Argentina latente (2007)

The director travels through different regions of Argentina, interviewing technicians, engineers, workers, and scientists. The film highlights the country’s economic potential—its natural wealth—and its human resources, which are not being put to use, allowing a brain drain. It also draws a contrast between Argentina’s immense wealth, owing to its vast size, climate diversity suitable for agriculture, mining resources, gas and hydrocarbons, and the Argentine Sea, and its levels of poverty, which result from these resources being poorly managed by private companies, a legacy of the privatization the country underwent in the 1990s. The film shows the major achievements of national industry throughout its history and its current state. It also portrays Argentina’s enormous potential, rooted in its scientific and technological heritage, its knowledge and human resources, and the high level of development it achieved in the 1950s and 1960s, especially in aerospace, aeronautics, the automotive industry, shipbuilding, natural sciences, and medicine. It shows how many of these resources were not only destroyed by the corruption and negligence of the country’s rulers, but also plundered and destroyed by major foreign capital interests, and privatized at the recommendation of financial institutions. Examples include the railways, the military aircraft factory, and YPF. The film does not seek to show Argentina’s shortcomings; on the contrary, it reveals the country’s enormous potential and aims to raise awareness of the national heritage that belongs to all Argentinians and which, if properly managed, could lift the country out of its current crisis. It shows a “Latent Argentina” with everything it needs to become a great country in every sense of the word.