In the swanky Buenos Aires district of Puerto Madero, there are rooftop bars where a sausage sandwich costs $10. In the not-so-swanky district of Barrio 31, popularly known as the Villa 31 informal settlement, many workers don’t see $10 in a day. They are next door to each other and worlds apart at the same time, in what feels like a microcosm of Argentina.
The eighth-largest country in the world by area, Argentina spans nearly 4,000 kilometres from the terracotta-red hills of Jujuy, on the Bolivian border, to where the gelid waters of the southern Atlantic lap at the shores of Tierra del Fuego.
