A century ago, Argentina was one of the 10 richest
countries in the world.
But it has earned the dubious distinction
of being the only nation ever to regress to developing country
status.
Argentina has had a major economic crisis roughly
once every decade in the last half century.
So hyperinflation, devaluations, and IMF bailouts
have all become facts of life.
So what is it like living in a state of almost
constant economic turmoil?
And after signing up to the biggest bailout
package in the IMF's history, can Argentina finally
break free from a cycle of boom and bust?
2018 has tested Argentines' patience.
In September workers took to the streets
to protest inflation that has soared above 40 per cent,
a currency crisis that has cut the peso's value in half
compared to the dollar, and the government's latest
loan from the IMF.
President Mauricio Macri has been
applauded for his reforms to cut the fiscal deficit
and tackle inflation.
But signs of a downward economic spiral
are all too familiar here.
Volatility has defined Argentina's recent history.
And memories of the last severe crisis in 2001 are still fresh.
Before the economic crisis of 2001,
Luis's taxi licence was worth about the same
as a 500 sq ft, one-bedroom apartment in Buenos Aries.
But in 2002, after a three-year long recession,
Argentina ended a decade-long peg to the US dollar.
Bank deposits indexed to dollars lost more than 70
per cent of their value, wiping out people's savings almost
overnight.
Luis was forced to return to the family business
at the San Telmo Market, where they
have worked since they arrived as immigrants from Italy
in the 1930s.
Together with his siblings and mother,
they also run two hostels, all to help make ends meet.
The Amitrano family have found ways
to survive repeated economic crises.
But the country as a whole has been
left psychologically scarred.
In 2001, a lethal cocktail of excessive state spending
and borrowing, a flawed currency regime,
and volatility in emerging markets,
led to the catastrophic failure of an IMF rescue programme.
Argentines have not forgotten the grinding recession,
social chaos, and acute political instability
of those days.
The problem is that in Argentina history
has a way of repeating itself.
This year the government turned to the International Monetary
Fund for help again.
They secured a $57bn loan, making it the biggest bailout
package in the IMF's history.
Recent volatility in emerging markets,
triggered by rising US interest rates and a looming trade
war with China, exposed the vulnerabilities
of Argentina's gaping fiscal and current account deficits.
And when foreign investors were no longer
willing to lend to Argentina, the government
was forced to seek financial backing from the IMF yet again.
But successive crises and more than a dozen bailouts
from the IMF have made Argentines doubtful
of the government's ability to break
the cycle of economic gloom.
Las Pipinas, about a two-hour drive southeast
of Buenos Aires, has been zapped by three
successive economic crises.
One in the 1970s, which led to the closure of its railway
station.
Again in 1989, which was followed by a neoliberal
stabilisation programme that led to the removal of fuel
subsidies for the town's main employer, a cement factory.
And the 2001 crisis, which forced the factory's closure.
Claudia Diaz co-founded a co-operative in Las Pipinas
after the cement factory closed and people were desperately
trying to find a new way of life.
Las Pipinas isn't the only place where ordinary Argentines
are trying to fill a void left by what many
see as a failure of the state to manage the economy
and create opportunities.
Father Lorenzo De Vedia - or Padre Toto, as he is known -
has been preaching in these slums for almost 20 years.
Back in the centre of Buenos Aries,
the message from government officials contrasts sharply
with discontent among ordinary Argentines.
But can this government deliver real change
that ends the cycle of boom and bust?
President Macri's fiscal discipline
is a novelty in Argentina.
He signed up to an unpopular IMF-backed austerity
drive in the year before an election
and is aiming to balance the budget by 2019,
potentially derailing his chances of remaining in office.
Although he swept to power on the promise of delivering
change, whether his government succeeds in making Argentina
a more stable country depends on Argentines' patience
with those reforms.