On a sticky morning in late May 1989, Argentines woke up to news of food riots and looting spreading across the country. For a society socialized in the easy assumption of food opulence, even if moderated by the burden of continuous economic impoverishment, the shock could not have been greater. By noon, rumors of spontaneous bouts of social turmoil and collective violence reached closer and closer to the major avenues and neighborhoods of the capital city and greater Buenos Aires, adding to the porteños' concern with food shortages. By afternoon, stores in the northern and southern regions of the metropolitan area closed their doors, and television news was filled with scenes of owners shuttering their shops and protecting them at gunpoint, along with images of desperate neighbors in their rush to markets to buy and store up whatever food was available.

These images of a radical social and economic collapse, however, were not the only ones to shape citizens' sense of what had suddenly taken place in their country. As Argentine television broadcast the events in detail, it also showed pictures of the security forces oscillating between brutal repression that killed several dozen people and a laissez-faire attitude that permitted looters to bring home their booty. The national media then presented the ironic, almost pathetic appeal of elected officials to appease the looters and to ask the police to restore public order.