¡Buenos días from Greenway Parks! This is the Rorshok Argentina Update from the 12th of February twenty twenty-six. A quick summary of what's going down in Argentina.

Let’s start with the cost of living. On Tuesday the 10th, the INDEC national statistics bureau reported that inflation hit 2.9% in January. This is the fifth month in a row that price hikes have accelerated, and it brings the total increase over the last twelve months to nearly 33%. Food, restaurants, and utilities saw the biggest jumps. While the government managed to cool prices down toward the middle of last year, things have been creeping up again lately.

This brings us to an update on the INDEC agency itself. Last week, we reported that Marco Lavagna, the head of INDEC, resigned unexpectedly. We now know his exit followed a disagreement with President Milei over when to start using a new system to measure inflation. The government decided to postpone the change, fearing it would make the monthly numbers look even higher since the new formula gives more weight to public services.

Pedro Lines has officially taken over as the technical chief to keep the data flowing, but the delay has sparked a lot of talk about whether the statistics are being handled for political reasons.

Speaking of the government’s plans, Argentina and the United States just signed a massive trade and investment deal. Pablo Quirno, Argentina’s Foreign Minister, and Jamieson Greer, a US Trade Representative, inked the agreement, which removes reciprocal tariffs on over 1,600 Argentine products. This effectively rolls back the 10% tariff President Trump imposed last year. The deal opens the door for Argentina to export more natural resources and pharmaceutical inputs, while making it easier for US machinery and medical devices to enter the local market.

Beef is at the center of this new relationship. The US issued a proclamation that expands the beef import quota for Argentina by 80,000 metric tons. This brings the total to 100,000 tons per year—four times the previous limit. While this is a win for local producers, the deal also means Argentina is opening its borders to several US products like cheddar cheese and salami.

President Milei is heading back to the States very soon to keep this momentum going. He changed his schedule to attend the inaugural meeting of Donald Trump’s Board of Peace in Washington DC on the 19th of February.

This is a new international body that some think might eventually rival the United Nations.

Trump launched the board at Davos in January, and it operates under a pay-to-play model where permanent members must contribute one thousand million dollars to join. Trump serves as the chairman for life with exclusive authority to dissolve or create entities as he sees fit.

While the government looks for wins abroad, groups at home say the local economy is hurting. The Industrial Union of Santa Fe recently warned that the middle class is eroding because of job losses and falling incomes. According to their report, there are over 2,300 fewer manufacturing firms now than there were in late twenty twenty-three. They’re worried that the country is mortgaging its future by letting industrial plants empty out while financial returns become more attractive than actually making things.

Since we mentioned Santa Fe, the central province is dealing with major unrest within its own security forces. Active and retired police officers held large protests this week in Rosario, and the provincial capital to demand better salaries. In Rosario, officers and their families gathered with patrol cars and burned tires, causing major traffic jams.

Pablo Cococcioni, the provincial Minister of Security, reacted quickly by suspending twenty officers and taking away their weapons. He says the protests are being driven by corrupt sectors of the force that were recently pushed out.

On the topic of security forces, last week we mentioned the government’s plan for a new immigration body. Now we have more details. The government is moving forward with the National Immigration Agency, which will be led by Diego Valenzuela, the former mayor of Tres de Febrero, a district in Greater Buenos Aires. This new agency will have much more power than the old one, focusing on security and border control. There is even talk of creating a specialized immigration police. This shift moves immigration from being a simple paperwork issue to a core part of the country’s security strategy.

On the legal front, there is a major update on the corruption case at ANDIS, the national disability agency. You might remember the agency was dissolved last year following bribery claims. Now, a federal judge has ordered Diego Spagnuolo, the former head, and eighteen others to stand trial. They are accused of running a criminal organization that took bribes from pharmaceutical companies in exchange for state contracts. The judge says the agency was used as a road to enrichment while neglecting the care of people with disabilities.

On that note about leadership exits, Demián Reidel, one of President Milei’s top advisors, resigned this week as the head of the state nuclear power firm, Nucleoeléctrica. His departure comes after weeks of claims regarding overpricing in cleaning contracts and software services. This follows the suspension of two other managers, which we mentioned last week. While the government says Reidel is leaving to focus on advising the President again, his time at the nuclear firm was marked by heavy friction with the technical staff and accusations of steering contracts to specific bidders.

In a very sad update, a court has handed down a significant sentence in a medical malpractice case in Río Negro, in northern Patagonia. An anesthesiologist was sentenced to three years in prison and banned from practicing medicine for seven years after a four-year-old boy died during a routine surgery. The investigation found the doctor had left the operating room to find a phone charger and was using his cell phone for twenty minutes during critical moments of the procedure.

Also in Río Negro and in Entre Ríos in the northeast, authorities rescued twenty-eight people from extreme labor exploitation. In the city of Viedma in Río Negro, a fifteen-year-old girl was found working in a field since she was twelve, earning almost nothing. Meanwhile, in San Benito, Entre Ríos, five other workers were found living in tiny spaces without clean water, often trapped by debts they owed to their employers. Federal prosecutors are now moving forward with charges against the owners of these establishments.

Let’s move to some lighter news. The Argentine Football Association confirmed that the national team will set up its base camp in Kansas City for the twenty twenty-six World Cup. They chose the city because its central location in the US makes it easier to travel between matches. Argentina will play its first game against Algeria on the 16th of June, and while they have to travel to Dallas for their second match, they’ll be back in Kansas City for the third one against Jordan.

To help fans get to the US, Aerolíneas Argentinas is launching new flights to Miami starting on the 8th of June. Some of these flights will take off directly from Córdoba, Rosario, and Tucumán. They’ll include a quick technical stop in Punta Cana. The airline is nearly doubling its flights to Miami to keep up with the World Cup demand.

Speaking of new developments, Chile just launched Latam-GPT, an artificial intelligence model designed specifically for Latin America. This tool is built to understand local slang, idioms, and cultural diversity. It’s an open-source project, meaning local programmers can customize it for things like hospital logistics or customer service.

Also focusing on the identity of Latin America, a must-read on the intersection of pop culture and Pan-Americanism. Diego von Vacano, a professor of political science and contributor to the Buenos Aires Herald, recently published an op-ed in English titled Bad Bunny’s Nuestra América, an analysis of the singer’s Super Bowl Halftime Show as a modern vessel for Latin American political philosophy.

Von Vacano argues that Benito’s performance was less about pop music and more about asserting a transnational artistic sensibility that defies the rigid, bellicose structures of the English-speaking world.

Check the full piece with the link in the show notes!

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

Share your email so we can keep you updated with what's going on in Argentina and Rorshok's projects connected to Argentina.

¡Nos vemos la próxima semana!