ABSTRACT
The long and exaggerated decline of Argentina in this century is legendary. Its social, economic, and political development in 1930 compared favorably to that of Canada, Australia, and much of southern Europe. Argentina suffered a devastating series of public humiliations during the 1980s from which many observers thought it would never recover. The country bumbled from its military defeat by British troops in the Falkland Islands in 1982 to a dubious position as the basket case economy of Latin America, surpassing even Brazil and Peru for this distinction. The economic disaster of the 1980s produced a virtual collapse in health care, steady increases in infant mortality, and minimal official response. Economic decline during the 1980s helped turn a once-wealthy nation where food was traditionally plentiful and cheap, into one harboring vast pockets of extreme poverty and class-based conflict.
