# "It's really not a question

By [ObduliaShearha](https://paragraph.com/@creazioni) · 2022-07-23

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"It's really not a question of if, but of when," says Guzman of Colombia's Risk Analysis.

He argues that regional governments won't be able to spend enough to mitigate the rising cost of living and pacify their populations. "As pockets tightens, people will be losing their patience, not because of anything the governments do, but because these countries don't have the capacity to increase social spending."

Ecuador's President Guillermo Lasso, for example, has been forced by protests to cap the price of gasoline at $2.40 per gallon -- a decision that will cost the country an additional three billion dollars by the end of the year, according to finance minister Simon Cueva.

In Argentina, where the country's finance minister has been forced to step down over extreme inflation, one Buenos Aires food delivery worker told CNN the year had so far proven more rancorous than the early years of the pandemic.

"Everybody complains," Federico Mansilia, a father of two, told CNN. "Those who get social support because they say it's not enough, and those who don't get it because they want social support. At least in the pandemic, government and opposition worked together, now polarization and bitterness is growing again."

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The sole hope for a moment of national unity, Mansilia says, is for Argentina to win the Football World Cup in Qatar at the end of the year.

"That will really bring the country together. If we win, everybody will be happy, no inflation or gasoline price to bother us. But right now, things are pretty miserable."

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*Originally published on [ObduliaShearha](https://paragraph.com/@creazioni/it-s-really-not-a-question)*