MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Kirchner: “Argentina is 6 miles undergound”.

President Nestor Kirchner led reporters Tuesday on a tour of “the hidden Argentina,” taking the journalists to public institutions that serve the needy.

"We must feel shame over this, which is in a deplorable state," the president said after visiting a government-funded retirement home in obvious disrepair.

Kirchner's whereabouts were kept secret by his press office until the president arrived in the Buenos Aires suburb of San Martin along with his sister, Social Development Minister Alicia Kirchner, and other officials.

Government sources said reporters accredited to the presidential palace were taken to the site in a van without being informed of their destination, in order to preserve "the surprise factor." Once in San Martin, one of the many districts in Greater Buenos Aires suffering from high rates of unemployment and poverty, Kirchner spoke of "the hidden Argentina, the one some advocates of orthodox economics don't see."

"Argentina is 10 kilometers (6 miles) underground," he said. "We have to go out, take on the problems, and I'm going to go everywhere, I want to see, and be with, the real Argentina." After touring a campus-like area housing separate retirement homes for men and women and a mother and child center, the president promised that repair and renovation of the facilities would begin within 15 days.

Their present dilapidated condition, Kirchner said, reflects "years of abandonment by governments that looked the other way." The president stopped several times to chat with the residents and employees of the institutions.

After nearly five years of brutal recession, 17.8 percent of the Argentine workforce is unemployed and 57.5 percent of the country's 36 million people live in poverty.