30%.

Di Tella also released the results of a separate survey about crime and how people have changed their behavior because of it.

Around 74% of people polled said they have stopped traveling to certain areas because of concern about crime. (The survey didn’t provide any details about these specific areas.)

It also revealed that 65% had installed alarms or security bars in their homes. Another 46% said they had or had obtained a guard dog.

Some 10% said they owned a firearm.

Numerous opinion polls have shown that crime is the top concern among Argentines, surpassing inflation and worries about the economy.

If you’re interested in crime, check out this post about the murder rate in Buenos Aires.

May each and every one of you have a very Happy Thanksgiving.

I am grateful for your readership, your interesting and intelligent comments and your generous feedback. As always, I appreciate it. Thank you!

If you don’t already have Thanksgiving meal plans, the very-American restaurant Kansas (even their toilets are imported from the U.S.) offers excellent Turkey and Pecan pie options today only. Their complete Thanksgiving Day meal costs 75 pesos.

You can see their Turkey-Day menu here.

But they fill up fast and don’t take reservations, so get there early.

Taos

*Next year I’ll have a new Thanksgiving Day joke

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Aerolíneas Argentinas, the country’s perennially troubled flagship airline, has decided to give obese people a free extra seat on regional flights.

The company, which announced the policy Tuesday, has already been offering an extra seat to exceptionally fat people in some cases on flights within the country.

The airline teamed up with Inadi, the national anti-discrimination institute, to develop the policy.

“This way people will be given a more comfortable seat and they will avoid being charged differently for suffering from the disease,” the government, which owns the airline, said in a statement.

The government did not add details to clarify exactly what “the disease” is and the new policy will likely fuel debate about the causes of obesity.As the above video shows, Aerolíneas is not the first airline to tackle the issue.

Aerolíneas has been offering extra seats for obese people on some flights since May 2009, the company said.

As a state-run company, Aerolíneas has to abide by the so-called 1998 Obesity Law, which prevents the government from discriminating against people using public services.

To get the extra seat, passengers must meet two requirements: 1) Reserve the two seats at least 48 hours in advance and 2) show a doctor’s certificate (which presumably certifies that the passenger is obese).

Most airlines follow an international guideline that requires obese passengers to purchase two seats, the government said in its statement.

Reliable obesity statistics are hard to come by for Argentina, where most people – well, women, at least – seem very thin. But such data are widely available in the U.S., where obesity has almost become the norm.

The free extra seat policy might be harder to implement – and much more costly for airlines – in the U.S., where about 27% of the population is obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC defines a person as obese if he or she has a body mass index of 30 or higher. To calculate your own BMI, click here.

Though obesity is a massive and rapidly growing problem in the U.S., it is also becoming a serious global epidemic. The World Health Organization estimates that by 2015 around 2.3 billion people will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese.

Oddly enough, at least one set of WHO data indicate that the U.S. is the most obese nation in the world, followed by Argentina. You can see the data in map form here. According to it, about 44% of the U.S. population is obese while 37% of Argentines are obese. But it’s hard to believe this data, which clash with everyday experience in Argentina. I’ll be contacting the WHO for an explanation and will update this post if I get one.

Meanwhile, for a stunning look at how the U.S. has gained weight in recent years, check out this graphic from the CDC. It charts the rise in obesity year by year and state by state. The thinnest state in the U.S., by far, is Colorado.

Torcuarto Di Tella University’s latest crime “victimization rate” survey indicates that both overall criminal activity and violent crime spiked last month.

Di Tella’s study, which surveys households in 40 urban centers around the country, shows that 36% of these homes said at least one household member was a victim of a crime within the past 12 months.

That figure is up from 33.6% the previous month and up from 34.3% a year earlier. In percentage terms, crime is up about 5% from the same month a year ago.

Meanwhile, about 23% of households reporting suffering from some kind of violent theft in October. That’s up from 21% in September and up from about 27% a year ago.

The safest place to be in Argentina, according to the survey, is in scarcely populated towns of less than 100,000 people. The victimization rates in these towns is about 13%. Cities with more than 500,000 residents appear to have the most crime per household, with a victimization rate of about 38%.

If you’re interested in crime, check out this recent post about the murder rate in Buenos Aires.

Argentine Health Minister Juan Manzur warned Friday that the mosquito transmitted illness dengue could become a serious problem for the country this summer.

“We’re facing a situation that is much graver in magnitude than it was a year ago because of the presence of dengue in countries on our border,” Manzur said at a meeting of provincial health ministers. “The dengue situation is really worrisome.”

Manzur, who said “health has no borders,” has been working in the triple frontier region in a bid to prevent the spread of mosquitos that transmit the illness to people in Argentina.

Given the presence of dengue in neighboring countries the most important thing we can do is prevent the spread of mosquitos that transmit the infection to people.

As of September 9, Brazil had about 942,000 cases of dengue, including 367 deaths, Argentina’s Health Ministry said, citing data from the Pan American Health Organization, or PAHO.

In Paraguay, the cases totaled almost 8,300 with 15 deaths. In Argentina, the number of cases by the same date was 1,059 with no deaths.

According to the PAHO:

“Dengue is a mosquito-borne infection that causes a severe flu-like illness, and sometimes a potentially lethal complication called dengue hemorrhagic fever. Global incidence of dengue has grown dramatically in recent decades. Dengue is found in tropical and sub-tropical climates worldwide, mostly in urban and semi-urban areas. There is no specific treatment for dengue, but appropriate medical care frequently saves the lives of patients with the more serious dengue haemorrhagic fever. The only way to prevent dengue virus transmission is to combat the disease-carrying mosquitoes.”

The World Health Organization estimates that the world has around 50 million dengue cases every year. The infection is now endemic is 100 countries.

Editor’s Note: If you like The Argentine Post and want more than you get here on this site, you might want to follow me on Twitter, where I tweet about all things Argentine.

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