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Back in 2007 the left-wing candidate Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner assumed the presidency of Argentina, becoming the first female president in the history of the country. The vote count in her favor exceeded 45% of all overall votes, a typical number for politicians affiliated with the Peronist doctrine established by Juan Domingo Peron fifty years earlier, which innovated by targeting the lower social classes.
Came 2009, under severe social pressure, the law availing the "Universal Child Allowance Plan" is approved with the usual vast majority of votes. Even today, it ensures a monthly allowance to parents for each child under eighteen, on the condition that they remain either domestic workers, under informal employment, or straight-up unemployed.
The answer as to how this president managed this level of consistency in votes and as to why such a hefty law was passed is one and the same. Nestor Kirchner, previous president and Cristina's husband both, had abolished immigration regulation laws right at the start of his term in 2003. People that couldn't even wash dishes in their countries came flooding into Argentina, grateful for the opportunity to work low-end jobs and be blue-collar workers, grateful to the president that allowed them in.
Less than a year in, the job market became over-saturated.
And every year since there would be a bit more crime, and a bit more tin roofs.
A sea of slums had engulfed the city from below. By the time Francisco Troyes, brother to ten, had his tenth offspring, Helen Troyes, vice-president Cristina Kirchner was on trial and well on her way to a ten-year sentence. Families surviving solely on the Universal Child Allowance Plan had become commonplace if not the norm, the money hardly ever enough to feed all mouths. But they made do. Bills would be avoided by tapping into the power supply of nearby electric poles, hacking into the Wi-Fi of neighbors or sharing it among many families, by connecting to pipes through often leaking clandestine gas systems…
But what would a little kid know of all this. She just thought her big brother liked bikes a bit too much, because he had so many of them, that her big sis had too many friends, that her dad should just drink a little bit less sugar… What would a kid know? She had rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and had learned to love it.
So when the orphanage lady told her that mom and dad were really, really busy, she was actually desperate to see them.
