The newsstand was open, (almost no one seems to be observing any lockdown here in microcentro), I grabbed a copy of La Nacion, and it has the Campo supplement. The front page has some cows and reads "Cepo a la carne, malestar, estupor, y enojo".
Translation breaks down at the first word. Carne is meat, sure, and the last three words are "discomfort, stupor, and anger", but "cepo"?
Literally translated it can be a stock chute, like at the rodeo. Or that thing they clamp on a wheel of your car when you have parked illegally. Or a medieval torture device. But of course none of those really apply. It's one of those uniquely Argentine words like "corralito"*, used to describe somewhat bizarre economic manipulations by governments of marginal competence, (and when was the last time Argentina had a truly competent government?), when they see things spiraling out of control and have no faintest ^%$&*&^@ idea what to do.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again - Argentina is to Political Science what non-Euclidean geometries are to Mathematics. The fundamental rules are just different. If you don't live here you don't understand, and no words can explain it to you. Hell, for that matter, it's entirely possible that even if you do live here, todavia no tenés ninguna jodida idea.
ANYHOW, in this case "cepo" clearly means the 30-day ban on exports of meat. I explained to the elderly man who operates the newsstand exactly why I was buying La Nacion instead of my usual idealistic leftist rag. When I mentioned the cepo, he did that explosion of outraged indignation thing that educated porteños do when confronted with government actions like this, and spent a good five minutes expounding in angry Castellano at 400 words per minute, with occasional gusts to 650, on the topic of why this is a terribad idea. (ARGH, Castellano is really ruining my English; I never used to write horrible run-on sentences like that!)
I have grown old, and a year of quarantine has done nothing good for my short-range vision. I can't read close-packed columns of small-face type in the dim evening light. I'll get to it tomorrow and try to post my own translated summary. Right now, I'm going to drink Malbec and make some pasta.
Ay, puta vida!
*I'm not suggesting that cepo and corralito are synonymous, only that they are both uniquely Argentine words in the way they are used here
