Last Sunday Argentina elected a new president, the first elected woman to the presidency, who just so happens to be the most recent first lady. Since we’ve gotten down here, talk on the election has been scarce. Not only at the local level, but candidates themselves weren’t really talking—there were no televised debates and the front-runner, Cristina Kirchner spent more time traveling abroad to Europe and the United States to meet with international leaders than campaigning in her own country.

I haven’t talked to a single Argentine who believes in Cristina Kirchner. The ones that don’t hate her are indifferent and expect life in Argentina to continue on as usual, as it was under Nestor Kirchner’s presidency. At least with a new president, people can hold on the hope for things to improve…even if in the end, they don’t. One of the big strikes against Kirchner 2 is that she stands by official numbers of inflation, reported at 10-12%. Argentines know that inflation is really much higher than the official numbers, since they live it on a daily basis. Prices here are written in chalk or pencil, since they change every day. When we first got here, there was a campaign to boycott tomatoes, since their prices had risen to become more expensive than beef. In a country where there has been so much political corruption, a president who refuses to face the facts or who is so out of touch with local reality is a bad sign of what is to come.

The day before the elections we had two conversations on the bus with older Argentine women. Before getting off the bus, one of them shook her fist at the Congress building shouting, “we pay them but they don’t do any work!” and then smiled and waved “ciao!” The next conversation started with “our government is the mafia, really”. Although many Americans, such as myself, may have a mistrust of certain governmental policies, there is still a trust in the core of our democracy. The deep cynicism of those two ladies is certainly justified when thinking about the last 50 years of Argentine politics.