"...una hectárea por una hamburguesa"

The fear of the foreign landowner is a growing theme these days in Argentina. Not fear of the foreign apartment or homeowner in Buenos Aires, mind you--hey, the more the merrier--but rather of owners of large tracts of productive farmland. As we noted earlier, the ex-subsecretary of land and social habitat Luis D'Elía declared a kind of war on foreign manufacturers of wool and fleece winterwear cutting open the entrance to North Face and Esprit founder--and 'deep ecologist'--Douglas Tompkins's property in the Corrientes province, accusing Tompkins of trying to control one of Argentina's strategic resources, fresh water, and saying the land should be expropriated. Then, of course, there's the contretemps between members of the Benetton family and members of the Mapuche tribe (above) who say at least some of the land is theirs. The fears mirror the anguish felt by many when state businesses--especially the petroleum company YPF--were sold off in the 90s, like (you could say), an impoverished family selling its jewels to pay off bad casino bets.

The last two days bring two good wrap ups on the subject. First, in the Observer [UK], correspondent Uki Goñi traces Tompkins story and the fears it inspires (that, for example, Tompkins could be a CIA agent grabbing the aquifer beneath the land for the US of A). Another article, in Spain's El Pais, explains the sheer amount of land owned by foreigners--300,000 square kilometers, or about half the size of Spain--and the absurdly low price of some of it--six Euros for a hectárea in Catamarca. As the article says, in Spain that's the price of a hamburger...