Apagón

Economy of Argentina
Peso (currency)
Convertibility plan
Corralito
Cacerolazo
2001 riots
Apagón
Debt restructuring

Apagón (in Spanish, literally, blackout) is a form of protest that was employed several times in some large cities of Argentina, during the economic crisis at the beginning of the 2000s. The justification for a blackout as a form of protest was a rejection of the proposed increase of fees of electricity and other basic services.

During the 1990s, under the Menem administration, the Convertibility Law guaranteed a fixed exchange rate of 1 U. S. dollar per Argentine peso, and the private companies that supplied electric power, telephone service, natural gas and drinking water, among others, earned consistently high profits, which could be turned into dollars and sent abroad with no loss. A number of these service providers had also secured dollarized fees, contracts that entitled them to ask for increases in their fees subject to the inflation of the United States, and other provisions of the kind.

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Wikipedia