The Guardian guardian.co.uk Monday 19 December 2011 21.00 GMT
Argentina is no paradise
With its vaunted growth and inflation numbers that don't add up, this is not a country in recovery but a client stateMiguel Bonasso
Article history
It was sticky and humid when dawn broke on 20 December 2001. The sound of shots could be heard behind us; the angry crowd protesting in the Plaza de Mayo began to move back. Then I saw him: that man in the blue trousers and Hawaiian shirt who fell on the steps of parliament. I knew he was dead. We started to retreat, pursued by the Infantry Guard Corps. Any of us could have ended up that way, with a bullet in the head. Yet we returned, despite the state of seige and the teargas and the bullets, until, later in the afternoon, President Fernando de la Rúa, the man who had ordered the repression, made his escape in a helicopter.