The final closure, a tragedy that still strikes traders

On March 20, 2020, a strict quarantine was decreed across the country. Ten months later, 300 days after this dramatic announcement, there are many traders who, despite the flexibility and new official regulations they had to close their stores and could never reopen them.

Stories seem to repeat themselves. The answers to the question why did they have to close? they cause the same tremors and anguish as in July or August, when most of these debt-covered companies They have decided to lower the blinds on their windows forever.

One of them is Horacio Asselborn (60), owner of a shoe store in Santa Fe and Pueyrredón, Recoleta district, which now remains with bars in sight. “The owner wanted us to collect the rent as before the pandemic. In March, we closed like everyone else and we had no more means of paying for it “, account.

With the passage of months and the uncertainty of not knowing how the strict quarantine would continue, Horacio and his two partners decided to give up: “Out of ten employees, we had to stay with three. We were lost every day. The ATP government covered 50 percent of our salaries, but the rest was impossible to sustain, ”he explains.

The three partners still maintain two other sites, one in the Maipú and Florida area, which for now, says Horacio, “the fight”, but admits that he is running out of time: the big companies prefer to have their employees at home or that schools do not open, it distresses us. We don’t know if it will get better“.

In just two blocks around Santa Fe and Pueyrredón, they closed 20 stores and a full gallery. The lack of tourism, traders report, has had a direct impact on these closures. The scene combines with a survey conducted by CAME which found that on average across the country 9 stores closed per block.

“We have closed permanently. 80 days of closure was impossible to maintain. Thank you all for these years ”. The poster went viral on social media, it was one of the first companies to show the pain of not being able to continue. The parade was over Honduras at 5000, in Plaza Serrano, and belonged to the Bad Toro bar, by Santiago Olivera (43), who in turn owns five other companies dedicated to the same activity in the Palermo region.

“In January and February, there was a lot of tourism and the weather was good. The quarantine did a place where everything was perfect had to close permanently“, take Santiago again.

“After March, I just accumulated debt. First with salaries, then with credits to pay rent in the amount of 400 thousand pesos which has not been changed and later with more credits. We put ourselves in a ball that we couldn’t stop, ”he says.

In this way and with no other exit in sight, in June he hung up the parade and closed the bar which had 17 employees. 80% were able to relocate them to their other businesses and with the rest, they are in legal negotiations.

Because what is to come, the prospect is uncertain: “I spend every day watching the news, negotiating rentals, talking to providers. It’s an unimaginable disaster“, he says and adds that in the premises which knew how to resist, it is now time to pay what could not be done in the year:”In one, we received 250 thousand pesos of electricity, between the debt and the payment plan. It costs and there is no quick fix“.

The panorama seen in the city of Buenos Aires and the suburbs is also repeated in other cities of the country. Cordoba is one of the provinces where the pandemic and quarantine.

There, among so many stories, stands out that of Sofía Agulles who, together with her husband, opened a cafeteria and an ice cream parlor in 2016 on Calle Chacabuco 390. Over the days after March 20, the couple began to notice how little all the stores in the area have said “goodbye”.

“Without these clients, without students at Nueva Córdoba and without being able to receive people there, we could no longer do, neither financially nor emotionally,” he said at the time, he also threw in the towel. They tried to sell. via WhatsApp or via delivery applications, but sometimes they did not even cover the cost of electricity.