For 30 years now, Europe and to a lesser degree, the USA, has been encouraging energy efficiency as a way to use less power.
The US government subsidizes zero interest loans to improve energy efficiency, in terms of better windows and doors, insulation, more efficient heating and cooling systems, less water consumption, and so on.
The single LEAST efficient way to cool buildings in a city like Buenos Aires would be to make cheap knockoffs of korean air conditioners (noblex, anyone) and then tack literally millions of small, inefficient models all over every single building.
Central air, of course, is much cheaper in the long run, both to install and to run. But it requires consorcios agreeing, something that will never happen here.
Is it any wonder there are blackouts?
The exact same btu's of cooling could probably be done with 2/3 the electricity, if there was a rational building code, and central air, or at least fewer units and some national program to study efficiency of cooling.
Luckily, the good restaurants have generators.