Meanwhile, Felix Salmon has a really excellent follow up to the discussion of how we can be fooled by the architecture of formerly wealthy nations:
I'd add that this effect has very real repercussions, well beyond touristic attitudes. My favorite example is Argentina during the 1990s, which went on a debt-fuelled spending spree. Every week one investment banker or other would fly down to Buenos Aires, put his team up at the Alvear Palace hotel, eat great food, drink great wine, enjoy a lively and vibrant culture, and pitch the finance ministry on a new bond issue. BA felt so prosperous and European (and, it must be said, white) that people ended up believing the evidence of their own eyes rather than the numbers in front of them.
In fact, large swathes of Argentina - and even of Buenos Aires, outside the parts visited by foreigners - were desperately poor all along. And eventually Argentina ended up defaulting on a hundred billion dollars or so of foreign debt. If Buenos Aires had looked more like Sao Paulo or Manila, I doubt that Wall Street would have been willing or able to finance the unsustainable boom for as long as it did.
In other words, becaues Argentina used to be incredibly wealthy, back at the turn of the century, it still felt wealthy at the end of the century. Which sowed the seeds of the disastrous crash of 2001-2.
In the late 1990s, I was struck by the difference between the Argentina described by tourists, and the one described by the Argentinians I knew. The expats described a developing country with all the attendant annoyances. The tourists described a sort of Far Western Milan.
Development may proceed in either direction.
It's "Tango" not "the Tango"
MM:
The attempt seems to be a fairly comprehensive failure. You couldn't just leave off the last six words?
Buenos Aires syndrome can be seen in Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Venice, Manchester, Birmingham, Rome... it's just that there are other poles of energy in those cities respective countries, while not so much in Argentina. Until Latin America truly adopts free governments and starts dealing with vicious criminals like Naomi Klein,they will be forever poor and blaming Yanqui. They deserve every failure they meet.
That's a somewhat superficial explanation. I'd at least want to see some numbers to back up the generaliztions. It's my understanding that Argentina had (and continues to have, to a lesser degree) a very robust middle class, and a smaller percentage of "desperately poor" than its neighbors.
Argentina in the 90's was considered a laboratory for market liberalization. Menem basically did whatever the IMF said. Pegging the peso artificially to the US dollar, privatizing everything that could be privatized, etc. The collapse of 2001 was a consequence of disastrous economic policy. Investors weren't duped by the pretty buildings, but by economic fairy tales.
Re "tango" or "the tango": in Rioplatense "el tango" is used frequently (as in the famous song "Asi se baila el tango"). What annoys me is use of tango as a verb ("two to tango" and other cliches), which is entirely an English invention.
Argentina has had robust growth for years since the crash (averaging about 8% per year, IIRC), with an unconventional policy mix that included letting its currency fall to a third of its previously pegged value against the dollar to stimulate tourism and exports, stiffing international creditors, and price controls in certain sectors such as energy. These policies are probably reaching a point of diminishing returns now, with inflation bubbling up, fuel shortages during the antipodal winters, etc.
There is an interesting contrast between São Paulo and Buenos Aires. São Paulo is a chaotic mess, with its favelas, sprawl, polluted air, and seeming lack of any urban planning. And yet it is the largest city in a country with solid macroeconomic performance (a primary budget surplus, rising sovereign credit rating, energy independence, etc.). On the other hand, Buenos Aires looks like a large European city, and yet Argentina's economic recovery is based on some rickety macroeconomics. It's worth noting though that there are parts of Brazil a lot more orderly than São Paulo, particularly the richer and whiter southern states.
Menem did many things the IMF recommended but he also run an enormous fiscal defict! Each time the public deficit explodes in Argentina there is a large crisis. It happened before 2001 and might happen again (thanks to the argentinean god for those high commodity prices that have been helping so much!)
Buenos Aires is beautiful, european and white...and yes unequal too.
Some great pizza and ice cream in Buenos Aires. I liked how common whole wheat ("integral") pizza was too.