By Miguel Lo Bianco and Leila Miller
BUENOS AIRES, March 31 (Reuters) - Every week, hundreds of people line up to fill a plastic container with food in an unlikely place: the humble home where Argentine soccer legend Diego Armando Maradona was born.
The house in Villa Fiorito, a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, no longer belongs to the family of Maradona, who died in 2020 after a heart attack, but for the last month, its current owner has lent its dirt yard to a group of volunteers who light a grill and cook for neighbors.
Last Thursday, Maria Torres stirred a stew in two large pots while several others peeled potatoes and chopped pieces of chicken. A mural painted on the house's facade depicts the soccer player next to the words, "The house of god."
Poverty has been trending downward in Argentina, with official statistics released on Tuesday showing it dropping to 28.2% of the country's population in the second half of 2025 from 52.9% in the first half of 2024, when President Javier Milei sharply devalued the peso and inflation spiked.
While there has been a "very important drop" in poverty, Argentina needs to see more GDP growth in labor-intensive sectors, such as mining, as opposed to capital-intensive sectors, such as agriculture, said Eduardo Donza, a sociologist at the Catholic University of Argentina.
The drop in the poverty rate has followed a substantial drop in monthly inflation, from double digits when Milei took office to 2.9% in February.
However, Milei's austerity measures have sharply diminished the public sector workforce and many say they have lost purchasing power as the government has cut transportation and energy subsidies.
Leonardo Fabian Alvarez, a pastor who runs the makeshift soup kitchen, said he has seen the demand for food in Villa Fiorito and other neighborhoods grow as small factories have closed. Deregulation and a stronger peso have led to cheaper imports under Milei.
"People obviously lost their jobs," he said, adding that "they come to the line, pick up food, take what we give them."
Argentina declared the home of Maradona a National Historic Site in 2021.
(Reporting by Miguel Lo Bianco in Buenos Aires; Writing by Leila Miller; Additional writing by Lucila Sigal; Editing by Rod Nickel and Matthew Lewis)
