A day of bumming around town…..

The history of El Calafate began in the first decades of the twentieth century. Originally, it was simply a sheltering place for wool traders. The town was officially founded in 1927 by the Argentinian government to promote settlement, but it was the creation of the nearby National Park in 1937 that sparked growth and the building of better road access.

El Calafate’s source of income is glacier and wildlife tourism, and it became transformed, during Mr Kirchner’s period as provincial governor, when the government built an airport in 2000.  The quickly booming town ran a programme that sold small lots of inexpensive land to local residents who intended to build houses or businesses. Some 3,000 had filled out the paperwork and were waiting for approval, but after Néstor Kirchner moved into the presidential offices in 2003 priorities changed. 

(Néstor Carlos Kirchner served as President of Argentina from 25 May 2003 until 10 December 2007. Kirchner’s four-year presidency was notable for presiding over a dramatic fall in poverty and unemployment, following the economic crisis of 2001, together with an extension of social security coverage, a major expansion in housing and infrastructure, higher spending on scientific research and education, and substantial increases in real wage levels). 

BUT, there were always issues about corruption that followed him and wife.  

Mr Kirchner, his wife, and some 50 other government functionaries found themselves front of the line and were awarded large plots of land in preferential locations at very low prices. In the most famous case, Néstor Kirchner bought two hectares near the town’s old airstrip for $50,000, then sold the lot to the Chilean Cencosud supermarket conglomerate for $2.4 million two years later. 

The view is that he enriched himself dramatically by mixing private and state business. Until 2003, Kirchner had no property in El Calafate. Now the Kirchner’s run 60 to 70 per cent of the economic activity in the town.

Much of the town is typical of Patagonia, with dirt roads and nondescript houses with wriggly tin roofs. Here is a sample…

But at Los Sauces, a hotel the Kirchners built on one of the parcels of land they bought near the mountain waters of Lago Argentino, the advantages of privilege are clear.

His wife, Cristina Elisabet Fernandez de Kirchner, and often referred to by her initials CFK, an Argentine lawyer and politician, took over as President from 2007 to 2015.  She was the second woman to serve as President of Argentina, after Isabel Martinez de Peron, 1974–76.

The new Argentinian President Mauricio Macri said he wants to start a “new kind of relationship” with Britain over the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) as he tries to move his country towards a centrist position in world affairs. Macri said he would continue to press Argentina’s claim to sovereignty, but he hoped the mood of ‘dialogue could change’.