In Argentina, some 80% of adoptions take place through a direct exchange, through a private agreement between the biological mother and those wishing to adopt. While the practice is legal and done under the supervision of a judge, it is vulnerable to numerous abuses that jeopardise the legality and ethics of the process. Still, it is widespread. Why do so many people choose direct adoption over adopting through the state?

One of the things that foreign visitors to any major city in Argentina find most surprising is the enormous presence of psychoanalysis in the urban culture. Rachel Randall explores the role of therapy in Buenos Aires.

Margarita Barrientos’ soup kitchen Los Piletones feeds 1,300 mouths a day. As the institution’s founder, Barrientos has been recognised on numerous occasions for her work with the poor in the Buenos Aires suburb of Villa Soldati, most recently with a Diploma of Merit for Social Development from the Konex Foundation.

Dog fighting is a blood sport. It was once lauded by aristocrats and embraced by medieval gentry, but after slowly being outlawed, it now demonstrates the presence of underground criminal activity in cities across the world. In Argentina, organisers are often also gang members involved in drug dealing and racketeering, with proceeds from fights funding these covert activities.

Argentina is currently wrenched by a security crisis that provoked 50,000 people to march the streets of Buenos Aires protesting for their safety last month. All sectors of society have witnessed an increase in violent crime. It now seems logical to ask where the causes of this problem lie. Dr Claudio Stampalija, the director of the Centre of Studies for the Prevention of Crime at the University of Belgrano, believes that the problem must be tackled at its grass roots: young people.

The lack of coins in circulation in Argentina turns relatively simple tasks such as buying lunch or catching a bus into complicated transactions. Without coins, using public transport in Buenos Aires is near impossible. In shops, customers are offered substitutes for monetary change and owners lose revenue by selling products at reduced prices, as they are unable to give customers change.

I arrive at the Once headquarters of AMMAR-Capital, a human rights-based organisation of prostituted women in Buenos Aires, to find a meeting underway. Ten women between 20 and 60 are sitting around a table, immersed in animated chat. The atmosphere, made comfortable by these women’s shared experiences on the streets of Buenos Aires, changes perceptibly with my entrance.

“He’s a black from the slums”, “Don’t cry, gay”, “You don’t fit, fattie”, and “Go home and wash the dishes” screamed the foot-high letters from billboards and the sides of buses in downtown Buenos Aires. The messages weren’t spray painted by vandals: rather they were part of an awareness-raising campaign produced by Argentina’s National Institute for the Control of Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism (INADI).

Old people are genuinely dangerous. ‘How?’ one might ask. The deadly combination of a loss of physical faculties and a driving licence? The constant armoury of knitting needles and hefty Zimmer frames carried by the average pensioner? Well, perhaps, but no. The real threat that the elderly pose is their growing abundance.

Silvia Carranza is one of the 2.2 million people in Argentina with a disability. The 53-year-old was diagnosed with polio at seven months when an epidemic spread across Argentina in 1955. As a result her lower body muscles have contracted, which means she is dependant on crutches and has great difficulty walking.