Here's footage of celebrations along the same avenue (Corrientes) for their first Cup in '78.

It's sad in a way, because you can also see how far living standards have fallen since then (plus, I should note the '78 footage was taken in June - which is winter for them). You'd almost think they were taken in two different countries, really.

Nevertheless, thank you.

My understanding is that it's been hard down there, for the average working family, since shortly after Perón died in '74 - which of course has only added to his appeal among the downtrodden since then.

If you blended Bernie Sanders' policies, with Trump's authoritarian and theatrical ways - you'd get Juan Perón.

Argentina had - by far - the largest (proportional) middle class in Latin America, and its best-paid, most unionized working class. "You almost forgot you were in the third world," as a BBC documentarian at the time put it.

Not any more.

A lot of the decline since then has to do with the Bush-style debt bubble/collapse under the dictatorship in 1978-82.

$40 billion in foreign debt was taken on, of which $30 billion was used to finance the dollarizing and offshoring of peso assets by speculators (domestic elites and foreign fly-by-nighters). They made off like bandits - and left everyone the bill.

Except Argentina didn't have a Fed to bail it out - so that debt has snowballed ever since.

No matter how much in trade surpluses they earn, most gets eaten up by interest payments - leaving (relatively) few dollars for anyone else.

All this usually gets left out of debates on the "Argentine failure."

Thanks again for reading, BlueWave, and All the Best.